Page:Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.djvu/180

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists 'So it does to me,' said Philpot. 'Slip upstairs and ask Slyme what time it is.'

Harlow laid his brush across the top of his paint pot and went upstairs. He was wearing a pair of cloth slippers, and walked softly, not wishing Crass to hear him leaving his work, so it happened that without any intention of spying, he reached the door of the room in which Slyme was working without being heard, and entering suddenly, surprised the latter, who was standing near the fireplace, in the act of breaking a whole roll of wall paper across his knee as one might break a stick. On the floor beside him was what had been another roll, now broken into two pieces. When Harlow came in, Slyme started, and his face became crimson with confusion. He hastily gathered the broken rolls together and stooping down, thrust the pieces up the flue of the grate and closed the register.

'Wot's the bloody game?' enquired Harlow, curiously.

Slyme laughed with an affectation of carelessness, but his hands trembled and his face was now very pale.

'We must get our own back somehow you know, Fred,' he said.

Harlow did not reply. He did not understand. After puzzling over it for a few minutes he gave it up.

'What's the time?' he asked.

'Fifteen minutes to twelve,' said Slyme, and added, as Harlow was going away: 'don't mention anything about that there paper to Crass or any of the others.'

'I shan't say nothing,' replied Harlow.

Gradually, as he pondered over it, Harlow began to comprehend the meaning of the destruction of the two rolls of paper. Slyme was doing the paperhanging piecework—so much for each roll hung. Four of the rooms upstairs had been done with the same pattern, and Hunter had evidently sent more paper than was necessary. By getting rid of these two rolls Slyme would be able to make it appear that he had hung two rolls more than was really the case. He had broken them in order to be able to take them away from the house without detection, and had hidden them up the chimney until an opportunity of so doing presented itself. Harlow had just arrived at this solution of the problem when, hearing the lower flight of stairs creaking, he peeped over and observed Misery crawling up, with the object of discovering someone who had stopped work before the proper time. Passing the two workmen 168