though Ranny's figure was
firm and slender, his suit was shabby. Leonard Mercier had the
prosperous appearance of a man unencumbered with a wife and family. And
unless you insisted on hard tissues he was good-looking in his own
coarse way. His face, with all its flabbiness, had its dark accent and
distinction; and these were rendered even more emphatic by the growth of
a black mustache which he had trained with care. The ends of it were
waxed and drawn finely to a point. His finger nails and his skin, his
hair and his mustache showed that the young chemist did not disdain the
use of the cosmetics that lay so ready to his hand.

The duologue was brief.

"Hello, old chappy. So you're going to be my new landlord?"

"Not _much_."

"What's that?"

"Some error of my wife's, I fancy."

"As _I_ understand it Mrs. Ransome's let me two rooms, and I've taken
them."

"That's right. But you can't have 'em."

"But I've engaged them."

"Sorry, Jujubes. You were a trifle previous. I'm not letting any rooms
just yet."

"Mrs. Ransome told me the contrary."

"Then Mrs. Ransome didn't know what she was talking about."

"Rats! When _you_ told _her_--"

"It's immaterial," said Ranny, with great dignity, "what I told her. For
I've changed my mind. See?"

"You can't change it. You can't play fast and loose like that. I've
engaged those rooms from a week to-day. Where am I to go to?"

"You can go to hell if you like," said Ranny, with marked amiability.

Up to that point Mercier had been amiable too. But when Ranny told him
where he might go to he began to look unpleasant.

Unpleasant, not dangerous; oh no, not dangerous at all. Ranny looked at
him and thought how he would go in like a pillow if you prodded him, and
of the jelly, the jelly on the floor, he would make if you pounded.

"You've got to account to me for this," said Mercier. "Those rooms are
let to me from the thirteenth, and on the thirteenth I come into them,
or you pay me fifteen bob for the week's rent."

"Have you got that down in black and white?" He had not.

"Well--if you come into those rooms on the thirteenth I shouldn't wonder
if you get it down in black and blue."

Whereupon Mercier pretended that he was only joking. He was glad that
the counter was between him and young Randall, the silly ass. And Ranny
said it was all right and offered him (magnanimously) the fifteen
shillings, which Mercier (magnanimously) refused on the grounds that he
ha