No Verdict

5. Midnight

6. Henry’s Plot

7. The Night-Call

8. On the Landing

9. Violet’s Victory

10. Departure

PART V

1. The Promise

2. The Refusal

3. The Message to Violet

4. Out of the Rain

5. The Two Patients

6. The Second Refusal

7. Malaria

8. A Climax

9. The Kiss

10. The Safe

11. Prison

12. Asleep

13. Disappearance of T.T.’s

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PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
RICEYMAN STEPS

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was one of the most versatile, ambitious and successful British novelists of the early twentieth century. His novels and short stories both celebrate and deplore a rapidly changing Britain. Much of his greatest work is set where he grew up, in the Potteries of the West Midlands. Inspired by Zola and Maupassant, he realized that this world of brutal industrial work and rapid social change, religious severity and material temptation, was the perfect backdrop for everything from comedy to tragedy. His novels include Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives’ Tale (1908) and The Card (1911), all of which are published by Penguin. He died of typhoid.

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PART I

1

Riceyman Steps

On an autumn afternoon of 1919 a hatless man with a slight limp might have been observed ascending the gentle, broad acclivity of Riceyman Steps, which lead from King’s Cross Road up to Riceyman Square, in the great metropolitan industrial district of Clerkenwell. He was rather less than stout and rather more than slim. His thin hair had begun to turn from black to grey, but his complexion was still fairly good, and the rich, very red lips, under a small greyish moustache and over a short, pointed beard, were quite remarkable in their suggestion of vitality. The brown eyes seemed a little small; they peered at near objects. As to his age, an experienced and cautious observer of mankind, without previous knowledge of this man, would have said no more than that he must be past forty. The man himself was certainly entitled to say that he was in the prime of life. He wore a neat dark-grey suit, which must have been carefully folded at nights, a low, white, starched collar, and a ‘made’ black tie that completely hid the shirt-front; the shirt-cuffs could not be seen.