Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 5.pdf/88

 eaten!" He glanced for his hat, and decided to go hatless.

As he rushed downstairs two steps at a time, he could hear along the street the mighty howlings to and fro of the hooligan paper-sellers making a Boom.

Orrible affair in Kent—'orrible affair in Kent. Doctor eaten by rats. 'Orrible affair—'orrible affair—rats—eaten by Stchewpendous rats. Full perticlers—'orrible affair."

III

Cossar, the well-known civil engineer, found them in the great doorway of the flat mansions, Redwood holding out the damp pink paper and Bensington on tiptoe, reading over his arm. Cossar was a large-bodied man with gaunt inelegant limbs placed casually at convenient corners of his body, and a face like a carving abandoned at an early stage as altogether too unpromising for completion. His nose had been left square, and his lower jaw projected beyond his upper. He breathed audibly. Few people considered him handsome. His hair was entirely tangential, and his voice, which he used sparingly, was pitched high, and had commonly a quality of bitter protest. He wore a grey cloth jacket suit and a silk hat on all occasions. He plumbed an abysmal trouser pocket with a vast red hand, paid his cabman, and came panting resolutely up the steps, a copy of the pink paper clutched about the middle like Jove's thunderbolt in his hand.