After asking his way two or three times he found the Rue Campagne Premiere.
The house in which Simon lived was tall and dingy, and the wood of the shutters showed gray under the crumbling paint.
When Charley put in his head at the concierge’s loge he was almost knocked down by the stink of fug, food and human body that assailed his nostrils.
A little old woman in voluminous skirts, with her head wrapped in a dirty red muffler, told him in rasping, angry tones, as though she violently resented his intrusion, where exactly Simon lived, and when Charley asked if he was in bade him go and see.
Charley, following her directions, went through the dirty courtyard and up a narrow staircase smelling of stale urine.
Simon lived on the second floor and in answer to Charley’s ring opened the door.
“H’m. I wondered what had become of you.”
“Am I disturbing you?”
“No.
Come in.
You’d better keep on your coat.
It’s not very warm in here.”
That was true.
It was icy.
It was a studio, with a large north light, and there was a stove in it, but Simon, who had apparently been working, for the table in the middle was littered with papers, had forgotten to keep it up and the fire was almost out.
Simon drew a shabby armchair up to the stove and asked Charley to sit down.
“I’ll put some more coke on.
It’ll soon get warmer.
I don’t feel the cold myself.”
Charley found that the armchair, having a broken spring, was none too comfortable.
The walls of the studio were a cold slate-gray, and they too looked as though they hadn’t been painted for years.
Their only ornament was large maps tacked up with drawing-pins.
There was a narrow iron bed which hadn’t been made.
“The concierge hasn’t been up to-day yet,” said Simon, following Charley’s glance.
There was nothing else in the studio but the large dining-table, bought second-hand, which Simon wrote at, some shelves with books in them, a desk-chair such as they use in offices, two or three kitchen chairs piled up with books, and a strip of worn carpet by the bed.
It was cheerless and the cold winter light coming in through the north window added its moroseness to the squalid scene.
A third-class waiting-room at a wayside station could not have seemed more unfriendly.
Simon drew a chair up to the stove and lit a pipe.
With his quick wits he guessed the impression his surroundings were making on Charley and smiled grimly.
“It’s not very luxurious, is it?
But then I don’t want luxury.”
Charley was silent and Simon gave him a coolly disdainful look.
“It’s not even comfortable, but then I don’t want comfort.
No one should be dependent on it.
It’s a trap that’s caught many a man who you would have thought had more sense.”
Charley was not without a streak of malice and he was not inclined to let Simon put it over on him.
“You look cold and peaked and hungry, old boy.
What about taking a taxi to the Ritz Bar and having some scrambled eggs and bacon in warmth and comfortable armchairs?”
“Go to hell.
What have you done with Olga?”
“Her name’s Lydia.
She’s gone home to get a toothbrush.
She’s staying with me at the hotel till I go back to London.”
“The devil she is.
Going some, aren’t you?”
The two young men stared at one another for a moment.
Simon leant forward.
“You haven’t fallen for her, have you?”
“Why did you bring us together?”
“I thought it would be rather a joke.