And in this moment that his instinct recognized as critical, he acquired a wisdom and a guile that ages of experience might have failed to teach him. With no perceptible pause, and in a voice utterly devoid of any treacherous emotion, he inquired what Mercier was doing there, and learned that Mercier was leaving Wandsworth next week, on the thirteenth, and would be established as chief assistant in the new chemist's shop in Acacia Avenue.
He remembered. He remembered how last year he had seen Jujubes coming out of the chemist's shop and looking about him. So that was what he was after! There had been no chance for him last year; but Southfields was a rising suburb, and this summer the new chemist was able to increase his staff.
It was not surprising that Mercier should want to leave Wandsworth, nor that the new chemist should desire to increase his staff, nor that these two desires should coincide in time. Nothing, indeed, could be more natural. But still Ranny's instinct told him that there had been a curious persistency about old Eno.
Well, he would have to interview old Eno, that was all.
He waited a whole hour, to show that he was not excited; and then, without saying a word to Violet, he whirled himself furiously down to Wandsworth.
The interview took place very quietly over his father's counter. He found his quarry alone there in the shop.
Leonard Mercier greeted him with immense urbanity. He could afford to be urbane. He was dressed, and knew that he was dressed, with absolute correctness in the prevailing style, a style that disguised and restrained his increasing flabbiness, whereas, though Ranny's figure was firm and slender, his suit was shabby. Leonard Mercier had the prosperous appearance of a man unencumbered with a wife and family. And unless you insisted on hard tissues he was good-looking in his own coarse way. His face, with all its flabbiness, had its dark accent and distinction; and these were rendered even more emphatic by the growth of a black mustache which he had trained with care. The ends of it were waxed and drawn finely to a point. His finger nails and his skin, his hair and his mustache showed that the young chemist did not disdain the use of the cosmetics that lay so ready to his hand.
The duologue was brief.
"Hello, old chappy. So you're going to be my new landlord?"
"Not much."