“Servants don’t sleep here,” said Kellerman. “Cook snores, bungalow like a fiddle for conveying sounds, come here for sleep and rest. They sleep at a cottage down the road.”
“So?” said Jones. “Well, getting no reply I looked in at the window, saw the supper, and came in.”
“That’s just the sort of thing that might occur in a photo play,” said Kellerman. “When I saw you, as I stepped in, sitting quietly at supper the situation struck me at once.”
“You call that a situation,” said Jones. “It’s bald to some of the situations I have been in for the last God knows how long.”
“You interest me,” said Kellerman, helping himself to cheese. “You talk with such entire conviction of the value of your goods.”
“How do you mean the value of my goods?”
“Your situations, if you like the term better. Don’t you know that good situations are rarer than diamonds and more valuable? Have you ever read Pickwick?”
“Yep.”
“Then you can guess what I mean. Situations don’t occur in real life, they have to be dug for in the diamond fields of the mind and—”
“Situations don’t occur in real life!” said Jones. “Don’t they—now, see here, I’ve had supper with you and in return for your hospitality I’ll tell you every thing that’s happened to me if you’ll hear it. I guess I’ll shatter your illusions. I’ll give you a sample: I belong to the London Senior Conservative Club and yet I don’t. I have the swellest house in London yet it doesn’t belong to me. I’m worth one million and eight thousand pounds, yet the other day I had to steal a few sovereigns, but the law could not touch me for stealing them. I have an uncle who is a duke yet I am no relation to him. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it, all the same it’s fact. I don’t mind telling you the whole thing if you care to hear it. I won’t give you the right names because there’s a woman in the case, but I bet I’ll lift your hair.”