Explore "The Great Skene Mystery" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was with a feeling of intense suppressed excitement that I came down into the courts surrounding the inner tabernacle of that mystery which my heart was set and my nerves were strung upon resolving. I had had no difficulty in finding the place. Luck, the old spoiler, was in the way to smooth every present obstacle from my path. The ridiculous ease with which I had hit my goal, left me no lack of self-confidence in the question of successfully exploiting it. But there, it will be seen, I reckoned without my host; and in the meanwhile there were some surprises in store for me.
It was a most bitter morning. A north-east wind slashed at Old Paradise Street like the sword of the archangel. The flood moving beyond its outlet -- the river of the land of gold -- was as unlike Pison as one might conceive. Thick and resistless, it went by with a gloating sound, a sewer rather than a stream. The old palace on its embankment looked numb with cold. There was more life in the fried-fish shop round the corner than in all its historic stones.