THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
trains were loading up, instead of coming down the gradient into Euston.
For a long time my brother stared out of the window in blank astonishment, watching the policemen hammering at door after door, and delivering their incomprehensible message. Then the door behind him opened, and the man who lodged across the landing came in, dressed only in shirt, trousers, and slippers, his braces loose about his waist, his hair disordered from his pillow.
"What the devil is it?" he asked. "A fire? What a devil of a row!"
They both craned their heads out of the window, straining to hear what the policemen were shouting. People were coming out of the side-streets, and standing in groups at the corners talking.
"What the devil is it all about?" said my brother's fellow-lodger.
My brother answered him vaguely and began to dress, running with each garment to the window in order to miss nothing of the growing excitement of the streets. And presently men selling unnaturally early newspapers came bawling into the street:
"London in danger of suffocation! The Kingston and Richmond defences forced! Fearful massacres in the Thames Valley!"
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