"I thought they were going to build a theatre here," said Edward Henry.
"I wish they had been!" said Mr. Alloyd. "I"d just like to design a theatre! But of course I shall never get the chance."
"Why not?"
"I know I sha"n"t," Mr. Alloyd insisted with gloomy disgust. "Only obtained this job by sheer accident! ... You got any ideas about theatres?"
"Well, I have," said Edward Henry.
Mr. Alloyd turned on him with a sardonic and half-benevolent gleam.
"And what are your ideas about theatres?"
"Well," said Edward Henry, "I should like to meet an architect who had thoroughly got it into his head that when people pay for seats to see a play they want to be able to _see_ it, and not just get a look at it now and then over other people"s heads and round corners of boxes and things. In most theatres that I"ve been in, the architects seemed to think that iron pillars and wooden heads are transparent. Either that, or the architects were rascals. Same with hearing. The pit costs half a crown, and you don"t pay half a crown to hear gla.s.ses rattled in a bar, or motor-omnibuses rushing down the street. I was never yet in a London theatre where the architect had really understood that what the people in the pit wanted to hear was the play, and nothing but the play."
"You"re rather hard on us," said Mr. Alloyd.
"Not so hard as you are on _us_!" said Edward Henry. "And then draughts! I suppose you think a draught on the back of the neck is good for us! ... But of course you"ll say all this has nothing to do with architecture!"
"Oh, no, I sha"n"t! Oh, no, I sha"n"t!" exclaimed Mr. Alloyd. "I quite agree with you!"
"You _do_?"
"Certainly. You seem to be interested in theatres?"
"I am a bit."
"You come from the North?"
"No, I don"t," said Edward Henry. Mr. Alloyd had no right to be aware that he was not a Londoner.
"I beg your pardon."
"I come from the Midlands."
"Oh! ... Have you seen the Russian ballet?"
Edward Henry had not, nor heard of it. "Why?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Mr. Alloyd. "Only I saw it the night before last in Paris. You never saw such dancing. It"s enchanted--enchanted! The most lovely thing I ever saw in my life. I couldn"t sleep for it. Not that I ever sleep very well! I merely thought, as you were interested in theatres--and Midland people are so enterprising! ... Have a cigarette?"
Edward Henry, who had begun to feel sympathetic, was somewhat repelled by these odd last remarks. After all the man, though human enough, was an utter stranger.
"No, thanks," he said. "And so you"re going to put up a church here?"
"Yes."
"Well, I wonder whether you are."
He walked abruptly away under Alloyd"s riddling stare, and he could almost hear the man saying, "Well, he"s a queer lot, if you like."
At the corner of the site, below the spot where his electric sign was to have been, he was stopped by a well-dressed middle aged lady who bore a bundle of papers.
"Will you buy a paper for the cause?" she suggested in a pleasant, persuasive tone. "One penny."
He obeyed, and she handed him a small blue-printed periodical of which the t.i.tle was, _Azure_, "the Organ of the New Thought Church." He glanced at it, puzzled, and then at the middle-aged lady.
"Every penny of profit goes to the Church-Building Fund," she said, as if in defence of her action.
Edward Henry burst out laughing; but it was a nervous, half-hysterical laugh that he laughed.
II.
In Carey Street, Lincoln"s Inn Fields, he descended from his brougham in front of the offices of Messrs. Slosson, Hodge, Budge, Slosson, Maveringham, Slosson, and Vulto, Solicitors, known in the profession by the compendious abbreviation of Slossons. Edward Henry, having been a lawyer"s clerk some twenty-five years earlier, was aware of Slossons.
Although on the strength of his youthful clerkship he claimed, and was admitted, to possess a very special knowledge of the law,--enough to silence argument when his opponent did not happen to be an actual solicitor,--he did not in truth possess a very special knowledge of the law,--how should he, seeing that he had only been a pract.i.tioner of shorthand?--but the fame of Slosson he positively was acquainted with!
He had even written letters to the mighty Slossons.
Every lawyer and lawyer"s clerk in the realm knew the greatness of Slossons, and crouched before it, and also, for the most part, impugned its righteousness with sneers. For Slossons acted for the ruling cla.s.ses of England, who only get value for their money when they are buying something that they can see, smell, handle, or intimidate--such as a horse, a motor-car, a dog, or a lackey. Slossons, those crack solicitors, like the crack nerve specialists in Harley Street and the crack fortune-tellers in Bond Street, sold their invisible, inodorous, and intangible wares of advice at double, treble, or decuple their worth, according to the psychology of the customer. They were great bullies. And they were, further, great money-lenders--on behalf of their wealthier clients. In obedience to a convenient theory that it is imprudent to leave money too long in one place, they were continually calling in mortgages and re-lending the sums so collected on fresh investments, thus achieving two bills of costs on each transaction, and sometimes three, besides employing an army of valuers, surveyors, and mortgage-insurance brokers. In short, Slossons had nothing to learn about the art of self-enrichment.
Three vast motor-cars waited in front of their ancient door, and Edward Henry"s hired electric vehicle was diminished to a trifle.
He began by demanding the senior partner, who was denied to him by an old clerk with a face like a stone wall. Only his brutal Midland insistence, and the mention of the important letter which he had written to the firm in the middle of the night, saved him from the ignominy of seeing no partner at all. At the end of the descending ladder of partners he clung desperately to Mr. Vulto, and he saw Mr. Vulto--a youngish and sarcastic person with blue eyes, lodged in a dark room at the back of the house. It occurred fortunately that his letter had been allotted to precisely Mr. Vulto for the purpose of being answered.
"You got my letter?" said Edward Henry cheerfully as he sat down at Mr.
Vulto"s flat desk on the side opposite from Mr. Vulto.
"We got it, but frankly we cannot make head or tail of it! ... _What_ option?" Mr. Vulto"s manner was crudely sarcastic.
"_This_ option!" said Edward Henry, drawing papers from his pocket and putting down the right paper in front of Mr. Vulto with an uncompromising slap.
Mr. Vulto picked up the paper with precautions, as if it were a contagion, and, a.s.suming eye-gla.s.ses, perused it with his mouth open.
"We know nothing of this," said Mr. Vulto, and it was as though he had added, "Therefore this does not exist." He glanced with sufferance at the window, which offered a close-range view of a whitewashed wall.
"Then you weren"t in the confidence of your client?"
"The late Lord Woldo?"
"Yes."
"Pardon me."
"Obviously you weren"t in his confidence as regards this particular matter."
"As you say," said Mr. Vulto with frigid irony.