With immense profundity. I bent over him and spoke his name in his ear. I shook him by the shoulder. He was unconscious of either action. His colour was blooming, his breathing deep and easy; else his sleep seemed to have the immensity of death itself. Under the glaring incandescent mantle he was theatrical in his beauty, superb in the relaxation of his strength. I could not take my eyes off him. It was almost frightening to see that complete annihilation of so much physical and mental power.
To write that book--and to fight Carpentier! He had worked it coolly and impudently out. The analytical faculties he would have brought to the one task he had merely applied to the other, and he had arrived at the perfectly logical answer that the way to make the maximum of money as nearly instantaneously as possible was to knock out Carpentier.
I could only gaze spellbound at him as he slept.
I was aware that this question had been waiting for an answer ever since we had left that picture-house in Shaftesbury Avenue. I had now found him, or he me; but what next? Let him go again? But apparently he did not want to go; he clung to me pathetically, as to the single companion he had in the world. Take him away somewhere? But he had refused to come, had urged that monstrous book. Was I to stay here with him, to stay all night, to stay till Trenchard's return? That was, to say the least, inconvenient. Should I put him to bed? Somehow I hesitated to disturb that vast unconsciousness. Poor fellow, he richly earned all the rest he got.
I went into the bedroom, brought out Trenchard's quilt, and spread it over him. I moved his head gently to the padded portion of the wicker chair. I made him as comfortable as I could. Then once more I stood irresolute.
It was now after one o'clock, and that powerful sleep had cut us clean off in the middle of things. I had much, much more to ask him. I wanted to know his intentions about his rooms in Cambridge Circus, whether he thought of returning there, whether he wanted his furniture stored or sold. If to myself and Trenchard and possibly a few others he was still known as Derwent Rose, I wanted to know what his name was to the rest of mankind. Merely as a means of communication with people he did not wish to meet face to face, I wanted to know whether his handwriting had changed, whether he used a typewriter, what his signature was like.
