“Having regard to the company present,” commented the fishy-eyed gentleman, “I consider that anecdote as distinctly lacking in tact.”
The feeling of the company appeared to be with the fish-eyed young man.
For the next half hour the door at the further end of the room continued to open and close, devouring, ogre-fashion, each time some dainty human morsel, now chorus gentleman, now chorus lady. Conversation among our thinning ranks became more fitful, a growing anxiety making for silence.
At length, “Mr. Horace Moncrieff” called the voice of the unseen Charon. In common with the rest, I glanced round languidly to see what sort of man “Mr. Horace Moncrieff” might be. The door was pushed open further. Charon, now revealed as a pale-faced young man with a drooping moustache, put his head into the room and repeated impatiently his invitation to the apparently coy Moncrieff. It suddenly occurred to me that I was Mr. Horace Moncrieff.
“So glad you've found yourself,” said the pale-faced young man, as I joined him at the door. “Please don't lose yourself again; we're rather pressed for time.”
I crossed with him through a deserted refreshment bar—one of the saddest of sights—into a room beyond. A melancholy-looking gentleman was seated at the piano. Beside him stood a tall, handsome man, who was opening and reading rapidly from a bundle of letters he held in his hand. A big, burly, bored-looking gentleman was making desperate efforts to be amused at the staccato conversation of a sharp-faced, restless-eyed gentleman, whose peculiarity was that he never by any chance looked at the person to whom he was talking, but always at something or somebody else.
“Moncrieff?” enquired the tall, handsome man—whom I later discovered to be Mr. Hodgson, the manager—without raising his eyes from his letters.
The pale-faced gentleman responded for me.
“Fire away,” said Mr. Hodgson.
“What is it?” asked of me wearily the melancholy gentleman at the piano.