“Tea? Good.”
Mr. Leyton pulled up a chair and plumped into it digging at his person and dragging out the tails of his coat with one hand, holding a rumpled newspaper at reading length. When his coattails were free he scratched his head and scrubbed vigorously at his short brown beard.
“You had tea?” he said to Miriam’s motionlessness, without looking up.
“No—let’s have tea,” said Miriam. Why should he assume that she should pour out the tea. …
“I say that’s a nasty one,” said Mr. Leyton hysterically and began reading in a high hysterical falsetto.
Miriam began pouring out. Mr. Leyton finished his passage with a little giggling shriek of laughter and fumbled for bread and butter with his eyes still on the newspaper. Miriam sipped her hot tea. The room darkled in the silence. Everything intensified. She glanced impatiently at Mr. Leyton’s bent unconscious form. His shirt and the long straight narrow ends of his tie made a bulging curve above his low-cut waistcoat. The collar of his coat stood away from his bent neck and its tails were bunched up round his hips. His trousers were so hitched up that his bent knees strained against the harsh crude Rope Brothers cloth. The ends of his trousers peaked up in front, displaying loose rolls of black sock and the whole of his anatomical walking-shoes. Miriam heard his busily masticating jaws and dreaded his operations with his teacup. A wavering hand came out and found the cup and clasped it by the rim, holding it at the edge of the lifted newspaper. She busied herself with cutting stout little wedges of cake. Mr. Leyton sipped, gasping after each loud quilting gulp; a gasp, and the sound of a moustache being sucked. Mr. Hancock’s showing out bell rang. Mr. Leyton plunged busily round, finishing his cup in a series of rapid gulps. “Kike?” he said.
“M,” said Miriam, “jolly kike—did you finish Mr. Buck?”
“More or less—”
“Did you boil the remains?”
“Boiled every blessed thing—and put the serviette in k’bolic.”
Miriam hid her relief and poured him out another cup.
Mr. Hancock came in through the open door and quickly up to the tea-tray. Pouring out a cup he held the teapot suspended, “another cup?”
“No thanks, not just at present,” said Miriam getting to her feet with a morsel of cake in her fingers.
“Plenty of time for my things,” said Mr. Hancock sitting down in Mr. Orly’s chair with his tea, his flat compact slightly wrinkled and square-toed patent leather shoes gleamed from under the rims of his soft dark grey beautifully cut trousers with a pleasant shine as he sat back comfortable and unlounging, with crossed knees in the deep chair.
Mr. Leyton had got to his feet.
“Busy?” he said rapidly munching. “I say I’ve had that man Buck this afternoon.”
“Oh yes,” said Mr. Hancock brushing a crumb from his knee.
“You know—that case I told you about.”
“Oh yes?” said Mr. Hancock with a clear glance and a slight tightening of the face.
Miriam made for the door. Mr. Hancock was not encouraging the topic. Mr. Leyton’s cup came down with a clatter. “I’m fearfully rushed,” he said. “I must be off.” He caught Miriam up in the hall. “I say tea must have been fearfully late. I’ve got to get down to headquarters by five sharp.”
“You go on first,” said Miriam standing aside.
Mr. Leyton fled up through the house three steps at a time.
When she came down again intent on her second cup of tea in the empty brown den a light had been switched on, driving the dark afternoon away. The crayon drawings behind the piano shone out on the walls of the dark square space under the gallery as she hesitated in the doorway. There was someone in the dim brightness of the room. She turned noiselessly towards her table.
“Come and have some more tea Miss Hens’n.”
Miriam went in with alacrity. The light was on in the octagonal brass framed lantern that hung from the skylight and shed a soft dim radiance through its old glass. Mrs. Orly still in her bonnet and fur-lined cape was sitting drinking tea in the little old cretonne chair. She raised a tired flushed face and smiled brightly at Miriam as she came down the room.
“I’m dying for another cup; I had to fly off and clear up Mr. Hancock’s things.”
“Mr. Hancock busy? Have some cake, it’s rather a nice one.” Mrs. Orly cut a stout little wedge.
Clearing away the newspaper Miriam took possession of Mr. Leyton’s chair.
Mr. Orly swung in shutting the door behind him and down the room peeling off his frock coat as he came.
“Tea darling?”
“Well m’love, since you’re so pressing.”
Mr. Orly switched on the lamp on the corner of the bench and subsided into his
