LITMIR.BIZ

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did not take off his collar because he hadn’t one. It saved time. He did not take off his coat because it was next to nature, and it was risky to sun-bathe when anybody might pop in on you. The same applied to his trousers. Going to bed, with Ben, was taking off your boots; getting up, putting them on again.

      He stretched himself out on the bed. Not in it. You can’t spring so far when you take the clothes with you.

      Nothing happened saving the constant expectation that something would. He listened for footsteps. He watched for the thin ray of light. The minutes slipped by in nerve-racking uneventfulness and silent blackness. Even the silence and the blackness contributed some special quality to the occasion. He had never known them so utter.

      A thought began to worry him before he knew what it was. It materialised into: ‘Blimy, I never looked unner the bed!’

      After a period which he estimated at, roughly, ninety-five hours, he drifted into the companion torture of dreams. The last, characteristic of the rest, from which he awoke with a start may be recorded. He was dancing with a skeleton. The skeleton was wearing jewels, and he was the skeleton’s giggerliot. Its bony arms pressed him so hard against its open ribs that they pressed him right inside, and he was struggling to get out when he opened his eyes and found Mr Stanley Sutcliffe smiling at him.

      Mr Sutcliffe was still in his dressing-gown and, with the room, was fully revealed for the first time by the light of a bedside lamp.

      ‘Oi!’ gasped Ben.

      ‘So you observed before,’ answered Mr Sutcliffe. ‘You say it beautifully.’

      Ben screwed up his eyes and then opened them properly while Mr Sutcliffe continued:

      ‘One day I must write some poems about you. Those I think I could do. Poetry is a sort of last resort when you’ve nowhere else to go. I wish I weren’t so witty. Did you sleep well?’

      ‘Wot ’ave you come back for?’ demanded Ben.

      ‘It’s time to get up,’ replied Mr Sutcliffe. ‘I mean, for you to get up.’

      ‘Go on!’

      ‘Eight o’clock, Mr Lynch.’

      Ben stared. If it was eight o’clock, which seemed impossible anyhow, why wasn’t there some daylight in the room? And where had the lamp come from?

      ‘You don’t know what you’re doing for me,’ said Mr Sutcliffe. There was no enthusiasm in his tired voice, yet the words had a curious genuineness. ‘You fit right into my hobby. Guessing, you know. I shall guess lots of things about you—till you drift away, like all the others, and become the big, final guess. Yes. But what I’m guessing now is small fry. I just look at your interesting face, and see if I can read behind. You won’t mind if I study you a lot, will you? I’m reading Alice in Wonderland at present, but I find it rather stiff, and I shall put it aside for you. You’re much nicer. And easier. You are wondering now about the light.’

      ‘Gawd, talk abart talkin’!’ muttered Ben.

      ‘But am I right?’ insisted Mr Sutcliffe.

      ‘This time,’ admitted Ben, ‘but p’r’aps yer won’t be nex’!’

      ‘Well, we’ll wait till the nex’ comes, and meanwhile I will satisfy your curiosity this time. A lamp is useless without those glass globe things. Last night your lamp didn’t have one. This morning I have brought one, so it has.’

      ‘Oh! Well, wot’s wrong with drawin’ the curtains?’

      ‘Draw them and see.’

      ‘Would you like to draw ’em for me?’

      ‘I should dislike it intensely. I have already been on my feet for a long time for this early hour. I never walk or work unless I have to, and—you may as well know it at once—there is only one person in the world I take orders from, and even she occasionally makes me do more than I think is strictly good for me.’ He stared at the carpet contemplatively. ‘It was she who asked me to come in and wake you.’

      ‘Yer mean, Miss Warren?’

      ‘There is only one “she” here.’

      ‘Well, wot ’ave I bin woke for? Breakfust?’

      ‘But not, for you, in bed.’

      ‘Oh!’ It occurred to Ben that Harry Lynch was not asserting himself sufficiently, and he frowned. ‘Well, I git up when I want to, see?’

      ‘Really?’ murmured Mr Sutcliffe, raising his faint eyebrows. ‘Really? But that is most interesting. Only I am going to guess that you will be very, very wise, Mr Lynch, and will want to get up now.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because what Miss Warren wants comes before what you or I want, and what she will want this morning at a quarter-past eight precisely is your presence. I assure you, our wishes, where separate from hers, are Also Rans.’ He sighed. ‘Also Rans. Dear old phrase. I still bet sometimes on paper. Last week I made £170. I think I must bet again today and lose it. Having so much money is rather taxing. Well, Mr Lynch, in a quarter of an hour. The second door on your left. The first is the bathroom.’

      He turned to go, but paused at the door.

      ‘And, by the way, Mr Lynch,’ he added, ‘if that is not your natural colour, I think I should wash.’

      This time he did not lock the door after leaving the room. He left the way clear to the bathroom.

      But before going to the bathroom to lighten his hue, Ben went to the window and drew aside the heavy curtains. The longed-for daylight that would have mitigated the suffocating atmosphere was blocked out by ironic boards. Now Ben understood the utter darkness and silence of the place.

      Were all the windows in the flat blocked up?

      The bathroom window was. He scrubbed by artificial light, and the passage by which he walked from his bedroom to the bathroom was illuminated by a soft glow of electricity from the hall beyond. No wonder the atmosphere was atmospherically as well as spiritually heavy!

      ‘If that bloke’s ’ad five months o’ this without no sun,’ thought Ben, ‘corse ’e’s barmy!’

      The unusual ablutions over, he returned to his bedroom and wondered how long he had been out of it. He possessed no watch and he had heard no striking clock, and he was not good at guessing time. It was not going to be easy to hit a quarter-past eight.

      ‘Say I was in the bedroom at four past,’ he tried to work it out. ‘Orl right. That’s four past. Then say it took me three minutes fer each ’and and a couple fer the ’ead, and then one more when I dropped the soap. Well, that’d mike it—well, whatever it’d be, wouldn’t it, so wot is it?’

      He gave it up.

      But help was at hand. The door suddenly opened and Mr Sutcliffe’s head came round the crack.

      ‘Fourteen past,’ announced the head. ‘She likes punctuality.’

      Then the head disappeared. Mr Sutcliffe was a tired young man, but he possessed a languid nippiness.

      At exactly a quarter-past eight, Ben knocked at the second door on the left. Miss Warren’s voice, richly sleepy, bade him come in.

      She was in bed. She wore a deep blue dressing-jacket and a deep blue boudoir cap. The boudoir cap reclined luxuriously against a soft pillow with lace edges, and she radiated an atmosphere of heavy, confident attraction. If there was any confusion, it was not on her side.

      ‘Don’t be bashful, Mr Lynch,’ she remarked with a faint smile, after a short silence.

      ‘Eh? ’Oo’s bashful?’ retorted Ben.

      ‘I’m sorry, I’ve evidently mistaken your expression,’ she answered. ‘Never mind, we’ll soon know each other better. Of

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