But these were but blackbird-scratchings, as it were, upon the deep
soil of the human heart. What Deasey cared about was what he called
"the secrets of the soul."
"Never met a man," he was wont to say, "with no backstairs to his mind!
And the quieter, decenter, respectabler, innocenter a man looked--like
enough!--the darker those backstairs!"
It was up these stairs he craved to go. To ring at the front door of
ordinary intercourse was not enough for him. When Deasey invested his
wife's money in a public-house he developed a better plan. It was the
plan which made him ultimately describe himself as a humorist. He would
wait until the bar was deserted by all but the one lingering victim
whom his trained eye had picked out. Then, rolling that same eye about
him, as though to make quite sure no other living creature was in
sight, he would gently close the door of the bar-parlour, pick up a
tumbler, breathe on it, polish the breath, lean one elbow on the bar,
look round him once again, and, setting the whisky-bottle betwixt his
customer and himself, with a nod which said "Help yourself," he would
lean forward, with the soft indulgent grin of the human
man-of-the-world, and begin:
"Now, don't distress yourself, me dear man, but as between frien's,
certain delicate little--facts--in your past life have come
inadvertently to me hearing.
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