"Only met him yesterday."
"What? Peter Farrell's Hire System? . . . And you met him there, in
the Tottenham Court Road--by appointment, I suppose, with a coy
carnation in your buttonhole. A bad young baronet, unmarried,
intellectual, with a craving for human sympathy, on the Hire
System'--"
"Don't be an ass, Jimmy," said I. "He's a Progressive, and they tell
me his seat's dicky."
"They mostly are in the Tottenham Court Road," said Jimmy. "But if
you've made half a promise, I was a week ahead of you with a whole
one. We dine with Jack Foe."
The night was a beast. Foe's flat, high up on a block overlooking
the Chelsea embankment, fairly rocked under squalls of a cross-river
wind. He had moved into these new quarters while I was down in
Warwickshire, and the man who put in the windows had scamped his job.
The sashes rattled diabolically. Now that's just the sort of thing
he'd have asked me to see to before he installed himself, if I had
been up at the time: or, rather, I should have seen to it without
being asked. That kind of noise never affected _him_: he could just
withdraw himself into his work and forget it.
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