"Why don't you try something of the same kind now?" said the Nilghai.
"Because those things come not by fasting and prayer. When I find a cargo-boat
and a Jewess-Cuban and another notion and the same old life, I may."
"You won't find them here," said the Nilghai.
"No, I shall not." Dick shut the sketch-book with a bang. "This room's as hot
as an oven. Open the window, some one."
He leaned into the darkness, watching the greater darkness of London below him.
The chambers stood much higher than the other houses, commanding a hundred
chimneys--crooked cowls that looked like sitting cats as they swung round, and
other uncouth brick and zinc mysteries supported by iron stanchions and clamped
by 8-pieces. Northward the lights of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square
threw a copper-coloured glare above the black roofs, and southward by all the
orderly lights of the Thames. A train rolled out across one of the railway
bridges, and its thunder drowned for a minute the dull roar of the streets. The
Nilghai looked at his watch and said shortly, "That's the Paris night-mail. You
can book from here to St. Petersburg if you choose."
Dick crammed head and shoulders out of the window and looked across the river.
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