“Mr. Carpentaria,” said Josephus Ilam, with unexpected bitterness, “is this your idea of a joke? Bringing me up here to see London and our show, as if I didn’t know London and our show like my pocket!”
Ilam’s concealed, hatred of Carpentaria, which had been slowly growing for more than a year, as a fire spreads secretly in the hold of a ship, seemed to spurt out a swift tongue of flame in the acrimony of his tone. Carpentaria was startled. Even then, in a sudden flash of illumination, he grasped to a certain extent the import of Ilam’s attitude towards him, but he did not grasp it fully. How should he?
“Why,” he said to himself, “I believe the old johnny dislikes mel What on earth for?” He could not understand all Ilam’s reasons. “Pity!” he reflected further. “If the managers of a show like this can’t hit it off together, there may be trouble.”
In which supposition he was infinitely more right than he imagined.
He balanced himself lightly on the edge of the car, his left leg dangling, and seized one of the field-glasses which hung secured by thin steel chains round the inside of the wicker parapet, and putting it to his eyes, he gazed down at the Oriental Gardens. He must have seen something there that profoundly interested him, for the glasses remained glued to his eyes for a long time.
“I repeat,” said Ilam firmly, standing up, “is this your idea of a joke?”
He was close to Carpentaria, and his glance was vicious.
“My friend,” murmured Carpentaria, dropping the glasses. “What’s the matter with you is that you aren’t an artist, not a bit of one. You are an excellent fellow, with a splendid head for figures, and I respect you enormously, but you haven’t the artistic sense. If you had you would share the thrill which I feel as I survey our creation and that London over there. You would appreciate why I brought you up here.”
“I’m a business man—a plain business man, that’s what I am,” said Ilam. “I’ve never pretended to be an artist, and I don’t want to be an artist. Let me tell you that I ought to be in the advertisement department, and not canoodling my time away up here, Mr. Carpentaria.”
“My dear sir,” said Carpentaria hastily, “accept my apologies. Let us descend at once.”