“I must apologise for being late, Mr. Beamish,” he said. “I was detained at the station-house.” He looked at Mullett uncertainly. “I think I have met this gentleman before?”
“No, you haven’t,” said Mullett quickly.
“Your face seems very familiar.”
“Never seen me in your life.”
“Come this way, Garroway,” said Hamilton Beamish, interrupting curtly. “We cannot waste time in idle chatter.” He led the officer to the edge of the roof and swept his hand round in a broad gesture. “Now, tell me. What do you see?”
The policeman’s eye sought the depths.
“That’s the Purple Chicken down there,” he said. “One of these days that joint will get pinched.”
“Garroway!”
“Sir?”
“For some little time I have been endeavouring to instruct you in the principles of pure English. My efforts seem to have been wasted.”
The policeman blushed.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Beamish. One keeps slipping into it. It’s the effect of mixing with the boys—with my colleagues—at the station-house. They are very lax in their speech. What I meant was that in the near future there was likely to be a raid conducted on the premises of the Purple Chicken, sir. It has been drawn to our attention that the Purple Chicken, defying the Eighteenth Amendment, still purveys alcoholic liquors.”
“Never mind the Purple Chicken. I brought you up here to see what you could do in the way of a word-picture of the view. The first thing a poet needs is to develop his powers of observation. How does it strike you?”
The policeman gazed mildly at the horizon. His eye flitted from the rooftops of the city, spreading away in the distance, to the waters of the Hudson, glittering in the sun. He shifted his Adam’s apple up and down two or three times, as one in deep thought.
“It looks very pretty, sir,” he said at length.
“Pretty?” Hamilton Beamish’s eyes flashed. You would never have thought, to look at him, that the J. in his name stood for James and that there had once been people who had called him Jimmy. “It isn’t pretty at all.”
“No, sir?”
“It’s stark.”
“Stark, sir?”
“Stark and grim. It makes your heart ache. You think of all the sorrow and sordid gloom which those roofs conceal, and your heart bleeds. I may as well tell you, here and now, that if you are going about the place thinking things pretty, you will never make a modern poet. Be poignant, man, be poignant!”
“Yes, sir. I will, indeed, sir.”
“Well, take your notebook and jot down a description of what you see. I must go down to my apartment and attend to one or two things. Look me up tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. Excuse me, sir, but who is that gentleman over there, sweeping with the broom? His face seemed so very familiar.”
“His name is Mullett. He works for my friend, George Finch. But never mind about Mullett. Stick to your work. Concentrate! Concentrate!”
“Yes, sir. Most certainly, Mr. Beamish.”
He looked with doglike devotion at the thinker: then, licking the point of his pencil, bent himself to his task.
Hamilton Beamish turned on his No-Jar rubber heel and passed through the door to the stairs.
III
Following his departure, silence reigned for some minutes on the roof of the Sheridan. Mullett resumed his sweeping, and Officer Garroway scribbled industriously in his notebook. But after about a quarter of an hour, feeling apparently that he had observed all there was to observe, he put book and pencil away in the recesses of his uniform and, approaching Mullett, subjected him to a mild but penetrating scrutiny.
“I feel convinced, Mr. Mullett,” he said, “that I have seen your face before.”
“And I say you haven’t,” said the valet testily.
“Perhaps you have a brother, Mr. Mullett, who resembles you?”
“Dozens. And even mother couldn’t tell us apart.”
The policeman sighed:
“I am an orphan,” he said, “without brothers or sisters.”
“Too bad.”
“Stark,” agreed the policeman. “Very stark and poignant. You don’t think I could have seen a photograph of you anywhere, Mr. Mullett?”
“Haven’t been taken for years.”
“Strange!” said Officer Garroway meditatively. “Somehow—I cannot tell why—I seem to associate your face with a photograph.”
“Not your busy day, this, is it?” said Mullett.
“I am off duty at the moment. I seem to see a photograph—several photographs—in some sort of collection. …”
There could be no doubt by now that Mullett had begun to find the consideration difficult. He looked like a man who has a favourite aunt in Poughkeepsie, and is worried about her asthma. He was turning to go, when there came out on to the roof from the door leading to the stairs a young man in a suit of dove-grey.
“Mullett!” he called.
The other hurried gratefully towards him, leaving the officer staring pensively at his spacious feet.
“Yes, Mr. Finch?”
It is impossible for a historian with a nice sense of values not to recognise the entry of George Finch, following immediately after that of J. Hamilton Beamish, as an anticlimax. Mr. Beamish filled the eye. An aura of authority went before him as the cloud of fire went before the Israelites in the desert. When you met J. Hamilton Beamish, something like a steam-hammer seemed to hit your consciousness and stun it long before he came within speaking-distance. In the case of George Finch nothing of this kind happened.
George looked what he was, a nice young small bachelor, of the type you see bobbing about the place on every side. One glance at him was enough to tell you that he had never written a Booklet and never would write a Booklet. In figure he was slim and slight; as to the face, pleasant and undistinguished. He had brown eyes which in certain circumstances could look like those of a stricken sheep; and his hair was of a light chestnut colour. It was possible to see his hair clearly, for he was not wearing his hat but carrying it in his hand.
He was carrying it reverently, as if he attached a high value to
