comes in. The change in his appearance is dazzling. He is in evening dress, with an overcoat lined throughout with furs presenting all the hues of the tiger. His shirt is fastened at the breast with a single diamond stud. His silk hat is of the glossiest black; a handsome gold watchchain hangs like a garland on his jilled-out waistcoat; he has shaved his whiskers and grown a moustache, the ends of which are waxed and pointed. As Sartorius stares speechless at him, he stands, smiling, to be admired, intensely enjoying the effect he is producing. The parlor maid, hardly less pleased with her own share in this coup-de-theatre, goes out beaming, full of the news for the kitchen. Lickcheese clinches the situation by a triumphant nod at Sartorius.]
SARTORIUS [bracing himself hostile] Well?
LICKCHEESE Quite well, Sartorius, thankee.
SARTORIUS I was not asking after your health, sir, as you know, I think, as well as I do. What is your business?
LICKCHEESE Business that I can take elsewhere if I meet with less civility than I please to put up with, Sartorius. You and me is man and man now. It was money that used to be my master, and not you: Dont think it. Now that I’m independent in respect of money —
SARTORIUS [crossing determinedly to tke door, and holding it open] You can take your independence out of my house, then. I wont have it here.
LICKCHEESE [indulgently] Come, Sartorius: Dont be stiffnecked. I come here as a friend to put money in your pocket. No use in your lettin on to me that youre above money. Eh?
SARTORIUS [hesitates, and at last shuts the door, saying guardedly] How much money?
LICKCHEESE [victorious, going to Blanche’ s chair and taking off his overcoat] Ah! there you speak like yourself, Sartorius. Now suppose you ask me to sit down and make myself comfortable.
SARTORIUS [coming from the door] I have a mind to put you downstairs by the back of your neck, you infernal blackguard.
LICKCHEESE [Not a bit ruffled, he hangs his overcoat on the back of Blanche’s chair, pulling a cigar case out of one of the pockets as he does so.] You and me is too much of a pair for me to take anything you say in bad part, Sartorius. ‘Ave a cigar.
SARTORIUS No smoking here : This is my daughter’s room. However, sit down, sit down. [They sit’]
LICKCHEESE I bin gittin on a little since I saw you last.
SARTORIUS So I see.
LICKCHEESE I owe it partly to you, you know. Does that surprise you?
SARTORIUS It doesnt concern me.
LICKCHEESE So you think, Sartorius, because it never did concern you how I got on, so long as I got you on by bringin in the rents. But I picked up something for myself down at Robbins’s Row.
SARTORIUS I always thought so. Have you come to make restitution?
LICKCHEESE You wouldnt take it if I offered it to you, Sartorius. It wasnt money: It was knowledge, knowledge of the great public question of the Housing of the Working Classes. You know theres a Royal Commission on it, dont you?
SARTORIUS Oh, I see. Youve been giving evidence.
LICKCHEESE Giving evidence! Not me. What good would that do me? Only my expenses; and that not on the professional scale, neither. No: I gev no evidence. But I’ll tell you what I did. I kep it back, jest to oblige one or two people whose feelins would a bin urt by seein their names in a bluebook as keepin a fever den. Their Agent got so friendly with me over it that he put his name on a bill of mine to the tune of well, no matter: It gev me a start; and a start was all I ever wanted to get on my feet. Ive got a copy of the first report of the Commission in the pocket of my overcoat. [He rises and gets at his overcoat, from a pocket of which he takes a bluebook] I turned down the page to shew you: I thought youd like to see it. [He doubles the book back at the place indicated, and hands it to Sartorius]
SARTORIUS So blackmail is the game, eh? [He puts the book on the table without looking at it, and strikes it emphatically with his fist] I dont care that for my name being in bluebooks. My friends dont read them; and I’m neither a Cabinet Minister nor a candidate for Parliament. Theres nothing to be got out of me on that lay.
LICKCHEESE [sbocked] Blackmail! Oh, Mr Sartorius, do you think I would let out a word about your premises? Round on an old pal! No: that aint Lickcheese’s way. Besides, they know all about you already. Them stairs that you and me quarrelled about, they was a whole arternoon examinin the clergyman that made such a fuss you remember? About the women that was urt on it. He made the worst he could of it, in an ungentlemanly, unchristian spirit. I wouldnt have that clergyman’s disposition for worlds. Oh no: Thats not what was in my thoughts.
SARTORIUS Come, come, man: What was in your thoughts? Out with it.
LICKCHEESE [With provoking deliberation, smiling and looking mysteriously at him] You aint spent a few hundreds in repairs since we parted, ave you? [Sartorius, losing patience, makes a threatening movement.] Now dont fly out at me. I know a landlord that owned as beastly a slum as you could find in London, down there by the Tower. By my advice that man put half the houses into first-class repair, and let the other half to a new Company: The North Thames Iced Mutton Depot Company, of which I hold a few shares promoters’ shares. And what was the end of it, do you think?
SARTORIUS Smash, I suppose.
LICKCHEESE Smash! Not a bit of it. Compensation, Mr Sartorius, compensation. Do you understand that?
SARTORIUS Compensation for what?
LICKCHEESE Why, the land was wanted for an extension of the Mint; and the Company had to be bought out, and the buildings compensated for. Somebody has to know these things beforehand, you know, no matter how dark theyre kept.
SARTORIUS [interested, but cautious] Well?
LICKCHEESE Is that all you have to say to me, Mr Sartorius? “Well!” As if I was next door’s dog! Suppose I’d got wind of a new street that would knock down Robbins’s Row and turn Burke’s Walk into a frontage worth thirty pound a foot! Would you say no more to me than [mimicking] “Well?” [Sartorius hesitates, looking at him in great doubt. Lickcheese rises and exhibits himself] Come: Look at my get-up, Mr Sartorius. Look at this watchchain! Look at the corporation Ive got on me! Do you think all that came from keeping my mouth shut? No: It came from keeping my ears and eyes open. [Blanche comes in, followed by the parlor maid, who has a silver tray on which she collects the coffee cups. Sartorius, impatient at the interruption, rises and motions Lickcheese to the door of the study.]
SARTORIUS Sh! We must talk this over in the study. There is a good fire there; and you can smoke. Blanche: An old friend of ours.
LICKCHEESE And a kind one to me. I hope I see you well, Miss Blanche.
BLANCHE Why, it’s Mr Lickcheese! I hardly knew you.
LICKCHEESE I find you a little changed yourself, miss.
BLANCHE [hastily] Oh, I am the same as ever. How are Mrs Lickcheese and the chil —
SARTORIUS [impatiently] We have business to transact, Blanche. You can talk to Mr Lickcheese afterwards. Come on. [Sartorius and Lickcheese go into the study. Blanche, surprised at her father’s abruptness, looks after them for a moment. Then, seeing Lickcheese’s overcoat on her chair, she takes it up, amused, and looks at the fur.]
THE
