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.
"I am. I am the fortunate possessor of the knack of writing advertis.e.m.e.nts."
"Indeed," I said, feeling awkward, for I saw that I ought to be impressed.
"Ah!" he said, laughing outright. "You"re not impressed in the least, really. But I"ll ask you to consider what advertis.e.m.e.nts mean. First, they are the life-essence of every newspaper, every periodical, and every book."
"Every book?"
"Practically, yes. Most books contain some latent support of a fashion in clothes or food or drink, or of some pleasant spot or phase of benevolence or vice, all of which form the interest of one or other of the sections of society, which sections require publicity at all costs for their respective interests."
I was about to probe searchingly into so optimistic a view of modern authorship, but he stalled me off by proceeding rapidly with his discourse.
"Apart, however, from the less obvious modes of advertising, you"ll agree that this is the age of all ages for the man who can write puffs.
"Good wine needs no bush" has become a trade paradox, "Judge by appearances," a commercial plat.i.tude. The man who is ambitious and industrious turns his trick of writing into purely literary channels, and becomes a novelist. The man who is not ambitious and not industrious, and who does not relish the prospect of becoming a loafer in Strand wine-shops, writes advertis.e.m.e.nts. The gold-bearing area is always growing. It"s a Tom Tiddler"s ground. It is simply a question of picking up the gold and silver. The industrious man picks up as much as he wants. Personally, I am easily content. An occasional nugget satisfies me. Here"s tonight"s nugget, for instance."
I took the paper he handed to me. It bore the words:
CAUGHT IN THE ACT
CAUGHT IN THE ACT of drinking Skeffington"s Sloe Gin, a man will always present a happy and smiling appearance. Skeffington"s Sloe Gin adds a crowning pleasure to prosperity, and is a consolation in adversity. Of all Grocers.
"Skeffington"s," he said, "pay me well. I"m worth money to them, and they know it. At present they are giving me a retainer to keep my work exclusively for them. The stuff they have put on the market is neither better nor worse than the average sloe gin. But my advertis.e.m.e.nts have given it a tremendous vogue. It is the only brand that grocers stock.
Since I made the firm issue a weekly paper called _Skeffington"s Poultry Farmer_, free to all country customers, the consumption of sloe gin has been enormous among agriculturists. My idea, too, of supplying suburban buyers gratis with a small drawing-book, skeleton ill.u.s.trations, and four coloured chalks, has made the drink popular with children. You must have seen the poster I designed. There"s a reduced copy behind you. The father of a family is unwrapping a bottle of Skeffington"s Sloe Gin. His little ones crowd round him, laughing and clapping their hands. The man"s wife is seen peeping roguishly in through the door. Beneath is the popular catch-phrase, "Ain"t mother going to "ave none?"
"You"re a genius," I cried.
"Hardly that," he said. "At least, I have no infinite capacity for taking pains. I am one of Nature"s slackers. Despite my talent for drawing up advertis.e.m.e.nts, I am often in great straits owing to my natural inertia and a pa.s.sionate love of sleep. I sleep on the slightest provocation or excuse. I will back myself to sleep against anyone in the world, no age, weight, or colour barred. You, I should say, are of a different temperament. More energetic. The Get On or Get Out sort of thing. The Young Hustler."
"Rather," I replied briskly, "I am in love."
"So am I," said Julian Eversleigh. "Hopelessly, however. Give us a match."
After that we confirmed our friendship by smoking a number of pipes together.
Chapter 5
THE COLUMN _(James Orlebar Cloyster"s narrative continued)_
After the first week "On Your Way," on the _Orb_, offered hardly any difficulty. The source of material was the morning papers, which were placed in a pile on our table at nine o"clock. The halfpenny papers were our princ.i.p.al support. Gresham and I each took one, and picked it clean. We attended first to the Subject of the Day. This was generally good for two or three paragraphs of verbal fooling. There was a sort of tradition that the first half-dozen paragraphs should be topical. The rest might be topical or not, as occasion served.
The column usually opened with a one-line pun--Gresham"s invention.
Gresham was a man of unparalleled energy and ingenuity. He had created several of the typical characters who appeared from time to time in "On Your Way," as, for instance, Mrs. Jenkinson, our Mrs. Malaprop, and Jones junior, our "howler" manufacturing schoolboy. He was also a stout apostle of a mode of expression which he called "funny language." Thus, instead of writing boldly: "There is a rumour that----," I was taught to say, "It has got about that----." This sounds funnier in print, so Gresham said. I could never see it myself.
Gresham had a way of seizing on any bizarre incident reported in the morning papers, enfolding it in "funny language," adding a pun, and thus making it his own. He had a cunning mastery of periphrasis, and a telling command of adverbs.