The doors opened with an uncanny bang and in the bang stood a fragile
minute queer figure, remotely suggesting an old man. The chief
characteristic of the apparition was a certain disagreeable nudity which
resulted from its complete lack of all the accepted appurtenances and
prerogatives of old age. Its little stooping body, helpless and brittle,
bore with extraordinary difficulty a head of absurd largeness, yet which
moved on the fleshless neck with a horrible agility. Dull eyes sat in the
clean-shaven wrinkles of a face neatly hopeless. At the knees a pair of
hands hung, infantile in their smallness. In the loose mouth a tiny
cigarette had perched and was solemnly smoking itself.
Suddenly the figure darted at me with a spiderlike entirety.
I felt myself lost.
A voice said mechanically from the vicinity of my feet: "_II vous faut
prendre la douche_"--I stared stupidly. The spectre was poised before me;
its averted eyes contemplated the window. "Take your bath," it added as
an afterthought, in English--"Come with me." It turned suddenly. It
hurried to the doorway. I followed. Its rapid deadly doll-like hands shut
and skillfully locked the doors in a twinkling. "Come," its voice said.
It hurried before me down two dirty flights of narrow mutilated stairs.
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