“We must ask some one.”
“Away there on the left towards Victoria there’s what looks like the real business way in. There’s two policemen. I’m not afraid of policemen. No. And of course that man at the corner is a plain-clothes man.”
“Then let’s ask him!”
Lambone made no move. “Suppose he hasn’t come here at all!”
“I know he meant to do so.”
“I suppose if he hasn’t come,” said Lambone, “we ought to wait about here on the chance of his coming.” He felt extremely like flight at that instant. “There ought to be seats here.
“Come along,” he said, with a sudden return to manly decision, “let’s ask one of those bobbies at the far gate.”
§ 6
The policeman at the gate to whom they addressed themselves listened gravely to their inquiries, making no instant reply. He belonged to that great majority of English speakers who are engaged upon the improvement of the word “yes.” His particular idea was to make it long and purry.
“Yurrss,” he said breaking presently into speech: “Yurrss. There was a small gentleman without a ’at on. Yurrss. He ’ad blue eyes. And a moustache? Yurrss, come to think of it there was a moustache. A rather considerable moustache. Well, ’e said he wanted to speak to King George on a rather urgent matter. It always is a rather urgent matter. Never ‘quite.’ Always ‘rather.’ We replied, according to formula, ’e’d ’ave to write for’n ’pointment. ‘Perhaps,’ ’e says, ‘You don’t know who I am?’ They all say that. ‘I guess it’s something important,’ I says. ‘Not the Ormighty, by any chance,’ I says. But ’e was ’ere last week and ’e wouldn’ go away and they ’ad to take ’im off in a taxi-cab. You know there was a chap ’ere, sir—Thursday last or Friday, I forget which—with a long white beard and ’air all down ’is back. Very like ’im I should think. Well any’ow this sort of dashed your gentleman. He kind of mumbled a name.”