Part 7 (1/2)

At that moment I advanced.

The lurchers vanished noiselessly and instantaneously.

Their victim held out his hand.

”Come in, won't you?” he said, smiling sleepily at me.

I followed him in, murmuring something about ”caught in the act.”

He repeated the phrase as we went upstairs.

”'Caught in the act.' Yes, they are ingenious creatures. Let me introduce myself. My name is Julian Eversleigh. Sit down, won't you?

Excuse me for a moment.”

He crossed to a writing-table.

Julian Eversleigh inhabited a single room of irregular shape. It was small, and situated immediately under the roof. One side had a window which overlooked Rupert Court. The view from it was, however, restricted, because the window was inset, so that the walls projecting on either side prevented one seeing more than a yard or two of the court.

The room contained a hammock, a large tin bath, propped up against the wall, a big wardrobe, a couple of bookcases, a deal writing-table--at which the proprietor was now sitting with a pen in his mouth, gazing at the ceiling--and a divan-like formation of rugs and cube sugar boxes.

The owner of this mixed lot of furniture wore a very faded blue serge suit, the trousers baggy at the knees and the coat threadbare at the elbows. He had the odd expression which green eyes combined with red hair give a man.

”Caught in the act,” he was murmuring. ”Caught in the act.”

The phrase seemed to fascinate him.

I had established myself on the divan, and was puffing at a cigar, which I had bought by way of setting the coping-stone on my night's extravagance, before he got up from his writing.

”Those fellows,” he said, producing a bottle of whisky and a syphon from one of the lower drawers of the wardrobe, ”did me a double service. They introduced me to you--say when--and they gave me----”

”When.”

”--an idea.”

”But how did it happen?” I asked.

”Quite simple,” he answered. ”You see, my friends, when they call on me late at night, can't get in by knocking at the front door. It is a shop-door, and is locked early. Vancott, my landlord, is a baker, and, as he has to be up making m.u.f.fins somewhere about five in the morning--we all have our troubles--he does not stop up late. So people who want me go into the court, and see whether my lamp is burning by the window. If it is, they stand below and shout, 'Julian,' till I open the door into the court. That's what happened tonight. I heard my name called, went down, and walked into the arms of the enterprising gentlemen whom you chanced to notice. They must have been very hungry, for even if they had carried the job through they could not have expected to make their fortunes. In point of fact, they would have cleared one-and-threepence. But when you're hungry you can see no further than the pit of your stomach. Do you know, I almost sympathise with the poor brutes. People sometimes say to me, 'What are you?' I have often half a mind to reply, 'I have been hungry.' My stars, be hungry once, and you're educated, if you don't die of it, for a lifetime.”

This sort of talk from a stranger might have been the prelude to an appeal for financial a.s.sistance.

He dissipated that half-born thought.

”Don't be uneasy,” he said; ”you have not been lured up here by the ruse of a clever borrower. I can do a bit of touching when in the mood, mind you, but you're safe. You are here because I see that you are a pleasant fellow.”

”Thank you,” I said.

”Besides,” he continued, ”I am not hungry at present. In fact, I shall never be hungry again.”

”You're lucky,” I remarked.