Alone, Albert Wickham walked halfway down the block till he found the figures 99 on a brownstone front across the street. As he stared at them, their house like a leader seemed to step from its rank, the two shaded windows on the second floor staring at him like the dead eyes of an old patriarch set hollowly into a weathered head, and he sensed the toothless mouth openly mocking him. Wickham’s despair returned. In four weeks of room searching, his expert methods had proved wholly inadequate, and he had been reduced to a childlike helplessness, a complete dependency, though on what he did not know, for not once in four weeks had anyone shared the least responsibility for him. As he looked at the brownstone front again, these blinded eyes, by a single gleam, a hint of light between sill and shade perhaps, warned him not to challenge their authority, but in spite of this and even though the mouth still grinned toothless and mocking, Wickham knew that he must not submit.
He twisted the bell handle and the bright reassurance he sensed in the quick ring pleased him. Furthermore, he had caused the house to make the same demands of the occupant—Edwina Holmes, the bell card said—as it had made of him. In a moment the door curtain moved slightly, and Wickham wondered whether to ignore it or nod and smile in reassurance at whoever was there, but he found he had already smiled politely and deferentially, and in his surprise at that, he smiled even more broadly. The door chain rattled and the door opened, and as Edwina Holmes stepped forward, Wickham looked up intently and confidently at her.
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