Part 10 (1/2)

The cyclist propped his machine carefully against the window, produced a key and blew down it sharply. ”The lock's a bit tricky,” he said, and devoted himself for some moments to the task of opening the door. Some mechanical catastrophe ensued and the door was open.

”You'd better wait here a bit while I get the lamp,” he remarked to Kipps; ”very likely it isn't filled,” and vanished into the blackness of the pa.s.sage. ”Thank G.o.d for matches!” he said, and Kipps had an impression of a pa.s.sage in the transitory pink flare and the bicyclist disappearing into a further room. Kipps was so much interested by these things that for the time he forgot his injuries altogether.

An interval and Kipps was dazzled by a pink shaded kerosene lamp. ”You go in,” said the red-haired man, ”and I'll bring in the bike,” and for a moment Kipps was alone in the lamp-lit room. He took in rather vaguely the shabby ensemble of the little apartment, the round table covered with a torn, red, gla.s.s-stained cover on which the lamp stood, a mottled looking-gla.s.s over the fireplace reflecting this, a disused gas bracket, an extinct fire, a number of dusty postcards and memoranda stuck round the gla.s.s, a dusty, crowded paper rack on the mantel with a number of cabinet photographs, a table littered with papers and cigarette ash and a syphon of soda water. Then the cyclist reappeared and Kipps saw his blue-shaved, rather animated face and bright-reddish, brown eyes for the first time. He was a man perhaps ten years older than Kipps, but his beardless face made them in a way contemporary.

”You behaved all right about that policeman--anyhow,” he repeated as he came forward.

”I don't see 'ow else I could 'ave done,” said Kipps quite modestly. The cyclist scanned his guest for the first time and decided upon hospitable details.

”We'd better let that mud dry a bit before we brush it. Whiskey there is, good old Methusaleh, Canadian Rye, and there's some brandy that's all right. Which'll you have?”

”_I_ dunno,” said Kipps, taken by surprise, and then seeing no other course but acceptance, ”well--whiskey, then.”

”Right you are, old boy, and if you'll take my advice you'll take it neat. I may not be a particular judge of this sort of thing, but I do know old Methusaleh pretty well. Old Methusaleh--four stars. That's me!

Good old Harry Chitterlow and good old Methusaleh. Leave 'em together.

Bif! He's gone!”

He laughed loudly, looked about him, hesitated and retired, leaving Kipps in possession of the room and free to make a more precise examination of its contents.

--2

He particularly remarked the photographs that adorned the apartment.

They were chiefly photographs of ladies, in one case in tights, which Kipps thought a ”bit 'ot,” but one represented the bicyclist in the costume of some remote epoch. It did not take Kipps long to infer that the others were probably actresses and that his host was an actor, and the presence of the half of a large, coloured playbill seemed to confirm this. A note framed in an Oxford frame that was a little too large for it, he presently demeaned himself to read. ”Dear Mr. Chitterlow,” it ran its brief course, ”if after all you will send the play you spoke of I will endeavour to read it,” followed by a stylish but absolutely illegible signature, and across this was written in pencil, ”What price, Harry, now?” And in the shadow by the window was a rough and rather able sketch of the bicyclist in chalk on brown paper, calling particular attention to the curvature of the forward lines of his hull and calves and the jaunty carriage of his nose, and labelled unmistakably ”Chitterlow.” Kipps thought it ”rather a take-off.” The papers on the table by the syphon were in ma.n.u.script. Kipps observed ma.n.u.script of a particularly convulsive and blottesque sort and running obliquely across the page.

Presently he heard the metallic clamour as if of a series of irreparable breakages with which the lock of the front door discharged its function, and then Chitterlow reappeared, a little out of breath as if from running and with a starry labelled bottle in his large, freckled hand.

”Sit down, old chap,” he said, ”sit down. I had to go out for it after all. Wasn't a solitary bottle left. However, it's all right now we're here. No, don't sit on that chair, there's sheets of my play on that.

That's the one--with the broken arm. I think this gla.s.s is clean, but anyhow wash it out with a squizz of syphon and shy it in the fireplace.

Here! I'll do it! Lend it here!”

As he spoke Mr. Chitterlow produced a corkscrew from a table drawer, attached and overcame good old Methusaleh's cork in a style a bartender might envy, washed out two tumblers in his simple, effectual manner, and poured a couple of inches of the ancient fluid into each. Kipps took his tumbler, said ”Thenks” in an off-hand way, and after a momentary hesitation whether he should say ”here's to you!” or not, put it to his lips without that ceremony. For a s.p.a.ce fire in his throat occupied his attention to the exclusion of other matters, and then he discovered Mr.

Chitterlow with an intensely bulldog pipe alight, seated on the opposite side of the empty fireplace and pouring himself out a second dose of whiskey.

”After all,” said Mr. Chitterlow, with his eye on the bottle and a little smile wandering to hide amidst his larger features, ”this accident might have been worse. I wanted someone to talk to a bit, and I didn't want to go to a pub, leastways not a Folkestone pub, because as a matter of fact I'd promised Mrs. Chitterlow, who's away, not to, for various reasons, though of course if I'd wanted to I'm just that sort I should have all the same, and here we are! It's curious how one runs up against people out bicycling!”

”Isn't it!” said Kipps, feeling that the time had come for him to say something.

”Here we are, sitting and talking like old friends, and half an hour ago we didn't know we existed. Leastways we didn't know each other existed.

I might have pa.s.sed you in the street perhaps and you might have pa.s.sed me, and how was I to tell that, put to the test, you would have behaved as decently as you have behaved. Only it happened otherwise, that's all.

You're not smoking!” he said. ”Have a cigarette?”

Kipps made a confused reply that took the form of not minding if he did, and drank another sip of old Methusaleh in his confusion. He was able to follow the subsequent course of that sip for quite a long way. It was as though the old gentleman was brandis.h.i.+ng a burning torch through his vitals, lighting him here and lighting him there until at last his whole being was in a glow. Chitterlow produced a tobacco pouch and cigarette papers and with an interesting parenthesis that was a little difficult to follow about some lady named Kitty something or other who had taught him the art when he was as yet only what you might call a nice boy, made Kipps a cigarette, and with a consideration that won Kipps' grat.i.tude suggested that after all he might find a little soda water an improvement with the whiskey. ”Some people like it that way,” said Chitterlow, and then with voluminous emphasis, ”_I don't_.”

Emboldened by the weakened state of his enemy Kipps promptly swallowed the rest of him and had his gla.s.s at once hospitably replenished. He began to feel he was of a firmer consistency than he commonly believed, and turned his mind to what Chitterlow was saying with the resolve to play a larger part in the conversation than he had hitherto done. Also he smoked through his nose quite successfully, an art he had only very recently acquired.

Meanwhile Chitterlow explained that he was a playwright, and the tongue of Kipps was unloosened to respond that he knew a chap, or rather one of their fellows knew a chap, or at least to be perfectly correct this fellow's brother did, who had written a play. In response to Chitterlow's enquiries he could not recall the t.i.tle of the play, nor where it had appeared nor the name of the manager who produced it, though he thought the t.i.tle was something about ”Love's Ransom” or something like that.

”He made five 'undred pounds by it, though,” said Kipps. ”I know that.”

”That's nothing,” said Chitterlow, with an air of experience that was extremely convincing. ”Nothing. May seem a big sum to _you_, but _I_ can a.s.sure you it's just what one gets any day. There's any amount of money, an-ny amount, in a good play.”