“Don’t forget this!” interrupted the other. “Don’t let this fact slip out of your memory. It was you began this argument. I never seeked for it. We was having a glass in the Old Kent Road, and you, or one of the others, began by saying that Erb was growing a great deal too big for his boots.”
“I never said it,” growled the other sulkily.
“Did someone pass a remark to that effect, or did someone not pass a remark to that effect? Am I speaking the truth, or am I a bloomin’ liar?”
“It’s one or the other,” said the member cautiously.
“That won’t do for me,” said the non-member, now in the sheer enjoyment of cross-examination. “I ast you a straightforward question, and if you can’t give me a straightforward answer, why, I must draw me own conclusions. That’s all.” And smiled again mysteriously at the sky.
“Well,” replied the other, goaded, “I don’t mind going so far as this. Certain things have been said of late at certain depots that I needn’t name, and it’s all going to be brought up at the meeting to-night. Mind you, it mustn’t go any further.” The other man gave a nod intended to signify that he had guessed all this. “And being meself on Erb’s side, and not wanting to be mixed up in anything like a shindy, why, I’m giving it a miss, and I’m off down to meet the wife’s brother at his club in Peckham and spend a nice, quiet, sociable evening. See?”
“And you,” remarked the other thoughtfully, “you call yourself a man? Well, well, well!” with a sigh, “the longer we live the older we get.”
“What are you snacking at me about now?” demanded the member heatedly.
Erb slipped down the steps, disturbed by the news which he had heard, but with also a feeling of elation at the prospect of a fight. He found the Professor alone in the house in Southampton Street; Rosalind was out giving lessons at a school for superior young ladies at Brixton. Professor full of a kind of stale enthusiasm concerning a new project, which was to take a theatre or a town hall or a room or something and give costume recitals, grave and gay, and to keep on at it night after night until people found themselves forced to come in their thousands; the Professor seemed to have worked this out as though it were a scheme for winning gold at Monte Carlo, and he had already decided what he should do with the enormous profits. Difficulty was to select from the many suburbs of London one place which should be favoured with the experiment; another difficulty (but this he seemed to think of less importance) consisted in the fact that, from inquiries he had caused to be made, it appeared that those who controlled the letting of public premises had a distrustful habit of requiring the rent in advance. Erb, in answer to a question, declared that he had no sort of influence in the City, a place with which the Professor seemed imperfectly acquainted in that he regarded it as a storehouse of valuables, the door of which flew open if you but knew the one, the indispensable word; the Professor considered the matter for a while with one hand twirling his hair, and then, illuminated, announced his intention of taking off his coat to the work. As a first step, he proposed to take a cab to Throgmorton Street, and have a thoroughly good look round. Erb suggested a ’bus and the Professor replied that undertakings of this kind had to be carried through with a certain amount of dash and spirit which could not be done under one and six, or, at the very least, one and three. For this sum Erb compounded, and the Professor made a note of the amount on the back of an envelope that a treacherous memory should not play tricks; the message for Rosalind he could trust to his mind. He was working like a bonded slave, he added, on behalf of his little girl: she was fortunate, indeed, in having a father who could keep accounts. Erb restrained an obvious repartee, and the old gentleman, in his slippers, walked with him out to Camberwell Gate, where, in the interests of economy, he proposed to look in at a bar which had in its window a card bearing the ambiguous announcement, “The ‘Stage’ Taken In.”
Erb found that he had allowed the garrulous old gentleman to detain him longer than he should have done; when, on reaching the coffee-shop in Grange Road he ran upstairs to the committee rooms, he could hear voices raised, and he knew that not only had the meeting already commenced, but that a contentious subject was being debated. The rapping of Payne’s hammer failed to arrest tumultuous speech, and it was only when Erb opened the door that the argumentative voices stopped.