All his heavy personal effects had been sent up from Walktown some days before, and when he had carried up his two portmanteaus he knocked at the "oak" or outside door of the chambers, which was shut, and waited for a response. He saw that his name was freshly painted on the lintel of the door under the two others:
Mr. Harold M. Spence.
Mr. Cyril Hands.
Rev. Basil Gortre.
In a minute he heard footsteps. The inner door was opened and he saw a tall, thin man, bearded and brown, peering at him through spectacles.
"Ah! Gortre, I suppose," said the other. "We were expecting you. I'm Hands, you know, home for another month yet. Give me these bags. Come in, come in."
He followed the big, stooping fellow with a sense of well-being at the cheery bohemianism of his greeting.
He found himself in a very large room indeed, panelled from floor to ceiling, the woodwork painted a sage green. Three great windows, each with a cushioned seat in its recess, looked down into the quadrangle below. Curtained doors faced him on all sides of the room, which was oddly shaped and full of nooks and angles. Books and newspapers covered two or three writing-tables and were piled on shelves between the doors. A bright fire burned in a large grate and the mantel above was covered with Oxford photographs, pipes, and tobacco jars. There was a note of comfort everywhere, of luxurious comfort though not of luxury. The furniture was not new and it bore the signs of long use no less than careful choice. Bohemia it was, but not a squalid Bohemia. If a room can have a personality, this was a gentlemanly room. One saw that gentlemen lived here, men who, without daintiness or a tinge of the sybarite, yet liked a certain order and fitness around them. At once Basil felt in key with the place. There was no jarring note anywhere.
"I've got you a sort of meal, Gortre," said Hands, pleasantly, "though we were rather in doubt as to what a man could want at four o'clock in the afternoon! Spence suggested afternoon tea, as you'll be wanting to dine later on. But Mrs. Buscall, our laundress, suggested cold beef and Bass's beer—after a sea voyage which she regards as a sort of Columbus adventure. So fall to—here you are. Harold is just getting up."
Indeed, as he spoke there came a noise of vigorous splashing from behind one of the closed doors and Spence's voice bellowed out a greeting.
Basil looked puzzled for a moment and Hands laughed as he saw it.
"You must remember that Spence doesn't get back from the office till three in the morning," he said. "He's writing four leaders a week now, and on his late nights, when he comes back, his brain is too alert and excited to sleep, so he has some Bovril and just works away at other stuff till morning. He won't interfere with us, though. I never hear him come in, nor will you. These chambers are a regular rabbit warren for size and ramification."