“About nine.”
“Very well. I’ll look round with Smithers and Arnold. It’s a job that Jimmy would enjoy, but he’s so lantern-jawed she’d know him at once.”
At nine Gully, Smithers, Arnold, and I were in Lucinda’s drawing room, smoking very strong tobacco and drinking hot gin and water; it gave me heartburn for nearly a week. But it made a good steam and fume; effect was what we wanted. We all four looked—well, rough. A bristly chin and no collar alters a man immensely. As luck would have it, neither Smithers nor I had shaved that morning; nor the morning before, in my case. Arnold wore a false beard.
Why do absconding criminals take the trouble to disguise themselves—decent, middle-class criminals who are accustomed to razors and clean linen? A bristly chin and a neck without a collar would do the whole business, without trouble or expense. If, added to that, the criminal gets his “portrait” in the paper, he’s safe.
My feet were on the sofa. The gin bottle and a jug of beer stood on Lucinda’s pet polished table. Arnold was gently scraping his boots on the copper scuttle, and Smithers had his head well into the white curtains. The rugs were kicked up; there were spent matches all over the floor. It was an education to see how by a few well-thought-out touches we had wrecked the room.
Lucinda was pretty punctual. She stood on the threshold for one second before she fled. I looked round. There was blank tragedy on her face. Gully got up, appearing a little guilty. He went out to her. Judging by the direction of their voices he found her in the lobby, with her face buried in his overcoat. She was crying. We three in the untidy room, thick with smoke and stale with spirit, heard her say in a muffled way:
“This is too much. You’ve taken away the—s—silver—all the decencies of life. You talk to me of a cheap boarding house. I’ll never consent to it; I’d rather die or go back to papa. And you’ve brought those wretches into my drawing room.”
“But we agreed, darling, that it wasn’t to be a drawing room any longer. We said that we’d devote it to the people. Your own idea was a laundresses’ weekly tea, and——”
“You look disreputable. You look like—a—brigand. No collar—that tie. I never was so miserable. I never would have married you if——”
“My dearest, you wouldn’t have me wound the susceptibilities of those worthy fellows——”