“I may have something to give you from an old lodger; but not till I’m sure you have a right to it.”
“What, him?”
“Very likely,” said the captain, calmly lighting a cigarette. “I shall know if you’re right, I dare say.”
“Right? Do you suppose I’m made of lodgers! ’Aint you talking about the singing chap—Armstrong he called himself, but at the Hall they called him Signor something—Francisco or the likes of that.”
The captain pricked his ears with a vengeance, and in his eagerness rattled the keys encouragingly in his trouser pocket.
“That won’t do,” said he. “I must have come to the wrong place after all. What sort of looking man was he, and where did he come from?”
“He’d got a pair of arms would knock you into the middle of next week, and when he went down to the Hall—”
“Which Hall?”
“The ‘Dragon’ Music-Hall—what, don’t you know it! go on with you—when he went there he flashed it with an eye-glass. Lor’, you should ’ave heard him sing! He’d a made your hair curl; it was lovely.”
“Ah! he wore an eye-glass and sang, did he?” said the captain. “And where did he come from, and what became of him when he left you?”