‘Ant now,’ he said, ‘I haf got to pekin my day’s work.’ Paul stared a little, but made no answer. ‘You had petter gome with me,’ said Darco. ‘It will help you to learn your business.’
Paul assisted his employer into the big fur coat, assumed his own and the shabby cap Pauer had given him, and went out at Darco’s heels. A closed brougham waited in the street. They entered and were driven away.
It was nearing six o’clock by this time, and as they were driven downhill they came into a stratum of cold yellow fog, through which the gas-lamps stared with a bleared and drunken look. The vehicle rumbled along for some three-quarters of an hour, and pulled up in a shabby side-way strewn with cabbage-leaves and all manner of decaying vegetable offal Darco rolled out of the brougham, and plunged with a waddling swiftness into a narrow, ill-lit passage which smelt of escaping gas. Paul followed, and in half a minute found himself for the first time within the walls of a theatre and on the stage. The darkened auditorium loomed beyond the solitary T-bracket like a great sepulchre. A hundred people, more or less, were gathered on the stage.
‘Act dwo!’ roared Darco at the moment of his entrance. ‘Glear for Act dwo.’ People began to dribble into the outlying darkness. ‘Do you hear?’ he stormed, clapping his hands together. ‘Glear for Act dwo. Look here, ladies and chentlemen, I am Cheorge Dargo. I do not zay to anypoty twice.’
From the moment when he gripped the idea that this was a rehearsal the place was a fairyland to Paul. Darco stormed round, correcting everybody, acted for everybody, and a little man, who was barricaded behind an enormous moustache, and seemed to be second in command, echoed the chief’s commands plaintively:
‘Oh I say, now, why don’t you? You got that cross marked down last night.’
‘You’re Binda, are you?’ said Darco, addressing one pale and trembling young woman who had just tried an entrance. ‘Veil, now, look here. I don’t sbeak to beobles twice. Binda is a light, high-sbirited kirl She is all light and laughder and nonsense. See? She gums hob, skib, and chump. Like this.’
He waddled furiously to the wing and made the entrance. He was ludicrous, he was grotesque, but somehow he conveyed the idea he desired to convey. The girl tried again, but failed to satisfy him.
‘Vere do you garry your prains?’ he asked. ‘In your boods?’
The girl began to whimper, and the lieutenant took Darco by the sleeve.