“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.
“'Sally in Our Alley,'” I replied.
“What are you?” interrupted Mr. Hodgson. He had never once looked at me, and did not now.
“A tenor,” I replied. “Not a full tenor,” I added, remembering the O'Kelly's instructions.
“Utterly impossible to fill a tenor,” remarked the restless-eyed gentleman, looking at me and speaking to the worried-looking gentleman. “Ever tried?”