In the meantime I was considerably cheered. He remembered that other night; he wanted to apologise for the lunacy of it; he had given a perfectly coherent account of his present whereabouts and how he came to be there, and his summing-up of the fellows whose basic domestic factor was a pint of methylated spirits had given me a clear and straightforward picture. As for the rest--why he had left Cambridge Circus, what it was that he found restful in those slowed-down films, and especially the measured carefulness of his speech--for the present these things could wait.
We left Gloucester Road Station, turned up towards Princes Gate, and then crossed the road and entered a dark gardened Square. Three minutes further walking brought us to a high stone archway with a heavily carved and moulded entablature, beneath which a cobbled way sloped slightly down into a mews. To right and left were garage-doors, some closed, others open and flinging shafts of orange light across the way. Somewhere an engine was being allowed to "race"; somewhere else a hose was being turned on to the body of a car. High over the roofs of the mews, as if suspended at random in the sky, the oblongs of light of the South Kensington backs showed. One unshaded incandescent burned on a top landing like a star.
"Let me go first; I've got a torch," said Derry, stopping at a narrow side-door next to where the car was being washed. "You'll find the rope on the right."
The moon of his electric torch shone on the broad treads of a steep-pitched ladder that rose to a loft above. Up one side of it ran a hand-rope. He preceded me, and on the upper landing lighted a wire-caged gas-jet. Then I followed him into Trenchard's abode.
He had described the place admirably well when he had spoken of the methylated spirits, adding that Trenchard was a gentleman. A few pieces of furniture--notably a tall walnut hanging-cupboard and a handsome lacquered cabinet--were evidently family possessions; the rest--his cretonne curtains, floor-mats, the blue-and-white check tablecloth on the thick-legged Victorian table and the glimpse into his kitchen--probably represented the greater part of his gratuity-money. Every ledge and angle and cheap bracket was crowded with photographs, and there were trees in his long row of boots. His central incandescent mantle was unshaded. Two deep basket chairs stood one on either side of where the hearth should have been. The portable oil-burning stove was tucked away in a corner.