The Mystery of Edwin Drood

here is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is s

e in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thin

tain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a

n, in a querulous, rattli

im, with his han

hinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these say! Here's another ready for ye, deary. Ye'll remember like a good soul, won't ye, that the market price is dreffle high just now? More nor three shill

ks, and, occasionally bubbling at

l bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay according." O my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles, ye see, deary-this is one-and I fits-in a mouthpiece, this way, and I takes my mixter out of this thimble wit

mptied pipe, and sinks bac

s that the woman has opium-smoked herself into a strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, eye, and temple, and his colour, are repeated in her. Said C

f many butchers' shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead se

ear, to listen t

telli

me contagion in them seizes upon him: insomuch that he has to withdraw himself to a lean arm-chair by the hearth-placed there,

both hands by the throat, turns him violently on the bed. The Ch

do you

chful

telli

into a half-risen attitude, glares with his eyes, lashes about him fiercely with his arms, and draws a phantom knife. It then becomes apparent that the woman has taken possession of this

efore 'unintelligible!' is again the comment of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding of his head, and a gloomy smile. He then lays certain silver money on the ta

Cathedral door. The choir are getting on their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service. Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divi