3
A little later Mr. Alfred Jingle, solicitor, talking to his friend the artist, may be permitted to throw some light on events.
“Saw Sharper yesterday. Don’t like it. Awful. Went to his house. What? Yes, looking for lunch. Brass knob on the front door blazing fit to blind you. No curtains at any of the windows. Sound like a carpet being beaten from the garden at the back. Sharper himself leaning out of upstairs window. Face ashen grey. Ears twitching. ‘Don’t come in,’ he calls out, ‘I’ll come down. Lunch in Dilborough.’
“Terrific noise of Sharper falling downstairs. Out he comes, rubbing knee. Hat bashed in.
“‘Had a little accident,’ he says. ‘They took out the stair rods. Carpet loose. We’ll go in by train. Wouldn’t ask you to lunch here. Had dinner in the bath-room last night. Mabel’s got her head in a duster.’
“I asked him what was the matter. And if he spent the entire day leaning out of that window.
“‘Yes, Jingle,’ he said. ‘I have to lean out. Do you know the smell of size? They use it a good deal in spring-cleaning. It’s like glue and decayed fish. House is full of it. It hurts. Horribly. Damnably. I’m glad you’ve come, Jingle. I was to have had lunch in the housemaid’s cupboard. But Mabel is an excellent housekeeper. Thorough.’
“Tried to cheer him up. Told him it would soon be over. And Summer would come.
“‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but if Summer don’t! Size and spring-cleaning for ever and ever. Do you believe in eternal punishment?’
“Lunched at the ‘Crown.’ Stuffed a whiskey into him. Had six myself. No good. Said the cold beef tasted of size. Tried to switch him off; on to politics. Hadn’t anything to say on that subject, because there was no room in his house in which there was enough space left to open a paper.
“‘Everything’s put where everything else ought to be,’ he said. ‘Place for everything, and my foot in a pail of soapsuds. Did you know that Washo worked by itself? Have you tried Pingo for the paint? These pickles taste of Pingo. Had to do the walls of my study-room with it. Mabel made me. She’s an excellent housekeeper. But the world does seem to be entirely filled with dust, and the smell of decayed fish, don’t you think?’
“Cheerful talk for a luncheon party, wasn’t it? That man’s on the verge of a breakdown. Don’t like it at all. That wife of his is overdoing it. Shall look him up again next week. His mind’s not right. He forgot to pay for the lunch. I suggested that I should do it, and he let me. Something seriously wrong there. Seriously. Have a drink.”