Tony, stirring the fire, “touching this same bundle of letters. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have appointed twelve o’clock tonight to hand ’em over to me?”
“Very. What did he do it for?”
“What does he do anything for? He don’t know. Said today was his birthday and he’d hand ’em over tonight at twelve o’clock. He’ll have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day.”
“He hasn’t forgotten the appointment, I hope?”
“Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him tonight, about eight—helped him to shut up his shop—and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed ’em me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming like the wind, the only song he knows—about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole.”