"Look here, old man! You're quite impossible, but I want a chat. Where can you come on to afterward? Pimlico's so far away. What do you say to the Concentric?" (I belong perforce to an "all-night" club.)
Ingram demurred. "No, thanks. I don't much care for the frescoes at the Concentric. I've got rooms—a room, I should say—nearly as close. It's not a bad little crib. Come round there as soon as you've fired in your stuff." And I pencilled the address on my shirt-cuff.
Paul's room was at the top of a narrow, old-world house in Beak Street, almost looking into Golden Square. A creeper wandered over the front, and there were little painted iron balconies at each window. The first floor was taken up by a bowed, weather-stained shop front, and behind its narrow panes, on a rusty wire blind, appeared the following legend in gilt lettering:
"J. Foudrinier
Table Liner and Leather Gilder."
The narrow staircase up which we climbed—for he let me in himself—was fragrant with the smell that is said to make radicals.
"What d'you think of it, Prentice?"
"Fine! Atmosphere here, my boy."
"It might be worse," said Paul, apparently misunderstanding my remark. "Imagine fried fish!"
I looked round me as he fought with a stubborn fire. The room was poor and low; its furnishings mere flotsam of the Middle Victorian era. The bureau and tallboy that I used to admire so much at Westminster were gone. My heart sank a little. Paul wasn't getting on.
"Come over here a minute, Prentice," he said, getting up and taking the lamp. "Look!"