Then, I think on the fourth evening after I had given Julia dinner in Jermyn Street, the history of Derwent Rose moved forward—or backward—once more.
I had thought of looking up Madge Aird that evening, but at the last moment had changed my mind. I did not feel up to Madge's liveliness. So I hung round that now so-drearily-familiar neighbourhood instead—the neighbourhood between Leicester Square Tube Station and Tottenham Court Road. I walked till I was tired, and then, more for the sake of sitting down than for any other reason, I entered a picture-house on the west side of Shaftesbury Avenue. I did not choose that one in particular. It was just like any other picture-house except that it had a small organ built into the wall high up in one corner. This organ was ceasing to play as I entered. The principal drama of the programme was just over.
As it chanced, I had arrived just in time for one of those rather curious effects that are obtained when the film is put through the machine extremely slowly. You know the kind I mean. A racehorse in full career picks up and puts down his legs as if they were fronds of seaweed moving lazily in water; a golf-ball trickles uncannily across the green, rising and falling idly over each minute obstacle, and then floats gently down into the hole. In spite of my languor I found myself interested in these analyses of motion. It is curious to see instantaneousness taking its time over a thing like that.
Then that series also finished, and I felt in my pocket for my cigarette case. As I drew out a cigarette and struck a match somebody behind me leaned forward and touched me lightly on the shoulder.
"I say, isn't your name Coverham?" a man's voice said.
The match was still in my fingers. I looked over my shoulder in the light of it. Then I dropped the match.
I had not found him. He had found me. It was Derwent Rose.