providential,’ was Dixson’s comment, and rather inconsequently he could not refrain from adding: ‘How lucky that I didn’t come from Canada! I am sure that if you would kindly introduce me and put in a good word on the score of respectability, that—coupled with a willingness to pay in advance—would make it all right with Mrs Hocking.’
‘We can but see,’ agreed Mr Galton. ‘I will use my utmost powers of persuasion. She is really a most hospitable woman—I believe she provides the buns for the Guild Working Party tea regularly every other Wednesday.’
‘I happen to be very fond of buns,’ said Dixson gravely. ‘I am sure that we shall get on together famously.’
‘Oh, really? As a matter of fact, I never touch them—flatulence. However, her cottage is only just there over the way. Now, had we better—no, perhaps on the whole if you waited by the gate while I broached the matter—what do you think?’
‘I am entirely in your hands,’ said Dixson diplomatically. ‘It’s most tremendously good of you. Is there only a Mrs Hocking?’
‘Oh, no. She has a husband and a daughter as well—an extremely worthy family—but as they work at the mill, like nearly everyone else here, she will probably be the only one at home just now.’
‘Perhaps I had better wait as you suggest then,’—really a non sequitur, thought the vicar—‘and, if it’s any inducement, I’m doing pretty well at home, you know, so that I shouldn’t mind something above the ordinary in the circumstances.’
The gesture that Mr Galton threw back as he turned into the formal little garden of a painfully modern cottage might have implied that it would be or it wouldn’t—or indeed any other meaning. Dixson strolled on as far as an intersecting lane. It began with a couple of rows of hygienic cottages on the severe plan of Mrs Hocking’s, but in the distance a high wall indicated premises of a different use, and from this direction came the regular but not too discordant beat of machinery at work. Less in keeping with the rural scene than this mild evidence of industry was the presence of a sentry-box before what was apparently the principal gate of the place. Plainly a strict guard was kept, but the picket himself was too far away or not sufficiently in view for the actual force he was drawn from to be determined. It was the first indication that Tapsfield held anything particular to safeguard and Dixson experienced a momentary flicker of excitement.
‘So that’s that,’ he summarised as he turned back without betraying any further symptom of interest. He had not long to wait for his new acquaintance’s reappearance.
‘Our efforts have been crowned with success,’ announced Mr Galton, beaming with satisfaction. ‘Mrs Hocking only stipulates for no late cooking.’
‘Famous,’ replied Dixson, a little more careless of his speech now that he had secured quarters. ‘I never tackle a heavy meal after sunset myself—insomnia.’
‘The question of terms I have left for your own arrangement. But I do not think that you will find Mrs Hocking too exacting.’
‘I’m sure. And you’ll remember your promise? I’m dying to see the celebrated twelfth-century canopied sedilia.’
‘You have heard of our unique Norman feature? Oh, really!’ It would have been impossible to strike a better claim on the vicar’s favour. ‘Really, Mr Dixson, I had no idea that you took an actual interest in ecclesiastical architecture.’
‘Well, naturally, I felt a deep regard for the church where my forefathers worshipped. Way out at home someone happened to be able to lend me a sort of guide to Sussex. I simply lapped it. Now I want to go over every nook and cranny in Tapsfield.’
‘So you shall; so you shall,’ promised the clergyman. ‘I will answer for it. We’ll arrange about the church as soon as you are settled.’ He had turned to go, but before Dixson was through the gate he heard his name called with a rather confidential import. ‘And, by the way, while I think of it. We have a little informal entertainment in the school house once a week—a, er, “penny reading” we call it.’
‘A sort of sing-song, I suppose?’
‘Precisely; but not in any way—er—boisterous. Well, we find it increasingly difficult sometimes—not that everyone isn’t most willing; quite the contrary, indeed, but what handicaps us with our limited material is to provide variety. Now I was wondering if you could be persuaded to give a little talk—it need only be quite short, of course—on “Life and Adventure in the Land of the Wombat”, or naturally, any other title that commends itself to you. You—? Well, think it over, won’t you?’
‘That was a tolerably soft shell,’ reflected Dixson, as he discreetly avoided discovering any of the interested eyes that had been following the details of his arrival from behind stealthily arranged curtains. ‘Now for Mrs Hocking—and the husband and daughter who work at the paper mill.’
JOOLBY DOES A LITTLE BUSINESS
STRANGERS who had occasion to visit Mr Joolby’s curio and antique shop—and quite a number of very interesting people went there from time to time—often had some difficulty in finding it at first. For Mr Joolby, in complete antagonism to modern business methods, not only did not advertise but seemed to shun the more obvious forms of commercial advancement. His address had never appeared in that useful compilation, the Post Office London Directory, and as yet—surely a simple enough matter—Mr Joolby had not taken the trouble to have the omission righted. The street in which he had set up, while far from being a slum, was not one of the better-known and easily remembered thoroughfares of the East End, so that collectors who stumbled on his shop (and occasionally discovered some surprising things there) more often than not found themselves quite unable to describe its exact position to others afterwards, unless they had the forethought at the time to jot down the number 169 and the name Padgett Street before they passed on elsewhere. ‘A couple of turns out of Commercial Road, somewhere towards the other end’ was as good as keeping a secret.
Nor would the inquirer’s search be finished once he reached Padgett Street, for with the modesty that marked his activity in sundry other ways, Mr Joolby had neglected to have his name proclaimed about his place of business or else he had allowed it to fade from the public eye under the combined erosion of time and English weather. Of the place of business itself little could be gleaned from outside, for the arrangement of the shop window was more in accord with Oriental reticence than in line with modern ideas of display. Dust and obscurity were the prevailing impressions.
Inside was an astonishing medley of the curious and antique and in this branch of his activities the dictum of an impressed collector did not seem unduly wide of the mark: that Mr Joolby could supply anything on earth, if only he knew where to put his hands upon it. And if the arrangement of the large room one first entered suggested more the massed confusion of an extremely bizarre furniture depository than any other comparison, it had what, to its proprietor’s way of thinking, was this supreme advantage: that from a variety of points of view it was possible to see without being seen, not only about the shop itself but even including the street and pavement.
At the moment that we have chosen for this intrusion—a time some weeks later than the arrival of ‘Anthony Dixson’ in Tapsfield—the place at a casual glance had all the appearance of being empty, for the figure of Won Chou, Mr Joolby’s picturesquely exotic shop assistant, both on account of absolute immobility and the protective
