It was a wet, miserable evening; a piercing wind shrieked along the dismal streets and moaned round the corners, chilling to the marrow the bones of one accustomed to the warmth and brightness of those sunny Southern seas. Leaving my omnibus in the Uxbridge Road, I walked up a side street to the house. There it stood, solid and respectable as I remembered it. No changes had been made in its exterior, everything was exactly as when I saw it last, even to the peculiar scrimpiness about the piece of privet hedge beside the gate. A light was burning in an up-stair window, but otherwise the house was dark and silent as the grave. I stood and looked, the tears rising in my eyes as I did so; then, heaving a sigh for the sake of "auld lang syne," and all that might have been, I turned and went sorrowfully away.
And now I am brought to the relation of an incident which was to have a great and awful bearing on my future. One wet morning, I had just alighted from a 'bus in Oxford Street, a little below the Holborn Restaurant, and was half-way across the street, when a hansom whisked past me, so close that the horse's nose brushed my sleeve. The driver called to me to stand clear, and, expecting an accident, the fare threw open the apron and half stepped out. _To my amazement he was none other than the Albino._ There could be no mistake about it; I knew him in an instant. My astonishment was so great that I stopped in the middle of the road, and once more came near being run over.
On recovering myself my first impulse was to hail a hansom and make after him, but on second thoughts I saw the folly of such a proceeding. My one endeavour must rather be to keep out of his way. Whether he recognized me or not I could not of course tell, but we were so close to one another that it was most unlikely that he could have failed to do so. But then, I told myself, even if he did, what could it matter? He would never suspect me of being the possessor of the locket, for how should he know that I had escaped with Veneda from Batavia? Still, until I knew whether the secret the locket contained was of any value, it would be folly to run the risk of losing it. How well I guarded it the sequel will show.