"I saw in the paper that you'd been turned out," said the Millionaire that night, when the Poet trudged home, footsore and fretful, to find his chambers occupied by the Iron King, the Private Secretary, the Lexicographer, the Military Attaché and their friends. "What are you going to do about it?" he continued with the relentlessness of a man who likes a prompt decision, even if it be a wrong one. "You know nothing about business, I'm sure; leases, premiums, insurance, all that sort of thing. You're in a hole; I don't see what more there is to be said."
So far the Poet, his mind wavering wearily between Glebe Place and
Victoria Street, had said nothing; he turned silently to the Iron
King, wondering how, without being rude, to indicate his desire
for bed.
"I saw rather a decent place that might suit you," drawled the
Private Secretary, smoothing a wrinkle out of his shapely silk
socks. "It's next to my Chief's in Belgrave Square. Of course,
I don't know what rent they want for it…"
The Iron King shook his head.
"He couldn't afford it," he said, speaking through and around and over the Poet. "Now I'm told that there are some very comfortable and cheap boarding-houses near Kensington Palace Gardens…."
The Poet drew the cork of a fresh bottle of whisky and collected four unbroken tumblers, a pewter mug and two breakfast cups without handles. As so often before, his destiny seemed to be slipping out of his control into the hands of the practical, strong-voiced men who filled his sitting-room to overflowing and would not let him go to bed. The Military Attaché knew of a maisonnette in Albemarle Street; the Official Receiver had been recently brought into professional contact with a fine Georgian property in Buckinghamshire, where they could all meet for a week-end game of golf at Stoke Pogis. Somewhere in Chelsea—not Glebe Place—the Lexicographer had seen just the thing, if only he could be quite sure about the drains…. With loud cheerfulness they accepted the Millionaire's postulate that the Poet knew nothing of business; unselfishly they placed all their experience and preferences at his disposal.
"Of course, there's the servant problem," an undistinguished voice remarked two hours later; and the Poet, settling to an uneasy sleep in his chair, mentally ruled out the Chelsea studio.
"The ordinary surveyor's no use," broke in the Lexicographer, pursuing his own line of thought. "What you want is a drainage expert."
"I know these good, honest, middle-aged couples," cried the Iron King with the bitterness of an oft-defrauded widower. "The woman always drinks, and them man always steals the cigars…"
"I have nothing but gas in my place," said the decorous voice of the Private Secretary, "and I have it on pretty good authority that there'll be a great coal shortage this winter. I don't want that to go any further, though…"