"Just step in and look up," he said, "afore I light the light. You'll see something."
Lorrimer obeyed. A swarm of golden bees glimmered before his eyes.
"Stars," said Dickie. "Down below you wouldn't hardly know you had 'em, would you?"
Lorrimer did not answer. A moment later an asthmatic gas-jet caught its breath and he saw a bare studio room almost vacant of furniture. There was a bed and a screen and a few chairs, one window facing an alley wall. The stars had vanished.
"Pretty palatial quarters for a fellow on your job," Lorrimer remarked.
"How did you happen to get here?"
"Some—people I knowed of once lived here." Dickie's voice had taken on a
certain remoteness, and even Lorrimer knew that here questions stopped.
He accepted a chair, declined "the makings," proffered a cigarette.
During these amenities his eyes flew about the room.
"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, "is all that stuff your copying?"
There was a pile of loose and scattered manuscript upon the table under the gas-jet.
"Yes, sir," Dickie smiled. "I was plumb foolish to go to all that labor."
Lorrimer drew near to the table and coolly looked over the papers. Dickie watched him with rather a startled air and a flush that might have seemed one of resentment if his eyes had not worn their impersonal, observing look.