‘That is a bart of vat is vanted,’ said Darco. ‘Haf you cot it town?’ Before Paul could answer he was off again in a new tangle, and fighting and tearing his way through it as madly as before. ‘Now I am dired,’ he said. ‘I shall haf some lunge, and co to sleep.’
He caught at the bell-pull in passing, gave it a tug, and waddled off to his bedroom. The landlady came in with the tray and began to arrange the table.
‘I don’t know what you gentlemen have been doing sir,’ she said to Paul, ‘but I’m sure I was afraid there was going to be murder in the house. I never heard anybody go on so in my life. I don’t know how any young gentleman puts up with it.’
‘There is very little danger, I assure you,’ said Paul. ‘Mr. Darco and I have been talking business.’
‘Well,’ returned the landlady, ‘I suppose you know how to manage him. But I wouldn’t be his keeper not for love or money.’
‘I am Mr. Darco’s private secretary, ma’am,’ Paul answered gravely.
‘All I can say is,’ said the landlady, sighing, ‘I’m glad it’s Saturday.’
It happened that the company took a late train that night for a distant town, and Darco paid his bill before leaving for the theatre. He told the landlady that he had been extremely comfortable, and that he should have great pleasure in recommending her to his friends. When he had gone, the landlady told Paul that she was glad the gendeman had his lucy intervals.
But the comedy having been once rebegun on Darco’s lines, was written to an accompaniment of fears and tremblings. It terrified the servants and the women-folk at large of every house the collaborateurs lodged in. Slaveys, with clasped hands and faces pale beneath smudges of blacklead, shook in the hall or on the stairs and landing whilst Darco roared, and Paul at the end of a day’s work used sometimes to feel as if he had been badly beaten about the head. None the less, the work was finished, and put into rehearsal.
‘Ve vill dry it on the tog,’ said Darco, and Paul, who never dared to question him as to his meaning, went puzzled for a while.