A Somewhat Improbable Story - Page 2

"This furniture is fairly solid; but, of course, people do treat
it much too carelessly."

As I looked up doubtfully my eye caught his, and was fixed
as his was fixed in an apocalyptic stare. I had thought him
ordinary as he entered, save for his strange, cautious manner;
but if the other people had seen him then they would have screamed
and emptied the room. They did not see him, and they went on making
a clatter with their forks, and a murmur with their conversation.
But the man's face was the face of a maniac.

"Did you mean anything particular by that remark?" he asked at last,
and the blood crawled back slowly into his face.

"Nothing whatever," I answered. "One does not mean anything here;
it spoils people's digestions."

He limped back and wiped his broad forehead with a big handkerchief;
and yet there seemed to be a sort of regret in his relief.

"I thought perhaps," he said in a low voice, "that another of them
had gone wrong."

"If you mean another digestion gone wrong," I said, "I never heard
of one here that went right. This is the heart of the Empire,
and the other organs are in an equally bad way."

"No, I mean another street gone wrong," and he said heavily
and quietly, "but as I suppose that doesn't explain much to you,
I think I shall have to tell you the story. I do so with all
the less responsibility, because I know you won't believe it.
For forty years of my life I invariably left my office, which is
in Leadenhall Street, at half-past five in the afternoon, taking with
me an umbrella in the right hand and a bag in the left hand.
For forty years two months and four days I passed out of the side
office door, walked down the street on the left-hand side,
took the first turning to the left and the third to the right,
from where I bought an evening paper, followed the road on
the right-hand side round two obtuse angles, and came out just
outside a Metropolitan station, where I took a train home.
For forty years two months and four days I fulfilled this course
by accumulated habit: it was not a long street that I traversed,
and it took me about four and a half minutes to do it.
After forty years two months and four days, on the fifth day I
went out in the same manner, with my umbrella in the right hand
and my bag in the left, and I began to notice that walking along
the familiar street tired me somewhat more than usual; and when I
turned it I was convinced that I had turned down the wrong one.
For now the street shot up quite a steep slant, such as one
only sees in the hilly parts of London, and in this part
there were no hills at all. Yet it was not