He turned to me with absolute happiness in his face.
“But for Heaven’s sake, don’t let out a word of it. I must have a copyright performance first before it’s really safe.”
“It’s a dead secret—till I’ve finished it, I mean—then I’ll come and tell you the dénouement. The last curtain is simply magnificent. You see, Middleton never hears——”
“I won’t tell a living soul,” I cried, running to catch a bus. “It’s a secret—yours and mine!”
And the omnibus carried me away Westwards.
Meanwhile the play remains to this day a “dead secret,” known only to the man who thinks he told it, and to the other man who knows he heard it told.
VI
THE LEASE
The other day I came across my vague friend again. Last time it was in an A.B.C. shop; this time it was in a bus. We always meet in humble places.
He was vaguer than ever, fuddled and distrait; but delightfully engaging. He had evidently not yet lunched, for he wore no crumb; but I had a shrewd suspicion that beneath his green Alpine hat there lurked a straw or two in his untidy hair. It would hardly have surprised me to see him turn with his childlike smile and say, “Would you mind very much taking them out for me? You know they do tickle so!”—half mumbled, half shouted.