The person at the door burst at once into a long, rambling, angry complaint, but precisely about what Rosie could not for certain make out. Mr. Mercaptan had left orders, she gathered, that he wasn’t to be disturbed. But some one had come and disturbed him, “fairly shoved his way in, so rude and inconsiderate,” all the same. And now he’d been once disturbed, she didn’t see why he shouldn’t be disturbed again. But she didn’t know what things were coming to if people fairly shoved their way in like that. Bolshevism, she called it.
Rosie murmured her sympathies, and was admitted into a dark hall. Still querulously denouncing the Bolsheviks who came shoving in, the person led the way down a corridor and, throwing open a door, announced, in a tone of grievance: “A lady to see you, Master Paster”—for Mrs. Goldie was an old family retainer, and one of the few who knew the Secret of Mr. Mercaptan’s Christian name, one of the fewer still who were privileged to employ it. Then, as soon as Rosie had stepped across the threshold, she cut off her retreat with a bang and went off, muttering all the time, towards her kitchen.
It certainly wasn’t a garret. Half a glance, the first whiff of pot-pourri, the feel of the carpet beneath her feet, had been enough to prove that. But it was not the room which occupied Rosie’s attention, it was its occupants. One of them, thin, sharp-featured and, in Rosie’s very young eyes, quite old, was standing with an elbow on the mantelpiece. The other, sleeker and more genial in appearance, was sitting in front of a writing-desk near the window. And neither of them—Rosie glanced desperately from one to the other, hoping vainly that she might have overlooked a blond beard—neither of them was Toto.
The sleek man at the writing-desk got up, advanced to meet her.
“An unexpected pleasure,” he said, in a voice that alternately boomed and fluted. “Too delightful! But to what do I owe——? Who, may I ask——?”
He had held out his hand; automatically Rosie proffered hers. The sleek man shook it with cordiality, almost with tenderness.
“I ... I think I must have made a mistake,” she said. “Mr. Mercaptan...?”
The sleek man smiled. “I am Mr. Mercaptan.”
“You live on the second floor?”
“I never laid claims to being a mathematician,” said the sleek man, smiling as though to applaud himself, “but I have always calculated that ...” he hesitated ... “enfin, que ma demeure se trouve, en effet, on the second floor. Lypiatt will bear me out, I’m sure.” He turned to the thin man, who had not moved from the fireplace, but had stood all the time motionlessly, his elbow on the mantelpiece, looking gloomily at the ground.