There was no difficulty in buying the proprietor out. A
woman and a man belonging to the group took it on. The man had been a
cook. The comrades could get their meals there, unnoticed amongst
the other customers. This was another advantage. The first floor was
occupied by a shabby Variety Artists' Agency--an agency for performers
in inferior music-halls, you know. A fellow called Bomm, I remember. He
was not disturbed. It was rather favourable than otherwise to have a lot
of foreign-looking people, jugglers, acrobats, singers of both sexes,
and so on, going in and out all day long. The police paid no attention
to new faces, you see. The top floor happened, most conveniently, to
stand empty then."
X interrupted himself to attack impassively, with measured movements,
a bombe glacee which the waiter had just set down on the table. He
swallowed carefully a few spoonfuls of the iced sweet, and asked me,
"Did you ever hear of Stone's Dried Soup?"
"Hear of what?"
"It was," X pursued, evenly, "a comestible article once rather
prominently advertised in the dailies, but which never, somehow, gained
the favour of the public.
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