“All right. You take it.”
Oliver had been sliding the window up all the while, cursing softly and horribly at each damnatory creak. Yes—there it was—and people thought fire-escapes ugly. Personally, Oliver had seldom seen anything in his life which combined concrete utility with abstract beauty so ideally as that little flight of iron steps leading down the entry outside the window into blackness.
“You first, Ted.”
“Can't.” The word seemed to come despairingly out of the bottom of his stomach.
“Came here. Own accord. Got to see it through. Take my medicine.”
“You fool, she doesn't want you here! Think of Elinor!” For a moment Oliver thought Ted was going to blaze into more blind rage. Then he checked himself.
“I am. But listen to that.”
The voices that came to them from the living-room were certainly both high and excited—and the second that Oliver heard one of them he knew that all his most preposterous suppositions on the drive down from Southampton had come preposterously and rather ghastly true.
“Well, listen to it! Do you know who the man is now? And will you get out on the fire-escape, you fool?”
Ted listened intently for the space of a dozen seconds. Then “Oh my God!” he said and his head went into his hands. Oliver crept over to him.