A light still burned in Billy's, and Spicer was waiting in the hall. "Anything happened?" he asked anxiously. His pale face had come out in spots round the mouth and nose.
"What do you think?" the Boy said, going upstairs.
"We brought the subscription."
Spicer followed him into his bedroom. "There was a call for you just after you'd gone."
"Who from?"
"A girl called Rose."
The Boy sat on the bed undoing his shoe. "What did she want?" he said.
"She said while she was out with you, somebody had been in asking for her."
The Boy sat still with the shoe in his hand. "Pinkie,"
Spicer said, "was it the girl? The girl from Snow's?"
"Of course it was."
"I answered the phone, Pinkie."
"Did she know your voice?"
"How do I know, Pinkie?"
"Who was asking for her?"
"She didn't know. She said tell you because you wanted to hear. Pinkie, suppose the bogies have got that far?"
"The bogies aren't as smart as that," Pinkie said.
"Maybe it's one of Colleoni's men, poking around after their pal Fred." He took off his other shoe. "You don't need to turn milky, Spicer."
"It was a woman, Pinkie."
"I'm not troubling. Fred died natural. That's the verdict. You can forget it. There's other things to think of now." He put his shoes side by side under the bed, took off his coat, hung it on a bed ball, took off his trousers, lay back in his underpants and shirt on top of the bed. "I'm thinking, Spicer, you oughter take a holiday. You look all in. I wouldn't want anyone seeing you like that." He closed his eyes. "You be off, Spicer, and take things easy."
"If that girl 'ever knew who put the card..."
"She'll never know. Turn out the light and get."
The light went out and the moon went on like a lamp outside, slanting across the roofs, laying the shadow of clouds across the downs, illuminating the white empty stands of the racecourse above Whitehawk Bottom like the monoliths of Stonehenge, shining across the tide which drove up from Boulogne and washed against the piles of the Palace Pier. It lit the washstand, the open door where the jerry stood, the brass balls at the bed end.
The Boy lay on the bed. A cup of coffee went cold on the washstand, and the bed was sprinkled with flakes of pastry. The Boy licked an indelible pencil, his mouth was stained purple at the corners, he wrote: * 'Refer you to my previous letter" and concluded it at last: "P. Brown, Secretary, the Bookmakers' Protection..." The envelope addressed "Mr. J. Tate" lay on the washstand, the corner soiled with coffee. When he had finished writing, he put his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. He fell asleep at once: it was like the falling of a shutter, the pressure of the bulb which ends a time exposure. He had no dreams.
His sleep was functional. When Dallow opened the door he woke at once. "Well?" he said, lying there without moving, fully dressed among the pastry crumbs.
"There's a letter for you, Pinkie. Judy brought it up."
The Boy took the letter. Dallow said: "It's an elegant letter, Pinkie. Smell it."
The Boy held the mauve envelope to his nose. It smelt like a cachou for bad breath. He said: "Can't you keep off that bitch? If Billy knew..."
"Who'd be writing an elegant letter like that, Pinkie?"
"Colleoni. He wants me to call in for a talk at the Cosmopolitan."
"The Cosmopolitan," Dallow repeated with disgust. "You won't go, will you?"
"Of course I'll go."
"It's not the sort of place where you'd feel at home."
"Elegant," the Boy said, "like his notepaper. Costs a lot of money. He thinks he can scare me."
"Perhaps we'd better lay off Tate."
"Take that jacket down to Billy. Tell him to sponge it quick and put an iron over it. Give these shoes a brush." He kicked them out from under the bed and sat up. "He thinks he'll have the laugh on us." In the tipped mirror on the washstand he could see himself, but his eyes shifted quickly from the image of smooth, never shaven cheek, soft hair, old eyes: he wasn't interested. He had too much pride to worry about appearances.
So that later he was quite at ease waiting in the great lounge under the domed lights for Colleoni; young men kept on arriving in huge motoring coats accompanied by small tinted creatures, who rang like expensive glass when they were touched but who conveyed an impression of being as sharp and as tough as tin. They looked at nobody, sweeping through the lounge as they liad swept in racing models down the Brighton Road, ending on high stools in the American Bar. A stout woman in a white fox fur came out of a lift and stared at the Boy, then she got back into the lift again and moved weightily upwards. A little Jewess sniffed at him bitchily and then talked him over with another little Jewess on a settee. Mr. Colleoni came across an acre of deep carpet from the Louis Seize Writing Room, walking on tiptoe in glac shoes.
He was a small Jew with a neat round belly--he wore a grey double-breasted waistcoat, and his eyes gleamed like raisins. His hair was thin and grey. The little bitches on the settee stopped talking as he passed and concentrated. He clinked very gently as he moved--it was the only sound.
"You were asking for me?" he said.
"You asked for me," the Boy said. "I got your letter."
"Surely," Mr. Colleoni said, making a little bewildered motion with his hands, "you are not Mr. P.
Brown?" He explained: "I expected someone a good deal older."
"You asked for me," the Boy said.
The little raisin eyes took him in: the sponged suit and the narrow shoulders, the cheap black shoes. "I thought Mr. Kite..."
"Kite's dead," the Boy said. "You know that."
"I missed it," Mr. Colleoni said. "Of course that makes a difference."
"You can talk to me," the Boy said, "instead of Kite."
Mr. Colleoni smiled. "I don't think it's necessary," he said.
"You'd better," the Boy said. Little chimes of laughter came from the American Bar and the chink, chink, chink of ice. A page came out of the Louis Seize Writing Room, called: "Sir Joseph Montagu, Sir Joseph Montagu," and passed into the Pompadour Boudoir.
The spot of damp, where Billy's iron had failed to pass, above the Boy's breast pocket was slowly fading out in the hot Cosmopolitan air.
Mr. Colleoni put out a hand and gave him a quick pat, pat, pat on the arm. "Come with me," he said. He led the way, walking on glace tiptoe past the settee, where the Jewesses whispered, past a little table where a man was saying: "I told him ten thousand's my limit" to an old man who sat with closed eyes above his chilling tea. Mr. Colleoni looked over his shoulder and said gently: "The service here is not what it used to be."
He looked into the Louis Seize Writing Room. A woman in mauve with an untimely tiara was writing a letter in a vast jumble of chinoiserie. Mr. Colleoni withdrew. "We'll go where we can talk in peace," he said and tiptoed back across the lounge. The old man had opened his eyes and was testing his tea with his finger. Mr. Colleoni led the way to the gilt grille of the lift. "Number fifteen," he said. They rose angelically towards peace. "Cigar?" Mr. Colleoni asked.
"I don't smoke," the Boy said. A last squeal of gaiety came from below, from the American Bar, the last syllable of the page boy returning from the Pompadour Boudoir: "Gu," before the gates slid back and they were in the padded sound-proof passage. Mr. Colleoni paused and lit his cigar.
"Let's have a look at that lighter," the Boy said.
Mr. Colleoni's small shrewd eyes shone blankly under the concealed pervasive electric glow. He held it out. The Boy turned it over and looked at the hall mark. "Real gold," he said.
"I like things good," Mr. Colleoni said, unlocking a door. "Take a chair." The armchairs, stately red velvet couches stamped with crowns in gold and silver thread, faced the wide seaward windows, and the wrought-iron balconies. "Have a drink."