The Mist in the Mirror Read Free

him, though we were never especially close, and I had never confided to him any of the secrets of my innermost heart and mind.
    But to stand at his bedside in the close, steamy air of the bungalow and see his face a dreadful, waxen colour, gleaming with sweat, the flesh already somehow shrunk back, to outline more clearly the skull beneath, shocked and distressed me greatly. I was trying to frame some words of affection but the sentences would not form, and when I next looked down at him, his eyes were staring up at me blankly. He was dead.
    For the next twenty years I had travelled, in India and all over Africa, to Burma, Singapore, Malaya, and finally in the remotest areas of China. At first, my travelling had been more or less without purpose, but soon, I had begun to fulfil my ambition of following in the footsteps of Conrad Vane. As I journeyed, I educated myself, by talking to any man I encountered, by living native, and by keeping my eyes and ears open. I also read whatever I could in the history and literature, lore and legends of those countries, and I picked up enough of several languages to serve me reasonably well. I belonged everywhere and nowhere, I was a nomad, and I was always, in the truest sense, alone.It was a strange, exciting, satisfying life. But it came to an abrupt end when I contracted a debilitating illness in Penang and, during the course of many long, weary weeks, had come to realise that I was finally done with travelling from place to place, I was a middle-aged man and had seen everything I had ever planned to see, and above all, had undertaken virtually every journey Vane himself had made. Indeed, so carefully and closely had I followed in his footsteps, some twenty-odd years after his death, that at times I identified with him, felt myself almost to
be
Vane.
    In those two score years, I had occasionally met people from England, and had listened intently to their talk about it. Now, I conceived a longing to go back there (for I knew, what my Guardian had briefly told me, that I was an Englishman born and that had been my early home). I did not formulate any definite plans, had no idea where I might settle when I arrived. I had money, held in trust for me by my Guardian and passed to me on his death, along with such funds and belongings as he himself had had, and I had lived frugally, these past years; there was more than enough to pay for my passage, and bring me in a modest income. Above all, I wanted to discover more about the early life of Conrad Vane, before he had embarked on his travels and begun to write about them – for he, too, had been an exiled Englishman – and I had some idea of paying my eventual tribute to him in a book. I felt that he and his work had been neglected, and was now in danger of being entirely forgotten.
    When I was strong enough, therefore, I sold most of my possessions, packed up the rest – there was precious little to show for the past twenty years – and booked my passage.
    And now, here I was, alone in the London rain, on that drear and melancholy night.
    The bulk of my belongings were to be stored at the dock, and I carried only an old canvas grip containing enough to see me through a day or so. I planned to find rooms asquickly as I could, so that I might lodge in London until I had my bearings, and could see my way ahead more clearly. For now, I obtained from the shipping company offices a couple of addresses of inns at which I might put up. At first, they had assumed that I would want to stay in one of the smarter areas of the city, but I had indicated that I would feel more comfortable in some plain, workaday place close by the river. I was not accustomed to fancy furniture and feather beds. After discussion between themselves, the clerks had decided on names, and warned me against picking out any other places for myself, en route. I rejected all suggestions of a porter to accompany me, and, armed with my bag and the slip of paper, walked out from the