I smiled.

’Very well.  Now, you’re a writer.  You like to get at the souls of men.  Suppose I show you a bit of mine.’

He had drunk freely of the potent ale, and was now sipping a strong tumbler of hot whisky.  Possibly this accounted in some measure for his communicativeness.

’Up to the age of five-and-twenty I was clerk in a drug warehouse.  To this day even the faintest smell of drugs makes my heart sink.  If I can help it, I never go into a chemist’s shop.  I was getting a pound a week, and I not only lived on it, but kept up a decent appearance.  I always had a good suit of clothes for Sundays and holidays—­made at a tailor’s in Holborn.  Since he disappeared I’ve never been able to find any one who fitted me so well.  I paid six-and-six a week for a top bedroom in a street near Gray’s Inn Road.  Did you suppose I had gone through the mill?’

I made no answer, and, after looking at me for a moment, Ireton resumed: 

’Those were damned days!  It wasn’t the want of good food and good lodgings that troubled me most,—­but the feeling that I was everybody’s inferior.  There’s no need to tell you how I was brought up; I was led to expect better things, that’s enough.  I never got used to being ordered about.  When I was told to do this or that, I answered with a silent curse,—­and I wonder it didn’t come out sometimes.  That’s my nature.  If I had been born the son of a duke, I couldn’t have resented a subordinate position more fiercely than I did.  And I used to rack my brain with schemes for getting out of it.  Many a night I have lain awake for hours, trying to hit on some way of earning my living independently.  I planned elaborate forgeries.  I read criminal cases in the newspapers to get a hint that I might work upon.  Well, that only means that I had exhausted all the honest attempts, and found them all no good.  I was in despair, that’s all.’

He finished his whisky and shouted to the landlord, who presently brought him another glass.

‘What’s that bird making the strange noise?’

‘A night-jar, I think.’

’Nice to be sitting here, isn’t it?  I had rather be here than in the swellest London club.  Well, I was going to tell you how I got out of that beastly life.  You know, I’m really a very quiet fellow.  I like simple things; but all my life, till just lately, I never had a chance of enjoying them; of living as I chose.  The one thing I can’t stand is to feel that I am looked down upon.  That makes a madman of me.’

He drank, and struck a match to relight his pipe.