The Secret Adversary

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walked up Shaftesbury Avenue, finally turning off into the maze of mean
streets round Soho. Tommy followed him at a judicious distance.

They reached at length a small dilapidated square. The houses there had
a sinister air in the midst of their dirt and decay. Boris looked round,
and Tommy drew back into the shelter of a friendly porch. The place was
almost deserted. It was a cul-de-sac, and consequently no traffic passed
that way. The stealthy way the other had looked round stimulated Tommy's
imagination. From the shelter of the doorway he watched him go up the
steps of a particularly evil-looking house and rap sharply, with a
peculiar rhythm, on the door. It was opened promptly, he said a word or
two to the doorkeeper, then passed inside. The door was shut to again.

It was at this juncture that Tommy lost his head. What he ought to have
done, what any sane man would have done, was to remain patiently where
he was and wait for his man to come out again. What he did do was
entirely foreign to the sober common sense which was, as a rule, his