“Can you get into the other rooms?”

“You can,” Mr. Allingham said. “She takes a dive in, headfirst. I’ve lost all interest in the other rooms, myself. You should live and die in there and nobody’d know. There’s some nice Chippendale, too. Up by the skylight.”

He rested his other elbow on a hallstand.

“I get to feel lost,” he said. “That’s why I go down to the buffet, there’s only tables and chairs there.”

Samuel sat on his perch, swinging the bottle and drumming his feet against the side of a bath mounted yards above the floor of mattresses. A carpet behind him, laid out flat and wide along the air, having no visible support, bore a great earthenware jar dangerously upon the backs of its patterned birds. High over his head, in the tall room, a rocking-chair balanced on a card-table, and the table’s thin legs rested on the top of a cupboard standing up straight among pillows and fenders, with its mirrored door wide open.

“Aren’t you frightened of things falling? Look at that rocking-chair. One little prod and over she comes.”

“Don’t you dare. Of course I’m frightened,” Mr. Allingham said. “If you open a drawer over there, a washstand falls down over here. You’ve got to be quick as a snake. There’s nothing on the top you’d like to buy, is there?”

“I like a lot of the things, but I haven’t any money.”

“No, no, you wouldn’t have money. That’s right. Other people have money.”

“I like the big jar. You could hide a man in that. Have you got any soap for my finger?”

“Of course, there’s no soap, there’s only washbasins. You can’t have a bath, either, and there’s five baths. Why do you want a jar big enough to hide a man in? Nobody I’ve ever met wants to hide a man in a jar. Everybody else says that jar’s too big for anything. Why do you want to find Lucille Harris, Sam?”

“I didn’t mean I wanted to hide a man in it. I mean that you could if you wanted to. Oh, a man I know told me about Lucille, Mr. Allingham. I don’t know why I want to find her, but that’s the only London address I kept. I put the others down the lavatory in the train. When the train was moving.”

“Good, good.” Mr. Allingham put his hand on the thick, white neck of the naked statue, and tightened his fingers.

The door opened onto the landing. Two people came in, and climbed up the mattresses without a word. The first, a fat short woman with black hair and a Spanish comb, who had painted her face as though it were a wall, took a sudden dive toward the corner behind Samuel and disappeared between two columns of chairs. She must have landed on cushions or a bed, for she made no sound. The second visitor was a tall, youngish man with a fixed smile; his teeth were large, like a horse’s, but very white; his glistening fair hair was done in tight curls, and it smelt across the room. He stood on a spring mattress just inside the door, bouncing up and down. “Come on, Rose, don’t be sulky,” he said. “I know where you’ve gone.” Then, pretending to see Samuel for the first time, “Good gracious, you look like a bird up there,” he said. “Is Donald hiding anywhere?”