little room in one of the by-ways of Bloomsbury. He was sprawling
angularly on a cane lounge, surrounded by whole rubbish heaps of
manuscript, a grey scrawl in a foam of soiled paper. He peered up at me
as I stood in the doorway.

"Hullo!" he said, "what's brought you here? Have a manuscript?" He waved
an abstracted hand round him. "You'll find a chair somewhere." A claret
bottle stood on the floor beside him. He took it by the neck and passed
it to me.

He bent his head again and continued his reading. I displaced three
bulky folio sheaves of typewritten matter from a chair and seated myself
behind him. He continued to read.

"I hadn't seen these rooms before," I said, for want of something to
say.

The room was not so much scantily as arbitrarily furnished. It contained
a big mahogany sideboard; a common deal table, an extraordinary kind of
folding wash-hand-stand; a deal bookshelf, the cane lounge, and three
unrelated chairs. There were three framed Dutch prints on the marble
mantel-shelf; striped curtains before the windows. A square, cheap
looking-glass, with a razor above it, hung between them. And on the
floor, on the chairs, on the sideboard, on the unmade bed, the profusion
of manuscripts.

He scribbled something on a blue paper and began to roll a cigarette. He
took off his glasses, rubbed them, and closed his eyes tightly.

"Well, and how's Sussex?" he asked.