“O, you ineffable ass! ‘Back of the caddy’ (that’s to say the tea-caddy; there it is), ‘see’—see what? What follows? Why, five notes, don’t they? ‘Back of the caddy see five notes’—and there they are.”
I sank in a heap in my chair. Light had dawned on me. “And you found ’em there, I suppose?” I murmured—“behind a false back or something?”
He nodded. “You’re getting on.”
“And, please, what’s the thing at the top?” I continued faintly. “Let me get it all over at once.”
“Ah!” he said: “there’s a trifle more ingenuity in that, perhaps. What is it, to begin with? A demisemiquaver balanced on the top of an M Y, eh?”
“So it appears to me.”
“To any one. Don’t be frightened. Try it every way round, and conclude with this: ‘On the top of M Y’—that is to say, ‘on M Y,’ which is my, ‘a demisemiquaver’: or, shorn of all superfluities (he pencilled it down), thus: ‘on my demisemiquaver.’ Now apply the same process.”
I looked; pondered; felt myself instantly and brilliantly inspired; seized the pencil from him, and ticked off the measurements:—
“On my demise | mi | q | u | av | er.”
“Exactly,” said Chaunt, rising with the air of an at-length-released martyr, and proceeding to roll another cigarette: “ ‘On my demise, my cue you have here.’ ’Pon my word, without irreverence, it’s worthier of the composer of ‘Say, den, Julius, whar yo’ walkin’ roun’?’ than of the author of ‘Some Unnoticed Sides of Bacon.’ But all one can say is that he adapted himself to the intellectual measure of his legatee. Have you got a match?”