A Buyer's Market Part 7

"Will you persuade him to stay!" she said, with that trace of c.o.c.kney which-as Barnby would have remarked-had once "come near to breaking a royal heart."

At that moment the young man with the orchid, who had risen with dignity from the sofa where he had been silently contemplating the world, came towards us, breaking into the conversation with the words: "My dear Milly, I simply must tell you the story about Theodoric and the Prince of Wales ..."

"Another time, darling."

Mrs. Andriadis gave him a slight push with her left hand, so that he collapsed quietly, and apparently quite happily, into an easy-chair. Almost simultaneously an enormous, purple-faced man with a decided air of authority about him, whose features were for some reason familiar to me, accompanied by a small woman, much younger than himself, came up, mumbling and faintly swaying, as he attempted to thank Mrs. Andriadis for entertaining them. She brushed him aside, clearly to his immense, rather intoxicated surprise, with the same ruthlessness she had shown to the young man with the orchid: at the same time saying to another servant, whom I took, this time, to be her own butler: "I told one of those b.l.o.o.d.y hired men to fetch my coat. Go and see where he's got to."

All these minor incidents inevitably caused delay, giving Stringham a start on the journey down the stairs, towards which we now set off, Mrs. Andriadis still grasping my arm, along which, from second to second, she convulsively altered the grip of her hand. As we reached the foot of the last flight together, the front door slammed. Three or four people were chatting, or putting on wraps, in the hall, in preparation to leave. The elderly lady with the black eyebrows and tiara was sitting on one of the crimson and gold high-backed chairs, beneath which I could see a pile of War Never Pays! War Never Pays!: Mr. Deacon's, or those forgotten by Gypsy Jones. She had removed her right shoe and was examining the heel intently, to observe if it were still intact. Mrs. Andriadis let go my arm, and ran swiftly towards the door, which she wrenched open violently, just in time to see a taxi drive away from the front of the house. She made use of an expletive that I had never before-in those distant days-heard a woman employ. The phrase left no doubt in the mind that she was extremely provoked. The door swung on its hinge. In silence Mrs. Andriadis watched it shut with a bang. It was hard to know what comment, if any, was required. At that moment the butler arrived with her coat.

"Will you wear it, madam?"

"Take the d.a.m.ned thing away," she said. "Are you and the rest of them a lot of b.l.o.o.d.y cripples? Do I have to wait half an hour every time I want to go out just because I haven't a rag to put round me?"

The butler, accustomed no doubt to such reproaches as all in the day's work-and possibly remunerated on a scale to allow a generous margin for hard words-seemed entirely undisturbed by these strictures on his own agility, and that of his fellows. He agreed at once that his temporary colleague "did not appear to have his wits about him at all." In the second's pause during which Mrs. Andriadis seemed to consider this statement, I prepared to say goodbye, partly from conviction that the occasion for doing so, once missed, might not easily recur; even more, because immediate farewell would be a convenient method of bringing to an end the distressing period of tension that had come into existence ever since Stringham's departure, while Mrs. Andriadis contemplated her next move. However, before there was time, on my own part, to take any step in the direction of leave-taking, a loud noise from the stairs behind distracted my attention. Mrs. Andriadis, too, was brought by this sudden disturbance out of the state of suspended animation into which she appeared momentarily to have fallen.

The cause of the commotion now became manifest. Mr. Deacon and the singer, Max Pilgrim, followed by the Negro, were descending the stairs rapidly, side by side, jerking down from step to step in the tumult of a frantic quarrel. At first I supposed, improbable as such a thing would be, that some kind of practical joke or "rag" was taking place in which all three were engaged; but looking closer, it became plain that Mr. Deacon was angry with Pilgrim, while the Negro was more or less a spectator, not greatly involved except by his obvious enjoyment of the row. The loose lock of Mr. Deacon's hair had once more fallen across his forehead: his voice had taken on a deep and mordant note. Pilgrim was red in the face and sweating, though keeping his temper with difficulty, and attempting to steer the dispute, whatever its subject, into channels more facetious than polemical.

"There are always leering eyes on the look-out," Mr. Deacon was saying. "Besides, your song puts a weapon in the hands of the puritans."

"I don't expect there were many puritans present-" began Pilgrim.

Mr. Deacon cut him short.

"It is a matter of principle principle," he said. "If you have any."

"What do you know about my principles?" said Pilgrim. "I don't expect your own principles bear much examination when the lights are out."

"I can give you an a.s.surance that you you have no cause to worry about have no cause to worry about my my principles," Mr. Deacon almost screamed. "Such a situation could never arise-I can a.s.sure you of that. This is not the first time, to my knowledge, that you have presumed on such a thing." principles," Mr. Deacon almost screamed. "Such a situation could never arise-I can a.s.sure you of that. This is not the first time, to my knowledge, that you have presumed on such a thing."

This comment seemed to annoy Pilgrim a great deal, so that he now became scarcely less enraged than Mr. Deacon himself. His quavering voice rose in protest, while Mr. Deacon's sank to a scathing growl: the most offensive tone I have ever heard him employ.

"You person," he said.

Turning fiercely away from Pilgrim, he strode across the hall in the direction of the chair under which he had stored away War Never Pays! War Never Pays! Together with his own copies, he gathered up those brought by Gypsy Jones-forgotten by her, as I had foreseen-and, tucking a sheaf under each arm, he made towards the front door. He ignored the figure of Mrs. Andriadis, of whose presence he was no doubt, in his rage, entirely unaware. The catch of the door must have jammed, for that, or some other cause, prevented the hinge from opening freely. Mr. Deacon's first intention was evidently to hold all the papers, his own and those belonging to Gypsy Jones, under his left arm for the brief second during which he opened the door with his right hand to sweep for ever from the obnoxious presence of Max Pilgrim. However, the two combined packets of Together with his own copies, he gathered up those brought by Gypsy Jones-forgotten by her, as I had foreseen-and, tucking a sheaf under each arm, he made towards the front door. He ignored the figure of Mrs. Andriadis, of whose presence he was no doubt, in his rage, entirely unaware. The catch of the door must have jammed, for that, or some other cause, prevented the hinge from opening freely. Mr. Deacon's first intention was evidently to hold all the papers, his own and those belonging to Gypsy Jones, under his left arm for the brief second during which he opened the door with his right hand to sweep for ever from the obnoxious presence of Max Pilgrim. However, the two combined packets of War Never Pays! War Never Pays! made quite a considerable bundle, and he must have found himself compelled to bring his left hand also into play, while he hugged most of the copies of the publication-by then rather crumpled-by pressure from his left elbow against his side. The door swung open suddenly. Mr. Deacon was taken by surprise. All at once there was a sound as of the rending of silk, and the papers, like a waterfall-or sugar on Widmerpool's head-began to tumble, one after another, to the ground from under Mr. Deacon's-arm. He made a violent effort to check their descent, contriving only to increase the area over which they were freely shed; an unexpected current of air blowing through the open door at that moment into the house helped to scatter sheets of made quite a considerable bundle, and he must have found himself compelled to bring his left hand also into play, while he hugged most of the copies of the publication-by then rather crumpled-by pressure from his left elbow against his side. The door swung open suddenly. Mr. Deacon was taken by surprise. All at once there was a sound as of the rending of silk, and the papers, like a waterfall-or sugar on Widmerpool's head-began to tumble, one after another, to the ground from under Mr. Deacon's-arm. He made a violent effort to check their descent, contriving only to increase the area over which they were freely shed; an unexpected current of air blowing through the open door at that moment into the house helped to scatter sheets of War Never Pays! War Never Pays! far and wide throughout the hall, even up to the threshold of the room beyond. There was a loud, stagey laugh from the stairs in the background. "Ha! Ha! Ha!" far and wide throughout the hall, even up to the threshold of the room beyond. There was a loud, stagey laugh from the stairs in the background. "Ha! Ha! Ha!"

It was the Negro. He was grinning from ear to ear, now more like a n.i.g.g.e.r minstrel-a c.o.o.n with bones and tambourine from some old-fas.h.i.+oned show on the pier at a seaside resort of the Victorian era-than his former dignified, well-groomed self. The sound of his wild, African laughter must have caused Mrs. Andriadis to emerge unequivocally from her coma. She turned on Mr<>

"You awful old creature," die said, "get out of my house."

He stared at her, and then burst into a fearful fit of coughing, clutching at his chest. My hat stood on a table not far away. While Mrs. Andriadis was still turned from me, I took it up without further delay, and pa.s.sed through the open door. Mr. Deacon had proved himself a graver responsibility than I, for one, by then felt myself prepared to sustain. They could, all of them, arrange matters between themselves without my help. It would, indeed, be better so. Whatever solution was, in fact, found to terminate the complexities of that moment, Mr. Deacon's immediate expulsion from the house at the command of Mrs. Andriadis was not one of them; because, when I looked back-after proceeding nearly a hundred yards up the road-there was still no sign of his egress, violent or otherwise, from the house.

It was already quite light in the street, and although the air was fresh, almost breezy, after the atmosphere of the party, there was a hint, even at this early hour, of another sultry day on the way. Narrow streaks of blue were already beginning to appear across the flat surface of a livid sky. The dawn had a kind of heaviness, perhaps of thundery weather in the offing. No one was about, though the hum of an occasional car driving up Park Lane from time to time broke the silence for a few seconds, the sound, mournful as the huntsman's horn echoing in the forest, dying away quickly in the distance. Early morning bears with it a sense of pressure, a kind of threat of what the day will bring forth. I felt unsettled and dissatisfied though not in the least drunk. On the contrary, my brain seemed to be working all at once with quite unusual clarity. Indeed, I found myself almost deciding to sit down, as soon as I reached my room, and attempt to compose a series of essays on human life and character in the manner of, say, Montaigne, so icily etched in my mind at that moment appeared the actions and nature of those with whom that night I had been spending my time. However, second thoughts convinced me that any such efforts at composition would be inadvisable at such an hour. The first thing to do on reaching home would be to try and achieve some sleep. In the morning, literary matters might be reconsidered. I was conscious of having travelled a long way since the Walpole-Wilsons' dinner-party. I was, in fact, very tired.

Attempting to sort out and cla.s.sify the events of the night, as I walked home between the grey Mayfair houses, I found myself unable to enjoy in retrospect the pleasure reasonably to be expected from the sense of having broken fresh ground. Mrs. Andriadis's party had certainly been something new. Its strangeness and fascination had not escaped me. But there appeared now, so far as I could foresee, no prospect of setting foot again within those unaccustomed regions; even temporary connection with them, tenuously supplied by Stringham in his latest avatar, seeming uncompromisingly removed by the drift of circ.u.mstance.

Apart from these reflections, I was also painfully aware that I had, so it appeared to me, prodigally wasted my time at the party. Instead, for example, of finding a girl to take the place of Barbara-she, at least had been finally swept away by Mrs. Andriadis-I had squandered the hours of opportunity with Mr. Deacon, or with Sillery. I thought suddenly of Sunny Farebrother, and the pleasure he had described himself as deriving from meeting "interesting people" in the course of his work at the Peace Conference. No such "interesting" contacts, so far as I myself had been concerned that evening, could possibly have been said to have taken place. For a moment I regretted having refused Gypsy Jones's invitation to accompany her to The Merry Thought. From the point of view of either sentiment or sn.o.bbery, giving both terms their widest connotation, the night had been an empty one. I had, so it appeared, merely stayed up until the small hours-no doubt relatively incapacitating myself for serious work on the day following-with nothing better to show for it than the certainty, now absolute, that I was no longer in love with Barbara Goring; though this emanc.i.p.ation would include, of course, relief also from such minor irritations as Tompsitt and his fellows. I remembered now, all at once, Widmerpool's apprehensions at what had seemed to him the "unserious" nature of my employment.

As I reached the outskirts of Shepherd Market, at that period scarcely touched by rebuilding, I regained once more some small sense of exultation, enjoyed whenever crossing the perimeter of that sinister little village, that I lived within an enchanted precinct. Inconvenient, at moments, as a locality: noisy and uncomfortable: stuffy, depressing, unsavoury: yet the ancient houses still retained some vestige of the dignity of another age; while the inhabitants, many of them existing precariously on their bridge earnings, or hire of their bodies, were-as more than one novelist had, even in those days, already remarked-not without their own seedy glory.

Now, touched almost mystically, like another Stonehenge, by the first rays of the morning sun, the spot seemed one of those cl.u.s.ters of tumble-down dwellings depicted By Ca.n.a.letto or Piranesi, habitations from amongst which arches, obelisks and viaducts, ruined and overgrown with ivy, arise from the mean houses huddled together below them. Here, too, such ma.s.sive structures might, one felt, at any moment come into existence by some latent sorcery, for the place was scarcely of this world, and anything was to be surmised. As I penetrated farther into the heart of that rookery, in the direction of my own door, there even stood, as if waiting to greet a friend, one of those indeterminate figures that occur so frequently in the pictures of the kind suggested-Hubert Robert or Pannini-in which the architectural subject predominates. This materialisation took clearer shape as a man, middle-aged to elderly, wearing a bowler hat and discreetly horsy overcoat, the collar turned-up round a claret-coloured scarf with white spots. He leant a little to one side on a rolled umbrella, just as those single figures in romantic landscape are apt to pose; as if the painter, in dealing with so much static matter, were determined to emphasise "movement" in the almost infinitesimal human side of his composition.

"Where are you off to?" this person suddenly called across the street.

The voice, grating on the morning air, was somewhat accusing in tone. I saw, as a kind of instantaneous revelation, that it was Uncle Giles who stood on the corner in front of the public-house. He seemed undecided which road to take. It was plain that, a minute or two earlier, he had emerged from one of the three main centres of nocturnal activity in the immediate neighbourhood, represented by the garage, the sandwich bar, and the block of flats of dubious repute. There was not a shred of evidence pointing to one of these starting points in preference to another, though other alternatives seemed excluded by his position. I crossed the road.

"Just up from the country," he said, gruffly.

"By car?"

"By car? Yes, of course."

"Is it a new one?"

"Yes," said Uncle Giles. "It's a new one."

He spoke as if he had only just thought of that aspect of the vehicle, supposedly his property, that was stated to have brought him to London. One of those pauses followed for which my uncle's conversation was noted within the family circle. I explained that I was returning from a dance, a half-truth that seemed to cover whatever information was required, then and there, to define my circ.u.mstances in as compact and easily intelligible a form as possible. Uncle Giles was not practised in following any narrative at all involved in its nature. His mind was inclined to stray back to his own affairs if a story's duration was of anything but the briefest. My words proved redundant, however. He was not in the least interested.

"I am here on business," he said. "I don't want to waste a lot of time. Never was keen on remaining too long in London. Your hand is never out of your pocket."

"Where are you staying?"

My uncle thought for a moment.

"Bayswater," he said, slowly and rather thoughtfully.

I must have looked surprised at finding him so comparatively far afield from his pied-a-terre pied-a-terre, because Uncle Giles added: "I mean, of course, that Bayswater is where I am going to stay-at the Ufford, as usual. There is a lot to be said for a place where they know you. Get some civility. At the moment I am on my way to my club, only round the corner."

"My rooms are just by here."

"Where?" he asked, suspiciously.

"Opposite."

"Can't you find anywhere better to live-I mean it's rather a disreputable part of the world, isn't it?"

As if in confirmation of my uncle's misgivings, a prost.i.tute, small, almost a dwarf, with a stumpy umbrella tucked under her arm, came hurrying home, late off her beat-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-along the pavement, her extravagant heels making a noise like a woodp.e.c.k.e.r attacking a tree. She wore a kind of felt helmet pulled low over her face, which looked exceedingly bad-tempered. Some instinct must have told her that neither my uncle nor I were to be regarded in the circ.u.mstances as potential clients; for altering her expression no more than to bare a fang at the side of her mouth like an angry animal, she sped along the street at a furious pace-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-and up the steps of the entrance to the flats, when she disappeared from sight. Uncle Giles averted his eyes. He still showed no sign of wis.h.i.+ng to move from the spot, almost as if he feared even the smallest change of posture might in some unforeseen manner prejudice the veil of secrecy that so utterly cloaked his immediate point of departure.

"I have been with friends in Surrey," he said grudgingly, as if the admission were unwillingly drawn from him. "It's a favourite county of mine. Lovely in the autumn. I'm connected with the paper business now."

I hoped sincerely that this connection took, as was probable, remote and esoteric form, and that he was not a.s.sociated with some normal branch of the industry with which my own firm might be expected to open an account. However, he showed no desire to pursue this matter of his new employment. Instead, he produced from his overcoat pocket a handful of doc.u.ments, looking like company reports, and glanced swiftly through them. I thought he was going to begin discussing the Trust-by now the Trust remained practically the only unsevered link between himself and his relations-in spite of the earliness of the hour. If his original idea had been to make the Trust subject of comment, he must have changed his mind, finding these memoranda, if such they were, in some way wanting, because he replaced the papers carefully in order and stuffed them back into his coat.

"Tell your father to try and get some San Pedro Warehouses Deferred," he said, shortly. "I have had reliable advice about them."

"I'll say you said so."

"Do you always stay up as late as this?"

"No-it was a specially good party."

I could see from my uncle's face that not only did he not accept this as an excuse, but that he had also chosen to consider the words as intended deliberately to disconcert him.

"Take a bit of advice from one who has knocked about the world for a good many years," he said. "Don't get in the habit of sitting up till all hours. It never did anyone any good."

"I'll bear it in mind."

"Parents well?"

"Very well."

"I've been having trouble with my teeth."

"I'm sorry."

"Well, I must be off. Good-bye to you."

He made a stiff gesture, rather as if motioning someone away from him, and moved off suddenly in the direction of Hertford Street, striding along very serious, with his umbrella shouldered, as if once more at the head of his troops, drums beating and colours flying, as the column, conceded all honours of war, marched out of the capitulated town. Just as I opened the door of my house, he turned to wave. I raised my hand in return. Within, the bedroom remained unaltered, just as it had appeared when I had set out for the Walpole-Wilsons', the suit I had worn the day before hanging dejectedly over the back of a chair. While I undressed I reflected on the difficulty of believing in the existence of certain human beings, my uncle among them, even in the face of unquestionable evidence-indications sometimes even wanting in the case of persons for some reason more substantial to the mind-that each had dreams and desires like other men. Was it possible to take Uncle Giles seriously? And yet he was, no doubt, serious enough to himself. If a clue to that problem could be found, other mysteries of life might be revealed. I was still pondering Uncle Giles and his ways when I dropped into an uneasy sleep.

3.

I USED TO IMAGINE life divided into separate compartments, consisting, for example, of such dual abstractions as pleasure and pain, love and hate, friends.h.i.+p and enmity; and more material cla.s.sifications like work and play: a profession or calling being, according to that concept-one that seemed, at least on the surface, unequivocally a.s.sumed by persons so dissimilar from one another as Widmerpool and Archie Gilbert, something entirely different from "spare time." That illusion, as such a point of view was, in due course, to appear-was closely related to another belief: that existence fans out indefinitely into new areas of experience, and that almost every additional acquaintance offers some supplementary world with its own hazards and enchantments. As time goes on, of course, these supposedly different worlds, in fact, draw closer, if not to each other, then to some pattern common to all; so that, at last, diversity between them, if in truth existent, seems to be almost imperceptible except in a few crude and exterior ways: unthinkable, as formerly appeared, any single consummation of cause and effect. In other words, nearly all the inhabitants of these outwardly disconnected empires turn out at last to be tenaciously inter-related; love and hate, friends.h.i.+p and enmity, too, becoming themselves much less clearly defined, more often than not showing signs of possessing characteristics that could claim, to say the least, not a little in common; while work and play merge indistinguishably into a complex tissue of pleasure and tedium.

All the same, although still far from appreciating many of the finer points of Mrs. Andriadis's party-for there were, of course, finer points to be appreciated in retrospect-and, on the whole, no less ignorant of what the elements there present had consisted, I was at the same time more than half aware that such lat.i.tudes are entered by a door through which there is, in a sense, no return. The lack of ceremony that had attended our arrival, and the fact of being so much in the dark as to the terms upon which the party was being given, had been both, in themselves, a trifle embarra.s.sing; but, looking back on the occasion, armed with later knowledge of individual affiliations among the guests, there is no reason to suppose that mere awareness of everyone's ident.i.ty would have been calculated to promote any greater feeling of ease: if anything, rather the reverse. The impact of entertainments given by people like Mrs. Andriadis, as I learnt in due course, depends upon rapidly changing personal relations.h.i.+ps; so that to be apprised suddenly of the almost infinite complication of such a.s.sociations-if any such omniscience could, by some magical means, have been imparted-without being oneself, even at a distance, at all involved, might have been a positive handicap, perhaps a humiliating one, to enjoyment.

To begin with, there was the unanswered question of Stringham's entanglement with Mrs. Andriadis herself. I did not know how long in duration of time the affair had already extended, nor how seriously it was to be regarded. Their connection, on his part at least, seemed no more than a whim: a fancy for an older woman, of which, for example, in a Latin country nothing whatever would be thought. On the other hand, Mrs. Andriadis herself' evidently accepted the fact that, so far as things went, she was fairly deeply concerned. I thought of the casual adventure with the woman in Nairobi that he had described to me, and of the days when he and Peter Templer had been accustomed to discuss "girls" together at school.

I could now recognise in Stringham's att.i.tude a kind of reticence, never apparent at the time when such talks had taken place. This reticence, when I thought it over, was not in what Stringham said, or did not say, so much as in what, I suppose, he felt; and, when he used to sweep aside objections raised by myself to Templer's often cavalier treatment of the subject, I saw-at this later date-his att.i.tude was a.s.sumed to conceal a lack of confidence at least comparable with my own. I did not, of course, come to these conclusions immediately. They were largely the result of similar talks pursued later over a long period with Barnby, of whom Mr. Deacon, congenitally unappreciative in that sphere, used to say: "I can stand almost anything from Barnby except his untidiness and generalisations about women." However, personally I used to enjoy Barnby's p.r.o.nouncements on the subject of feminine psychology, and, when I came to know him well, we used to have endless discussions on that matter.

This-as Barnby himself liked to believe-almost scientific approach to the subject of "women" was in complete contrast to Peter Templer's, and, I think, to Stringham's too, both of whom were incurious regarding questions of theory. Templer, certainly, would have viewed these relatively objective investigations as fearful waste of time. In a different context, the ant.i.thesis of approach could be ill.u.s.trated by quoting a remark of Stringham's made a dozen or more years later, when we met during the war. "You know, Nick," he said, "I used to think all that was necessary to fire a rifle was to get your eye, sights, and target in line, and press the trigger. Now I find the Army have written a whole book about it." Both he and Templer would have felt a similar superfluity attached to these digressions with Barnby, with whom, as it happened, my first words exchanged led, as if logically, to a preliminary examination of the subject: to be followed, I must admit, by a lifetime of debate on the same theme.

The circ.u.mstances of our initial encounter to some extent explain this early emphasis. It had been the end of August, or beginning of September, in days when that desolate season of late summer had fallen like a pall on excavated streets, over which the fumes of tar hung heavy in used-up air, echoing to the sound of electric drills. After two or three weeks away from London, there was nothing to be enjoyed in antic.i.p.ation except an invitation to spend a week-end at Hinton with the Walpole-Wilsons: a visit arranged months ahead, and still comparatively distant, so it seemed, in point of time. Every soul appeared to be away. A sense of isolation, at least when out of the office, had become oppressive, and I began to feel myself a kind of hermit, threading his way eternally through deserted and sultry streets, never again to know a friend. It was in this state of mind that I found myself wondering whether some alleviation of solitude could be provided by "looking up" Mr. Deacon, as he had suggested at the coffee-stall; although it had to be admitted that I felt no particular desire to see him after the closing scenes of the party, when his behaviour had struck me as intolerable. However, there appeared to exist no other single acquaintance remaining within a familiar orbit, and the Walpole-Wilson week-end still seemed lost in the future. As a consequence of prolonged, indeed wholly disproportionate, speculation on the matter, I set out one afternoon, after work, for the address Mr. Deacon had scrawled on an envelope.

Charlotte Street, as it stretches northward towards Fitzroy Square, retains a certain unprincipled integrity of character, though its tributaries reach out to the east, where, in Tottenham Court Road, structural anomalies pa.s.s all bounds of reason, and west, into a nondescript ocean of bricks and mortar from which hospitals, tenements and warehouses gloomily manifest themselves in shapeless bulk above mean shops. Mr. Deacon's "place" was situated in a narrow by-street in this westerly direction: an alleyway, not easy to find, of modest eighteenth-century-perhaps even late seventeenth-century-houses, of a kind still to be seen in London, though growing rarer, the fronts of some turned to commercial purposes, others bearing the bra.s.s plate of dentist or midwife. Here and there a dusty creeper trailed from window to window. Those that remained private dwellings had three or four bells, one above the other, set beside the door at a height from the ground effectively removed from children's runaway rings. Mr. Deacon's premises stood between a French polisher's and the offices of the Vox Populi Press. It was a sordid spot, though one from which a certain implication of expectancy was to be derived. Indeed, the facade was not unlike that row of shops that form a backcloth for the harlequinade; and, as I approached the window, I was almost prepared for Mr. Deacon, with mask and spangles and magic wand, suddenly to pirouette along the pavement, tapping, with disastrous consequence, all the pa.s.sers-by.

However, the shop was shut. Through the plate gla.s.s, obscured in watery depths, dark green like the interior of an aquarium's compartments, Victorian work-tables, papier-mache papier-mache trays, Staffords.h.i.+re figures, and a varnished sc.r.a.p screen-upon the sombrely coloured trays, Staffords.h.i.+re figures, and a varnished sc.r.a.p screen-upon the sombrely coloured montage montage of which could faintly be discerned s.h.i.+ny versions of of which could faintly be discerned s.h.i.+ny versions of Bubbles Bubbles and and For He Had Spoken Lightly Of A Woman's Name For He Had Spoken Lightly Of A Woman's Name-swam gently into further aqueous recesses that eddied back into yet more remote alcoves of the double room: additional subterranean grottoes, hidden from view, in which, like a grubby naiad, Gypsy Jones, as described so vividly by Mr. Deacon, was accustomed, from time to time, to sleep, or at least to recline, beneath the monotonous, conventionalised arabesques of rare, if dilapidated, Oriental draperies. For some reason, the thought roused a faint sense of desire. The exoticism of the place as a bedroom was undeniable. I had to ring the bell of the side door twice before anyone answered the summons. Then, after a long pause, the door was half opened by a young man in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, carrying a dustpan and brush.

"Yes?" he asked abruptly.

My first estimate of Barnby, whom I immediately guessed this to be, the raisonneur raisonneur so often quoted at the party by Mr. Deacon as inhabiting the top floor of the house, was not wholly favourable; nor, as I learnt later, was his own a.s.sessment of myself. He looked about twenty-six or twenty-seven, dark, thick-set, and rather puffed under the eyes. There was the impression of someone who knew how to look after his own interests, though in a balanced and leisurely manner. I explained that I had come to see Mr. Deacon." so often quoted at the party by Mr. Deacon as inhabiting the top floor of the house, was not wholly favourable; nor, as I learnt later, was his own a.s.sessment of myself. He looked about twenty-six or twenty-seven, dark, thick-set, and rather puffed under the eyes. There was the impression of someone who knew how to look after his own interests, though in a balanced and leisurely manner. I explained that I had come to see Mr. Deacon."

"Have you an appointment?"

"No."

"Business?"

"No."

"Mr. Deacon is not here."

"Where is he?"

"Cornwall."

"For long?"

"No idea."

This allegedly absolute ignorance of the duration of a landlord's retirement to the country seemed scarcely credible in a tenant whose life, at least as presented in Mr. Deacon's anecdotes, was lived at such close range to the other members of the household. However, the question, put in a somewhat different form, achieved no greater success. Barnby stared hard, and without much friendliness. I saw that I should get no further with him at this rate, and requested that he would inform Mr. Deacon, on his return, of my call.

"What name?"

"Jenkins."

At this, Barnby became on the spot more accommodating. He opened the door wider and came out on to the step.

"Didn't you take Edgar to Milly Andriadis's party?" he asked, in a different tone.

"In a manner of speaking."

"He was in an awful state the next day," Barnby said. "Worried, too, about losing so many copies of that rag he hawks round. I believe he had to pay for them out of his own pocket. Anyway, Edgar is too old for that kind of thing."

He spoke this last comment sadly, though without implication of disapproval. I mentioned the unusual circ.u.mstances that had brought Mr. Deacon and myself to the party. Barnby listened in a somewhat absent manner, and then made two or three inquiries regarding the names of other guests. He seemed, in fact, more interested in finding out who had attended the party than in hearing a more specific account of how Mr. Deacon had received his invitation, or had behaved while he was there.

"Did you run across a Mrs. Wentworth?" he asked. "Rather a handsome girl."

"She was pointed out to me. We didn't meet."

"Was she with Donners?"

"Later in the evening. She was talking to a Balkan royalty when I first saw her."

"Theodoric?"

"Yes."

"Had Theodoric collected anyone else?"

"Lady Ardgla.s.s."

"I thought as much," said Barnby. "I wish I'd managed to get there. I've met Mrs. Andriadis-but I can't say I really know her."

He nodded gravely, more to himself than in further comment to me, seeming to admit by this movement the justice of his own absence from the party. For a moment or two there was silence between us. Then he said: "Why not come in for a minute? You know, all sorts of people ask for Edgar. He likes some blackmailers admitted, but by no means all of them. One has to be careful."