Chapter 4 — Chapter IV<br/>The Story of the Bald-Headed Man

We followed the Indian down a sordid and common passage, ill-lit and worse
furnished, until he came to a door upon the right, which he threw open. A blaze
of yellow light streamed out upon us, and in the centre of the glare there
stood a small man with a very high head, a bristle of red hair all round the
fringe of it, and a bald, shining scalp which shot out from among it like a
mountain-peak from fir-trees. He writhed his hands together as he stood, and
his features were in a perpetual jerk, now smiling, now scowling, but never for
an instant in repose. Nature had given him a pendulous lip, and a too visible
line of yellow and irregular teeth, which he strove feebly to conceal by
constantly passing his hand over the lower part of his face. In spite of his
obtrusive baldness, he gave the impression of youth. In point of fact he had
just turned his thirtieth year.

“Your servant, Miss Morstan,” he kept repeating, in a thin, high
voice. “Your servant, gentlemen. Pray step into my little sanctum. A
small place, miss, but furnished to my own liking. An oasis of art in the
howling desert of South London.”