A whistle sounded.

‘Better get in,’ he suggested; and then in a tone of absolute command:  ‘Give me your bag.’

I obeyed.  He opened the door of a first-class carriage.

‘I’m travelling second,’ I explained.

‘Never mind.  Get in.’

In his tones was a kindly exasperation.

I got in; he followed.  The train moved.

‘Ah!’ breathed Mr Brindley, blowing out much air and falling like a sack of coal into a corner seat.  He was a thin man, aged about thirty, with brown eyes, and a short blonde beard.

Conversation was at first difficult.  Personally I am not a bubbling fount of gay nothings when I find myself alone with a comparative stranger.  My drawbridge goes up as if by magic, my postern is closed, and I peer cautiously through the narrow slits of my turret to estimate the chances of peril.  Nor was Mr Brindley offensively affable.  However, we struggled into a kind of chatter.  I had come to the Five Towns, on behalf of the British Museum, to inspect and appraise, with a view to purchase by the nation, some huge slip-decorated dishes, excessively curious according to photographs, which had been discovered in the cellars of the Conservative Club at Bursley.  Having shared in the negotiations for my visit, Mr Brindley had invited me to spend the night at his house.  We were able to talk about all this.  And when we had talked about all this we were able to talk about the singular scenery of coal dust, potsherds, flame and steam, through which the train wound its way.  It was squalid ugliness, but it was squalid ugliness on a scale so vast and overpowering that it became sublime.  Great furnaces gleamed red in the twilight, and their fires were reflected in horrible black canals; processions of heavy vapour drifted in all directions across the sky, over what acres of mean and miserable brown architecture!  The air was alive with the most extraordinary, weird, gigantic sounds.  I do not think the Five Towns will ever be described:  Dante lived too soon.  As for the erratic and exquisite genius, Simon Fuge, and his odalisques reclining on silken cushions on the enchanted bosom of a lake—­I could no longer conjure them up even faintly in my mind.

‘I suppose you know Simon Fuge is dead?’ I remarked, in a pause.

‘No!  Is he?’ said Mr Brindley, with interest.  ’Is it in the paper?’

He did not seem to be quite sure that it would be in the paper.

‘Here it is,’ said I, and I passed him the Gazette.

‘Ha!’ he exclaimed explosively.  This ‘Ha!’ was entirely different from his ‘Ah!’ Something shot across his eyes, something incredibly rapid—­too rapid for a wink; yet it could only be called a wink.  It was the most subtle transmission of the beyond-speech that I have ever known any man accomplish, and it endeared Mr Brindley to me.  But I knew not its significance.

‘What do they think of Fuge down here?’ I asked.