Going in one day with my friend for some stamps, Mr Pound himself handed them to me.
Here was my chance! I must confess that I hesitated to ask such an apparently absurd question on such slender grounds. In any case, was it likely that he would remember the names of all the undergraduates in the University who might have lodged with him twenty or thirty years before? I whispered to my friend: "Shall I ask him?" but she did not hear, so even this small encouragement was denied me. I was actually turning to leave the shop, when resolution at length took the reins, and I found myself asking:
"Is it true, Mr Pound, that you lived many years ago at No. — Trumpington Street?"
"Quite true," was the ready answer. "I went there in the year fifty-five." (I quote this from memory, but it was in the fifties certainly.)
"I wanted to ask a question about a gentleman who may have lodged with you a good deal later than that—about seventy, I should think." And I mentioned the name of my friend.
Mr Pound's brow cleared at once, and he looked up with a beaming smile. "Mr Forbes," he said—"why, of course, I remember him well. He lodged with me over eighteen months." Then turning to his assistant, he told him to go into the parlour and bring out the large photograph album. There was my friend, sure enough, with his big dog—the very photograph I had of him, given me in the early days of our acquaintance.
Mr Pound was full of reminiscences. My friend had evidently been a prime favourite with him, and it was some minutes before I could squeeze in my crucial question. It seemed almost impossible to expect him to remember the exact rooms occupied by Mr Forbes, considering there were two or three "sets" of rooms in the house, in addition to several bedrooms which were let separately.
But even here Mr Pound's memory proved invaluable. "Which room he slept in? Why, of course, I remember distinctly. He had the large front sitting-room and the bedroom at the back of it; over our living-room in those days."
So I was living in Mr Forbes' sitting-room, and sleeping in the bedroom, he had occupied for more than eighteen months.
My Cambridgeshire friend was, fortunately, present as a witness that no word of mine had indicated this fact before Mr Pound corroborated my intuitive impression. She said afterwards, laughingly, that Mr Myers would certainly think I had got up a special ghost story for him the moment I set foot in Cambridge.