“Next morning I was at the door of number sixteen pretty early.
“Rat-tat-tat went my knuckles on the panels. ‘Hillo!’ was the answer. ‘Going to get up to-day; it’s morning,’ says I. ‘Morning be hanged,’ was the answer. ‘If you don’t go away, I’ll call up the landlord and have you removed. Don’t want to be disturbed by intoxicated visitors. Telling me it’s morning when it’s pitch dark. You’re drunk.’
“Well, I was just flabbergasted to be called drunk. At this moment Matilda, who was getting curious about the stranger, had joined me. ‘He calls you drunk, does he?’ says Matilda; ‘let me talk to him,’ and rat-tat-tat went Matilda’s knuckles on the door. ‘Hey, you inside there, are you going to get up? You’ve been sleeping sixty hours,’ said she.
“‘At it again, are you, old fool?’ was the answer. At the word ‘old fool’ you ought to have seen Matilda’s face. I thought her eyes would have come out of her head. ‘Old fool!’ she gasped, ‘me an old fool; it’s the first time I’ve been called an old fool, and in my own house too.’ For the next ten minutes Matilda kept on saying ‘old fool’ to herself.
“Me an old fool and my husband drunk indeed! I’ll give it to you, you wicked old ass,’ then, putting her mouth to the keyhole, she poured into number sixteen’s ears such a shower of superlative adjectives as he’ll never forget. I didn’t know she had it in her. ‘You dirty old bear, do you think we’re going to have you hibernating all winter in our bedroom. Get up, you old beast, and we’ll teach you some manners. So you think Joe’s drunk, and I’m an old fool, do you? Out you get now, quick, before I call in the policemen. You old villain, you, to think you can insult people in their own house.’ Here she paused to get a little breath. She was just putting her lips to the hole to continue, when there was a fearful bang on the door, and something which sounded like a boot dropped on the floor.
“‘Joe! Joe!’ said Matilda, ‘he’s thrown his boot at me,’ and with a little scream she fell fainting in my arms. For the next few hours number sixteen held quiet possession of his apartments while I was plying Matilda with brandy and cold water.
“What was to be done nobody knew. ‘Starve him out’ was one suggestion. ‘At nine o’clock to-night he will have been in bed seventy-two hours, and he must be getting pretty hungry.’
“By this time the other guests in the hotel had got wind of the fact that there was something strange going on in number sixteen, and several of them left us.
“Nine o’clock came, but yet there was no sign that the old man intended to capitulate. All night long Matilda was so worked up about our guest that she would not let me sleep. We couldn’t burst the door open, because it was double-bolted. It would be easier to cut a hole through the wall—the one on the drawing-room side was only plaster and wood.
“‘If we can’t starve him,’ said Matilda, ‘we can stop the old bear from sleeping. Yes, that’s what we’ll do.’ Next morning we were up betimes, and the business of keeping number sixteen from sleeping commenced. The work we did that day was something terrible; we took it in turns, two hours at a time, beating a frying-pan on the door-handle. At first the visitors who had remained in the house thought it a joke, but towards evening several of them thought it a nuisance, and moved with their traps over to the Great Northern. Number sixteen never made a sound. At eight o’clock that night, when Matilda came up to relieve me with the frying-pan she said: ‘Suppose he is dead, Joe?’ He seemed to have heard this. ‘So you are there again, you old fool, are you; it isn’t your fault that I’m not dead. You have had your racket for the last twelve hours, now I’m going to have mine;’ and then there commenced such a row as you never heard. How he managed it I don’t know, he seemed to have got all the fire-irons tied together and kept them bumping against each other and the wooden wall. ‘Stop! for goodness’ sake, stop!’ I shouted. ‘Oh, no,’ says he. ‘Why have you stopped? Please go on; the two together will make a charming duet!’ and then he continued to bang and clash as if he was going to bring down the house. By eleven p.m. every visitor that had remained in the house had disappeared, and there was I, Matilda, Susan, and Jo, the ostler, listening to the inferno going in number sixteen. At midnight two neighbours came in saying they couldn’t sleep, and if the row did not cease they would report the house as disorderly, and have our licence cancelled. Of course nobody slept that night. Matilda spent most of her time in weeping. ‘Let us try quiet measures to-morrow,’ I suggested.