“Incognito,” the young man repeated, as though he considered the word. “Of course. Naturally. By the by, sir, might I ask your name? (If you hit me again, Susan, I shall do something cruel and dreadful to you.) We’d have to know your name.”
“For the time I think Mr.—Mr. Sargon.”
“Of course,” said the young man, “for the time. Sargon—wasn’t that an Assyrian king, or does my memory betray me?”
“It is not the Assyrian Sargon in this case, it is the Sumerian Sargon, his predecessor.”
“Not a word more, sir—I understand. You must be fatigued after your long journey and I should love—I should dearly love to let you the room. Wow! Susan, you go downstairs. Pinching I can’t stand. Come along. You go down to your own proper room and let’s have no nonsense about it. Come!”
Susan backed to the wall and prepared to resist tooth and nail. “I didn’t mean to pinch, Bobby,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pinch. Troof and really! I was just feelin’ your trousis. Oh, don’t take me down, Bobby! Don’t take me down. I will be good! I’ll be awful good. I’ll just stay here and look at the funny geman. If you take me down, Bobby——”
“Now, is this a real reformation, Susan—a conversion, a change of heart? Will you be a jeune femme rangée and all that, if I forgive you?”
“I’ll be anyfing, Bobby dear, flet me stay.”
“Well! cease to exist then—for all practical purposes and I’ll forgive you. What can the nice gentleman think of you, Susan? And you more than five! Bah! We were saying, Mr. Sargon—? Yes, of course, I was saying that you ought to take the room. Payment in advance will be accepted. But—there is that toothbrush. And other small—what shall I say?—realistic touches. I shouldn’t mind personally, but I’m only an agent, so to speak. Properly I am a sort of writer. Properly I ought to be writing a novel now, but, as you see, Mrs. Richman has left the house on my hands and my friends downstairs have left this charming young lady on my hands—Put that tongue back at once, Susan. Unladylike child!—and here we are! But as I’m saying, Mrs. Richman is the principal. She has her fancies about lodgers. It is useless to dispute about them. She will want a show of luggage. She will insist. But that is really not an insurmountable difficulty. This—you will remember the name?—is Nine Midgard Street. If you go out from here and turn to the left, take the third to the right and go straight on, you will come to a main thoroughfare full of ’buses and trams and traffic and light and noise, and at the corner you will find a shop where they sell second-hand trunks and bags. Now if you bought an old, battered, largish bag—and then went across the road to a chemist’s shop and got those washing things you need—Oh! and a reserve collar or so at the outfitter’s next door—You must get such things.... You see the idea?”
Sargon stood in front of the unlit gas-stove. “This seems to be acting a falsehood.”