'Delighted,' said Woodhouse. 'What did you get?'
'I haven't decided. It might make a good turn, but--the public aren't educated up to it yet. It's beyond 'em. If it wasn't, that red dub on the Bench would be worth fifty a week.'
'Where?' said Woodhouse. The man looked at him with unaffected surprise.
'At any one of My places,' he replied. 'But perhaps you live here?'
'Good heavens!' cried young Ollyett suddenly. 'You are Masquerier, then? I thought you were!'
'Bat Masquerier.' He let the words fall with the weight of an international ultimatum. 'Yes, that's all I am. But you have the advantage of me, gentlemen.'
For the moment, while we were introducing ourselves, I was puzzled. Then I recalled prismatic music-hall posters--of enormous acreage--that had been the unnoticed background of my visits to London for years past. Posters of men and women, singers, jongleurs, impersonators and audacities of every draped and undraped brand, all moved on and off in London and the Provinces by Bat Masquerier--with the long wedge-tailed flourish following the final 'r.'
'I knew you at once,' said Pallant, the trained M.P., and I promptly backed the lie. Woodhouse mumbled excuses. Bat Masquerier was not moved for or against us any more than the frontage of one of his own palaces.
'I always tell My people there's a limit to the size of the lettering,' he said. 'Overdo that and the ret'na doesn't take it in. Advertisin' is the most delicate of all the sciences.'
'There's one man in the world who is going to get a little of it if I live for the next twenty-four hours,' said Woodhouse, and explained how this would come about.