Lindsay, when he had surmounted
these, found himself at the entrance to a quadrangle which was
positively dark. He waylaid a sweeper slinking out; and the man showed
him where an open staircase ran down against the wall in one corner. It
was up there, he said, that the "tamasho-mems"[2] lived. There were
three tamasho-mems, he continued, responding to Arnold's trivial coin,
and one sahib, but this was not the time for the tamasho--it was
finished. Lindsay mounted the first flight by faith, and paused at the
landing to avoid collision with a heavy body descending. He inquired
Miss Filbert's whereabouts from this person, who providentially lighted
a cigar, disclosing himself a bald Armenian in tusser silk trousers and
a dirty shirt, presumably, Lindsay thought, the landlord. At all events,
he had the information. Lindsay was to keep straight on; it was the
third story, "and a lovelie airie flat, too, sir, for this part of the
town." Duff kept straight on in a spirit of caution and just missed
treading upon the fattest rat in the heathen parish of St. John's. At
the top he saw a light and hastened; it shone from an open door at the
side of a passage. The partition in which the door was came considerably
short of the ceiling, and from the top of it to the window opposite
stretched a line of garments to dry, of pungent odour and infantile
pattern.
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