“Disguise!” cried the artist. “Must I indeed disguise myself? Has it come to that?”
“My dear creature,” returned his companion, “disguise is the spice of life. What is life, passionately exclaimed a French philosopher, without the pleasures of disguise? I don’t say it’s always good taste, and I know it’s unprofessional; but what’s the odds, downhearted drawing-master? It has to be. We have to leave a false impression on the minds of many persons, and in particular on the mind of Mr. Gideon Forsyth—the young gentleman I know by sight—if he should have the bad taste to be at home.”
“If he be at home?” faltered the artist. “That would be the end of all.”
“Won’t matter a d——,” returned Michael airily. “Let me see your clothes, and I’ll make a new man of you in a jiffy.”
In the bedroom, to which he was at once conducted, Michael examined Pitman’s poor and scanty wardrobe with a humorous eye, picked out a short jacket of black alpaca, and presently added to that a pair of summer trousers which somehow took his fancy as incongruous. Then, with the garments in his hand, he scrutinised the artist closely.
“I don’t like that clerical collar,” he remarked. “Have you nothing else?”
The professor of drawing pondered for a moment, and then brightened; “I have a pair of low-necked shirts,” he said, “that I used to wear in Paris as a student. They are rather loud.”
“The very thing!” ejaculated Michael. “You’ll look perfectly beastly. Here are spats, too,” he continued, drawing forth a pair of those offensive little gaiters. “Must have spats! And now you jump into these, and whistle a tune at the window for (say) three-quarters of an hour. After that you can rejoin me on the field of glory.”
So saying, Michael returned to the studio. It was the morning of the easterly gale; the wind blew shrilly among the statues in the garden, and drove the rain upon the skylight in the studio ceiling; and at about the same moment of the time when Morris attacked the hundredth version of his uncle’s signature in Bloomsbury, Michael, in Chelsea, began to rip the wires out of the Broadwood grand.
Three-quarters of an hour later Pitman was admitted, to find the closet-door standing open, the closet untenanted, and the piano discreetly shut.