章 4: Dain's Invention{3}
even they had no knowledge of the amazing transformation that had been effected in their own property. the place was no longer an office with a tiny annexe. it was a Network of shinning wires and little polished dials set row on row all round the walls. Dain himself had carried up the various fittings an inconceivable number of journeys , and had assemble them with a patience that was as precise and unflagging as the skill employed in their making.
And the thing had grown on him. only Dain himself knew how tremendously this hobby of his had become his dominating master. imperceptibly at first, but with a dreadful surety it had come to be the be-all and end-all of his existence. Very slowly his old haunts ceased to know him. his own home out at Hendon became little more to him than an occasional bedroom. Dain was a sporadic lodger in his own house. Equally slowly he became more and more Mr. Landring Dent, of the top floor offices in kingsway.
That was Valmon Dain, the man , the strange contradiction of power and subtlety of notoriety and anonymity of public fame and complete mystery who sped in his high powered car sheer across the teeming city to post a letter card to Scotland Yard--- a letter-carded. moreover, which was printed and not written, blocked up in tiny perpendicular capitals which completely disguised his handwriting an which for some definite reason known only to himself, contained his own right thumb print pressed firmly into the sealing wax.
He drove along till he got into the mazy heart of the Streets that clutter the East end. Round by the Aldgate pump he went and pulled up finally at a garage in the Mile end Road.
"petrol, sir?" asked the blue -jean mechanic.
"please. two gallons."
It was indicative of the man that instead of asking for a can, he asked for the exact liquid measurement he required.
Though petrol was the ostensible reason for his pulling up at that particular garage, his real reason was that there was a pillar-box immediately in front of it.
He took out his wallet to pay the mechanic, he game him a pound note and while the mechanic went inside to get his change, he nonchalantly dropped the letter-carded into the gaping maw of the Scarlet box.
And that, as he subsequently realized, was the fatal action of his life. the simple little gesture that was to lead finally and without halt or hindrance to his undoing. it was a gauntlet thrown with the indifference bred of long immunity at the face of fate. the thirty-fourth gauntlet he had flung at her unoffending Majesty, and that was the particular gauntlet which fate decided had overstepped the bounds of all propriety. unseen and quite unnoticed fate stopped down, picked it up and flicked it back neayly in his teeth.
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