The Song of the Flea

GERALD KERSH

FOR

JACK RUBENS—

gratefully

That’s a valiant flea that dare eat

his breakfast on the lip of a lion

SHAKESPEARE, Henry V

Contents

1. Title Page

2. Dedication

3. Epigraph

4. Preface to the 2013 Edition

5. CHAPTER ONE

6. CHAPTER TWO

7. CHAPTER THREE

8. CHAPTER FOUR

9. CHAPTER FIVE

10. CHAPTER SIX

11. CHAPTER SEVEN

12. CHAPTER EIGHT

13. CHAPTER NINE

14. CHAPTER TEN

15. CHAPTER ELEVEN

16. CHAPTER TWELVE

17. CHAPTER THIRTEEN

18. CHAPTER FOURTEEN

19. CHAPTER FIFTEEN

20. CHAPTER SIXTEEN

21. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

22. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

23. CHAPTER NINETEEN

24. CHAPTER TWENTY

25. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

26. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

27. Copyright

Preface to the 2013 Edition

At his death in 1968 Kersh had left us with a dazzling gallery of criminals and artists, characters filled with love and loathing, and carrying the seeds of their own destruction. It’s a mystery that he is not regarded as a great British writer of the twentieth century.

Christopher Fowler, Independent on Sunday, 18 September 2011

Forty-five years after he left us Gerald Kersh still suffers from little better than the ‘large, vague renown’ Orwell famously ascribed to Thomas Carlyle. He is remembered chiefly for Night and the City (1938), one of the great novels of London’s Soho, driven by its shabby anti-hero Harry Fabian. Jules Dassin’s 1950 film version starring Richard Widmark has certainly helped that book to endure. But Kersh’s novel lives on by itself because it teems with adroitly observed forms of (low) life, and it still feels like the real thing. Readers who come newly to Kersh usually sense quite soon from his salty, word-rich presence on the page that this was a writer who lived fully, and who never missed a trick. Evidently all he saw was of interest to him, not to say fair game.

Kersh does have his notable and steadfast champions today: Harlan Ellison has vigorously sought to promote awareness of a man whose talent he considered ‘immense and compelling’; Michael Moorcock is the ‘sometime executor’ of the Kersh estate and has kindly made possible Faber Finds’ reissues of a selection of Kersh’s finest works; while cinema-book specialist Paul Duncan has also been an avid advocate for Kersh, and is understood to have been at work awhile on a biography. What general readers may know of Kersh for the moment is largely down to the information these men have placed in the public domain.

Kersh was born in Teddington on 26 August 1911. Writing as a meaningful pastime came quickly to him, such that he soon sniffed a vocation. He quit schooling early, and raced through a succession of jobs as if seeking to go one better on Hemingway’s maxim that a novelist ought to have a friend in every occupation. In 1934 he published a roman-à-clef, Jews without Jehovah, but it wasn’t on sale for very long, since three uncles and a cousin of Kersh’s made out unflattering renderings of themselves within its pages, and sought legal redress – apparently a lasting source of tension at Kersh family occasions.

Following the outbreak of war Kersh joined the Coldstream Guards in 1940 and seems to have been rated a decent soldier. His first stint of leave was during the Luftwaffe’s Blitz, whereupon he narrowly escaped fatal injury but was thereafter reassigned to desk duties. In 1941 he drew on his Guardsman experience to write They Die with Their Boots Clean, a classic fictional account of basic training, and he enjoyed a surprise bestseller with a work that is richly illustrative of his gift for refining into print things you can well imagine he actually heard. (Finds offers the book, bound up with its sequel The Nine Lives of Bill Nelson, under the title given this pairing by their US publisher: Sergeant Nelson of the Guards.)

Thereafter Kersh would be phenomenally productive: a writer not merely of novels and stories but of journalism, sketches and columns, radio and documentary film scripts. After the war he settled in the US and there made himself a fixture in popular magazines that paid well for stories and brought him to huge readerships: the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Collier’s, Playboy. Kersh’s stories are the most accessible demonstration of his protean gifts: the strange and fantastical tales are especially cherished, and may be sampled in Finds’ reissues of The Horrible Dummy and Other Stories as well as a broader selection chosen by Simon Raven entitled The Best of Gerald Kersh. At the height of this productivity came three of his most admired novels: Prelude to a Certain Midnight (1947), The Song of the Flea (1948), and The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (1950).

Kersh wrote so much, his printed output was so compendious, that one might suppose he never had time to blot a line. And yet his sentence-making is remarkably strong. He was both a singular talent and a hard grafter: a crafter of sentences, spinner of yarns, scholar of human follies. His living by the pen, however, seems to have been rarely better than precarious, for a variety of reasons: he had money troubles, personal troubles, health troubles, and over time these tended to come at him in battalions. Amid this turmoil he could still produce Fowler’s End (1958), judged by Anthony Burgess as ‘one of the best comic novels of the century’. Burgess was also a champion of The Implacable Hunter (1961); and The Angel and the Cuckoo (1966) earned Kersh more high praise. But by then he was very nearly through: he died in New York on 5 November 1968, aged fifty-seven. He remains one of those writers perpetually in need of revival, admired by near enough all who read him, awaiting still his golden hour of evangelism. The reader, if not already a convert, is warmly invited to start here.

Richard T Kelly

Editor, Faber Finds

July 2013

CHAPTER ONE

WITH his cold filmy eye, his long wrinkled red neck, shiny morning-coat and flat bald skull, the landlord resembled one of those small Mexican buzzards that float down out of the sky and find, in village rubbish heaps, eatables that even the pigs will not touch. When you see a large number of them wheeling and hovering in the distance you know that somewhere below there is dirt, apathy, poverty, and death. They can sense the death of a rat or the decay of a cast-up fish a mile above the earth. As soon as their claws touch the ground their mighty wings fold; they stop looking like birds and become little wicked mean old men, like Busto, with their hands hidden under the tails of their greasy morning-coats. They advance cautiously, never moving their heads, abstracted-looking and seemingly indifferent—until they are within pecking distance. Then their necks stretch like concertinas and their murderous beaks go to work. If their prey is not dead, but dying, they wait, looking not unlike respectable tradesmen. Then, as soon as life flickers away, they go straight for the eyes, which are to a buzzard what oysters are to a city businessman: a little something to roll around the tongue before the main dish. How they rend and gulp! You see the scrawny, rugose necks jumping and quivering. From time to time they raise reddened beaks and look (as you might think) straight ahead. In point of fact, their horrible muddy sepulchral eyes are taking in everything. They never pause for long: one of their brothers, sons, wives or husbands may take advantage of the pause to gulp an extra beakful. In the half second of pause, however, they look strangely serene. Then they go to it again, ripping and tearing, burying their filthy heads in the carrion. Wave a stick at them and they stop, put on an expression of outraged respectability, and waddle away—only a few feet away—and stand equidistant from one another with every appearance of disinterestedness. One of them seems to be looking at his neighbour; another might be admiring the sunset; a third looks as if he is working out some deep dark metaphysical proposition. But they are watching their carrion and you, and as soon as you turn your back there they are again, taking what they can while they can, bloody to the shoulders, but always decently covered in shiny shabby genteel mourning and ready at any moment to hop back and raise their wrinkled heads to heaven in silent ecstasies of injured innocence.

Busto the landlord was like that. Fifty years of watching and listening had given him a sort of second sight. But he did not live in the upper air: he lived in some dark place under the earth. His room was in the basement. It was a converted wash-house. There he lived and slept and kept his accounts, and he knew the meaning of every sound in the house. He could interpret the inwardness of every intonation and the significance of every footstep. He could read the nervous defiance in the heavy stamping and loud laughter of the tenant who was trying to establish confidence in spite of an empty pocket. He was infallible in his assessment of true and false nonchalance, and might have written a monograph on Walking Downstairs. Some people walked quietly because it was their nature to do so, because they did not want to disturb their fellow men. Others, again, walked quietly because they were afraid: they had had experience of apartment houses, and were anxious to earn goodwill as nice quiet tenants; they walked flat-footed, firmly, slowly and with great care. There was considerable difference between careful and stealthy descent. The stealthy descender—the man with his heart in his mouth—made a different kind of noise; Busto could almost hear the unhappy wretch’s heart missing a beat as the floorboards on the second landing creaked. Then, of course, the footsteps paused for a second before coming on down. The landlord would be waiting. He knew. In the malodorous little passage, which to the haggard eyes of the departing tenant appeared to be a quarter of a mile long and strewn with nightmarish obstacles, Busto always appeared, blacker than the night in his black coat, hideous as a wizard in the light of a sixpenny paraffin lamp.

Where do you think you’re going with that suitcase at this time of night, Mr. So-and-So?

You could not deceive him by running. There is a remarkable difference between the sound of a man running in a hurry and that of a runner in a fright. Nothing can disguise it. Busto could have told you whether you were trying to get to a place or away from a place. A mad dash in the dead of night would not save you. He knew in advance what you intended; but the devil knows how he knew. He was a connoisseur of poverty. There are men who can guess your weight to an ounce: he could guess your means to a shilling. Not only could he detect a lie—he could feel it coming, and had an unearthly way of knowing whether there was anything of value in your battered old fibre luggage. He could tell, by the way you carried it. His sombre, stuffy, cold, dank little room was full of suitcases confiscated and held in lieu of rent. Tears would not melt Busto; neither could promises impress him: he was beyond pity or faith. He knew his customers. He knew that you were lying, to him or yourself, or both of you, when you swore with tears in your wide-open eyes that you had been promised a job on Thursday, or that you had at last persuaded your mother to send you a couple of pounds by Friday at the latest. Busto knew that on Thursday morning or Friday afternoon you would go out whistling, with a false grin on your hopeless face, leaving your bag in your room; and you would never come back. Naturally, for your departure, you wore your best clothes and carried a clean shirt, if you had one, under your coat. He saw. He knew.

His cold, soulless rheumy old eyes were full of deadly omniscience. Tenants had often tried to take their property away piece by piece … a shirt to-day, a pair of trousers to-morrow, a couple of books on Monday; but Busto observed what was taken out and what was brought back. He knew the contents of every room, down to the last handkerchief. So, having strode out humming or whistling, forcing your grin—which fell awry and went away like smoke in the open air—you wandered on your way and never came back. If you owed fourteen shillings in rent (and he would never let you owe more) you knew that you had left thirty shillings’ worth behind you, because he would never have given you those few days of grace if he was not assured that you had that much to leave.

So his room was crammed with abandoned personal property, clipped down in cardboard attaché cases, fibre suitcases, and leather valises that had seen better days and changed hands a hundred times. Before selling what you had left he held it for a year. Sometimes, not often, you left something that he could not sell, and which therefore he kept. Busto threw nothing away. He had, for instance, a number of books; an air-pump; a cracked Buddha; an extremely filthy tin box, hideously encrusted, full of untouchable powder-puffs and dried-up sticks of theatrical make-up; a cavalry sabre; a French pewter jug with a melted bottom, in which someone had tried to boil water; a birdcage, two-thirds of a fishing-rod, thirty wooden chessmen, a magnificent fountain-pen without the nib, a fine copper kettle without a spout, a broken flintlock pistol, a steel engraving of the burning of the Palace of Sardanapalus, and a painted Persian box which might have been valuable if the lid had not been missing. There was also a cluster of artificial flowers under a glass bell, which had belonged to a mysterious old lady who had come primly out of nowhere with this and another glass-domed Victorian ornament—a wax figurine remarkably like herself, but better dressed. She had sold the figurine and run away, leaving the artificial flowers and a few clothes, which Busto had managed to sell at a profit. There were ink-wells without tops, peculiar old hats, out-dated women’s shoes with the Louis heels of the 1920’s, a moth-eaten overcoat with an exhausted beaver collar, which no one would have as a gift, and an enormously complicated radio set with twenty-two dusty valves shaped like tulip bulbs. This had belonged to an inventor, a Russian, who was tormented by persecution mania and hallucinations. No one ever knew exactly what he thought he was inventing: it was impossible to understand what he said. He put three padlocks on his door. Every morning he went out on some mysterious errand. Sometimes he would return five minutes later and creep upstairs, grinding his teeth, for he believed that enemies, spies in the pay of Marconi, were lurking at every corner. His neighbours complained: he used to talk to himself, and the conversation, growing acrimonious, always ended in angry screaming. One foggy morning he went out as usual, and never came back, leaving his strange machine. A radio engineer, who examined it carefully and said that it had no meaning; the transformers, coils and valves were just wired together in a highly complicated way, and all the connections ended nowhere. It was the merest fantasy, a foolish dream: the Russian’s life-work.

That is the sort of wretch that came limping out of the streets with a sagging suitcase to live in Busto’s apartment house. His place was a kind of sorting-office and clearing house for the jails, the casual wards, the lunatic asylums, and the mortuary slabs. Here, desperately clinging to the last strained strand of your dignity, you felt the fibres giving way; for you had to fall pretty low to live at Busto’s. The building itself seemed to have been forgotten of God: passers-by gave it a sidelong glance and then hurried on—it reminded them, inexplicably, of those silent, horrible outcasts that sleep on the benches outside the park at Bayswater. You do not like to be seen looking at them, and wonder how a human being can fall so deep and still hang on to the chewed, trampled, muddy butt-end of his life. Busto’s house ought to have been condemned twenty years before, but he held a long lease and would not move. He hoped to be paid to go: there was a rumour current that his side of the street was to be pulled down to make room for a large office building. He wanted substantial compensation: his house was his living, and he claimed to have built up what he called “goodwill”. It is true that he was notorious in West Central London for his squalid avarice and had become the subject of fabulous stories. There is a frontier beyond which disagreeable things become preposterous, and then it is not difficult to laugh at them.. Exhausted men, slouching into all-night cafés to drowse away the small hours over twopennyworth of coffee, passed the time exchanging reminiscences of Busto’s apartment house. They said that he was not a man but a ghost, too mean to give you a fright; that he smoked his tenants’ cigarette ends, used the ash for snuff and was slowly dying of a broken heart because he could not find a use for the puffs of smoke he reluctantlv let go; that he washed, dried, and re-used toilet paper, which he stole from the public conveniences. They said that he never ate: he lived on the air in the house, of which you could cut yourself a slice. They believed that he had never taken off his clothes: that he sewed them on and slept in them until they flaked away. His morning-coat gave rise to macabre speculation. The sheets on his beds inspired unprintable legends. Busto, who knew that space was money, had put partitions across his larger rooms, so that he could accommodate two tenants at twelve-and-sixpenoe a week instead of one tenant at eighteen shillings. These partitions were made of beaver-board: you could make a spy-hole with a nail file. The things men claimed to have seen through these spy-holes are unrepeatable and best forgotten. Many years will pass before they stop repeating, with embellishments, the incident of the consumptive night-club hostess. Busto threw her out for non-payment of rent, and kept her last warm garment—a dilapidated teddy-bear overcoat. The girl disappeared, but the fable-mongers say that she collapsed in the street, was picked up by a duchess, and is now Lady Something-or-Other … and when Busto heard of this he went along to the Castle with her clothes in a bundle, demanded five-and-sixpence for arrears of rent, and was bought off for £10,000.

There used to be a dying idiot who went up and down the stairs with a worn-out brush and a tin dustpan, brushing and brushing and brushing. Nobody ever knew who he was, where he came from, or how he ended; but everyone says that this was Busto’s father, and that Busto sent him to the workhouse one dark night after he had ascertained that the old man had out-lived his usefulness.

If Busto had been a little less avaricious they would have hated him. But he had become a Character. In a way, they were proud of him. If he had ever been detected in an act of mercy, they would have despised him. But Busto remained Busto—intransigent, uncompromising in his pitilessness, greedy as a quicksand, inhospitable as the east wind, untouchable as a broken-toothed old wolf. And therefore they forgave him. They almost liked him. He was one in a million. A Busto was not born every day. There were some who admired him because he had made good—that is to say, made money. His house provided something more than four walls and a roof. Having stayed there, if only for a couple of weeks, you had something in common with many other men and women—something to talk about; grounds for intimacy.

For example: you could talk about Busto’s Art Gallery. People like to put pictures on their walls, but when they run away without paying their rent the pictures are always left. Busto’s house was hung with the pictorial detritus of forty years. Sometimes someone left a picture in a frame; in which case, the picture not having been worth five shillings of any fool’s money, Busto sold the frame and hung the canvas on a wall. In general his tenants satisfied themselves with plates torn out of illustrated magazines. So you might have seen half a dozen September Morns, caricatures of chimpanzees by Starr Wood, cartoons by Spy and Ape. There were several First Kisses, Love-Me-Love-My-Dogs, a score of cavaliers kissing chambermaids, a representative handful of the drawings of Phil May, a quantity of nudes, and a surprising number of nostalgic Old English tavern scenes. Many of Busto’s tenants liked to look at big clean interiors in cosy firelight, where jovial red-faced men lounged in red coats, cutting mighty rounds of red beef and drinking deep draughts out of twinkling silver tankards … poor devils! And anyone who has looked into Busto’s room, the old wash-house, will tell you that over his bed hangs an oleo of La Gioconda, which he believes to be a faithful representation of the Virgin Mary.

Once upon a time there was a time when Busto believed in God. He is a mystery. There is one man who says that Busto was the rightful King of Italy; and another who maintains that he belonged to the Camorra. Others, more plausibly, insist that he was nothing but a retired valet who took to apartment house-keeping on legitimate plunder—discarded suits, pilfered studs, filched shirts, and tips. You could talk about Busto’s wealth. He has lived in a hole in the ground for fifty years, always taking and never giving. How could he help being rich? … And assume that he has put away five pounds a week for only forty years—that makes ten thousand pounds….

The conversation goes on and on. You take your cold coffee sip by sip, making it last. In a little while it will be dawn. You do your best to look animated, calm and prosperous … you are a gentleman, killing time, waiting for another day. Meanwhile, you take care not to draw too hard on your cigarette: you have only one left, cunningly secreted in your right-hand coat pocket. In due course you and your fellow-outcast get back to wondering how Busto does it. How is he always awake and about at the wrong time? How does he know just when to come upstairs and intercept you? You talk of vultures that sense their prey from afar; you talk of the Sixth Sense; you discuss the telepathic sensations of identical twins and, putting away a few lumps of sugar while the waitress is not looking, you make romances, fairy-tales.

It never occurs to you that Pio Busto has seen you before: he knows exactly how your needs change your face, your gestures, the tone of your voice and the sound of your footsteps. You are his living, and he knows you to the backbone.

In place of a brain Busto had a sort of abacus, some rattling contraption of black-and-white beads and wire, designed to record how much people owed him, and nothing more. If you were of an excitable, imaginative temperament you could almost hear it working. A pavement artist who had lived in his house, a dribbling old drunkard who claimed to have seen better days, made up a strange composition of balls and barbed wire drawn with coloured chalks on wrapping paper, and entitled it Busto—A Portrait. He showed it to some of the other tenants in the “Duchess of Douro” and, for the first time in his life, felt that his work was appreciated. “I don’t know why, but it kind of reminds you of the old bastard,” said a little man like a sparrow who picked up a precarious living following the horses.

Busto had learned how to write his name in great black letters, so that it had the spine-chilling look of a voodoo death warning: but he had never had occasion to learn the alphabet. He had no use for writing. The little black-and-white balls always slid into place, left or right, up and down the parallels under his flat skull. Only the credit side of the abacus had rusted and grown fallible: there, the white beads stuck and had to be jolted into place. When it came to giving change, Busto became feeble-minded: after two or three days he shrugged and blinked like an imbecile … he was getting old, he said, and begged pardon … he could not remember. He never failed to remember your indebtedness to him. The wires on the debit side were highly polished, worn thin, tuned tight like steel guitar strings. And so it happened that one morning Busto got out of his mysterious little bed at a quarter to six and, obedient to a blind reliable impulse, went upstairs to the eleven-shilling room on the top floor back, and listened.

He heard nothing. Busto rapped with a knuckle upon one of the blistered brown panels. There was no answer. He opened the door very gently, stretched his neck and looked in. He saw the old familiar wash-stand with the blue basin and soap-dish, and the red-and-yellow jug. In the mauve-and-green pail below stood the inevitable scummed grey washing water. There was an awful stillness on the face of this water. Busto went into the room, looked about him sharply, and cried out in anguish. The bed—a secondhand wooden bed sawn down to look like a divan—was disordered and cold. Mr. Pym was gone. Busto cursed himself for his carelessness. Pym must have crept out before dawn: a certain warmth lingered between the blankets. Snarling like a dog, Busto went to the wardrobe and jerked open the door. There was nothing inside but a musty smell. Under the bed he found a pair of shoes, the uppers of which had been carefully polished. Mr. Pym had tried to keep up appearances. The soles were worn through, and he had tried to repair them with a sixpenny tube of the stuff called “Liquid Leather”, but the fibrous sediment that it left behind had fallen away, leaving a sort of high-water-mark or fuzz somewhere near the instep. After that Mr. Pym had drawn outlines of his feet on the covers of a calf-bound “Life of Alexander the Great”, cutting them out with an old razor blade and smearing them with Vaseline to make them waterproof before fitting them into his shoes. But they had worn through. Pym had tried, with his inexpert hand, to screw on a pair of cheap rubber heels. He had no idea of the proper technique. In the heel of the left shoe there was a little jagged hole; in the right was embedded the head of a screw. Busto could see that this undesirable tenant had made experiments: a sixpenny rubber belt had been cut into two-inch lengths and subjected to the action of fire. Pym had imagined, no doubt, that he could make these strips of rubber stick so as to cover the holes in his shoes if he applied them while they were still hot and bubbling. It had not worked. He had given up, and gone out in his last pair of presentable shoes—the thin-soled ones with the down-trodden heels. Busto had the eye of a detective: he did not fail to notice certain strands of muddy wool on the floor. These, he knew, had been cut with the same old safety-razor blade from the cuffs of Pym’s trousers. Pym had been making himself beautiful.

Busto gnashed his teeth. “My own father!” he said. He meant that after this he would not give his own father three days’ grace if he had a father. But then he noticed that the table was covered with little stacks of paper. One of these was nearly two inches thick, grey-and-blue, with typewritten lines and scribbled corrections. Another, much smaller, was black with microscopic handwriting. The rest was blank paper, flimsy porous stuff sold at tenpence a ream. Busto’s fists, which he had raised above his head in anguish and hate, came slowly down. He knew that hope was not lost, because Pym was trying to write a book. Certain people came back: mechanics for their tools; actors for their shirts; and writers for their bits of paper.

Busto padlocked the door and went downstairs. He was not really worrying: he was merely cursing himself for his stupidity. Last rent-day Mr. Pym had gone out with his little typewriter and returned, affluent, without it. “I ought to have known,” said Busto.

He went back to his room and listened. There was a gentleman on the second floor front who owned a musical instrument, a portable gramophone and a big case of records, whose rent was due at noon: a man from the North of England, who had played the trumpet in a colliery band but had come South hoping to get a job with Ambrose. Busto could tell by the creaking of the stairs whether a man was carrying weight. He sat still, listening. He could identify you by the click and scrape of your key in the lock. Instinct told Busto that sooner or later Mr. Pym would come back.

CHAPTER TWO

PYM will never forget how he went downstairs that morning. The whole house was squealing Awake! Awake! Awake! For one mad minute he considered the possibility of sliding down the banisters, but he realised that in doing this he would make a strange noise. Be calm, he said to himself, remembering old stories of wild-beast trainers. Pym convinced himself that he was not in Busto’s house; it was a bad dream; he was a respected guest in a big hotel. He walked steadily downstairs. But as soon as he closed the street door behind him Pym ran away, braking down into a walk as he passed the policeman on the corner.

He had fivepence to spend and four hours to kill.

Pym went to Carnero’s café, which was open day and night, and sat inconspicuously in the corner behind the pin-and-marble machine, pretending to write notes on the back of an envelope. The waitress, Gina, found him in three minutes.

“Sir?”

“Oh, just a small white coffee,” said Pym.

“Piccolo bianco-o-o-ooo!” cried Gina, whisking away dust and ashes with a red-edged cloth. Pym described a letter “W” on his envelope and paused, gnawing his pencil. Everyone else was eating. Gina was screaming orders over her shoulder.

“… Scrambalegg-a-namm a rolla-butter potta-tea! … ’Am-sangwitch, jambon—twice—piccolo nero, one tea-a-a! … Christamighty, look sharp! Uno pair kippers, well do-oone! … One omblet, two eggs, and capucino! You dropped down dead down there? … Gord blood-and-water!—One ’ammanegg! ’Am, ’am! Egg, egg! One!—’Ammanegg, turned over, one slice cord Mary Jesus, once—a move on, cor Christianity! … Hey! —Troppo cotto, ’sto cutlet! Oh, Joseph Jesus Christ! Quick—uno pairo kippers, well do-o-one! … Piccolo bianco, piccolo nero, capucino-o-o-oo! … Gorgimme strenf, you got ruptured down there? Wake up, dreamy! Bubble ’n Squeak twice—two strong teas!”

“One piccolo bianco,” said the waitress, banging down the little cup. “You gonna eat something? Sangwitch?”

“No, thank you, Gina, I’m not hungry.”

“What about a nice omblet?”

“I don’t want an omelette, thanks. I’ve got a stomach-ache.”

“What you want is a nice plate of minestrone.”

“I don’t want a nice plate of minestrone. Thanks, all the same,” said Pym.

Gina, the waitress, would not go away. She leaned over his shoulder, dusting the table, steadying herself with a big red hand on his shoulder. She said: “Ain’t you got nice hair? Is it naturally wavy?”

“No. I go to my hairdresser every morning to have a perm and set—I’ve got nothing better to do. Didn’t you know that?” He was carefully smoothing out the wrinkles in his last cigarette. “If you want to get me something you might get me a light.”

“You wanna box of matches?”

“No; just a light.”

“Ah-ha!” said Gina, “I get it.”

“What do you mean—you get it? You get what?”

“You broke, ain’t it?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Listen: you want to order something to eat and a packet of cigarettes, that’s all right. Pay another time.”

Pym swallowed saliva, shook his head, and said: “Thanks, all the same, darling, I couldn’t touch a thing.”

“Okay,” she said, and went back to the coffee-bar.

Pym sat, drinking his coffee in tiny sips and carefully smoking his cigarette. He drew a figure five on the envelope, shaded it and embellished it; turned it into a banjo, and then into a round human face, upon which, hair by hair, he hung a luxuriant curly beard and cavalier moustache. The hat, an ornate Mexican sombrero, took him a long time: and then there had to be a little embroidered jacket. He was trying to outline his plans for the following day; but his plans had no outlines—they were wavering, amorphous, tenuous, smoky little things; the sort of vapours that arise when hope reaches melting point.

He drew a poppy with a hairy stem. Having used up the back of the envelope he cut the edges with his coffee-spoon, folded it back, and tried to outline a clenched fist gripping a dagger, but he could not get the thumb right. So he shook his head gravely and drew a padlock. He had the air of a man who, after years of toil, finds himself on the verge of a masterpiece. Now, the name of Carnero on the glass door was black against a gold oblong of autumnal daylight.

“Artist?” said a shy little voice. He looked up with a start. A small, slyly-smiling man in a shabby overcoat was sitting at his table. He, too, had sidled into an inconspicuous corner.

“No,” said Pym, covering the paper with his hand. “No, I’m not an artist.”

“You’ve got artistic hands,” said the shabby man. “I could have sworn you were a bit of an artist. Pardon the liberty.”

“Not at all.”

“In a very small way, I’m what you might call a bit of an artist myself. That’s why I took the liberty.”

“A painter?”

“A musician, sir, in a smallish kind of way. Yes, I’m a musician.”

“Violinist?”

“Well, no, not exactly a violinist. I perform on wind instruments.”

“The flute?” said Pym, merely for the sake of talking.

“Well, no, not exactly the flute,” said the other; “as a matter of fact, no, I don’t play the flute. But I did use to play the trumpet.”

“Did you now!” said Pym, with an expression of awe. “And don’t you play the trumpet any more?”

“Well … not exactly, no. I lost all my teeth, and that was the end of me as a trumpeter. And I had to give up the trumpet. As a matter of fact, I sold it when I lost my teeth. You have to change with the times.”

“True, true. And what instrument do you play now, if I may ask?”

The small shabby man took from his pocket a broken tin whistle and held it up for Pym’s inspection. “This is about all I can manage these days,” he said. “And look at it.”

“It does seem to have got knocked about a bit, doesn’t it?”

The little man put the whistle to his lips and blew. Nothing came out but a hiss and a squeak.

“A great misfortune, sir. I was playing to the ladies and gentlemen at the Lyceum——”

“At the Lyceum!”

“Just outside. I was playing there this evening, and I’d just got started when somebody bumped into me and knocked it out of my hand, and somebody else trod on it. It cut my gum, too—look,” he said, opening his little chapped mouth and pointing. “People really are careless and inconsiderate. I said to the gentleman: ‘Now look what you’ve been and done, sir. This is my living, this is.’ You’d think in a case like that he would give you a shilling or two, wouldn’t you? Well, he didn’t give me anything at all—told me to look where I was going. I said to him: ‘In my opinion, sir, the boot is on the other foot.’ He just walked away without even saying he was sorry. What would you have done then?”

“God knows. I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“If I was versatile I could have sung a song, or done a little dance. And now I come to think of it, if I’d had any sense, I would have done as my wife told me.”

“You have a wife?” asked Pym, incredulously.

“Oh yes. She said to me: ‘Why,’ she said, ‘you silly little fool, you! That was the time to go round with the hat and cry a bit and say look what they did to my instrument,’ she said. ‘But no,’ she said, ‘not you,’ she said, ‘you’re not a man you’re a little worm,’ she said; and I don’t blame her, either. ‘You get out of my sight,’ she said, ‘and don’t dare show your face inside this door until you bring the price of a bit of something to eat,’ she said; and she picked me up bodily and threw me out. I was too well brought up to raise my hand to a woman, sir,” said the little man sadly, contemplating a dirty fist remarkably like a chicken’s claw, “so I’ve been walking about all night. This morning I hope to pick up the price of a new whistle.”

“How much do they cost?”

“I can get one for eightpence,” said the little man, looking up hopefully and talking very fast. “I’m sure I could get one for eightpence or ninepence. If I had a couple of shillings I could get a new instrument and buy some sausages to take home, and then get an hour or two’s sleep and start again this evening like a lion refreshed, as the saying goes. If you could help me, I should be very grateful indeed. And I should be able to repay you in a day or so. You would probably be saving my life. I’m not a bit strong, and I don’t eat much, but the little I do eat is necessary to keep body and soul together, and——”

Pym, writhing with embarrassment, said: “Look here, friend, excuse me just one moment. I’m very sorry indeed if I managed to convey that I was prosperous. I’m terribly sorry. But the fact of the matter is, I’m absolutely broke. That’s why you see me here at this hour of the morning. You see,” said Pym, in almost abject apology, “in a way I’m pretty much in the same boat myself. I’m a writer, you see—an author, and I’m in a similar kind of jam. You’ve got to get your tin whistle, and I’ve got to get my typewriter. I can’t get along without it: I can’t sing or dance, either. And what is more, I’ve got to pay my rent, because I’ve got to have somewhere to work. You see, I’m just finishing a book, and when I’ve finished it a publisher is going to give me fifty pounds advance for it. Do believe me; when I’ve paid for my coffee I shall have just about threepence in the world. You see my position? I wish I could do something for you, honest to God I do. But, I hate to say it—I can’t. I haven’t got anything.”

The little man said: “Oh, dear me! What am I to do?”

“I don’t know what you’re to do. I don’t know what I’m to do,” said Pym in irritation. Then he stopped, snapped his fingers, and called the waitress. “Gina,” he said, “you remember you said a little while ago that my credit might be good for something to eat?”

“Sure.”

“Well, look: if I promise to pay you to-morrow, or the day after at the latest, do you think you could let me have some ham-and-eggs and a packet of cigarettes and two large white coffees?”

“Sure, Curlylocks,” said Gina, looking with distaste at the whistle-player. She came back with the order, said: “Eat it all up like a good boy,” and went away to serve three pallid men who talked without opening their mouths.

Pym pushed the plate over to the tin-whistle player and said: “Eat that up, quick.” While his guest swallowed the food in furtive gulps, Pym opened the packet of cigarettes. “Ten for you and ten for me,” he said; “and since I may have to put on a front, perhaps you won’t mind if I keep the packet.”

“You’re very good, I’m sure.”

“You haven’t eaten your roll. It would be a pity to waste it,” said Pym, breaking it. The roll and the hot coffee made him feel strong, wise and full of confidence. He leant back, enjoying his cigarette, and said:

“D’you know what? I think your wife is a woman of sense. D’you know, there’s money in what she said?”

“Money? How?”

“Why, my dear sir, it ought to be obvious! You can make more out of that tin whistle when it’s been trodden on than you can when it will play a tune. You need a capital of one penny. With this penny you buy one box of matches—only one. You have no need for more than one. You keep your broken tin whistle. You wash yourself very clean, look as respectable as you can, hang about the West End, and when you see a likely-looking sucker you approach him with your one and only box of matches in your right hand and your broken whistle in your left. You say: ‘I should be grateful, sir (or madam), if you would buy a box of matches. I broke my musical instrument last night outside the Lyceum, and must buy another. I am a musician, not a beggar. My wife will not let me go home empty-handed. This is very humiliating for me. I should be very grateful for any assistance, however small. I need only two shillings to buy a new whistle and some sausages and bread to take home. This is the first time I have accosted strangers in the street. Believe me, I should not have done so if I had not been driven by necessity.’ … I wouldn’t mind betting that a line of talk like that brought in more than a pound a day. And there you are. All you need is a clean box of matches. On second thoughts, better have two: there’s always someone who takes the box of matches to have something to show for the shilling he has given you. Look,” said Pym, putting down two of his last three pennies, “I’ll set you up in business. Buy two boxes of matches and keep that broken tin whistle. When it gets rusty, buy another and stamp on it.”

The morning was bright. Pym took hold of his suitcase and stood up.

“I’m sure I’m more than grateful to you, sir. I hope one day I’ll have the opportunity to repay you.”

“Think nothing of it.” Pym went out, smiling at Gina.

As the door closed her smile disappeared; her mouth became sullen and ferocious. She stamped on her high-heeled shoes to where the little musician was sitting and said: “You leave people alone! You go away out of here!”

“But tell me, lady, what have I done?”

“I do wanna know! You interfere with my customers, and you stay out of this place!”

“I mean no harm, I’m sure,” the little man said. He picked up his pennies, adjusted his bowler hat, and left the café.

Half an hour later, having reported the incident to his wife, after emptying his pockets, he said: “I love these steamers that try and teach you your business! Count the takings, Pat.”

*

Pym walked slowly, thinking hard, figuring. He was wondering which pawnshop to visit first. He carried tickets from three pawnbrokers in different parts of the City. Greenberg & Co. had the typewriter; McCormick Ltd. had a silver cigarette case and an old silver watch; Messrs. MacAllister & MacDermott had lent him twenty-five shillings on a grey summer suit and a blue winter overcoat in an old-fashioned heavy leather suitcase. After the manner of men in his uneasy situation he was weighing one pawnbroker against another and trying to find a pennyweight of difference on the generous side. Futile speculation! A pig is not called a pig for nothing, as the Petchenyeg said in the story; and a pawnbroker is not a pawnbroker except by vocation.

A pawnbroker must purge himself of commiseration, sweating himself clean of pity, and with the hard rubber nozzle of practical common sense probe and irrigate his bowels of compassion. He too has his living to get It is perfectly reasonable. If a drunken washerwoman came to him to pledge her flat-irons and he lent her a pound instead of a shilling, the time would come when his wife, washing dirty linen for a bit of bread and a sausage, would creep out one Monday morning to pawn her flat-irons for tenpence.

He is necessary, like hangmen, slaughterers, and dentists. Since people must borrow, the pawnbroker must lend, not without security. Therefore he must learn the ultimate value of an Unredeemed Pledge. He must learn to read and translate all the inscriptions that Want carves on a human face, and translate them into arithmetic. He must lock his heart when he unlocks his shop door and take off compassion with his overcoat. Pym knew that an object valued at nine-and-sixpence by Greenberg would be valued at nine-and-sixpence by the others. In the weird unanimity of pawnbrokers, a superstitious man in need sometimes imagines that he hears the beat of Congo drums.

Pym had often wondered what makes a man decide to be a pawnbroker, a dentist, or a hangman. A medical student, learning a little bit of everything, is sidetracked by successful enquiry into a carneous mole, and finds himself, almost in spite of himself, specialising in obstetrics. He does not, in his formative years, raise a shining boyish face to his father and, in reply to enquiry as to what he hopes to do, say: ‘Father, I want to explore gynæcology.’ Yet many young men, thinking of the future, state quite clearly that they want to go in for dentistry—to probe, drill, and twist out of ulcerated gums the stumps of rotten teeth. There is money in it, yes: we cannot get along without dentists. But what kind of boy makes up his mind to scrape and bore a respectable living out of sepulchral mouths?

Similarly, if you want to be a hangman you must make proper application for the job, and devote yourself to it—you must, literally, get to know the ropes. You must look at necks and consider them in relation to individual weights and muscular peculiarities. You must take an interest in your work, so that you may pride yourself on a workmanlike execution—a nice smooth drop and a good clean snap when your hooded client goes down through the trapdoor and jolts to death in the dimness below. Such work must be taken seriously: it is highly skilled work, and underpaid, so that hangmen generally run little businesses of their own on the side—cobblers’ shops, barber shops, and the like. Cobblers and barbers all over the world keep themselves and their families by mending shoes and cutting hair: before an ordinary tradesman thought of hanging his neighbour he would hang himself. And still staid, prim men go out of their way to become hangmen.

Perhaps they enjoy the terror they inspire as agents of the Angel of Death.

It is possible, also, that a pawnbroker’s clerk feels twice the man he might have been when he looks into the blinking eyes of some miserable little woman, glances down scornfully at her husband’s best suit—(she must get it out by Saturday, or God help her!)—and, with a weary shrug, says: “What, this one again? Let you have seven-and-six.” No one denies that he is a kind man at heart—kind, at least, to his wife and children, and a good provider who will work his fingers to the bone to send his boys to secondary school. This being the case, why doesn’t he use his wonderful sense of values in another kind of shop? Why does he want to be a pawnbroker? How does he manage to grow indifferent to the misery on which he lives and the fearful hate he inspires? How does he get that way?—that is what you ask yourself.

*

For two or three speculative minutes Pym played with the idea of an untried pawnbroker near Oxford Street. He turned and began to walk there. Then, remembering that it is better to have dealings with the devil you know than the devil you don’t know, went to McCormick’s. This was an austere establishment on a corner. Most pawnshops are: the façade on the main street is a shopfront, the window of which is full of secondhand fountain-pens, pitiful little opal engagement rings, musical instruments, and attractively-ticketed silver candlesticks and spoons. You walk into this part of the place like a buyer, with an arrogant lift to your head, slamming down your independent feet, because you have money in your pocket. Round the corner there is a dark, brown-painted doorway. Customers who go in that way dart rather than walk in. Watching from the other side of the street, between ten in the morning and noon, you will recognise three types. One, shabby-genteel, sidles guiltily along the back street, looking at his feet and carrying a little bundle: he darts in, darts out empty-handed, and creeps away. Another, well-dressed, strolls to the corner and looks around with the air of a man-about-town; examines the doorstep, looks up at the painted inscription on the lintel, swaggers in, and comes out—still swaggering—five minutes later without his overcoat; looks up and down the street, and strolls away humming a gay tune. The third, a woman, just goes straight in with a parcel and walks right out without it, and goes home.

*

Pym said: “I wonder if you’d care to lend me as much as you can on this till Friday?”

The clerk said nothing: he opened the suitcase.

“There’s a perfectly good suit, a pair of shoes, a valuable glass paper-weight—look, shake it and it makes a snowstorm—and a pair of flannel trousers. There’s a magnifying glass in a real morocco case. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind letting me have a couple of pounds on this till Friday.”

The pawnbroker’s clerk looked at him and spread out the suit. Pym had prepared it carefully, rubbing out spots with an old handkerchief and a pennyworth of petrol But when the clerk laid his hands on the cloth all the old stains came back. A disparaging forefinger brought up something like a fringe under a sleeve. At the touch of an accusing thumb a buttonhole disintegrated. A quick hand stroked from left to right, and the lining of the waistcoat became grey and greasy. With supernatural cunning the clerk turned back the cuffs and uncovered a split lining.

“That’s very extraordinary,” said Pym.

The clerk looked at the shoes and threw them aside; shook the paper-weight and grunted. He looked through the magnifying glass at a thumbnail, sighed, and said: “Let you have ten bob, if you like.”

“You must be crazy,” said Pym, desperately; “that’s an eight-guinea suit.”

“Ten bob.”

“No, but listen——”

“I can’t let you have more than ten bob. And I don’t want the paper-weight.”

“Damn it all, man—till Friday!”

“Say you fell dead on Thursday?”

“I won’t fall dead on Thursday, I give you my——”

“Ten bob.”

Pym hesitated. Then he hitched up his shoulders in what he believed to be a nonchalant shrug and said: “Oh, all right; take it.”

“Have you got twopence for the ticket?”

“Take it out of that. I shall want some small change. Damn it all!” said Pym, “couldn’t you make it a little more than that?”

“Got a cellar full of stuff like this—more than I know what to do with.”

Pym took the money and the ticket and went into the street, too depressed even for resentment. He had nine shillings and elevenpence. No sum of money in the world is more irritatingly useless than nine shillings and elevenpence when you need two pounds. The odd pennies make it loose and untidy. His mind had gone blank again. He put the silver carefully into his fob-pocket and took the fivepence into a teashop, where he squandered it on weak tea and penny buns. There, again, he chose a corner seat: it was appropriate to his mood of quiet desperation, for he felt now like a boxer fighting for his supper, who has struggled like a madman for nine rounds and sits with a sinking heart in a heaving breast waiting for the gong, the knock-out, and the limping journey home in humiliation through the rainwashed streets.

For want of something better to do, Pym took out the little worn wallet in which he kept his private papers. These were mostly pawn-tickets. Pym put the new one with the old ones, shuffled them, and fanned them open warily like an anxious gambler after a desperate draw in a poker game. He contemplated this melancholy hand and arranged it carefully, instinctively smiling brightly and pretending to be pleasantly surprised—pathetically bluffing, like an unlucky player; deceiving nobody. He put the typewriter next to the cigarette-case, fitted in the winter overcoat and the summer suit, and then started in real astonishment. There was a ticket he had forgotten.

The ticket said Silver Snuff-box … 7/6. It was a handsomely engraved snuff-box, two hundred years old. Pym had got it from his father, and used to carry it for luck. Sometimes, in order to make an impression, he had put a little snuff in it and offered it with a flourish to startled acquaintances. Now, remembering it, he sat upright and put the other tickets away. In as little time as it took to snap his fingers, Pym became happy. His heart beat harder and faster. Trapped hope had found a hole in the net, a loose bar in the cage. In five seconds he had a plan, complex, bold and exciting.

He would redeem the snuff-box; go to Szisco’s, near Holborn, and sell it. Szisco bought and sold Georgian silver. Pym remembered seeing in Szisco’s window neatly arranged cases of Georgian silver snuff-boxes, the meanest of which was priced at four pounds ten. One of them, much less beautiful than his, was for sale at fifteen pounds. Assuming that old Mr. Pym’s snuff-box was worth no more than ten pounds, could Szisco offer him less than five pounds for it?

It was unreasonable to suppose that Szisco could be such a fool.

He paid the bill and hurried out. The curdled grey sky had cleared. It was going to be a fine day. Everything had cleared. There was a pleasant smell in the air, and the passing girls looked friendly and beautiful. But there was no time to waste. Pym walked as fast as he could, scarcely pausing to look at the faces of the people who were waiting outside the Old Bailey, where someone was being tried on a charge of murder. His swinging right hand struck somebody’s wrist and he apologised gaily and profusely without turning his head. It was as if a window had been thrown open to let out some of the stale smoke in his head. Everything was clear and crisp. He had only to get the snuff-box. After that he could put down his money for the typewriter, lay in some filling food—tinned herrings and potatoes for example—go home to Busto, slap down a week’s rent, run upstairs, sit down and finish the novel, hurry it to Egan & Dobbs, and collect fifty pounds. He was not a shallow-minded man, a wishful-thinker who lived for the moment: he knew that fifty pounds would not last for ever. Fifty pounds was not a large sum: in fact fifty pounds was nothing. Still, it would tide him over. He could get his best clothes out of pawn, buy more paper and some typewriter ribbons, pay a debt or two, and work comfortably for at least two months. In two months he could write another novel. Well-dressed, with a quarter of an inch of good shoe-leather solidly separating his feet from the floor, he could talk to an editor with confidence and, crossing his legs, feel free of frayed trousers and perforated socks.

Pym danced rather than walked past the post office, and smiled in the musty gloom of the pawnshop as he put down his ticket like an ace of trumps, jingling the money in his pocket.

The clerk, hairless and sickly yellow like the bulb that hung from the ceiling, untied a neat little bow in a piece of thin string and unwrapped the snuff-box. Then he took the money, and looked up grimacing as the door slammed.

Pym was out of the office before the clerk had begun to refold the little piece of paper.

He was prudent enough to walk a few yards to a bus stop from which it would cost him only three-halfpence to ride to Szisco’s. He exchanged badinage with the conductor and whistled a tune between his teeth. But at Szisco’s door he hesitated. The whistle went back into his mouth with a little hiss. He looked into Szisco’s window, which was full of silver. There were chafing-dishes for which he would not have given twopence, priced at scores of guineas; candlesticks which he would not have had as a gift, available for twenty-one pounds apiece; and there were snuff-boxes, the cheapest of which would cost you four pounds ten shillings. But Pym’s box was four inches long, three inches wide, and two inches deep—bigger than the snuff-box in the top left-hand corner which Szisco valued at nineteen guineas, and ever so much better engraved. There, still, hung the card: ‘OLD SILVER BOUGHT’. Pym drew himself up, smoothed his coat, and walked into the shop.

Until he felt the thudding of his heart he did not know that he was afraid. He had intended to smile, converse offhandedly, and come suavely to the market value of his box. But when he was confronted by an old man with hair that was neither black nor grey, dressed like a Consul-General in heavy cloth that was neither grey nor black, the virtue went out of him.

Pym could only say: “I believe you buy silver?”

The old man almost smiled.

“… Rather valuable old silver snuff-box. My … I … It … Well, this is it, and I wondered …”

A dry, silvery hand came out of a beautifully starched cuff, picked up Pym’s box, and felt it. The old man cocked his head and stooped. He seemed to be smelling the box. At last he said: “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m sorry. There really isn’t much I can say about this. It’s no use to me. I have a room full of them up there in the front. I’ve got more of these than I know what to do with.”

“But you’ve got all sorts of things, not half as good as this, that you’re charging ten, fifteen, twenty pounds for! You’ve got them in the window! Come and see!”

“Yes, I know what I’ve got in the window. But stop to consider how long I might have had them in the window. Simply ask yourself what people want with snuff-boxes now, things being as they are.”

“Do you seriously mean to say that you actually don’t want this?” cried Pym.

“I don’t want it.”

“Are you seriously telling me that it isn’t worth, for instance, a fiver?”

The old man smiled and said: “My goodness gracious, no, indeed!”

“What would it be worth to you, then?” asked Pym, in a flat voice, stroking the engraved lid of the box.

“As things are now it’s hardly worth making an offer for. Twenty years ago, yes. In twenty years’ time, perhaps. I’ll give you a pound for it, if you like.”

“What! A pound? If I wanted to, I could pawn it for more than that,” said Pym.

“I don’t think you could.”

Pym licked his lips and said: “The fact of the matter is this. There’s an old man, a very old man, very sick—cancer. He’s got cancer, inoperable cancer of the stomach. All he’s got left is his silver—antique silver, some marvellous stuff. He asked me to find a dealer. This box of his is, as you might say, a kind of sample. He’s got tons of it—plates, dishes, candlesticks, teapots … snuff-boxes … all kinds of silver. And he said to me: ‘My boy, I have got to sell my silver. It has come to this, and there’s no getting away from it. I’ve always heard that Mr. Szisco is a good man to deal with. You go and see what Mr. Szisco gives you for this snuff-box, and if what he gives you is fair, I’ll sell him the rest of my silver.’ So you see …”

“A pound is all I can offer.”

There was a little silence. The old man pushed the box back across the counter.

“I’ll take the pound,” said Pym.

“Would you rather have change?” said the old man, putting down a new pound note.

“No thanks—it isn’t for me.”

“Of course; I quite understand that. Good day to you.”

Pym tried to slam the door behind him, but even in that he was frustrated by a patent pneumatic brake that seemed to laugh under its breath. He stood on the kerb and waited for the traffic to stand still, feeling as he had felt once before when, having stopped to pick up a halfpenny, he rose and broke his head on the edge of a marble mantelpiece … shocked to stupefaction, hopelessly vulnerable, unforgettably foolish. He could almost feel the trickle of blood creeping under the back of his collar, and the strain of the shamefaced grin under his cheekbones.

“Easy now—easy does it,” said Pym, breathing deeply. Before he crossed the road he compelled himself to take hold of certain loose strings inside himself. He gripped hard and pulled. His loose, astonished mouth closed tight. Then he got a grip on the slack, empty part of his will and twisted it with all his might until he felt compact again—screwed down and reduced; knotty, taut and uncomfortable—clenched like a hand that becomes a fist to reassure itself that it is still all there.

Hope, by God, was not lost! Nothing but a bubble was broken! The morning was not gone, and he had more than twenty-one shillings in his pocket. Pym walked resolutely northward, but he paused outside a respectable pawnshop near the Hampstead Road, and glanced at the display in the window. No more dreams! He walked right in.

“You have a cigarette-case in the window marked three pounds ten shillings,” he said.

“Yes, sir?”

“Look: I’ve got one exactly like that, but a good deal heavier, at home. If I wanted to sell it, how much would you give me for it?”

“Oh, well,” said the pawnbroker. “I mean to say … how could I say without seeing it?”

“Listen: say it was just like the one you’ve got in the window, and in perfect condition, and I wanted to sell it—not pawn it, sell it—could you give me an idea of what you’d give for it?”

“Hard to say without seeing the case. Could be worth thirty shillings or a couple of quid. Depends on the weight and quality of the article, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so. But say my case——”

“You bring it along,” said the pawnbroker. Then his face changed and his body swelled. He began to quiver. “Circumstances alter cases,” he said, bursting into a long laugh.

“I want to get this right, you see,” said Pym. “You’d give up to two pounds for a cigarette-case exactly like that bevelled-edge one in the window?”

“It depends, you see. Circumstances alter cigarette-cases.—Hwa-hwa-hwa-hwa-hwooo!” The pawnbroker controlled himself. “A good modern bevel-edge case like the one in the window, in perfect condition, I’d pay up to a couple of pounds for. But circumstances——”

“I’ll bring mine along.”

“Yes, you do that.”

Ignoring the ache in his legs and the heavy emptiness of his stomach, Pym walked to Islington and redeemed his cigarette-case from Messrs. McCormick Ltd. He paused only to visit a public lavatory, where he filled one of his pockets with thin paper. He had a little more than six shillings now. His head was rattling like a stale walnut, and in his throat there was something like a hangman’s knot.

“Well?” he said to the pawnbroker near the Hampstead Road.

“It’s a nice case all right. But I mean to say—look.”

“What d’you mean—‘look’? What’s the matter with it? Look at what? Why look, in that tone of voice?”

“Well, look—J. P.”

“What’s the matter with J. P.? That’s my initials.”

“I daresay. Well, there you are. That’s just it.”

“That’s just what?”

“Well, who wants a case with somebody else’s initials?”

“You said——”

“I said nothing about initials. You were talking about a case in perfect condition. You never mentioned initials.”

Licking dry lips with a glutinous tongue, Pym said: “They can be taken off.”

“Spoil the case,” said the pawnbroker.

Pym swallowed air. “How much for it?” he said.

“You want to sell it, do you?”

“Those initials aren’t cut deep—they’re only sort of scratched on.”

“I could let you have a pound.”

“I want two pounds.”

“Well, I daresay you can get it elsewhere. Not me, sir.”

Pym struck out SOS in Morse code with a knuckle on the glass counter. “Thirty shillings,” he said.

“I’ll make it twenty-two-and-six. Twenty-two shillings and sixpence is my last word.”

“Oh, all right, all right—give me twenty-two-and-six.”

“It would have been worth a couple of pounds if it wasn’t for the initials,” said the pawnbroker, counting out the money.

“One of these days those initials will be worth more than the case,” said Pym, through his teeth.

“But at the present moment——”

Pym began to say something, thought better of it, and left the shop. Now he had twenty-eight shillings and sixpence in his fob-pocket, and some copper coins in the right-hand pocket of his trousers.

CHAPTER THREE

DETERMINED, now, to see the end of the matter, Pym went to another pawnshop and redeemed his summer suit and winter overcoat. He had not known that the old leather suitcase was so heavy. After twenty paces the strength ran out of his right arm, so that he had to stop. A rough seam in the handle cut a groove in his left hand. He changed hands again and again. At last he balanced the suitcase on his shoulder, where it nuzzled its way in again and hurt abominably. Pym put it down, took in a reserve of breath, and transferred it to the other shoulder; but his face was dripping with sweat and his handkerchief was out of reach of his left hand—and already sodden, in any case.

Nevertheless he reached Proust’s secondhand gentlemen’s wardrobe shop in High Street, St. Giles’, at a quarter to two in the afternoon, and walked in, stopping only to wipe his face on his sleeve and adjust his tie.

Pym hoped for nothing, and had no fear. Three shillings and a thin sixpence tinkled in his fob-pocket. He threw down the suitcase—his last chip—and said, quite calmly:

“Want to buy this stuff?”

The man behind the counter shook out the overcoat and spread out the suit. If he says ‘Fivepence’, I’ll take fivepence, Pym said to himself. I shall have done all I could.

“Did you want to sell the case, too?” the man asked.

“Of course. The case, too.”

Pym did not care. He opened his nostrils and sniffed the heavy odours of the secondhand clothes shop. There was a lingering smell of steam that had passed through tired trousers; a sour whiff of dry-cleaning; a tang of benzine, boot-polish, wax, perspiration, dead flowers, and tobacco.

“Hm!” said the man behind the counter. “Well, well! If you like I can let you have forty-five shillings for the lot.”

“Forty-five shillings?” said Pym, stupefied.

“You see, the case isn’t much good to me. Well, look here, call it forty-seven-and-six.”

Pym picked up the pound note, two ten-shilling notes, and three half-crowns. He felt weak and tearful, limp yet light, blissfully drowsy, like a woman after a sharp travail. He had fifty-one shillings. How wise he had been to ask for a loan of only twenty-five shillings on the typewriter; how prudent, how far-sighed! If he had been a fool who lived for the moment, like certain others he could name, he would have borrowed all he could get—three pounds, perhaps—and then where would he be? Now he could get back the machine, pay his rent, and had a bed to sleep in, a table to work on, a fine typewriter to work with, and something to eat. What more could a man desire? He had sold his last good suit and his overcoat, his only pair of decent shoes, and his presentable leather suitcase—a good twenty pounds’ worth—for forty-seven-and-six. What did that matter? ‘With my typewriter I can turn a sheet of toilet paper into a five-pound note,’ he said to himself. Hungry but exhilarated, curiously peaceful in spite of his sore feet and aching arms, he rode in a bus to Greenberg’s, near the Gray’s Inn Road, and got the typewriter. Pym could not wait until he was at home: he went to a café and, balancing the machine on his knees, took off the cover. It was good to look at—a big American portable with all the most recent devices, carefully tended, better than new. It had a tabular key, an asterisk, and plus and equal signs in case you wanted to type arithmetic. Pym could see his face in the gleaming black enamel. Looking lovingly into his own eyes he touched one of the keys. Instantly up leapt the letter ‘a’ and the platen received the imprint of it and then moved one space to the left. Here was perfection, absolute beauty, brightly bedecked with a red-and-black ribbon—efficiency wearing the colours of Anarchy.

Pym marvelled at the kindly considerate competence of pawnbrokers who treated strangers’ goods with such loving care. Lend your typewriter to a friend and it comes back broken, or full of fluff and candle-grease: lend it to a pawnbroker and he treats it as if it were his own.

When Pym left the teashop he did not carry the typewriter by the handle: he held it warmly under his right arm.

Busto came up from the basement as soon as Pym’s key rattled in the lock.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

Busto touched the palm of his right hand with the forefinger of his left and said: “Hah?”

“Eh? Oh! Oh yes, yes, of course—the rent, the rent—I clean forgot. It slipped out of my mind.”

“Sure—it slip out of your mind, and you slip out of my house. Well? You gonna lolly?”

“Let me see,” said Pym. “I owe you eleven shillings, I think. Rent payable in advance, if I remember rightly. Here it is.”

Busto’s curved thumb and forefinger snapped like the beak of a parrot; in their grip Pym’s two ten-shilling notes resembled a bedraggled paper tulip. “I got no change,” he said.

“Hold it for me,” said Pym, “and then I’ll only owe you two shillings for the next week.”

“Well, okay,” said Busto, gloomily. He dragged a bunch of keys out of his pocket, led the way upstairs, and unlocked Pym’s door.

Without pausing to take off his hat Pym uncovered the sleek, gleaming black typewriter and played with it for a little while. He worked the tabular key, the back-spacer, and the shift lock: voluptuously inserted a sheet of paper and typed The quick brown fox jumped right over the sly lazy dog and made a row of figures and punctuation marks. A cracked saucer in the cupboard was still greasy with the rancid traces of a bit of butter. Pym gathered them on a forefinger and anointed the groove along which the platen ran. Now, when he touched the space-bar, the machine seemed to purr like a well-fed black cat.

Then, as he stood back smiling and looking down at it, automatically licking his finger, he tasted the butter and remembered that he was very hungry. Pym smiled again: now he could smile at hunger, for he had five shillings and sixpence in silver. Half a crown of this he hid under one of the stacks of typescript, and then he went out again, locking the door and testing it twice—not before he had dusted the enamelled surfaces of the typewriter with one of the ends of his necktie.

*

The publicans, butchers, milkmen and grocers of the neighbourhood seldom gave credit to Busto’s tenants, who were sure to be gone to-morrow. Even the newsagents waited to see the colour of a penny before parting with a daily paper.

Pym stopped at the shop of Dai Davies, a dairyman who carried attractive sidelines of wrapped bread, canned food, tea and little cakes. Dai Davies, who went to bed at midnight and got up at three, looked like an old horse in a homespun jacket and a tweed cap; but his wife and daughters were scoured and starched, white from hairline to hem—quick women with lidless black eyes, who crackled with cleanliness. Pym ordered half a pint of milk, a two-ounce packet of tea at two-and-eight a pound, a soft white two-pound loaf of bread in a wax envelope, and half a pound of Cheddar cheese at eightpence a pound. While Mrs. Davies darted from shelf to shelf, Pym gnawed a thumbnail and stood vacillating, rocking from heels to toes, reading the labels on the tin cans. One label attracted him more than all the rest put together—a coloured photograph of strawberries.

“How much are these strawberries?”

“One-and-ten.”

Pym turned on his heel and looked at the peaches, the pineapple, the loganberries and the pears. He wanted strawberries now, more than anything in the world. Two or three minutes passed: Dai looked at Blodwen, Blodwen exchanged glances with Gwen, and they all watched Pym. He knew that strawberries were not to be thought of. For the price of one tin of strawberries he could buy two pounds of cheese and still have fivepence for bread and twopence for gas. A hot wetness, which he had to swallow, came up from under his tongue. One-and-tenpence would buy him cooked meat, liver sausage, brawn, veal-and-ham pie, herrings, salami—anything he liked in the delicatessen shop two streets away. He could buy a fillet steak, or seven pounds of potatoes; or some cigarettes and an inexhaustible quantity of lentils, split peas, or rice. He could buy cabbages, carrots, onions, and Saturday night trimmings of meat, and make a magnificent stew. He could buy a few Portuguese sardines, a quantity of Norwegain brisling, or several tins of herrings in tomato sauce. Who but a madman would buy tinned strawberries for one-and-ten?

He sucked his mouth dry, went to the counter, put down his money and picked up his parcel. Blodwen rang the cash register and scraped up the change.

“How much are strawberries?” said Pym, making conversation.

“Strawberries are one-and-ten, strawberries.”

“You have only large tins, I suppose?”

“Yes, only large tins there is.”

“Give me a tin of strawberries.”

Back in his room Pym cursed bitterly: he had a blunt knife with an ivorine handle, a steel knife with a black handle, one heavy fork marked with the name of a restaurant, one nickel-plated fork with uncertain prongs, two spoons, a rusty tea-strainer, and a wooden handle that had belonged to an ice-pick.

There was no tin-opener.

He went out to eat in a restaurant.

Pym was angry with himself. Strawberries were symbolic of all the folly in the world; he hated strawberries. In all his life Pym had never felt quite so disgusted and unhappy.

On his way to the Escurial Palace Restaurant in Charlotte Street, where anyone could buy a dish of spaghetti for ninepence, Pym began to cross-examine himself. What had he done? What did he mean to do, and with what motives? Where had he been all his life? What right had he to strut with peacock feathers in his hair while his toes were sticking out of his boots—to swagger from pawnshop to rag-and-bone shop and so, cock-a-hoop, to a hash joint?—he, with his one-and-tenpenny tin of strawberries, and no tin-opener! Who was he, what was he? He had sold his birthright for a typewriter and some clothes, pledged everything for a tin of salmon and a week in a dirty bed; and exchanged the clothes for the typewriter, another week in the same bed, and a tin of strawberries which he couldn’t even open. He was nothing. He was lost.

Near Warren Street someone called him by his name. He stopped and exclaimed: “Why, Win!”

“Johnny!” cried the girl called Win. “My God, Johnny!—This is a sort of an act of Providence’”

“It’s nice to see you again, Win.”

“I don’t suppose you really mean it, but you’ll never know how nice it is for me to see you again, Johnny. You’ve got thin: what have you been doing with yourself?”

“Oh … this and that. What’ve you been doing with yourself?”

“Don’t let’s go into that just now, Johnny. How is the book going?”

“It goes, it goes. How’s Ted?”

“Well, I suppose he’s all right. As a matter of fact, I don’t really know.”

“Is it like that?”

“I suppose it is in a way like that.”

“Since when?”

“Oh, since about a month ago. I was looking all around for you, but nobody seemed to know where you were. I’ve got all sorts of things I’ve been wanting to tell you. Where are you off to?”

Pym said: “I was thinking of going to get a cup of coffee and a sandwich, or something. And you?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Come and have a cup of coffee, Win.”

They walked twenty yards before Win said: “It seems so silly, somehow, saying you’re not going anywhere, doesn’t it?”

“Why should it?” said Pym. A little later, embarrassed by his own silence, he said: “Tell me about Ted.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, there’s nothing to tell. As a matter of fact, he found out about us.”

“I thought he knew,” said Pym.

“It’s a complicated business,” said Win. “I’ll tell you all about it when we sit down.”

They had reached the corner of Percy Street before Pym said: “I thought Ted knew all about you and me before you and he got together?”

“Well, you see, as a matter of fact, it isn’t that, entirely. I can’t talk in the street.”

Pym found a table in a comer near the door. “All I want is some coffee and a sandwich,” he said. “You go ahead.”

He had lost his appetite.

*

“… It wasn’t so much that Thing about you and me,” said Win. “As a matter of fact, Ted knew all about that. He was awfully sweet about it, as a matter of fact. I mean, we weren’t children, were we? As a matter of fact, it was the business about Ted’s microscope.”

“What microscope? I don’t know what you mean—microscope,” said Pym.

“I don’t want you to feel guilty about this, Johnny.”

“Why should I feel guilty? Tell me about the microscope.”

Win said: “We were good pals, you and I—weren’t we? I mean—friends. As a matter of fact, you were awfully good to me, weren’t you?”

“Oh, please!”

“Well, you remember after Ted and I got married?”

“I remember.”

“As a matter of fact, Johnny, you asked me for some money.”

“As I remember it, Win, you had asked me for some money for Ted. I let you have the two pounds. You knew perfectly well that if it had been for yourself I should never have asked for the money back,” said Pym, smoothing his forehead with an anxious hand. “You know me well enough to know that it is not in my nature to go around dunning people. But you did say it was for Ted, and after all you were married to Ted, and …”

“It’s my own fault, Johnny. I deserve everything I got. As a matter of fact, I deserve twenty times more, and then some more. You remember, Johnny, what good pals we were? You were always so sweet, Johnny. My God, you were decent! As a matter of fact, you’re the most decent person I’ve ever known. Well, you know I was pretty well dressed then, and all that sort of thing? I know you asked for your money back only because you were, as a matter of fact, hard up—otherwise you wouldn’t have. I know you, Johnny! Well, as a matter of fact I didn’t have a bean. And do you know what I did? I pawned Ted’s microscope.”

“But why, for heaven’s sake? You must have been crazy!”

“Well, as a matter of fact I must have been, rather. I’m an awful bloody little fool. It must be the way I’m made, I suppose. But you’d have lent me so much more than I could pay back, and you really had been so bloody nice and kind….”

Red with shame and anger, Pym said: “I never wanted anything back that I gave you. I only called it ‘loans’ to spare your feelings. I wish to God I’d dropped down dead before I took that two pounds from you. I would never have taken money from you if I’d been starving; only you did say that the last couple of pounds you borrowed was for Ted; and you did look pretty prosperous; and it was you who brought up the subject of repayment in the first place. Damn you, couldn’t you have made some excuse—said you couldn’t get the money after all—instead of behaving like a crazy little crook and pawning other people’s microscopes?”

Win’s large, childish blue eyes filled with tears, and her mouth quivered as she replied: “You’re right. I’m an awful little liar, as a matter of fact. When I borrowed the last two pounds off of you, it wasn’t really for Ted at all. It was for me.”

“Then why in God’s name did you have to go and tell me that it was for Ted? Why lie? And, incidentally, why put me in a false position? Couldn’t you have said you wanted the money for yourself? Would I have refused?”

A big tear bounced down Win’s cheek and ran into her mouth.

“Oh, don’t you see, that’s just it! You’d lent me so much already … I was ashamed. And then, afterwards … well … I was afraid you’d meet Ted and ask him for the money. As a matter of fact, I was terrified. You know how it is, Johnny—one thing led to another. I told him I’d borrowed his microscope to lend to my young nephew.”

“What young nephew?”

“I haven’t got a young nephew, Johnny. That was a lie, too; but I had to tell him something, didn’t I? Well, the long and the short of it is, he found the pawn-ticket. That’s how it all came out.”

“All came out!” cried Pym, shrill with horror. “All came out? Are you sitting there telling me that you told Ted you’d sold his microscope to give me money? Me?”

“I didn’t say ‘give’, Johnny, I swear I didn’t. I said: ‘I owed Johnny so much: he was marvellous with money when he had it; and when he was flat broke … I considered it sort of paying a debt of honour.’ That’s what I said, Johnny.”

Pym clutched at his hair. “I hope to God he punched you right on the nose, you damned little fool! You bloody little fool! You——”

“No, he never laid his hands on me. You know Ted, Johnny—old school tie, and all that sort of thing. But there was a frightful scene. He tore up all my clothes and kicked me out. He said,” said Win, beginning to shake, gulp, sniff, and hiccup, “he said … he said … he said I was nothing but a cheap little whore. And I’m not, Johnny. You know I’m not, Johnny! There’s only been two men in my life, really—you and Ted. None of the others ever mattered—you believe that, Johnny, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes; I believe you, I believe you! But don’t start crying here.”

“Where else can I cry? I haven’t got anywhere else to go and cry. I’m sorry … I’m sorry, Johnny … it’ll be over in a minute. I was sort of bearing up … until I saw you in the street … brave-little-woman-keeping-stiff-upper-lip kind of stuff … and then … Oh, Johnny, Johnny, you’re so bloody kind, so bloody sweet … you’re the only really good person I’ve ever met in all my life. And I hadn’t eaten for two days, and you bought me all this lovely spaghetti, although I know I’ve been mean and wicked to you, and you don’t like me a bit. I’m sorry, Johnny,” said Win, blowing her nose wetly into a full handkerchief. “It’s all over now. I’m sorry I made a scene. Don’t worry, Johnny. I’ll be bright and cheerful now. But you do forgive me, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes, I forgive you,” said Pym, sick at heart and heavy with foreboding. “Have a bit of cheese.”

“I’d love a bit of cheese, Johnny, but tell me: are you in the money?”

“That’s neither here nor there. I asked you if you wanted a bit of cheese. Stop balancing my books and say yes or no.”

“Yes,” said Win, smiling gratefully.

“One cheese,” said Pym.

While Win ate her cheese, Pym picked up and ate the little hard-baked flakes that had fallen from the crusts of the rolls.

“You know what? As a matter of fact, once in a while, I believe in God,” said Win. “Ted always used to say that God, as a matter of fact, is, sort of Goodness in people. Do you remember that thing about forgiving your enemies and loving your neighbour as yourself? That sort of thing is God, if you know what I mean. Johnny, I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I know we were ever such good pals once, until I spoiled everything. You know, one of the things there was between Ted and me? He always thought I was still in love with you … What are you laughing at?”

“I wasn’t laughing,” said Pym.

“I suppose you think Ted was pretty crazy?”

“I suppose he was,” said Pym.

“Well, as a matter of fact, Johnny, he wasn’t so very crazy really. I daresay you know it: when you get to wander about with nowhere to go, you start thinking; and I shouldn’t be surprised if Ted was right.”

Meaning to change the subject Pym said: “Well, what’s your next move?”

“I don’t know, Johnny. There had better be a next move, because I’m going to be in a jam. I haven’t got anything, as a matter of fact, except what I stand up in. As a matter of fact …”

“Well, what?”

“No, I don’t want to tell you. Putting it another way, there are all sorts of reasons why I’ve got to eat. You know, eat and sleep, and keep warm, and all that. And to be perfectly frank, as a matter of fact, if I couldn’t manage to eat and sleep in a pleasant way … Well, I was getting ready to do so in an unpleasant way.”

“What do you mean exactly?”

“You’re understanding. Anyway, as a matter of fact, I don’t suppose anything I say will make you despise me more than you do already. The name Ted called me wasn’t very far wrong. Do you remember when I spoke to you a little while ago near Warren Street station?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” said Pym, with tired irony.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I was trying to work up enough nerve to …”

Feeling the eye of the waitress, Pym ordered coffee, and then, leaning across the table, he said quickly and breathlessly: “Don’t be such a damned fool! You mustn’t do these things. Where will it get you? What will you get out of it? Less than nothing. I know you, Win. You haven’t the temperament. For God’s sake, don’t be such a fool. You’ve been broke before, haven’t you? You can be broke again. Besides, there are other things to do. I swear to God, scrubbing floors is easier work. You get more out of——”

“I don’t know how to scrub a floor. I couldn’t even get a job as a waitress. You know that, Johnny. Even say … well, say you were the manager of Woolworth’s—would you give me a job selling sixpenny writing-pads? I’m not good for anything, Johnny, as a matter of fact. I’ve been trying to get some ‘Extra’ work on the films, and there’s a man who says he’s going to be able to give me a job doing Market Research … you know, you go from door to door and ask people what soap they use. But I’m so tired, Johnny. I need a good long sleep, and a bath, and a square meal or two—because I’m not myself. Once I’m myself again, well, then I’ll be myself again, if you understand what I mean. And also, I don’t know whether I mentioned it before, I’m going to have a baby.”

“Good God!”

“Ted swears it isn’t his, Johnny—but it is, it is!” said Win, shedding tears again. “It is! I never was actually unfaithful to Ted. We were happy together, Johnny—for a little while. Then all of a sudden he started to get suspicious, but he had no reason to be, as a matter of fact, and after that business of the microscope—when he threw me out, Johnny—he got cruel, cruel! ‘How can you do this to me when you know I’m pregnant?’ And Ted said: ‘That’s the father’s worry,’ and I told you what he called me after that. And here I am, and that’s that.”

Turning over the small change in his pocket Pym said, heavily: “If you don’t mind my asking: how much of this infant is there? I mean, how long has it been going on?”

“Nearly four months. I suppose that’s why I’m so emotional and silly.”

“You never were anything else,” said Pym. “I never knew you do or say anything that wasn’t somehow stupid.”

“I better go now.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know—just go.”

“Well, look here: I think I can probably get you a room for a day or two. Where did you sleep last night?”

“Mona let me sleep on her sofa, but this morning she told me she had someone coming.”

“Come along with me.”

*

Pym said to Busto: “This friend of mine wants a room. Her luggage is coming along.”

“Hah!”

“Well, you know I gave you a pound this afternoon? That leaves me nine shillings in the clear. Would you mind taking that on account until, say, to-morrow?”

“To-morrow never comes,” said Busto. “Anyway, no transfer against the law.”

“It isn’t against the law to transfer money paid in advance in a case like this,” said Pym.

“Against my rule. No transfer.”

Win was standing, limp and relaxed, swaying from side to side. “Where is the lady going to sleep?” cried Pym.

“I ain’t the Salvation Army,” said Busto, “and no women brought in. Against the law.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Win.

“Listen, Mr. Busto, have you any objection to this lady sleeping to-night in my room if I go elsewhere?”

Busto scratched his chest with his chin and, after some meditation, said: “No. But no transfer: no funny business.”

Pym took Win to his room. “Here is a room,” he said, hospitably, screwing a few pennies into the gas meter. “A bed, a roof, a fire. There’s some tea, milk, bread and cheese. Make yourself comfortable. By the way, there’s a tin of strawberries if you can open it.”

“Strawberries! Do you know, I’ve had a craving for strawberries, as a matter of fact?”

Pym had an idea. He knocked at his neighbour’s door and said: “Do forgive me if I disturb you—do you happen to have a tin-opener I might borrow just for two minutes? It’s to open a tin.”

The door closed. Pym heard a drawer opening and the clatter of cutlery under an uncertain hand. Then the door opened again and a tremulous little hand, the left hand of a woman without a wedding ring, thrust out a blunt tin-opener with a cracked unpainted handle. Before he had finished thanking the lady to whom the hand and the tin-opener belonged, the door slammed. He heard the snick of a bolt.

Pym opened the tin of strawberries. “Now there you are,” he said. “Make yourself at home. Sleep, eat, drink the tea, and I hope you enjoy the strawberries. I’ve come round to hating the sight of the things. I’ll look in to-morrow morning to see how you’re getting on. But do me one favour: don’t touch those papers on the table and leave the typewriter alone.”

“As if I’d touch anything,” said Win, while Pym covered the typewriter. “But what are you eating? Where are you sleeping?”

“Give you my word, I’m all right.”

“Won’t you kiss me good-night?”

“To-morrow,” said Pym, wondering how he could ever have looked upon her without disgust. “To-morrow. I’ll see you to-morrow. Don’t think about anything until then. Just sit down, eat whatever you find, and make yourself comfortable. One thing——”

“Yes, Johnny?”

“I don’t want to appear inhospitable, Win, but if you wouldn’t mind leaving me, say, about half of the tea and some of the bread….”

“Oh, Johnny, you are so sweet!”

“My house is yours, as they say; but if you could manage to move around without touching the table, I should be very grateful.”

“I’m terribly grateful to you, Johnny.”

“Il n’y a pas de quoi. Just have a good rest.”

“God bless.”

“I’ll be back in the morning.”

“I wish you could stay with me, Johnny.”

“Out of the question. So long.”

Pym was too tired to walk much more. He dozed in a café all night. At nine in the morning he went back to the house. Busto, as usual, was lurking in the shadow between the passage and the darkness under the house.

“Lady leave a note,” he said, handing over a sheet of Pym’s typewriting paper folded like a spill.

“She left?”

“’Arf an hour ago. Says, give you this.”

Pym unfolded the note and stopped to read it in the dull, nightmarish light of a little round stained-glass window on the first-floor landing—a window like the panel in a diver’s helmet. In this light everything was grey-green. He read:

“Johnny darling—It was horrible to think of you giving up your room to me after I’d treated you so badly like the hopeless little bitch that I am. You really have heaped coals of fire on my head and returned good for evil. Darling Johnny, you are the only true Christian I have ever known, and also the only real gentleman, and when I think of all you have done for me, so much more than I could possibly deserve, I feel funny and trembly inside. I know you used to like me quite a bit once upon a time, but you don’t now, which is only natural—and you know I loved you quite a lot, Johnny, as a matter of fact still do and always will. I don’t suppose you will ever know how ashamed I am of everything, dearest Johnny, and I am not going to stay to be a burden to you. Everything  was over between you and me quite a while ago, and I have no right to drag things on by making you feel sorry for me. I slept beautifully in your beautiful warm bed and only used a little bit of the tea. I put the rest of the strawberries on a plate in case they went bad in the tin, but a lot of the juice ran over; I am a lousy housewife and a lousy everything else. My darling Johnny, do not think too unkindly of me, but I’ve had just about as much as I can stand, and am going home to father with my tail between my legs—and that is about all there is going to be there for the rest of my life, because I don’t seem to be fit to live like other women. Do not be angry with me, Johnny, because somehow I will repay sometime.

Win.

Under the signature there was the imprint of a kiss in bright red lipstick.

Pym sighed. ‘I have been too harsh with the poor girl,’ he said to himself in sad reproach. ‘Too much false pride, that is the trouble with me: it turns me into an absolute brute. Gentleman! What kind of a gentleman makes a guest feel like an intruder? And now the poor girl is struggling back home to her swine of a father—probably walking all the way to Buckinghamshire….’

Before putting the note in his pocket he looked at it again and saw that it was typewritten.

‘I did tell her distinctly not to touch the things on the table,’ he thought.

He opened his door. There was no doubt about it, Win was gone. The bedclothes were on the floor. Win must have burnt up all the gas: the tap of the gas fire was up, the broken asbestos elements were grey and cold, but the air was like hot sour cream. A fork lay on his pillow, in the middle of a pink stain shaped like South America, and the strawberry tin was empty. Win had put what was left of the strawberries in a shallow plate on top of his typescript; he saw five strawberries in a lake of rose-coloured syrup, a quarter of a pint of which had overflowed.

Pym cried out in agony. Before he could take up the plate he had to stoop, put his lips to the rim, and drink a sickening mouthful. Then he put the plate on the gas stove and looked at his typescript. At least eighty pages were gummed together, unpresentable. He had no carbon copy.

Pym emptied the water in which Win had washed, poured into the basin a little clear water from the jug, peeled off one sticky sheet and tried to wash it. The cheap spongy paper began to disintegrate. He lifted it tenderly and laid it on the bed. Then he turned back to the table and saw that the typewriter was no longer there.

Win had stolen it.

He picked up the plate of strawberries, meaning to throw it at the door.

Syrup ran into his sleeve. Holding the plate by the edges, like a gramophone record, Pym dropped it into the wastepaper basket.

‘Now what am I to do?’ he wondered.

CHAPTER FOUR

AT last, desperately shaking his ragged mind like a worn-out coat, he felt something resistant, something that crackled down in the darkness among the fluff and the dust. There yet remained something which had slipped through a hole in a pocket: it might be a bill, or a banknote; he could feel it only through thicknesses of napless cloth. Still, it made the heart beat.

Pym went to the editorial offices of the Sunday Special and asked for the Features Editor, a tired, fat, brusque man in whose flat white face a long pink mouth writhed like a worm in a puddle of paste.

“Oh, Mr. Steeple,” said Pym, “it’s quite a time since I did anything for you. I think I’ve got an idea.”

The long pink worm took hold of its tail. The Features Editor said: “Oh?”

“I was thinking of calling it I Ate My Hat—And Coat.”

“Not a bad title. What’s the general idea?”

Pym outlined the events of the past thirty-six hours, embellishing here, censoring there, telling the story with breathless gaiety.

“It sounds all right, Pym. Yes, you write that one. It doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Well,” said Pym, “the fact of the matter is … I want the use of a typewriter—just for an hour or so.”

“How long is it going to be?”

“About two thousand words.”

“How long would it take you?”

“A couple of hours, at the most. Well—say three.”

The long pink worm curled, buried itself, wriggled, and came to the surface coiled about the quivering tip of a brown tongue. “I can let you use a machine for a couple of hours, if you like.”

“About how much will you be paying?”

“Well, I don’t know. It depends whether I like it.”

“Assuming you like it?”

“Eight guineas, if it’s okay.”

“Say ten,” said Pym, intoxicated with hope.

“Write it and I’ll see,” said the Features Editor. “I hope you realise, by the way, that I don’t make a practice of this kind of business. It’s only because I think you’ve got something, Pym, if only you settle down and put your mind to it.”

*

Three-and-a-half hours later Pym gave Mr. Steeple twelve typewritten pages.

“Look here, old man,” said Steeple, “I’ve got an appointment with Professor Morris, old Jay Cross Morris. Article on strategy. Enemy at our gates kind of stuff.” The Features Editor had been out to lunch: the worm had stopped writhing and was asleep, loosely curled into an indulgent scroll.

“You couldn’t take a quick look at this, I suppose?”

“Sure I will, Pym! You bet I will! A bit later. But I’ve got to see this old bastard. He’s leaking interesting facts like … like an incarcerated bull. Ring back later. No, I tell you what—you ring back to-morrow. I’ll get a chance to breathe by to-morrow.”

Pym’s voice became limp and heavy; fell back, and died as he said: “You couldn’t manage to look at it now, by any chance, I suppose? I have dates and things to-morrow.”

“Well,” said Steeple, who was not unacquainted with the agonised mouthing of stranded men inarticulately floundering on the rocks, “ring me about five o’clock. If you’re short for the moment, would a quid or two help?”

“No, no, thanks all the same,” said Pym. “I’m quite all right. I’ll ring you about five.”

There was a new hole in his left shoe, and he was hungry; so he hurried back to Busto’s. His rent was paid, he had something to eat and money to put in the gas-meter. Eight or nine pennies in the slot, a pillow on the greasy floor of the gas-oven, a dozen deep breaths … Why not, thought Pym; why not?

But Busto was waiting for him. “Hoi! Mista Pym—gennaman a-see you,” he said in a stage whisper. “Police.”

“Police? For the love of God, what’s the trouble now?’

“I dono, I dowanna know!”

A thickset, dark-eyed man with a loose mouth and tight nostrils came out of a shadow and said: “Mr. Pym?”

“I’m Mr. Pym. Yes?”

“Allow me to introduce myself—Detective-Sergeant Packard. Pleasure of a word with you?”

“Yes, of course. Would you care to come up to my room? It’s not much of a place,” said Pym.

“Honoured. Sorry to intrude.”

“Please come up. I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a mess….”

“Thanks, Mr. Pym.”

Pym locked his door and said: “What can I do for you?”

“I don’t want to disturb you in any way, Mr. Pym. You know a lady named Winifred Victoria Joyce?”

“Win Joyce? Yes. Why?”

“Long time since you saw her last?”

“Why no, not very long. Why?”

“See Miss Joyce in the last twenty-four hours, for instance?”

“Yes, I did. Why?”

“Did you give Miss Joyce anything?”

“Why?”

“Give her a typewriter?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Look, Mr. Pym: do you own a typewriter?”

“Well, yes. Why?”

“A Paramount Portable Typewriter, Number PWS/67565?”

“Why, yes: 67565 adds up to 29; 9 and 2 make 11, and 11 is a lucky number—that’s how I remember it … Why?”

“You pawned that typewriter at Greenberg’s, didn’t you?”

“Well … yes. But why?”

“Sorry to keep bothering you, Mr. Pym. You got the typewriter from the City & Western Typewriter Company? On hire-purchase?”

“I’ve paid for it.”

“I know. You gummed the receipt inside the lid, didn’t you?”

“I did,” said Pym, blushing, “because occasionally I had to pawn it, and pawnshops want to know if the typewriter is really yours. It saves trouble to stick the receipt inside.”

“You got it back from Greenberg’s yesterday, though?”

“Well, yes. It was only a temporary …”

“Shortage?”

“Shortage. But what makes you ask?”

“A certain party took your typewriter to Greenberg’s pawnshop this morning and asked them to lend money on it. See. Said it was their property. Greenberg’s clerk remembered you got it out yesterday. Asked a few questions. Clerk was told you’d given that typewriter away. Is that so?”

“Look here, detective-sergeant,” said Pym, uneasily finical. “I wish you’d tell me what you’re driving at.”

“Not driving at anything, Mr. Pym, I assure you. Routine enquiry. Did you give Miss Joyce your typewriter?”

Hazily remembering something he had read in a novel, terrified of the Law as a child is terrified of the dark, Pym said: “Yes and no.”

He looked and felt, now, like a man with a secret. The detective-sergeant said: “Now come on, Mr. Pym! You give a thing or you don’t give a thing. Which was it?”

“I gave the lady to understand that my house was her house. You know the kind of thing,” said Pym, trying to laugh: “—‘Everything I Have Is Yours’—as in the song. You know what I mean. ‘Help yourself,’ you say to somebody, ‘go ahead and help yourself to anything you want.’ Do you see?”

“That’s right. You need a typewriter in your business, I should think.”

“Can’t get on without one,” said Pym. “God knows how men like Dickens wrote books as big as Dombey & Son all by hand. No wonder they died——”

“—You got your typewriter out of pawn to give it away to Miss Joyce, I take it?”

“Well, no, not exactly … no. Miss Joyce was welcome to an indefinite loan of it, so to speak. It’s my fault—I ought to have scraped that receipt off the inside of the cover. To be quite frank, Detective-Sergeant, I don’t know what all this fuss is about. What is it?”

“Miss Joyce——”

“—She could easily have misunderstood me, don’t you see? I have a loose way of talking, as you must have noticed.”

“Miss Joyce is under arrest, Mr. Pym. She’s been knocking stuff off right and left. There’s a nine-carat gold watch and an eighteen-carat double-curb Albert chain, a walnut bed, twenty-five leather-bound books, and a valuable microscope in a mahogany case. Now your typewriter. Why don’t you charge her? She’s best pinned down, for everybody’s benefit,” said the detective-sergeant.

“Charge her? I don’t want to charge her,” said Pym, “why should I?”

“Listen,” said Detective-Sergeant Packard, very patiently. “I’m a bit older than you, Mr. Pym, and I’ve had a bit more experience than you of that class of woman. Give her an inch and she’ll take a mile. Let her get away with it again, and one of these days she’ll steal something off of somebody that really needs it. She wants to be checked, you know; you’d be doing her a kindness to let her see that it isn’t as easy as she thinks.”

In an uncertain voice Pym said: “I daresay you’re right, Detective-Sergeant, but …. it’s a difficult thing to explain … You know how our sort of people get the habit of helping themselves? You borrow my trousers; I borrow your boots: it’s not stealing. There’s a kind of understanding about it. I would have got the typewriter back in due course. Personally, I don’t want to do anything at all about it.”

The detective-sergeant shrugged his heavy shoulders so that the chair creaked, and he laughed. “You don’t need that typewriter, I suppose? You don’t need it in your business?” he said.

“Oh yes, I need it all right. All I want is to get it back. I’m not going to prosecute anybody.”

“How did you think you were going to get it back? I suppose you know she gave it to her boy-friend?”

“What boy-friend?”

“Do you know a fellow called American Henry?”

“Never heard of him. Why? Who is he? Should I know him?”

“A bad’n. He’s been inside two or three times—living on the immoral earnings, loitering with intent, and burglary. Henry’s your girl-friend’s boy-friend. I thought you would have known.”

“But that’s impossible!” said Pym, taking Win’s note out of his pocket and glancing at it again.

“May I?” said Detective-Sergeant Packard, taking the paper neatly between his fingers.

“You may not! That is a private letter!”

The detective-sergeant, who had skimmed the cream of it in a quick diagonal glance, handed it back with an apology, and said: “Mr. Pym, you’re an educated man; you know right from wrong. It seems to me that you’ve had enough to put up with from this young woman already. You’ve got your work to do, your typing. I daresay, what with one thing and another, you’ve got trouble enough. You don’t mind my saying so, I hope; but I don’t suppose you’d be living in a place like this, having to put your typewriter in and out of pawn, if you didn’t have to struggle. I’m all for it myself; but I’m just saying—people like you go through the mill; and good luck to you!”

“Well, I suppose so …” said Pym.

“Now you take the case of this young woman—Miss Joyce. All she does is grab hold of what she can get. You know how it is,” said the detective-sergeant. “You hang on longest to whatever is most valuable to you. If you’re a medical student, you hang on to your microscope. Or if, say, you’re a sentimental sort of fellow, you might hang on to your father’s watch and chain. If you’re a journalist, like yourself, you go without food and drink to keep your typewriter. Isn’t that so? … Well, along comes Winifred Joyce, and helps herself to everything you’ve been trying to hang on to. She knows that in your circle people are used to being borrowed from, so she takes advantage of it and pinches everything she can lay her hands on. And what for? To give to American Henry. She pinches your property for him! She went straight to American Henry as soon as you turned your back. Cover up for her and you cover up for American Henry, and he’s a nasty piece of work, if ever there was one. I’m telling you for your own information—he talked once. He said: ‘Win got it off a sucker. A sucker gave it to Win.’ … And there you are, being a gentleman, Mr. Pym! Now honestly, you didn’t give her that typewriter, did you?”

“No,” said Pym. “‘Sucker,’ did they say? I gave—well, it doesn’t matter. ‘Sucker.’ How right they are!”

“Speaking as man to man, Mr. Pym, the fact of the matter is, she stole your typewriter.”

“Yes,” said Pym. “Sucker is right.”

“I mean to say, seeing the facts face to face, she got into your room under false pretences, and just pinched it.”

“I told her not to touch anything on the table,” said Pym. “Sucker— that’s me!”

“And the minute your back was turned….”

Pym was angry. He glanced from the stained pillow to the typescript of his novel, sticky with strawberry juice; and then looked for a long time at the strawberries in the pink puddle on the plate in which a young cockroach, stupefied with feeding, was blissfully drowning. This enraged him. He flipped the cockroach to the floor, stamped on it until the gas-stove rattled, and cried: “God damn it, yes! I charge Win Joyce with the theft of my typewriter! The cheap little sneak!”

“Better come along and do it now,” said the detective-sergeant.

At five o’clock Pym telephoned the Features Editor, who said: “There’s ten guineas here for you if you want to come along and get it, Pym. That’s not bad stuff at all.”

Pym left the telephone booth opposite the police station and walked up the street singing. He took a bus to the office, where the cashier paid him in clean notes and new silver. That night Pym dined at the Café Royal, drank a five-and-sixpenny bottle of wine, and lent a man ten shillings.

Busto heard him skipping upstairs. Before he went to bed Pym counted his money: eight pounds ten in notes, nine shillings in silver, and three-halfpence. Raising his eyes to the cracked ceiling he said: “Lord God in Heaven, for the life of me I cannot imagine where the odd halfpenny comes from, but I thank Thee with all my heart.”

He was still smiling when he awoke at eight o’clock next morning.

*

Two days later, at about ten o’clock in the morning, Busto knocked at his door and said that there was a gentleman to see him. “A genelman. A proper genelman. Mr. Mellish.”

Pym ran downstairs and saw a little old man waiting in the passage; a sweet, healthy, red, shiny old man who reminded him of an apple. His ears and nose were full of hair as white and crisp as frost. His hard little hands were interlocked on the knob of a blackthorn stick.

“You must be Mr. Pym,” he said. “Allow me to present myself. My name is Mellish. You, I believe, are Mr. Pym. My unfortunate stepdaughter Winifred called you ‘Johnny’. How do you do?”

“How do you do, sir? Yes, my name is Pym. Win—I mean Winifred—did call me Johnny. I am sorry, sir, to have to receive you in a place like this.”

“Oh, vie de bohème, vie de bohème! If I could have a word with you in private….”

“If you don’t mind coming up to my room, Mr. Mellish … I live,” said Pym, “in a bit of a dump. I’m afraid you’ll have to take me as you find me. I’m not even tidied up, up there … Mind that step, sir, it’s mended with tin. You side-step that bit of tin—that’s fine. I see you can adjust yourself to wherever you find yourself.”

“Vie de bohème, vie de bohème?”

The old gentleman sat on the chair, with his hat on his knees. He said that he had already breakfasted, and that tea disagreed with him. There was something about him that made Pym feel comfortable.

“I daresay you can guess for what reason I have called,” said Mr. Mellish.

Pym grinned uneasily and said: “I suppose so.”

“About that silly girl of mine. You’re a man of the world, and I suppose you guess. She means no harm, you know, Mr. Pym.”

“Oh, I know, I know.”

“If anything—wild.”

“Nothing more than wild, I quite agree, sir.”

“But I see you have charged her with stealing a typewriter of yours. No, no, say no more about it, Mr. Pym—I know, I know. I don’t blame you. Winifred always has been an unscrupulous little thief. I used to be an architect, you know: I was presented with a set of ivory instruments in a silver-mounted case. She stole them. She stole most of my best books. Between ourselves—as victim to victim, as one might say—she started doing this sort of thing when she was seven years old, even before I married her mother. She’s a naughty little girl, Mr. Pym, and I’m very cross with her. I daresay you’re cross with her, too?”

“Well, I was, yes, Mr. Mellish. In a way, I suppose I am, I am still.”

“Mr. Pym, I don’t blame you for prosecuting Winifred. She deserves it. It will do her the world of good. But at the same time I find myself in a certain position. I’m an old man, you see, very old and very foolish; and I promised her mother to look after her—so what can I do? Time after time I tell myself that I’ve done enough, that I’ll never do anything more again, that this is the last time … and so on and so forth. But every time I soften, I weaken, Mr. Pym. I was very fond of her mother. Perhaps you are a little young to understand this sort of thing?”

“No, no, Mr. Mellish, I do understand exactly what you mean.”

“It would do her no harm at all to serve a sentence in prison; in fact, on the contrary, it would do her good. I swore, last time, that on the next occasion I would not lift a finger. But here I am again. I don’t know if you believe in psychology, as they call it, Mr. Pym?”

“Well …”

“Well, Mr. Pym, Winifred’s mother had a dreadful life with her first husband, and then had to do this and that to make ends meet—until she did me the honour of marrying me. And by that time the little girl had reached what is known as an operative age. You see, Mr. Pym,” said the old man, gently smiling, “fundamentally, Winifred is as honest a girl as breathes. Except for the convenience of the moment I’ve never known her to lie. She’s had a bad start, Mr. Pym—you must realise that?”

“Oh, I do, I assure you I do!”

“Then be merciful, Mr. Pym. She took my instruments for your sake when you were prostrate with appendicitis——”

“She did what?”

“She would never have taken my instruments for herself, Mr. Pym, and she told me that what she did was for you. Winifred has never lied to me for her own sake. Do you know that when she was thirteen years old she took money out of my pocket to buy French nougat for a little girl friend of hers? Buying affection, Mr. Pym, buying affection! The pathos of it, when you consider it! But no doubt you think me a foolish old man?”

Pym had leapt up in great excitement. “My dear sir,” he said, “I give you my word of honour I’ve never been prostrate with appendicitis in my life! I can prove it!” He even unbuckled his belt with the intention of showing his unscarred belly; but the old man raised his hands so forlornly and looked up so dispiritedly that Pym was ashamed, and begged his pardon.

“Then I must be mistaken, Mr. Pym. It must have been someone else who had the appendicitis. It’s out of the question that Winifred would tell a deliberate lie like that; in fact, it’s impossible—it is not in her character; she couldn’t. No, no, I’m not as young as I used to be and my memory is failing me just a little. I’m seventy-two, Mr. Pym; so perhaps you will be a little indulgent?”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Mellish. You startled me, or I wouldn’t have been so brusque. Appendicitis!” said Pym, bristling with indignation.

“I don’t know what grievance you have against Winifred,” said the old man; “I daresay you have your own good reasons for wanting revenge.”

“I don’t want any revenge,” said Pym, wretchedly.

“Come now: is there not some little private grievance that prompts you to throw the child into jail like a common felon, Mr. Pym? No doubt she owes you money: she owes several people money.”

“She doesn’t owe me anything, sir, I assure you—nothing at all.”

“It’s chivalrous of you to say so, Mr. Pym, but I happen to know different. You don’t understand the girl as I do—you see, I dandled her on my knee when she was a mere child. Winifred is the soul of honour. She has made her little mistakes, as who has not? But she never yet failed to make—you’re not a religious man, I suppose, Mr. Pym?—an act of contrition. She has always been really and truly sorry. She has a frank, open nature, Mr. Pym, and couldn’t conceal anything—however discreditable it might appear—if her life depended on it! I admire your attitude, sir, but Winifred has already told me that she borrowed money from you after you and she were … no longer together.”

He took out a red-covered notebook, slid a red forefinger down a page and, with something like triumph, said: “Thirty-seven pounds two shillings.”

“Let’s forget it, Mr. Mellish; forget all about it.”

“Winifred is fanatically punctilious. I want you to let me pay you that money, Mr. Pym.”

“The lady owes me nothing, Mr. Mellish.”

“But I want to pay you, Mr. Pym. I wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t. Please let me. I should keep worrying about it. Now do, please, Mr. Pym; please humour a silly old man—do let me pay back the money she borrowed after you had … ah … separated.”

“All right, then,” said Pym. “And you can skip the two shillings. I suppose money she asked me for after we’d parted could be considered as a debt.”

“No, no, if you’ll pardon me—I want this to be clear. Thirty-seven pounds two shillings. I want everything to be clear, if you’ll excuse me—clear and above board.” The old gentleman took banknotes out of a wallet and found a florin in a waistcoat pocket. “Now Winifred owes you nothing.”

“I never said she did owe me anything,” said Pym, dog-tired; “I told you before.”

“I honour you for that, Mr. Pym. I honour you for it, upon my soul I do! And now, will you have mercy?”

“What do you mean—have mercy!”

“You’ll withdraw your charge?”

“Why, yes, of course, naturally. I didn’t want to charge her,” said Pym. It was impossible to say to this old gentleman that his stepdaughter was a whore and a thief for whom hanging was too good, and that she was best locked up for the good of the community. Pym had a tender regard for people who found themselves old and feeble in a young and vigorous world. “Of course I’ll withdraw the charge. I was only persuaded to charge her in a moment of irritation.”

“God bless you! God bless you! And will you give me, for my records, a receipt for this amount?” said Win’s stepfather, laying a hand on the money he had counted out. “I have a twopenny stamp.” As he spoke he pulled a flat leather case out of a pocket and opened it, uncovering visiting cards and a book of stamps.

Pym wrote a few lines and read them aloud:

“I hereby acknowledge receipt of £37 2s. This is payment in full of all moneys advanced by me to Miss Winifred Victoria Joyce….”

He was proud of the word moneys, and felt that advanced made a legal document of it. Having written his signature and the date across the stamp, he looked at the document with complacent gravity and gave it to the old gentleman, who nodded, smiled and said: “I’m very relieved, Mr. Pym, very relieved. Concerning the matter of the withdrawal of the charge, do you happen to know the proper procedure?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I suppose I give you something in writing to that effect,” said Pym. “I don’t know a great deal about these formalities. I should think a signed note should just about cover it, don’t you?”

“I rather fancy there are forms to fill in. Wouldn’t it be better if you came along to the police station with me?”

Pym shook his head. He could see the contemptuous curling of the Inspector’s lips under the steely bristle of the clipped moustache, and feel the numbing sting of a frostbitten voice saying: Make your mind up, can’t you? “No, I don’t think there’s much to be gained by that. I’ll give you a note to cover everything. Then you could take the note to the station, and if they want me to sign anything, you can rest assured that they’ll ask me soon enough.”

“Perhaps you’ll be so kind as to write the little document? It might be just as well if you made it as clear as possible….”

Pym wrote:

I impetuously charged Miss Winifred Victoria Joyce with stealing my typewriter. I hereby withdraw this charge. In charging Miss Joyce I was prompted by a momentary irritation.

Pym never knew when to stop. He was full of magnanimity now; ready—even anxious—to cut the throat of pride on the altar of dignity.

Everything is now resolved. The fault was entirely mine.

He signed his name with a flourish and gave the paper to the old gentleman, who thanked him in a broken voice.

“I don’t really want this money,” said Pym.

“Thank you for humouring an old man. God bless you, Mr. Pym. You are a gentleman. I had begun to believe that the breed had become extinct.”

“I never lend, you see—I give,” said Pym.

“I know, I know. Not to put too fine a point upon it, she was your mistress, I believe … silly girl, silly little generous girl; foolish, soft-hearted, passionate little girl!”

Pym blushed. He was shocked—not because the old man knew that Win had been living with him, but because he had used the word passionate.

But when he went back to his room, having conducted his visitor to the door, Pym began to sing a cheerful song in a raucous voice. He was rich—rich and powerful, powerful and happy. “I’m sitting on top of the world …” he sang. Now he could buy strawberries, ham, tongue, tyepwriter ribbons, cigarettes by the hundred, new shoes, butter—everything a man needs in order to finish a book. But when he closed his door, the little bedroom breathed its stuffiness right into his face. The stained top sheet of finished work on the table looked like the smudged face of a bleary-eyed woman on the threadbare pillow of a ten-shilling bed in a questionable hotel at dawn: the sooner he got out into the fresh air the better.

Pym put twenty-five pounds between pages 385 and 386 and washed his hands and face. He was determined to have a little holiday; meet old friends, slap backs, offer hospitality, and make a night of it.

He shook his jacket and put it on. But while he was buttoning it he heard a short, terrified cry in the adjacent room—a bitten-off shriek, not unlike the shriek of a hungry seagull. It drew itself out, long and thin, until the bird-cry became the howl of a cat. He heard the soft thud of bare or stockinged feet. The floor quivered and a few flakes of plaster floated down from the ceiling as a body (unmistakably a body) fell and rolled from side to side. There was a mad thumping of knees and elbows, a hard banging—a head against a floor—and a noise that made him think of the flapping of a broken wing.

Busto also had heard. As Pym ran out on to his landing he heard the landlord’s footsteps three floors below. The other door was locked, and white smoke was crawling out of the chinks between the lintel and the floor. The smoke was crawling, the voice was screaming, and the woman might have been trying to tear herself to pieces.

Pym tried the lock again, and then—a fourteen-year-old boy could have done it in Busto’s house—knocked the door off its hinges with one thrust of his shoulder and hip. The room was full of smoke. In the fireplace there was a pile of burning paper. On the floor writhed a burning woman, screaming. Pym snatched a blanket from the bed; it took time because the bed had been tightly and neatly made. When he threw the blanket over the woman and muffled her in it, she cried out in such agony that he recoiled, so that a little golden tongue of fire darted between the edge of the blanket and her chin and flickered under her nose.

Then Busto appeared, breathing heavily and saying: “Alla time I got trouble! What she doin’ now? Is this a respectable house? Is this a dirty bloody lunatic asylum? Chrissake! They wanna burn me down?”

Pym said: “Get a doctor. Call an ambulance. To hell with your fireplace—get a doctor!”

“Who bust my door?”

“I bust your door. I’ll pay for your door. Go and get a doctor.”

A tenant who lived on the floor below cried: “Doctor!” and ran downstairs.

“Wrap it tighter thees blankets!” said Busto. “Jesus Chris’, you set light to the bloody blanket: you burn her some more, Jesus Chris’!”

But when Pym, in obedience to Busto’s agonised command, drew the blanket tighter and slapped at another insinuating flame that came out with a flirting pigtail of smoke, the woman uttered such a cry that he fell back, horrified. The blanket fell loose. Another flame peeped out red, sucked in air, and leapt up white. Busto took hold of the blanket and held on. The woman screamed again, but the flames went out.

“I tell ’em fifty thousand million bloody times don’t use no bloody fireplace. Gawd bleeding Jesus!” shouted Busto. “What, they too bloody mean to pay they bloody rent and they ain’t got a penny to stick in the bloody gas-meter, so they burn my bloody house down to make a cup of bloody tea? Godd-amighty! Chrisamighty! I’m fed up!”

“Shut your mouth, you stinking old parrot, or I’ll shut it for you!” said Pym.

Several other lodgers in the doorway murmured indignant approval, and a man wrapped in the remains of a vieux-rose dressing-gown said, in gentlemanly accents: “It would serve him damned well right. Give him one for me while you’re about it, old man.”

Busto, who had taken the jug from the washstand and was pouring water on the smoking paper in the fireplace, said: “Oh, it’s you, hah, Mr. Bellamy? I wanna talk to you.”

“If that water drips down into my room and spoils my clothes, Mr. Busto, I’ll sue you.”

“You go to buggery,” said Busto.

Pym had put a pillow under the woman’s head. “Don’t you talk about suing anybody,” he said. “Other people can play that game. I could report you to the sanitary inspector.”

Feeling the pillow under her head, the woman opened her eyes and said in a cracked whisper: “I won’t be buried in a pauper’s grave.”

“There, there, you won’t be buried in any grave at all, madam,” said Pym. “It’s nothing: only a burn: just a little burn.”

“I’m so ashamed …” Her face crumpled, exuding moisture like a handkerchief in an agonised fist. “I was only burning some papers, some private papers. I’m so ashamed to give you all this trouble It was very foolish of me to use paraffin—I caught myself alight. I didn’t mean to do it. They were my own papers, strictly private … Mr. Vaughan opened my box after I left the Hotel Perfecto in Tavistock Place and looked at my diaries. He had no right to … I caught fire by accident. Tell them to go away. Why don’t you tell them to leave me alone? They were my own papers, private. Oh, please, why doesn’t somebody call somebody to give me something? It hurts. There’s something they give you. And tell them to go away and leave me alone—why can’t they leave me alone?”

Two men came upstairs with a stretcher. The old woman looked up at Pym with streaming eyes and said: “Don’t let them bury me in a pauper’s grave.”

“No, no, I won’t, I won’t,” said Pym.

She was taken away. At last Pym found himself in her room alone with Busto.

“That’s the sorta tenant I got,” Busto said.

“What’s her name?” asked Pym.

“Mrs. Greensleeve. Ker-ist!” cried Busto. “Go on, cursa piss outa me!”

“You rotten dog!” said Pym. “Do you want pity?”

“Ain’t I got to live?” shouted Busto. “Santa Maria Vergine—che cosa c’e’—qui? Stracci—spazzatura! Rubbish, gorblimey—rags!” He jerked a hand and snapped a finger, flipping open an invisible fan. “Look. See what I got—look an’ see!”

Pym saw a puddle of cold water creeping in to obliterate a coffin-shaped dry patch of grey on the floor by the fireplace. Mrs. Greensleeve’s bed was still respectable, although one blanket and a pillow had been dragged away. Upon the dressing-table lay a cardboard suitcase, wide open. Busto thrust a hand into it and brought up a shiny serge skirt and a darned blouse.

“My landlord take this?” he said.

“How much does the lady owe you?”

“Mrs. Greensleeve? Same as you.”

“I owe you nothing, damn you!”

“Same rent as you,” said Busto.

“Here,” said Pym, giving him a pound, “leave her things alone.”

“Things! You callum things?”

“Yes; leave her things alone.”

“Spazzatura,” said Busto. “Rags, rubbish. I don’t want rubbish—I got rubbish … Hah? What about my door? You bust my door. Hah? That cost!”

“It couldn’t possibly cost me more than forty shillings to bust you,” said Pym, pale with anger and damp with disgust. “Forty shillings for assault—I know the law!”

Busto was not afraid. He said “Hah!” and went downstairs. Three steps down he paused, turned his buzzard’s neck, and said: “Bloody fool!” Then he disappeared.

Pym sniffed the familiar odour of burnt paper, mingled with the clinging smell of singed wool and the stink of charred flesh.

Now he felt sick, angry, and unsociable. He threw the dirty little rug over the coffin-shaped island of dust in the puddle by the fireplace. Ashes and charred paper fluttered up and came slowly down. Pym picked up a ragged, roasted half-moon of blue-lined paper and read:

No matches. “Incapacity to shake off poverty

last stage of human infirmity.” Hazlitt.

St. Pancras again. 1/- & a penny left

but would not give me even 1d. He

because the Holy Spirit

Mrs. Greensleeve had been burning her diary. A brown-edged rectangle said:

uary 10th. Telegram unanswered. No stamps reply. No tea. Toothache. No fire. No hope

And there was another:

Mother of the Gracchi! These are my jewels, God help me! Cicero and Decimus, my semi-precious stones. Stones of small value, cold and hard and dull like their only begetter. Who would not leave such

And another, a charred triangle, dry and flaky as piecrust:

sixpence-halfpenny between

and starvation. Needles and thr

Bread? Soap costs threepence

pen-nibs three a penny

ink. And paper

soap, I think

must be

oap

It broke and fell to pieces in Pym’s hand. He sighed, and his sigh stirred the cooling ashes of the paper in the grate so that they settled down, whispering. Busto’s dash of cold water had saved the raw middle of a notebook from the fire. It was cold and moist to Pym’s fingers as he carried it at arm’s length to his room, where he put it down to dry.

He had been looking forward to a fillet steak and half a bottle of burgundy at the Marquis of Bute; but now everything tasted of singed old women, charred wool and paper, and the ashes of burnt-out hopes.

Pym went to the Duchess of Douro, drank a double brandy, ordered another, and washed his mouth with it before swallowing it.

Yet after four double brandies Pym still tasted the smoke of something burning. He gulped down a pint of bitter to take the taste away; but still it lingered, clinging to the roof of his mouth.

“Want a handkerchief?” said the barmaid.

“No, thank you. No. No, I do not. Why do you ask … may I ask?” said Pym.

“Sniff, sniff, sniff,” said the barmaid. “Why don’t you have a good blow?”

“I thought … tsnff-tsnff-tsnff … something burning.” Pym looked at the ash-tray, examined his sleeves, and sniffed again: “Tsnff … tsnff …” Then he said: “Give me another double brandy … tsnff-tsnff-tsnff …”

“Stop it, for goodness’ sake! It’s not nice: you’re making me nervous,” said the barmaid.

“Tsnff … tsnff … tsnff …” Pym sniffed at his double brandy, drank it and sniffed again. A big woman glowered at him, exchanged looks with a heavy man in a striped suit and then, lowering her face until her nose touched the point of one of her shoulders, sniffed.

“Anything the matter?” she said, between her teeth.

“Tsnff-tsnff-tsnff … ah!”

“Annoying you?” asked the heavy man.

“Keeps on smelling,” she said, confidentially.

“Oh! Change place with me, Lila, will you? … Hey, you! Do you mind? What the——”

“Now then,” the barmaid said.

“I see that I am de trop here,” said Pym, with drooping lips and bloodshot eyes. “Good evening to you!”

The big woman examined the soles of her shoes, lifted a forefinger to her nostrils, looked at the heavy man and said: “Do you smell something?”

He curled back his upper lip until it touched his nostrils, inhaled deeply, and said: “Why?”

“Tsnff … tsnff … tsnff …”

“The gentleman said he thought he smelt something burning,” said the barmaid.

“Oh, I thought he was trying to take liberties,” said the heavy man.

“No, but no jokes,” said the big woman, “can’t you smell something burning?”

“Come to think of it, there is a kind of a smell of burnt,” said the barmaid.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE rainy evening, like a patient grey nurse, sponged his face and helped him to cleanse his throat and nostrils. He drew several deep breaths and walked aimlessly to the end of the street, mildly wondering how he could ever have wanted to go and eat steak in the Marquis of Bute—sickeningly thick, detestably bloody, bubbling steak, with reeking fried potatoes… collops hacked from the backside of dead beasts and dung-nurtured roots cooked in the fat of filthy pigs that had screamed horribly before dying when they were singed with fire, scraped with knives….

Pym helped himself to some more damp air, and tried to think of other things. Food was not to be thought of: food was burnt flesh, roasted or boiled tubers, roots, or leaves. Even grass stank of old ladies burnt to death, since all flesh was grass.

He went on, avoiding the windows of the restaurants, pushed open the door of another saloon bar, and ordered another double brandy, which he swallowed in two gulps. An old, white-headed barman watched Pym out of the corner of one eye and saw a sad, brooding man rocking to and fro on a bar stool and flipping the rim of a glass with an idle forefinger.

“Did you call, sir?”

“Eh? Call? Me? No, I was just fiddling.”

“Did you want the same again?”

“Well, yes, I think you’d better let me have the same again.”

Pym’s right-hand trousers-pocket was full of silver and copper coins. Something was wrong with his fingertips. Money felt like discs of leather and flannel. He pulled out a fistful and emptied it on to the bar. Two or three coins rolled away. The old barman, pushing a glass towards him, said: “After this one I should say you’ve just about had enough, sir.”

“Fruit of the vine,” said Pym. “Often wonder what you vintners buy one half so precious as the goods you sell … And they that drink the blood of God will never thirst again …” He emptied the glass. The barman, dexterous as a banker, flicked the price of it away from the little pile of change. Another man stood, frozen in an unnatural attitude a yard and a half away: he had one of his feet on a shilling.

“You put that money back in your pocket,” said the barman.

“I will, I will,” said Pym, scraping up a handful of shillings and pennies. But then, swallowing back an eructation of brandy, and remembering the word “grape”, he thought of peasants, French peasants with rotten teeth, stamping with great sticky bare feet in scummed wine vats, their shirts tucked up to their hips. God only knew what nastiness they let fall … and voila—the gourmet warmed it in his manicured hands and sniffed the vapours of it up into his chiselled nose … and the cook poured it over the Christmas pudding, and struck a match, and whuff!——

—Up went the old lady, blazing like one of Nero’s Christians dipped in pitch!

Pym drank some soda water. The bubbles stung the back of his mouth, and the last mouthful went down slowly, like a balloon, until it hit his stomach and exploded in a hiccup: Hup-pass!

“Gas,” said Pym, with a grave, apologetic bow: “carbon dioxide. This is nothing but water into which they force CO_2. You can find this gas in the Cave of Dogs. It will not support life. You breathe it out with every breath,” he said, turning to an old man on his left. This old man had sores in the corners of his mouth.

“Are you a doctor?” he asked, coming nearer.

“I am not a doctor. Every schoolboy knows this sort of thing. Soda-water is water charged with carbon dioxide. You breathe carbon dioxide. Trees and flowers take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen. This is a fact, I give you my word of honour, an incontrovertible fact. If you pass CO_2 through a tube of red-hot coke, you get CO, carbon monoxide, which is deadly poison. But CO_2, I can tell you for a fact, is inert. It is not poisonous, it suffocates. It puts out fire.”

“I once put out a fire with a soda-water syphon,” said the barman.

“Water puts out fire,” said the old man on the left.

“Water is a product of fire,” said Pym. “If you take oxygen, by means of which everything lives, and then … excuse me if I put it unscientifically … mix it up with hydrogen and put a match to it, there is a terrible explosion (you could blow this place to smithereens with it) and the result, I give you my word of honour, is water. Again, electrolyse water by the process known as electrolysis, and you break water back into oxygen on the one side and hydrogen on the other. Mix these two together again and …”

Pym looked at the bubbling half-inch of soda-water in his glass. In that water he saw fire. He saw the flicker of flames in a grate, and gagged at the mixed odours of an old lady in flames. “Look!” Pym struck a match and dropped it into the soda water, where it hissed and became black. “Fire is water, water is fire, everything is fire,” he shouted.

“Why don’t you pick up the rest of your change and get along home?” said the barman.

“Fire is water, water is fire!” said Pym, striking the bar with a fist.

“You pick up that change and go home,” the barman said.

*

Pym will never forget that night. It left a scar in his memory. The wound cicatrised, skinned over, and paled … but only the worms could take it away. Like a scratch from a lion’s claw, which would not let itself be forgotten, and ached abominably in bad weather. He cannot remember everything that happened: nothing but the skeleton of the night hangs in the cupboard of recollection. He never will know what happened to the flesh and the entrails: he hates to speculate. He remembers buying double gins-and-lime for a hideous woman with orange-coloured hair, who developed a high regard for him because he became maudlin over her dog—an aged, stinking, vixenish, flea-bitten bitch. Yes, Pym clearly remembers embracing the animal, covering it with tender kisses, and buying it a roast-beef sandwich and some sweet biscuits. The raw head and bloody bones of that night are sharply defined enough! The woman said: “What I like about you is, you’re kind. I like a person to be kind. I bet you wouldn’t raise your hand to strike a lady.” Pym said, with tears in his eyes, that he would cut his right hand off and swallow it rather than use it for anything but caressing her. She said: “I wish you meant it,” and Pym swore with frightful vehemence that he did mean it. In demonstration he took her left hand (when he thinks of that he thinks of a plate of thick hot porridge into which some slut has let fall a thick gold wedding-ring and a few dirty finger-nails). He scooped up this hand, rose unsteadily, and bowed low to kiss it, knocking over his double brandy. At this the orange-headed lady turned to a man, who seemed to materialise out of the smoky air, and said: “You see, Joe? That’s a gentleman. Catch you doing that! … Catch him doing that,” she said to Pym; “this is more his line.” Then she lifted her upper lip with both thumbs and curled a little finger to point to a space where one of her teeth had recently been. The man told her to shut up. Pym flew into a rage:

“You dare to speak to my friend in that tone of voice! To Woman, suffering, persecuted Woman? You swine!” He would have thrown his brandy into the man’s face but his glass was empty: so he threw the lady’s gin-and-lime. The man licked some of it off the back of his hand where most of it had fallen, and got up slowly. Sitting, this man was of average height—a little on the heavy side. But when he stood he seemed to grow, foot by foot, like a carpenter’s ruler, until he stopped with a jerk six feet from the floor. A little publican with the voice of a field-marshal said: “That’s enough of that. Get out, you!” He grasped Pym by the arms and with the miraculous skill of a piano remover, found a point of balance and rushed him out into the street, saying: “And don’t come back here again.”

Pym intended to go back immediately, but he walked in the wrong direction, straight into a lamp-post which became two lamp-posts. Rearing over him, both of these lamp-posts bobbed and weaved defiantly. Their heads were lighted catherine-wheels, throwing out ripples of red, yellow, blue, green, indigo and violet. “Come on, both of you,” said Pym, and grappled. Then he was clinging, giggling, to one cold wet lamp-post haloed with muddy rainbows in the moist, misty night.

Between this and the next rib of the skeleton there was a dark emptiness, out of which blazed a public-house with a bohemian atmosphere: the customers talked louder and were untidier than the taxi-drivers and labourers in the public bar, and there were pictures on the walls. An extraordinarily filthy young woman and a pale, fat, featureless man, who reminded Pym of a chamber-pot curiously cracked, said: “Let’s have a party.” Two people produced four quarts of pale ale and Pym bought three bottles of gin. They all went out shouting as loud as they could. A coster offered chrysanthemums at sixpence a bunch. Pym got five-shillingsworth—an armful—and gave them to the filthy woman. “It is because I love you,” he said. A rim of the chamber-pot rolled down: the featureless man was scowling. But the woman kissed Pym voluptuously, fully visible in the light that streamed through the window of a Cypriot café. They went on, singing.

Pym slid over the round edge of another rib into another darkness, and came up gradually into a studio furnished with a divan, two chairs and a table, and lighted by candles. How long had these candles been burning? He did not know. One of them was guttering. He was sitting on the divan arguing metaphysics with an old man whom he seemed to have offended, because the old man was saying:

“Will you repeat what you said?”

“I repeat what I said,” said Pym.

The old man hit him in the eye with a small fat fist. Then a long, thin man in black with golden hair (Pym likened him to a fountain-pen) said: “You’ve been picking on everybody all the evening. Be friendly or go away.”

“I see that I am de trop here.”

In and out of the interstitial blacknesses between the bones of the skeleton in the cupboard Pym went rolling, down and down, to the heel of the night. Later Pym found himself in the Strand, opposite Charing Cross Station. He had some idea of crossing the road: his heels were on the kerb, his toes were in the air, and his hands were groping for something to hold on to. Two men took him by the arms, and one of them said: “For your own good, you know, you’d better come along with us.”

“I will come along with you anywhere you like, with pleasure,” said Pym.

They were policemen; but on the way to the police station Pym insisted that they were angels of God. He said that he could walk along in their company for ever. “Do you know, I feel as if my feet weren’t touching the ground?” he said. One of them replied: “Why, you see, sir, your feet aren’t touching the ground, you know.” Then it occurred to Pym that he was being carried. This affected him so deeply that he tried to kiss one of the policeman and, reaching uncertainly in the half dark, counted the silver buttons on a blue uniform with a playful forefinger and said: “Eeny-meeny-miney-mo.” At last they reached Bow Street Police Station, where Pym, holding hands with both policemen, ran in a little ahead of them crying: “Yoo-hoo!” Charged with being drunk and incapable he began to argue the point. Drunk, yes: incapable, no. When they asked him his name he replied, with a girlish titter: “My name is Norval.” His address, he said, was Saint Busto’s Hotel. They emptied his pockets and locked him in a cell with a wooden floor, designed for the temporary accommodation of irresponsible inebriates. There was a wooden bed like a shelf with a severely hygienic little water-closet fitted into the far end. The authorities are not unacquainted with the suicidal gloom of the debauchee in the small hours of the morning when you taste yourself, smell yourself, remember yourself, and want to pick yourself up between thumb and forefinger and throw yourself away.

There was no chain with which Pym might have hanged himself. They had taken away his penknife—he remembers missing it. Nothing but death would do, he felt. Never again could he walk the streets like a free man. He was a jail-bird, pasty and furtive, stale with the smell of the bucket—ruined, lost.

He lay down and wept. He could hear himself hiccuping and groaning like a worn-out gramophone—a gramophone with an unbalanced turn-table that squeaked and shuddered as it spun to a standstill … wobbling and grating … running down….

In the morning they took him upstairs to be charged. One of the policeman who had arrested him said: “You had a good time last night.”

“Lovely,” said Pym; “simply divine.” Bitterness gave place to shame and anguish. “What did I do?” he asked, looking at the stone floor.

“You tried to kiss me,” said the policeman. “Kept counting my buttons and saying, ‘Eeny-meeny-miney-mo’, and you couldn’t stand up. Nothing much, really. Don’t take it to heart,” he added, touched by the horror on Pym’s face. “I arrested a Lord not so long ago and he thought he was a dog and was on all-fours by the lamp-post outside the florist’s shop trying to unbutton his fly. When we picked him up he went ‘Woof! Woof!’ and bit me. If I hadn’t picked him up in time he’d ’ave got it for ‘indecent exposure’——”

“I’ll admit anything,” said Pym; “—anything you like—I was drunk. I hadn’t eaten—I wasn’t well. But don’t, for Christ’s sake, please don’t say I tried to kiss you!”

“Don’t you worry—that’ll be all right.”

“And cut out that ‘Eeny-meeny-miney-mo’, won’t you?”

“Your name’s Norval, isn’t it?”

“Good God, no! Pym—John Pym; that’s my name.”

“You said Norval last night.”

“It’s out of a poem. My name is Pym, I swear! Oh, God! God!”

“I can see this is your first,” said the policeman, nodding like a midwife. “You wait in there and don’t worry. They’ll fine you a few shillings, that’s all.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“That’s all right. Just don’t worry: it’ll all be over in a few minutes. Now you go and wait in there.”

Pym pressed the fright out of his face. His mouth became a crack; his eyes became narrow, hard and glittering. Now he was a rock—a Gibraltar only a little the worse for wear. In the big, cool, dull-green waiting-room fifteen or twenty other prisoners were assembled.

Here wavered stale, pale simulacra—worn-out carbon copies of men: uncorrected proofs and childishly-daubed miniatures of sinners. In one corner a methylated-spirit drinker with a green-and-mauve face crouched shivering: his mouth was a yellow perforation like a worm-hole in a plum—perfectly round. He was trying to blow spit-bubbles. One of the aristocrats of the place, a young man who had already served three months in prison and was to be charged with stealing an overcoat, looked down with amused disdain. Near-by a concatenation of little frail malefactors whispered mouth-to-ear, while a young man in a horribly-stained best suit wrung his poor little hands a yard away, as he explained to the missionary that he didn’t know what to tell his mother. A costermonger in an Anthony Eden hat was saying: “A b—— woman’s got to b——well do what ’er b—— old man b——well tells ’er to b——bloody do. You’re a man o’ the world, eh?” A youth of eighteen who had been taken in the act of dragging a rug out of the window of a parked car said: “Ah—you’ve got something there!” Pushing his Anthony Eden hat to the back of his head, the costermonger said, in a bewildered voice: “I chastised ’er. I didn’t know she was going to fall spark into the fire. I mean to say!”

“You got something there!”

“All I done: I ’it ’er across the mouf. I never told ’er to catch ’er ’air alight. I mean to say! They can’t take my living away—I got six boxes o’ ’zanths.”

“’Zanths?”

“Chrysanthemums.”

“Will she charge you?”

“She bloody better not. I’ll do ’er if she do.”

“You got something there.”

The missionary glanced from face to face, saw Pym’s compressed mouth and terrified eyes and said: “What brings you here?”

“Drunk,” said Pym.

“Feel pretty sick and sorry for yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Well, try not to be so silly another time, will you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right, that’s right. Is it worth it?”

“No, no—no!”

The missionary said: “Um …” and went to another man—a thickset, broken-faced young assaulter, who said: “Yer—’ere again, that’s right, ’ere again. Mind your own business. Lea’ me alone. Scram!”

An untidy, insinuating man who might have weighed a hundred pounds took the missionary by the sleeve and cried: “Your Reverence—a lady give me a bag to ’old, a crocodile bag. ‘’Old it for me—you got a honest face,’ she says——”

“You again, Thomas. The same old story?”

“Well…”

At Pym’s shoulder a voice of light music said:

“Base, sinister, scurvy, foul, gross and felonious—

Flagitious, atrocious, incarnate, accursed!”

Pym turned and looked into the eyes of a stout grey man in a decent dark-brown suit: a keen-eyed elderly man with a bloodhound face and cropped white hair.

“Malevolent, heartless and lost in iniquity

Indefensible, culpable, past praying for …

Ah! Thank God for poetry. Thank God for it!…

Looseness of morals, obliquity, infamy,

Hardness of heart and corruption—depravity——

Fleshly infirmity, sink of iniquity,

Take the wrong course, son, and sow your wild oats!

Does that convey anything to you?”

“That really is very good indeed. Who is the author?” said Pym.

“Oh, our vices, wrong-doing, iniquity, wickedness,

Laxity, scandal, offending old Adam——”

The stout man declaimed these lines in a heroic baritone, but he watched Pym in a sly, sidelong way. Pym saw that he had beautiful little tapering hands—like the hands of the Mona Lisa in Busto’s lithograph, astonishingly clean in spite of everything. Indeed, although the stout man must have spent the night in a cell, he had the crisp, brisk, contented air of a gentleman with a clear conscience who has bathed and dressed at his leisure after a refreshing sleep.

“Perhaps it strikes you as familiar?” he said.

“Yes, it does. Who wrote it?”

“Ah!” the stout man said, with a delighted chuckle. “It has a certain something? It rolls off the tongue? It has resonance, eh? One dabbles, one dabbles. I knew that you were a literary man the moment I set eyes on you.”

Pym expressed astonishment and said, with considerable bitterness: “Literary man! A fine literary man! Look at me!” He had lost his hat, and his trousers, freshly torn, were covered with mud. The grazed knuckles of his left hand were dark with dried blood and he had to tilt his head like an apoplectic in order to see out of his blackened eye. His tongue was dry sackcloth in a mouth full of ashes. “A literary man!” he repeated with a cindery cough.

“Why not? Why not?” said the stout man; and now he used his voice as a masseur uses aromatic ointment to take away a pain in the neck. “Why not a literary man? It was perfectly obvious to me at a glance that you weren’t one of these…” His left hand described a smooth figure-of-eight. “It is not necessary for a literary man to maintain a conventional appearance. A literary man, my dear fellow, is the freest creature on earth, and whatever he does is right. He may strut in a laced coat like Oliver Goldsmith, wallow in snuff like Dr. Johnson, or array himself like a perfect gentleman in the manner of Lord Macaulay. He is not bound by the chains of convention that fetter us businessmen. I am a businessman, although I try to dabble in higher things. Don’t look at yourself so disparagingly. It happens to us all. One escapes, so to speak, from the bitter realities of life for one indiscreet little evening. I know—you writers are so sensitive: you feel too much and too deeply. I take it,” he said, exploring Pym’s face with his bright, quick eyes, “that this is your first visit to this place, and that last night you fell among … friends?”

“Yes. And you?”

“Oh, me? Allow me, by the way, to introduce myself. My name is Thomas Paine Sherwood. How do you do?”

“John Pym. How do you do?”

Mr. Sherwood laughed heartily. “My father, as you may have guessed, was a Freethinker and a believer in the Rights of Man, Mr. Pym. I was named after his hero.”

“I hope you’re not here for anything serious,” said Pym.

Mr. Sherwood laughed heartily and said: “Indeed I am not. It’s so absurd that it’s scarcely worth mentioning. Quite simply—there’s nothing to conceal—I arrived in Town yesterday from the Continent and went to the Hotel Masefield. It’s a quiet hotel, as I daresay you know—nothing lavish, but solid and good. Full of stuffy old dowagers and apoplectic admirals, but thoroughly reliable and comfortable. But, of course, you know the place—the Masefield, St. James’s. I am known there—or I should say now that I used to be known there. The hotel changed hands three or four years ago. Marcantonio, the manager, seems to have been susperseded by another man—some Swiss or other—and even the head porter is new. To put it in a nutshell—because I rather fancy your call is coming soon—I assumed that I was well enough known there not to need to reserve a room. So I went straight to the Masefield and told the people at the station to have my luggage sent on, so that I arrived empty-handed, asked for Marcantonio, was told he’d left, asked for a room, was asked to wait, and waited. They kept me waiting more than twenty minutes. I had all sorts of things to think of, so I didn’t mind that for the first ten minutes or so. I checked over a list of commitments in an engagement book, and made things clear for myself in the next forty-eight hours—in short, I was thoroughly preoccupied. Now this will strike you as utterly ridiculous. When I travel on the Continent I have the habit of keeping with me at all times a pigskin dressing-case with silver fittings. Over there they are not anything like as reliable as they are here. Once, for instance, in Barcelona, I found myself without the raw material for a civilised toilet for more than three days. That was in 1928. Ever since then I have made a practice of keeping my dressing-case with me. On this occasion—feeling that I was at home—I left my dressing-case to be sent on. Everybody concerned swore that all my luggage would be at the Masefield within the hour. But, as I was saying, I lost patience after a quarter of an hour or so, told the receptionist what I thought of the new order of things in the Hotel Masefield and walked out.

“And this is the ridiculous part of it!—Without thinking, I picked up a pigskin-and-silver dressing-case, out of sheer force of habit, since I had been accustomed to the feel of a pigskin-and-silver dressing-case in my hand for so long. Incidentally, my pigskin-and-silver dressing-case was expecially made with a compartment for papers. Well, to cut it short, I was stopped while I was stamping indignantly out of the Masefield and, as God is my Judge, given in charge for trying to make off—of all things—with a pigskin-and-silver dressing-case (a damned inferior one) the property of Major-General Hoskins, whoever he may be!

“And it’s all my fault. Yes, it is. Because it has since occurred to me that I must have misdirected my own luggage. I have a sprawling, loose, hurried way of writing, and ought to have written the name of the hotel in block letters. But I wrote it in longhand, and I will wager any sum within reason that they sent my luggage to the Hotel Hirschfield instead of the Masefield. There you have the whole story of my crime. And speaking of hotels, Mr. Pym, where do you live?”

“Care of the Sunday Special will always get me … Ah-ah!—this is it!”

Pym felt that his bladder had risen into his throat, and that his uvula was beating upon it like a stick on a wet drum. He went into Court and was charged with being drunk and incapable.

“Were you drunk?” they asked him.

“Well …”

“Were you drunk?”

“I am afraid I was.”

“Has he any money?”

“Thirty-nine shillings in silver and one shilling and twopence-halfpenny in bronze, sir.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Fined ten shillings. Next.”

Pym walked out like a somnambulist. “You mean, I simply pay ten shillings and then I can go away?” he asked, incredulously.

A colossal unhelmeted policeman said: “Unless you want to come and live with us.”

Another policeman in the doorway, looking stolidly to his front, flicked Pym a knowing wink with one eyelash. A raddled woman from whose face dried paint and powder were falling in little flakes, smiled at him, uncovering teeth like mildewed fragments of cheese.

Pym ran away. In Long Acre he found a taxi and—muddy and bruised, bloody and tattered, sore and humiliated—returned to Busto’s.

Busto focused his deadly old eyes upon him and said: “Aha! Aha! Youra girl friend. On danger list. Horsapidle says you go if you wanna go any time you like. Okay?”

“Danger list? Girl friend? What girl friend? Do you mean Miss Joyce?”

“No—Mrs. Greensleeve, what caught alight,” said Busto. “She been, she gone, she done it! Foolish woman.”

“Why pick on me?” said Pym.

“I dunno, I don’t care, I dowanna know,” said Busto. “She ask for you: they send. None of my business.”

“When did the message come?”

“Just now. Oh yes, I forgot—they bringa this for you,” said Busto, fishing an envelope from under the tails of his coat.

Ten minutes of contact with Busto were enough to make the envelope look and smell as if he had been wearing it next to his skin for six weeks. Pym took out a little sheet of notepaper with the letter-heading of the Lazarus Infirmary. He recognised Mrs. Greensleeve’s handwriting: the cramped, spikey writing of an impoverished gentlewoman to whom paper is money; who makes a pen-nib last a long time, and has to think twice before spending twopence on a bottle of ink. He read:

I must speak to you please come quickly.

M. Greensleeve.

She had tried to sign her name with a flourish, but the flourish had gone awry so that it reminded Pym of the distorted lower lip of a crying child.

“Hah!” said Busto, and shuffled away into his musty darkness below stairs.

Pym went to his room to wash, but when he saw himself in his sixpenny shaving-mirror he cried: “Christ!” again and shut his eyes. Then he examined himself as well as he could, fitting eyeful to eyeful of oblong reflection, and threw the mirror into the fireplace. It broke. “Another seven years’ bad luck,” he said.

He took his hoarded twenty-five pounds from between pages 385 and 386 of his typescript, and went out again.

CHAPTER SIX

YOU must dress before you can be dressed. Who dares to come, in filthy rags, into the presence of a tailor? First, Pym went to a barber’s shop—the dirtiest he could find, since he hated to be conspicuous. Then—ragged, but smelling of brilliantine—he bought a white shirt for seven-and-sixpence and a pair of green socks for eighteenpence: one cannot try on even a fifty-shilling suit in a dirty shirt, and who is so lost to decency that he will uncover the nakedness of his toes to a salesman in a shoe shop?

Pym put on his new shirt and socks in a public lavatory, leaving the old ones in a neat bundle on top of the cistern. Now he felt better; he could even thank God for his hungry leanness, that made of his shoulders a hanger which any coat might fit.

Intoxicated by the caress of clean linen, he walked past the fifty-shilling place and confidently confronted a pushing individual who hung his shop window with autographed portraits of celebrities. The smell of new clothes stung Pym’s nostrils like spice: for one mad moment he lusted after a sportsmanlike double-breasted dog-tooth red-and-grey check suit as worn by the Lightweight Champion. He tickled the padded shoulder of a white tweed sports-coat, and stroked the back of a jacket which, the shopkeeper assured him, was as worn by Lord Lonsdale. There was a zigzag pattern in three distinct shades of brown that caught his eye; another fascinated him because it was like the Fire-and-Smoke-of-Navarino that Chichikov bought after he swindled Kholobuev. In the end he decided on something discreetly grey, calculated not to show the dirt. The shopkeeper assured him that his was a favourite colour of Sir Edward Marshall Hall.

“Where shall I send it, sir?” he asked, as if he did not know.

“I’ll wear it now.”

“And the other suit, sir?”

“Keep it until I call for it.”

After that, unashamed, almost arrogant, Pym put his stockinged foot on a stool in a shoe shop and paid seventeen shillings for a pair of black shoes.

Then he bought two ninepenny handkerchiefs for himself, ten-shillingsworth of black grapes for Mrs. Greensleeve, and went to the Lazarus Infirmary in a taxi.

The road was bad. The jolting of the taxi reminded Pym that his head ached and that there was a bad taste in his mouth. The infirmary was built of the French-mustard-coloured bricks that they used in the ’80’s for workhouses and barracks. It was blackened by the smoke of a railway junction—grim, disheartening, expressionless, cold as charity. The taxi paused, trembling, at the main entrance. The driver looked sourly at his fare, knocked up his flag with a vicious upper-cut and drove away. Pym pushed open two great glass doors. The smell of the lobby made him gulp, while his memory threw up the image of a cruel little widow who had been his nurse twenty-five years ago: she shone with cleanness and washed her hands with carbolic soap ten times a day as if she was aware of a bad smell that she wanted to conceal. He hated her: she frightened him with her furtive glancings and scourings. What guilt was she scrubbing from her fingers, this Lady Macbeth of the Lavatory?

“I have come to see Mrs. Greensleeve, the lady who was brought here yesterday—the lady who burnt herself,” said Pym.

“Billing’s Ward.”

*

In Billing’s Ward Mrs. Greensleeve lay perfectly still. She was bandaged so that she resembled a mummy, partly unwrapped. A chin and a sticky-looking blue eye were visible, stained with bright yellow. An undamaged hand—a skein of blue-black veins and a ladylike débris of sucked chicken-bone in a cracked membrane—rested on a cushion. They had given her something to keep her quiet. The drug was working. As the needle had gone into her arm the pain had gone away in big ripples, so that she was full of a sweet, pleasantly-throbbing calm. Through that hollow needle the gentleman in the white coat had squirted grateful peace … she had felt it creeping up the big vein like mercury in a thermometer as the warmth soaked in. It settled in a placid pool somewhere near her heart, and sent easy-going tributaries away from there into her head.

Now Mrs. Greensleeve, who knew that she was going to die, thought of death in the same way as a nightbound wanderer in the rain looks forward to a soft bed.

When Pym put the grapes on the table by the bed she beat a feeble tatto with her undamaged hand. She had been drowsing on the edge of a wonderful sleep. Mrs. Greensleeve still suffered: she was not dead yet. She could even talk. Following her beckoning finger, Pym stooped until his ear was a few inches from where her mouth was hidden under lint and bandages. Green screens enclosed the bed. Beyond the screen a woman was calling for a nurse. From another bed came a curiously melodious moaning. Brisk heels rang and reverberated in the corridor. An interminable goods train rattled and gasped out of the junction and in the distance an engine blew its whistle three times, very deliberately, as an owl hoots. From the street came a melancholy concert of horns: a taxi-driver, punching a rubber bulb, set up a lugubrious honking that made Pym think of wild geese over a desolate fen; a klaxon sounded and an effeminate little horn, with four distinct notes, cried plaintively. Now! the taxi-driver’s horn seemed to say; and then they all honked and cried and roared together. A man shouted. A motor-cycle stopped, impatiently thudding.

Mrs. Greensleeve’s whisper found its way through the bandages, and under the noise, as fog finds its way through the crack under a door.

She said: “Thank you for coming. I am so ashamed. Can you hear me?”

“Perfectly. I brought you some grapes, Mrs. Greensleeve. You must eat them all up and you’ll be better soon.”

“How kind of you. I haven’t had a grape for six years. I’m afraid I shan’t be able to eat them. No, no more grapes. I’m afraid I’m a dead woman, Mr. Pym.”

“Oh no, don’t say that, Mrs. Greensleeve! Should you talk? Oughtn’t you to rest?”

“As Carlyle said … ‘shall I not have all eternity to rest in?’ Excuse me. A foolish old woman—a selfish old woman. I have no right to do it—to take you away from your work.” She whispered the word “work” with reverence, giving it a whole breath. “I often sat listening to you at your typewriter. I am a writer myself … that is why I appealed to you. There is a freemasonry in the Craft. The Craft … the Craft….

“… I never was a crafty woman. I was not crafty enough. Couldn’t I have deceived Greensleeve? But did I? I did not, I did not. ‘You, Mary, the wife of a man in my position—you of all women to give way to this blind infatuation! … Love, you say? Do you dare to say so? Your love is for your husband—your children! This is lust—filthy lust! You will end in the gutter, diseased, and be buried in a pauper’s grave …’” Her lint-muffled ghost of a whisper sounded different as she said this: she managed to inflate the shadow of a voice and made it round and bulky. She went on dreamily: “Fool! Fool! Canonical fool! If Harold Nero wasn’t love … if I had been nothing but a little lustful woman … Stronger than honour, stronger than my children. Lust? True love, true love, true love! ‘Oh, how beautiful you are!’ … How beautifully he said it! Lust! To say that of me! Not lust enough, dear God, not enough lust! … Poor Nero … dear Nero, so patient until … Poor him; poor me … poor Greensleeve. Sometimes an Anglican canon is given the gift of prophecy. Pauper’s grave!…”

Pym’s neck was aching. He said: “You must relax, Mrs. Greensleeve, and take things easy.”

“What was I saying? I forget what I was saying,” she whispered. “Have I been talking? If I have, please pay no attention. There’s something. I am not asking a favour. One thing I don’t want. I don’t want to be … I was insured, but the policy lapsed. I couldn’t keep it up. What are you to do? Say you need shoelaces, or a box of matches to light the gas, or a penny for the fire. You need a needle and thread, a pencil, soap. My money was in rubber when it crashed—rubber and Mexican Eagles … Also, if you’ve got a pencil you want a rubber … I kept up the payments as long as I could. Believe me—believe me! I am told that they built their big building with the money they got from policies like mine. I simply had to have pen and ink and paper. Faith in my work. To get it typed cost pounds … If you will promise me something I swear that I will make you rich, very rich. Will you promise?”

“Yes,” said Pym.

“Promise not to let them bury me in a pauper’s grave.”

“No, no, they won’t.”

“I have nothing. Forgive me. Greensleeve was not far wrong. I did sink low, after everything was lost. Oh, dear me, dear me, that place in Paddington … and then those hostels. ‘A poor man is full of tears, and imagines himself despised by all mankind,’ said Menander. How much poorer is a poor old woman? So much poorer than a man? Oh, Poverty and Pride—Poverty and Pride! They make a secret, and the secret begets a lie, and the lie begets a fear, and the fear multiplies itself—oh dear, the poor, the poor, poor proud, how frightened they always are, always hiding! Now listen. Go to No. 8 Damascus Terrace and ask for Mrs. Lincoln. Lincoln—remember it; Damascus Terrace. Give her forty-eight shillings—a month’s rent I owe—and ask her for Mrs. Greensleeve’s box of papers. I want to give it to you. It will make you rich. Will you do that?”

“Word of honour. You must rest now.”

“‘A poor man has no honour,’ as Dr. Johnson said. Mrs. Lincoln thought my box was full of valuables. She let me go on for a month before she locked me out … Valuables, yes—but not her sort. I want you to have them. Write on a piece of paper:

‘The bearer of this is authorised to claim my property.’ As quickly as you can, please, so that I can sign it.”

Pym wrote the words on a sheet of hospital notepaper and gave her the pencil. She signed her name firmly, without looking.

“I want to do something for you,” she said; “and in return all I ask is that you won’t let me be buried in a pauper’s grave. Promise?”

“Of course.”

“I believe you. God bless you. Will you sit with me just for a little while?”

“Yes,” said Pym.

A few minutes later Mrs. Greensleeve said: “Art is long and life is short … but how can I sharpen a pencil with a fish-knife? … And with what else am I to sharpen my pencil?” She was almost asleep. “…. Designer infinite! Must thou then char the wood ere thou canst limn with it?”

*

Several hours later Pym handed the late Mrs. Greensleeve’s note to Mrs. Lincoln, at No. 8 Damascus Terrace. She was a tight-mouthed, tight-eyed, shrewish little woman; brisk, voluble, businesslike. “Greensleeve?” she said. “Ah! She was a cunning one.”

“She said that I was to give you forty-eight shillings and take her box,” said Pym.

“I don’t know how people can be like that! If you ask me, she’s no better than a common thief. Her and her box! She talked me over nicely, I don’t mind telling you. The trouble with me is I am too kind-hearted. ‘I’ll pay next week’. And after that it’s ‘positively next week’, and then it’s ‘the week after next’. She’s expecting a remittance. Remittance! Then she wants five shillings for stamps, and I, like a fool, give it to her out of my own pocket. Out of my own pocket! ‘There’s always my box as security.’ Her box—security! An old trunk full of dirty paper. That was her security. If you want my opinion, your Mrs. Greensleeve is no better than a common swindler. Wait till I get hold of her—I’ll tell her what I think of her if it was in front of King George himself!”

“That isn’t very likely, I’m afraid,” said Pym, “because the lady died to-day.”

“Oh. I see. And she gave you the money to pay me what she owed me, is that it?”

“Yes, that’s it. Forty-eight shillings.”

“Of course, she forgot five shillings lent out of my own pocket for stamps,” said Mrs. Lincoln with bitterness. ‘She always did have one of those convenient memories.”

“She didn’t mention five shillings for stamps—only a month’s rent. But if you tell me that the lady owed you five shillings extra, I’ll pay it.”

“Of course she forgot to mention meals and cups of tea! Oh well, never mind, I suppose I’ll have to let it go. Forty-eight, and five out of my own pocket, that makes fifty-three. Two pounds thirteen. Pay me that and you can have her rubbishing old box. Box! I treated her like one of my own, and all I got was aggravation. I’d have boxed her!”

Mrs. Lincoln dragged a dusty little wicker-work trunk out of a cupboard under the stairs and pushed it towards Pym. Having counted the money she softened a little and said: “She talked like a lady. She seemed to have been about a bit. This much I will say: she kept herself clean and her room was a picture to look at. I’m not a hard woman, but it stands to reason I’ve got to live. I try to be fair, but I’m a widow. Just a minute, and I’ll get some of the dust off of that. One thing I can’t stand and won’t stand is dirt. Nobody is ever going to say that I was dirty. Anybody could go into any of my rooms at any hour of the day or night. If ever you want a clean room——”

“—I shan’t fail to let you know,” said Pym.

On the way home, cross-examining himself in the hate-inspired manner of a prosecuting counsel, Pym forced himself to admit that he despised himself:

Mrs. Greensleeve was your neighbour, is that so? asked Reason.

“Yes, that is so,” said the shamefaced Pym.

You know her well?

“Why, no. In fact, not at all.”

Not at all. You had, however, exchanged conversation with Mrs. Greensleeve?

“Well, no—no, I’d never conversed with her, unless….”

Unless what?

“Unless you call borrowing a tin-opener conversation. I had a visitor,” said Pym, hurriedly excusing himself: “I wanted to open a tin of strawberries.”

You had a visitor in your bedroom?

“Yes; in my room.”

In your bedroom. Your visitor was a lady?

“Yes.”

This lady—your visitor—was she your mistress?

“No. She had been, but wasn’t any more.”

This lady, who had been your mistress but wasn’t any more: you were fond of her, no doubt?

“No; I disliked her.”

You disliked her. You exhausted yourself walking from pawnshop to pawnshop to buy a tin of strawberries for an ex-mistress whom you disliked—having taken that woman to your room. Is this what you are telling me?

“I suppose so—yes.”

Think carefully, Mr. Pym. Having taken to your bedroom a young woman for whom you had no regard, you knocked at a door and borrowed a tin-opener from Mrs. Greensleeve, whom you had never met. Yes?

“Yes.”

In order to open a tin of strawberries which you could ill afford?

“That is so.”

Why did you buy this tin of strawberries?

“I took a fancy to it.”

Yet you did not eat these strawberries?

“No.”

Why not?

“I hadn’t a tin-opener.”

Mr. Pym! You, a hungry man, spend some of your last pennies on a tin of strawberries because you ‘fancy them’, as the saying is. You do not eat your strawberries because you have not got a tin- opener. The woman, Win Joyce—whom you say you disliked—came to your room on your invitation. You knocked at your neighbour’s door and borrowed a tin-opener from Mrs. Greensleeve. Is that so?

“Yes.”

For the woman you disliked?

“I suppose so—yes.”

You say yes. Why did you do it?

“I don’t know; I can’t say. I am made that way, I suppose.”

You are made that way, you suppose. Later, Mrs. Greensleeve having been the victim of an accident, you spent ten shillings on grapes—black grapes—and stayed by her bedside in the Lazarus Infirmary. Did you or did you not?

“I did.”

After Mrs. Greensleeve died, did you agree to pay Messrs. Ongar & Hole fifteen pounds to bury her respectably?

“Yes.”

Why did you do that?

“I promised her that she wouldn’t be buried in a pauper’s grave.”

Why did you promise her that?

“I don’t know.”

Where did you get the money, Mr. Pym?

“I’d rather not say.”

The money was given to you by the stepfather of Win Joyce. Is that so?

“Well, yes.”

Having walked your feet raw to redeem a pawned typewriter, you invited an ex-mistress whom you disliked and distrusted back to your room. She stole this typewriter. Agreeing not to prosecute her for the theft, you accepted a sum of money from her stepfather?

“Yes, but——”

Please answer the question.

“Yes.”

Do you believe in God, Mr. Pym?

“I don’t know.”

Have you any respect for the Church?

“Not much.”

You have, I believe, on several occasions made mock of Christian burial. “A racket” was the term you employed, I think?

“That is correct.”

You have also said—and, I think, believe—that it does not matter how the corruptible flesh goes back to the elements. Do you believe that?

“I do.”

You have even attacked in writing—potentially in print—the necessary processes of burial. Have you or have you not?

“I have.”

Why, then, did you do what you have done to-day?

“The old lady wanted it that way. I gave her my word of honour.”

Why?

“I was sorry for her.”

Could it possibly matter to Mrs. Greensleeve if her dead body was thrown into a cheap grave or a dear one, in an oak or a pine coffin, with or without brass handles?

“No; but I’d given her my word of honour.”

You are a man of your word then, Mr. Pym?

“I am.”

Have you not, on several occasions, promised a tradesman that  you would pay him to-morrow or the day after, and then defaulted? Think again, Mr. Pym.

“When I said I’d pay I meant to pay—I thought I’d be able to pay——”

You are lying!

“I am not! I will pay everything I owe——”

I put it to you that you are a self-deceiver, Mr. Pym, a presumptuous, wrong-headed man, drunk with vanity and blind with self-esteem—a cheap little romantic—a Quixote of the back streets, a sordid Quixote without the saving graces of courage and honesty. You are a thief of the meanest kind!

“Sir!”

Yes; you are a would-be robber. You have attempted to pilfer a feeling of nobility. Ah! You hang your head. You do not deny it, eh?

“No; I hang my head. I don’t deny it … But … but …”

Never mind the “but, but”, Mr. Pym. Go to your room now and sit down and work. Work, Mr. Pym—work! Grow great and wealthy and afford to be a benefactor in your own right, you shoplifter in the bargain-basement of magnanimity—you grubby Robin Hood in borrowed Sherwood-green, who take from the poor to give to the dead! Go back where you belong, and work!

“Yes, sir.”

Pym slunk home like a criminal. The detective-sergeant was waiting for him.

“You made a nice mess of yourself,” he said.

“Oh, God! What now?”

“What did you want to withdraw that charge for, for Christ’s sake? Now you’ve committed a misdemeanour. If you know that a felony has been committed and conceal it, without being in any way a party to it, you commit the misdemeanour of misprision of felony. You compounded a felony—that’s what you did.”

“But surely …!” cried Pym, “they can’t do anything to me for that!”

“They can give you up to two years in jail, you know,” said the detective-sergeant. “It is a misdemeanour at Common Law for a person, for any reward or advantage, to agree not to prosecute any person for felony. You see what I mean.”

“What am I to do, for the love of God?”

“Oh, I should think you’ll be all right. Now keep calm—calm, do you hear?—Stop that laughing and keep calm! Hysterics’ll get you nowhere. Will you stop it? Now, look—I’ve got to do this——”

Having received a stinging slap in the face, Pym hiccuped, shuddered back to sanity and said: “Thanks. Thanks. I wish I knew exactly what I’ve done.”

“You’ve just been soft,” said the detective-sergeant.

“You said something about Two Years. I couldn’t do it—I couldn’t!”

“Now then, now then, take it easy! I don’t imagine for one moment that it’ll come to that in your case. Take it easy, now!”

“I wish to God I was dead and buried!” cried Pym.

“All in good time. Take it easy; take it easy. Come along now; pull yourself together and let’s talk it over. What do you say?”

“Go and try and be decent to people!” cried Pym. “See where it gets you! Under the circumstances, I’ve always been more or less honourable. You can ask anybody you like. I’ll never try to do anyone a good turn again as long as I live!”

The detective-sergeant said: “Now blow your nose, blow your little nose, son—that’s the style, a good blow—and tell us all about it….”

Pym looked out of the window. The world was squalid and mean—a bad little world under a stained sheet of sky blotched with the traces of a furtive couple of clouds that had met and were parting in a hurry behind the sun’s back. Filthy sky! Sordid sky! Brothel-sky! Scummy sky of dirty water ringed with greasy sediment stuck with strange coarse hairs! Lodging-house sky! Heaven of mucus and spittle and dirty linen, dripping … dripping….

“Pah!” said Pym. “If people would only leave me alone! I only want to be left alone to get on with my work. I can’t help doing such silly things—I can’t help feeling sorry for people. I ask you, what would you do if an old man came to you and said—Oh, but what the devil is the use of talking? What’s the use?”

“I daresay you can establish the fact that you didn’t mean to do it, can’t you? I mean to say, you accepted payment from the old man, and signed papers to prove it, didn’t you?”

“It serves me right for being sorry for people. If they’d just leave me alone! Oh, you don’t know how tired I am of people! I’m so tired. I really am so tired! As if I’d accept payment for withdrawing a charge!”

“The old gentleman’s showed us the document and the receipt, you know.”

“Oh, all right! Hang, draw and quarter me.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said the detective.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SO there came a sombre threatening night when Pym was overtaken by madness in an empty street.

He was being hunted down. Stealthy footsteps were following him. He wanted to run, but was ashamed. At last, when he dared to turn and look back, his heart contracted like a squeezed sponge.

A dim, squat, froglike thing was crouching at his heels.

He shrieked, and the echoing street shrieked back. Then Reason, badly battered, staggered out of its whispering corner and Pym knew that the footsteps that had followed him were only echoes of his own, and the squatting thing was his shadow thrown down by the light of the street lamp under which he had instinctively stopped. Pym walked on, but his heart was cold and desperate, leaping and falling like a salmon in a stream, and his blood was water. A white thing slid past his face. He leapt sideways. The white thing was only a puff of smoke from Pym’s cigarette—he had forgotten that he was smoking.

“God help me! Don’t leave me alone in the dark!” he cried. Then he stopped and listened again. Not far from where he stood someone was weeping desperately—some poor beaten whore perhaps whom a word might comfort. Pym could not bear the noise of weeping—anyone with sound tear-ducts and a strong diaphragm to sob with could put out his anger as water quenches fire, or make him boil like quicklime. He began to say: “Who’s that? Where are you?”

Who—hoo!-hoo!-hoo! was what he said.

It was he who was weeping.

The shock of this discovery gagged him for a few seconds, and then he knew that something terrible had happened to him. The night was a dark cupboard into which he had been cruelly thrust and locked away and forgotten, like an ill-treated child, and there he would remain for ever, heartbroken and lonely. Hearing his own sobs Pym thought of a narrow-necked bottle emptying itself, gulp by gulp—and this thought made him laugh so loudly that he had to push his handkerchief into his mouth to muffle the noise.

At the back of his head a voice said, coldly and clearly: “You are going mad.” Pym stopped laughing, and cried again. The street was closing in. On a roof a cat wailed O, wo-wo-wo!—but the voice of the cat was full of mockery. He took hold of himself and then he shook like a man who has been tricked into gripping the handles of a shocking-coil—he was shaking himself to pieces, but he could not let go.

Presently he started and listened again. The short hairs on the back of his neck stirred and prickled. He could hear heavy, deliberate footsteps—not his own—a policeman was coming. Pym glanced from left to right. There was no escape. This was the end. He would fight to the death. The policeman came near, looked at him incuriously, and passed.

“I am not afraid of policemen,” said Pym. “I am not afraid of the dark … I do not cry like a baby!” Nevertheless he was crying again. He wanted to lie down in a doorway and let the gulping narrow-necked bottle empty itself, so that in the morning they would find nothing but a skin. “I haven’t got a friend in the world—not one friend in all the world. I am the loneliest man on earth,” Pym said to himself.

But Reason, punch-drunk and almost blind with blood, came back again to close with the Shadow, while the bell of a church struck one, like a gong.

“Snap out of it! What about Proudfoot? Go to Proudfoot.”

Pym writhed out of the narrow street like a dog struggling through a hole in a wall and found himself in the Strand. The road glistened in the lamplight by the dark and dreadful gates of the Tivoli. A swollen sky sagged under an infinite weight of water: everything was stretched tight, shining with tension—in one moment the road would burst like a black bladder and the sky would split like a sail and darkness and wind and rain and light would rush together in seething chaos.

A taxi, coming out of Bedford Street, swung eastward. Pym ran towards it, shouting.

“Where d’you want to go?” the driver asked.

Something grey and woolly was packed between Pym and what he wanted to say. He found a couple of syllables, hard and sharp, like seeds in raw cotton, and said: “Proudfoot.”

“Never heard of it.”

Pym’s groping fist caught hold of a cold metal lever. “God give me strength,” he prayed and put out all his force, because upon the turning of this lever the fate of the world depended. Something clicked and the lever was down—but it was nothing but the handle of the taxi door.

“Emerson Square—yes, Emerson Square,” said Pym.

He threw himself back on the ice-cold leather cushions. Grey streets, blotched and stippled with yellow light, curled and swirled away.

“Number?”

Pym’s rattling brain bounced and spun like a marble on a roulette wheel and came to rest. “Ten,” he said, holding his breath like a gambler who has staked all he has upon one single number.

The taxi stopped.

Pym pressed his thumb on a bell-push and held it there. A window opened and a woman said something in an angry voice. Slippered feet slapped and shuffled in the passage. A man’s voice, curiously tense and alert even at that small hour of the morning, said: “Who’s that?”

“Oh, Proudfoot, Proudfoot, it’s me—John Pym! Please let me in, quickly—Oh, please let me in!”

The door opened.

“Come in quickly. Don’t stand there crying. Quick—I’m cold. Come in, come in. What the devil do you want at this time of night?”

“I don’t know … I don’t know. I’m sorry … I don’t know. I don’t know what I want—I don’t know what to do. I don’t know! Don’t you understand?—I don’t know!”

“Oh, I see. I think I understand. Come in and sit down.”

“I knew you’d understand, Proudfoot. I knew you would. You understand everything,” said Pym.

“Come in and shut the door.”

*

In his day Proudfoot had been worshipped and feared by an obsequious rabble of pickpockets, pimps, whores, card-sharpers, abortionists and burglars. They called him The Mouthpiece. He was supposed to be the most brilliant criminal lawyer on this side of the Atlantic. He could prove that black was white, hypnotise juries, and in cross-examination make such fools of witnesses that they did not know where to hide their heads. He had been notorious for his unscrupulousness and his terrifying audacity. When a case seemed hopeless Proudfoot The Mouthpiece thundered down upon the prosecution like a wounded buffalo, and smashed through; or he could weep like an innocent child; or be silent until he pounced like a cat. He was bold, shameless, irresistibly seductive. Someone drew a caricature of Proudfoot, repulsively ugly, lifting the skirts of blind Justice upon a sofa, with the caption: What does she see in him?

His daring was phenomenal. For example: he whisked the infamous Silver Jack Stutz away from the gallows by reciting a formidable list of the man’s previous convictions, and thus managed to convince the jury that they were prejudiced against him. Proudfoot had gigantically magnified and coloured a microscopic speck of doubt in the evidence—having buzzed about the heads of the witnesses like a cloud of mosquitoes, harassing them to the edge of madness. Silver Jack, who had split his mistress from head to waist with a butcher’s cleaver, was acquitted.

After that Proudfoot might have grown very great. But he was not strong enough. He could hold up the falling sky over the head of a bandit or wrestle with Death for the body of a murderer, but he could not carry the weight of success. The card-sharpers, share-pushers and con-men caught Proudfoot in the end—they flattered and adored him into over-estimating his might. They sold him a gold brick—a belief in his infallibility. Yes, in a little while they talked him into staking everything he had on one throw. For Proudfoot had become a god, and a god must be what his worshippers want him to be. The god of vengeance must drip blood; the god of love must be gentle and loving; the god of thieves must laugh at the law, especially if he is a lawyer. Proudfoot embezzled money and bribed a witness. (He could get away with anything.) By then he had taken to heavy drinking; and since women loved him for his success, and a god may do anything he likes except disappoint his worshippers, Proudfoot worked all day and played all night.

On the day of reckoning the virtue went out of Proudfoot. He was defending himself against Dekker. The court was crowded. The public held its breath in anticipation of an historic rapier-and-dagger duel. They were disappointed. Proudfoot went down squirming and gasping, and there was the end of him. When he came out of prison only a column-inch or two in the newspapers announced the fact, and no one was interested, although headlines on the front pages had announced his going in. He loitered about Fleet Street on his way down along the gutters. Sometimes he was seen in the crypt of the Law Courts, lead-grey and heavy, noticeably aged. He had strutted like a bantam cock in his heyday: now he waddled like an old duck, all belly and backside. Sometimes he staggered a little: this meant that he had got hold of a pound or two. He contrived to live, in one shady way or another.

How otherwise can a disbarred barrister live? If he decides to go straight, having found that crime, detected, does not pay, he can do little jobs of clerking in a practising lawyer’s office—provided he can find an unbroken lawyer who will trust him or pity him enough. But that kind of honest bread is gritty to bite and bitter to swallow. He can try his hand at salesmanship, dragging a case of samples from door to door. But he has not the knack of selling things. There is no law that compels a shopkeeper to listen to him; no judge to say: “You must not interrupt.”

At last the broken barrister has a go at journalism, and so he finds himself in the company of many other professional gentlemen rather the worse for wear—ex-doctors whose pockets bulge with rejected articles on health and first-aid; ex-accountants who have committed to paper astonishing facts about income tax, which every editor in England has seen before; unfrocked clergymen bulging with essays on Resignation, or Christmas poems; struck-off solicitors with dog-eared analyses of the laws pertaining to Compensation; ex-actors who want to write about the Drama. In this wistful, well-spoken, confident-voiced, worried-eyed, important-chested, shiny-trousered half-world he meets, also, ex-burglars who are prepared to spill the beans; ex-bucket-shopkeepers willing to tell inside stories; old lags from Dartmoor and ex-prisoners from Devil’s Island who have hair-raising tales of incarceration. This is the ex-World of simple equations: of familiar symbols posing as unknown quantities.

Sometimes the disbarred barrister has some brushing lip-to-ear contact with a questionable private-detective agency in one of the back-doubles near Holborn. Sometimes he acts as freelance consultant to worried, whispering women and pale, secretive men in the drinking clubs of Lisle Street and Gerrard Street and the coffee shops off the Charing Cross Road. Sometimes he may be seen urgently talking behind his hand to another ex-professional man near the Mansion House. Again, he may be in conference with white-handed members of the lumpen-proletariat in a bar near Bow Street. He survives. And every week or so, sure as fate, he squeezes his wine-red or lead-grey face into the pigeon-hole of the porter’s box in a newspaper office and asks to see “someone in authority on a matter of considerable importance”. (He has had another inspiration—probably something to do with your legal position if you trip over a bucket of dirty water and cut your knee.) Each time he appears a shade greyer, or redder; a little more seedy about the cuffs, and a little less firm-handed when he fills in the form that required him to state his name and his business.

One muddy morning, or sweltering afternoon, the porter as good as tells him to go away and stay away. He goes. He is EX——.

X = O.

Proudfoot described himself now as a Journalist: his name was not quite forgotten in Fleet Street. After his crash the Sunday Special had published Proudfoot’s life-story: Master Mouthpiece! Once in a blue moon they printed a few of his paragraphs. He was a ruined man—a damp firework, spasmodically promising brilliant things; emitting nothing but pungent smoke and rocking to a disappointing standstill. Yet within the sodden coils of the man something smouldered until it touched a dry patch. Then Proudfoot blazed with coloured sparks and twirled again—for two seconds, after which he rocked suggestively in a cloud of promise, and was dead again. He was drunkenly spinning but still sparkling when Pym first said: “How d’you do?” to him in the lower waiting-room of the Sunday Special building. Pym, also, had sold an article. They exchanged courtesies, drinks, expressions of esteem; and became friends.

*

Pym sat in Proudfoot’s broken-bottomed easy-chair by the gas-fire, sniffing up the beginnings of explanations, sighing out the hiccup-broken fragments of apologies, and trying to swallow his shame.

“You can stop that,” said Proudfoot.

“I … I ha-beg …”

“I said you can stop that! Come on, now; take a sip of water, Pym. Or will you have it in your face? Sip it, I said—sip, sip! Not gulp—sip, man! Sip it slowly and swallow the water, not the air. You must do as I say.”

“I will, Proudfoot, I will.”

When Proudfoot smiled his mouth looked like the sticky imprint of a gross kiss on a pewter tankard. He smiled now, remembering old times: the days of his godhead when people wept before him in the big soundproof office near Jockey’s Fields. “Lord, what shall we do to be saved?” they had asked; and he had always stood as he was standing now, with his hands clasped behind him smiling moistly with loose-mouthed scorn.

“Yes, you will, Pym. And first of all you must be calm. If you are not calm,” said Proudfoot, separating his words and lingering on them a little, pressing them home like so many impressions of a rubber stamp, “if you are not calm I shall refuse to talk to you. I shall tell you to go away and come back another time when you are calm.”

“I’m better now, Proudfoot. I can’t tell you how ashamed I am.”

“Forget that. Tell me, what’s on your mind? I shall understand. Talk; get it off your chest.”

Pym hesitated. He was confused. “I don’t quite know,” he said; “all of a sudden … snap—just like that—I felt I was going crazy. I don’t know what was the matter with me. It happened—just like that. I felt … I can’t describe it … that I was in danger, and people were after me. And I wanted to run away and hide. I didn’t want to go home because—it seems ridiculous—I was afraid to be alone; and I didn’t dare to go to a café or any such place because I was afraid to be with strangers. I knew I should do something silly. So I roamed about, and it got worse and worse, and then, just when I thought I really was going stark staring mad I thought of you. I came here in a taxi. Proudfoot, for God’s sake, what’s the matter with me? Am I really going crazy?”

“I said be calm, Pym. You are not crazy. Relax now, and get things straight and tidy in your muddled head. Think hard and think carefully … Now tell me one single thing of which you have reasonable cause to be afraid.”

Pym thought and shook his head.

Proudfoot went on: “You were afraid of going to prison, were you not?”

“Well, yes; but——”

“There was no likelihood of that, as I told you when I found bail for you. You were in a highly nervous state at the time, yet you will not have forgotten that I tried to reassure you then.”

“I’ll never forget all you’ve done for me, Proudfoot, as long as I live.”

“Never mind that. You did not believe me, on that occasion, when I assured you that there was not one chance in a thousand of your being found guilty of compounding the felony. You did not believe me, did you, Pym?”

“It wasn’t exactly that I didn’t believe you, Proudfoot; but was worked up—overwound—and fed up, fed up to the teeth.”

“You did not believe me. Yet events proved me right. Did they or did they not?”

“My God, yes, Proudfoot! I can’t tell you how grateful——”

“You will believe me in future, perhaps? You will have a little more confidence in me?”

“I have, Proudfoot—on my word of honour, I have confidence in you.”

“That is all I want to know. Now it is established that your fears were groundless even when there appeared to be some material basis for them. Is that so?”

“You’re absolutely right, Proudfoot.”

“And the other fears that sent you—you—running like a rabbit through the streets to cry on my shoulder at two o’clock in the morning: they were nothing at all. They were not even figments of your imagination, were they? They had no form, even in your imagination, had they?”

“No,” said Pym. “And I can’t tell you how——”

“So, Mr. John Pym,” said Proudfoot, counting the points on the fingers of his left hand, “knowing that there is nothing to fear, you are afraid. You admit that you are frightened literally by Nothing. It is not like you to be afraid—even of Something, I believe?”

“I suppose not.”

“So you were not yourself, eh?”

“It wasn’t like me, I admit. I’m terribly ashamed of myself.”

“Excuse me: you are not ashamed of yourself: you are ashamed because you were not yourself. You are ashamed of having lost your grip upon yourself. But, my dear fellow,” said Proudfoot, trying to bring back into his hoarse voice a little of the old magic, “my dear fellow, no man’s strength is illimitable. You said that you were fed up—fed up to the teeth. It must have been a very tremendous combination of forces indeed that could break your hold on yourself! Consider, my dear Pym—look at yourself. You are young, you are healthy, you are handsome, you are strong; you have a charming personality and—above all, above all, Pym—you have genius. You are going to be great, a great author. You have told me so, and I believe you. And mark my words, Pym, it is impossible to be what I have been without a knack of weighing and measuring men. Oh, you may look at me as I am now, and laugh at the dirty old bum in the stinking old room, wearing a ragged old overcoat for a dressing-gown—you may laugh, Pym, and probably do laugh at me when you are far enough round the corner not to hurt my feelings——”

“—I’d never dream——”

“—But there are three or four large volumes of newspaper cuttings over there in which you may find certain evidence of certain qualities, certain faculties, and certain powers of assessment with which God has endowed this same out-at-elbows laughing-stock of Fleet Street,” said Proudfoot. “And I can tell you that although I have fallen low, I still know how to measure and assess a man. And I know you, Pym, to be potentially great. Don’t shake your head at me—you know it yourself, and you know that you know it. Otherwise—if you had not the genius’s faith in himself—would you have suffered as you have suffered merely for the sake of writing a book?”

“I really have been trying to write a good book,” said Pym, pulling a loose horsehair out of the arm of the chair.

“Living on coffee and rolls in dirty coffee shops, sleeping in lousy lodging houses, washing your own shirt in a basin overnight and putting it on damp in the morning, re-rolling your own cigarette ends half a dozen times, never having a penny to bless yourself with—when you might quite easily be rich and comfortable? It’s true that many second-rate artists have lived like that, but only because they were lazy and liked hard liquor and easy women. You are not like that. No, a man’s destiny is written on his face if you know how to read it. I know how to read men, and that, more than anything else, made me what I used to be when they called me The Mouthpiece. Oh, I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking: here is a fine one to talk—this flabby failure in a dirty overcoat, wearing old shoes on his bare feet because he hasn’t got slippers, and unable to offer a friend anything better than a sip of cold water out of a jug! That’s what you’re thinking. Still, I tell you that I’m right! There was only one man whom I couldn’t read. That man was my downfall.”

Proudfoot paused, waiting for it. It came.

“Who was he?” asked Pym.

“Myself,” said Proudfoot, pointing to his four fat books of press cuttings, and watching Pym’s face.

It was a strange face, blunt-featured, compact and muscular; a well-constructed, useful-looking face, handsome in spite of the short blunt nose and the out-thrust jaw. Pym’s mouth was set, now, in an expression of unshakable resolution and his eyes were steady under his frowning brows. Now he looked as a boxer looks when he shuts his ears to the thunder of the crowd and climbs through the ropes. Yes, Proudfoot had seen Pym’s face tightening and hardening while he talked. Ten minutes ago it had been the tear-stained face of a lost child. Now it was the formidable face of an undefeated fighter. The big bony hands, which had been plucking nervously at the loose horse-hair on the arm of the ragged easy chair, had closed slowly into hard knuckly fists.

Proudfoot smiled. He was pleased. He liked this young man, whom he could pull together like a jointed doll at the end of a string. There Pym had sat, blubbering like a schoolboy and pleading with his wet eyes like a spaniel whose master has left him at home. And he, Proudfoot The Mouthpiece, with his magic mouth had whispered the Word and made a new man. Proudfoot the god had breathed a breath of life into this tear-softened clay. He had stretched out His Hand over the Chaos that was Pym, and lo! the light was separated from the dark, the earth was separated from the waters, the sun and the moon and the planets had clicked into their pockets in the sky, the things that swam and the things that crawled and the things that walked were in their ordained places, and in the broken chair by the gas-fire sat Man! Proudfoot drew a deep breath, so deep that his bronchitic old chest sang like a kettle. He was still in his heaven; a little advanced in years, somewhat tarnished about the aureole, and a shade flyblown on the surface. But He was still strong to save men from the perils and dangers of the night, and be with them in the Valley of the Shadow; He was still the Rock of the Salvation of them that walk in darkness.

“I owe you more than I can ever repay, Proudfoot,” said Pym, firmly now but fervently; “I hate to think what I should have done without you.”

“It was nothing—nothing at all, Pym, my dear fellow,” said Proudfoot, coming to earth and appearing as a Son of Man. “I am flattered, my dear fellow, that a man like you should come for help to a man like me. Well, I suppose even an eagle or an albatross comes down to rest for a moment on a ruin or a rotten derelict. But you were saying that you were fed up, fed up to the teeth, Pym. Why? I’ve known you for two years or more, and nothing ever seemed to shake you. My poor friend, how you must have been suffering!”

The resolute mouth relaxed a hair’s breadth and some of the whiteness went out of the fighter’s knuckles. “It’s so difficult to explain. I don’t think I know how to explain. But I owe you an explanation of some sort, Proudfoot. I owe you ever so much more than just an explanation——”

“Have you got any money?”

“I’ve got nearly five pounds,” said Pym, taking the money out of his pocket; “please have it.”

“My dear fellow, I wouldn’t dream of it. Well, I might borrow thirty shillings. A loan, mind. You have already been far too kind. You insisted on my taking that five pounds as a fee—as if a fee were necessary! I’ll borrow thirty shillings, since you’re so insistent, and remember,” said Proudfoot, still watching Pym’s face, “remember that you are not indebted to me for anything whatsoever.” He read dog-like gratitude in Pym’s lifted paw, and went on jovially: “I’ll tell you why I asked you whether you had any money. It’s getting on for five o’clock. Until you were so kind as to lend me thirty shillings I had no money. I was going to say that the public house in Covent Garden Market will be opening now, and that if you liked we could take a walk in that direction and you could—if it were perfectly convenient—buy me a drink. But you’re tired.”

“Indeed I’m not tired, Proudfoot, and I’d love to buy you a drink.”

“No, no; you must be exhausted after all you’ve been through … Oh, well, all right, since you insist, let it be as you say. And on the way you can tell me all about it.”

They went on tiptoe to the outer door. “Quietly, if you don’t mind,” said Proudfoot; “that’s right. Come along now.”

Pym laid an affectionate hand on the old man’s shoulder, Proudfoot smiled in the dark: the spaniel was grateful: it was being taken for a walk.

After a minute or two of thoughtful silence Pym said, striking himself on the thigh with a merciless hand (the slap and the jingle of small change in his trouser-pocket sent a stray cat bounding in terror across the street): “I must get my typewriter and go back to work, Proudfoot, by God I must! I haven’t much more to do. I’ve got to finish. I can get my typewriter, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes. It is necessary only for you to establish your right to it by application to the Police Commissioner, and you will get it back from the pawnbroker without any trouble at all, and it will cost you nothing.”

“Oh, by the way …” said Pym.

It was too dark for Proudfoot to see Pym’s face between the lamp-posts, but Proudfoot (like Busto) had ears trained to turn sound into pictures. Something in Pym’s voice informed him that the clenched hands had unclenched. “By the way, what?”

“I forgot to ask: what happens to Win—Miss Joyce?”

“It’s difficult to predict these things with any degree of certainty; but, to hazard a guess, I should say that she’d probably get—taking all things into consideration—something like three months.”

“What!”

“Oh yes, she’ll get off lightly, in spite of the fact that one or two similar little affairs have been hushed up before. You see, although she has no previous convictions, no actual convictions, she’s not unknown to the police. But the old gentleman, her stepfather, has a lot of money. The argument will be: silly, thoughtless girl. Taking all in all … let me see. She has been in very bad company—a pimp, in point of fact, called American Henry or something of the sort. He has just served three years for burglary. You know what these people are: if he had been romantic enough to take the blame, he would have got it in the neck. He was not. He said, without hesitation, that he had got the typewriter from the young lady, who had given it to him to pawn. When she was questioned, she told another tale, and by that time you had already charged her with the theft of the typewriter. On the one hand we have … well, let us not bother about the one hand or the other hand. Yes, I should say something like three months.”

“Three months,” said Pym, shocked and fascinated, “three months in prison! What on earth will she do?”

“Oh, pretty much the same as they all do, I suppose. Keep regular hours, do a little work, keep out of mischief, stop smoking and drinking and fornicating, and have a little time for reflection on a hard, clean bed, without too much rich food. I will wager the thirty shillings I have just borrowed from you that she will be vastly improved physically by the time she comes out. Do you know what? They always are: it’s a fact. A little discipline does them good. I used to know a manufacturer of window frames who went to prison for twelve months for defrauding the Inland Revenue. When he stood in the dock he was as flabby and unsavoury a wreck as I am now. He was about the same age, too—somewhere around sixty. When I saw him rather less than a year later, he looked ten years younger. It is good for them, my dear fellow, good for them!”

Sadly, not without bitterness, Pym said: “That sounds strange, Proudfoot, coming from The Mouthpiece.”

Proudfoot was not disconcerted. He laughed lightly and said: “My dear fellow, what’s strange about it? Has it occurred to you that my clients were seldom if ever liable to less than ten years’ penal servitude? I never involved myself in petty larceny and misdemeanours … until now, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Pym’s cheeks were red and hot in the cool darkness as he said: “I’m sorry, Proudfoot.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” said Proudfoot. “That’s your trouble, Pym—that is your curse. Sorry! If you are to be the man you are meant to be you must stop being sorry. You must be hard, Pym, hard! Great men are not sorry. It is nothing but conceit, this perpetual sorriness of yours!”

“You’re always right, you’re never wrong, Proudfoot. But great man are sorry—I mean, they do feel pity.”

“Very well. Go on.”

“The greater the man, the deeper the pity,” said Pym.

“All right. ‘The greater the man, the deeper the pity.’ Very good. ‘Let us now praise famous men.’ Since you are a writer, let us talk about greatness in its relation to Pity. Come on, Sorry—I am going to nickname you ‘Sorry’—come on, Sorry Pym, name me a few pitiful great writers.”

“There was, of course, Shakespeare,” said Pym uncertainly; “and there was Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Dickens——”

“—That’s enough. Add, if you like, Balzac and Zola. Add whoever you like. All great writers know pity. I put it to you that if Charles Dickens had gone on as you are going on he would have lived and died in the blacking factory, labelling bottles, with Oliver Twist unborn—for the simple reason that he would never have snatched enough time to write it! My dear fellow, you must realise that pity, material pity, pity in four dimensions (I include Time as a dimension) is a life work in itself. Who was more full of pity than Dostoevsky? What did he do? Did he stay in Siberia, busily pitying? Oh no; oh, dear me, no! He got out of it, married a reliable typist, smacked his innocent children’s heads if they dared to cough or sniff in the flat while he was putting pity on paper, and sat down and wrote Crime and Punishment. You mentioned Shakespeare. At your age, Shakespeare was already a man of power. ‘The greater the man the deeper the pity’ were your words, I believe?”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

“I agree,” said Proudfoot, and paused before hammering in the last half-inch of his argument.

“Well, then——”

“—The greater the man the profounder the pity. The profounder the pity the sharper the pain of uprooting it. The sharper the pain the harder to bear. The harder to bear the stronger the man. The stronger the man, the greater the man, writer, businessman, or what you will. Detach yourself!”

“Detach myself! How?”

“My dear fellow, with only a little time to call your own—left alone only for a little while—could you, or could you not, do what you have set out to do?”

“I believe I could.”

“You know you could. I agree with you when you say ‘the greater the man the deeper the pity’, but if you are to be great you must see your subject from a distance. You must listen to me, Pym, because although I’m old and wretched and shabby and broken and altogether ridiculous, I am not a fool, and I was on the way to being great (comical though it may sound, coming from me) before you were born. You must see life from the proper distance. You do not see a landscape when you are lying on your face in a bed of stinging nettles, any more than you hear an orchestra if you push your ear into the mouth of a trombone. True, if you wish to paint a landscape, you must first learn the shape and feel of a nettle or a blade of grass; and you appreciate music better if you know the potentialities of all the instruments. Again, before you portray a human being you must see the articulation of his bones. But the whole, Pym, may not be viewed except from a distance. You are too closely in contact with things, especially with people, at the present moment, and you must go away to a quiet place, and put your head in order, and lick some of the salt out of your wounds, and settle down to work; as other great men have done.”

“You’re right, Proudfoot—you are right, I know. All I want is to be left alone. The point is, one has to eat and keep a roof over one’s head. A formality, perhaps,” said Pym, laughing, “but necessary.”

“Quite simply, then, you must get hold of some money,” said Proudfoot.

“I like the ‘quite simply’.”

“Oh, but you can.”

“How?” asked Pym.

Proudfoot said: “Now, I don’t want to say too much at present, but a day or two ago I met an old friend who has a project in which I am interested—I think profitable, when it matures a little. I’ll tell you about it. You have lent me thirty shillings, and been very kind on previous occasions,” said Proudfoot; “and, as the saying goes, I’ll cut you in if all goes well. But you do realise, my dear fellow, that the time has come to detach yourself a little—to be hard?”

“I do, on my word of honour I do, Proudfoot. But …”

“Oh, enough of my chatter, my dear fellow. Tell me about yourself.”

“The trouble with me——” Pym began.

“Ah!” said Proudfoot.

They were at the door of the Jackdaw of Rheims.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“THE trouble with me——” said Pym.

“Rum. At this hour of the morning rum is the best thing. Rum for you?”

“Whatever you like. Anything.”

“Two rums,” said Proudfoot.

“I’m only supposed to serve market people at this time of the morning,” said the barman. “Are you market people?”

“Well …” said Pym.

“Yes,” said Proudfoot firmly.

A costermonger in a tight brown overcoat and a cracked bowler hat said: “You’re a bloody liar.”

“Perhaps——” said Pym.

“Pay no attention,” said Proudfoot.

The costermonger’s pink, drink-thickened face glowed in the cigarette smoke like a setting sun in a wet sky. He was sullen and angry; heavy, strong and dangerous. A little, quick, dry woman, whose hat brushed his chin, touched his wrist with a tiny hand and made a gesture that reminded Pym of a fly cleaning its front legs. “Now then, Nat,” she said.

“Shut up! Keep your snotty nose out o’ this. Wodger mean—‘pay no attention’? Eh? Goon. Wodger mean?”

“Leave people alone,” said the barman.

“Yes, come on, Nat.”

“Shut your bloody mouf! Put a bloody sock in it or I’ll shut if for ya. ’Oo said ‘pay no attention’? You? You dirty bastard! I’ll knock your bastard block orf!”

“Go on and do it,” said Proudfoot, smiling. “I know your kind, my friend. I defy you to touch me, you sodden loafer! Here—look—here’s my face. Touch it—just touch it! I dare you to! You miserable cur. Go on—hit me, knock my ‘bastard block’ off. Here it is.”

Proudfoot folded back his upturned coat-collar and offered his face to the costermonger, looking into his eyes.

“Nat!” said the little woman.

“Oh, shullup!” The costermonger looked away from Proudfoot, saw Pym and said: “What’s the matter with you?”

“Are you asking for trouble?” said Pym. “This gentleman is my friend.”

“Now then, Nat—stop it, for Christ’s sake, can’t you?” cried the little woman.

A fruit-salesman wearing an Old Etonian tie and a tweed cap muttered: “Turn it up. Ignore ’im. You don’t want no trouble with Nat.”

“‘This gentleman is my friend,’” said Nat, with savage mockery. “‘This gentleman is my friend.’ Well, I tell you what you can do with your friend. You can go and —— your friend, and —— your mother, and —— your father, and —— yourself. See? That’s what you can do. All right? Well, go on, then. I told you what you can do, didn’t I? and do it, you dirty-rotten, twanking son of a nore! Go on—go on and do what you’re told!”

“Good Lord!” said Pym, mildly astonished. He was looking at the ceiling in the abstracted manner of a man making mental notes.

“Come and sit down,” said Proudfoot, pulling at his sleeve.

“All right,” said Pym.

“If anybody said that to me,” whispered the fruit-salesman, “I’d ’ave a go if ’e was Jack Dempsey. I’d do ’im if I ’ad to do ’im wiv an iron bar—I’d do six months for ’im, so ’elp me Jesus Christ Allbloodymighty!”

“He didn’t seem to annoy you,” said Proudfoot, sitting next to Pym at a little round table.

“Not much, no. I really don’t mind a great deal what people say to me. Why, do you?”

“No, not a bit. You were wise not to get into a fight with Nat the Terror, though. He’s one of the madmen that don’t know when to stop: a violent creature with no regard for the consequences of anything he does,” said Proudfoot. “Shall we have another rum?”

“By all means, Proudfoot. I’ll get it. Just let me swallow this. Now, what was I saying? Yes: the trouble with me, as I was saying——”

Nat the Terror made the glasses jump as he struck the table, and the tip of his nose touched Pym’s cheekbone as he shouted: “You’re a dirty bastard of a f—d pig! I told you what to do. Don’t sit here! Go and —— your —— ing mother!”

The little woman took hold of Nat’s sleeve and drew him back a pace or two.

“Pay no attention,” said Proudfoot.

“No, but this is very interesting,” said Pym.

“I’ll shut your mouf for you,” said Nat, with a knowing smile, and knocked the little woman down with a backhanded swing of his right fist.

“This is what comes of interfering——” Proudfoot began to say; but Pym did not hear. He rose, kicking away his chair and shouting “No! No! No!” in a strangled, husky voice. The barman, with a mallet in his hand, was lifting the hinged flap of the bar and advancing with the sophisticated trepidation of an old soldier.

“Now look what you done!” cried Nat, holding up a cut knuckle, “you ’oring cow, you interfering bloody bitch!”

The little woman sat up unsteadily, retching and spitting a lingering, gummy string of blood. Then Pym leapt upon Nat and struck him with all his strength in the middle of his face. “Women? You hit women?” he shouted, and struck again. Nat fell back upon the bar. “Leave him alone—leave him to me!” cried Pym to the barman. Hurling himself against Nat he fell with him into the street beyond the swinging doors of the Jackdaw of Rheims.

“This is going to be a bundle!” said the fruit-salesman, leaving his beer undrunk and rushing out. Even the barman followed him.

Nat feinted with his left hand, struck with his right and knocked Pym as he staggered back. Pym’s heels struck the kerb, and he sat down on the pavement. Nat jumped on him, but Pym, rolling forward, caught one of his ankles in a terrible grip, so that Nat fell on his face and they were lying together in the gutter. Pym remembered that a coster lived on his feet and one might break his ankle, so he relaxed his hold; and then Nat kicked himself loose and stamped on Pym’s face with a heavy boot. He had the legs of a man who pushes loaded barrows. Something clicked: there was another red sunset flavoured with salt and Pym was standing up, keeping away. He hit hard with his left hand. Nat came on. Pym skipped away from a swinging boot, and still Nat came on. The back of Nat’s hand scraped his nose. A hand took hold of his throat. Pym bowed his head, found a finger, and bit it with all his might.

“Biting, by Christ!” said Nat. “Biting!” Nat dragged himself away. He and Pym stood face to face.

“Let’s call it a day,” said Nat.

“No!” cried Pym, landing a shattering right-hand punch on his chin, and Nat fell on his back “A woman? A woman? You’d strike a woman, would you?”

“Woman, you bloody fool? Woman? That’s Lil, my wife. She’s not a woman!” said Nat the Terror, rising. “But okay, you asked for it.”

He bobbed his head, hunched a shoulder, drew back his left hand and aimed a kick at Pym’s groin. Pym stepped aside and hit him four times before he recovered his balance. Nat fell into a mess of horse droppings and cabbage leaves, but came up with a nail-studded batten from a broken crate, indignantly shouting: “Foul me, would ’e?”

“’It ’im in the guts!” cried the barman, dancing in ecstasy. “Kick ’im in the trollybobs!”

“Mind your own bloody business!” said the fruit-salesman. “Slosh ’im in the bleeding teeth!”

“Watch them nails!” said a porter.

Pym ran in as the batten came down, caught Nat’s wrist in his left hand and butted him in the face. The batten clattered on the paving-stones. “Sticks, eh?” said Pym, still gripping Nat’s wrist; and hit him a tremendous blow on the side of the jaw. This time, as Nat fell, Pym threw himself upon him, buried his fingers in his white muffler, and knocked his head on the edge of the kerb. Nat snorted, and was still.

“That’ll teach people to hit women,” said Pym.

Then the little woman went mad. She foamed at the mouth and shrieked: “’Itting people when they’re down, you dirty, rotten stinker! You bloody, dirty, filthy-rotten stinking twanking bastard!” She buried her fingernails in Pym’s face, reaching for his eyes. “They won’t let you live! You leave my Nat alone! You leave my Nat alone!”

“Lil’s worse than what ’e is,” said the porter to Proudfoot.

“Madam——” said Pym, holding her wrists.

“Don’t give me none of your ‘Madam’.

“What’s all this?” said a policeman.

The salesman lit a cigarette. The barman went back into the Jackdaw of Rheims. The porter looked at the sky and the other spectators made polite conversation.

“You mind your own,” said Lil, picking at a broken fingernail.

“Friendly bout,” said Nat, brushing horse dung and cabbage leaves off his neck.

“I know all about your friendly bouts,” said the policeman. “Break it up, will you?”

“That’s right,” said the porter.

“Don’t you put your oar in, Mike,” said the policeman. “I know you.”

“I assure you that everything is perfectly in order,” said Proudfoot.

“Well, well! You, eh? How are you?”

“Bearing up, bearing up, officer. There’s nothing to detain you here, I assure you.”

The policeman walked heavily towards Wellington Street. Nat the Terror offered Pym a hand like a boiled crab and said: “A fair fight and no favour. All right? Clean battle well fought. All right? Eh? No ’ard feeling. Shake ’ands and come out fighting and may the best man win. All right?”

“I’m afraid I lost my temper,” said Pym.

“That’s all right. Afraid I lost my temper.”

“You call yourself a man?” cried Lil. “You tuppenny-ha’penny twirp—you stinkpot, you, you dirty-filthy-rotten shite! You——”

Nat, who had been watching big slow drops of blood falling from his nose into the cupped palm of his right hand, as the representative of a defeated Power might watch melted sealing-wax dropping on to the parchment of a treaty, said: “Was you told to poke your nose in? If I told you once I told you a million times to stuff a sock in it and shut your gash!” He slapped her face with his left hand, so hard that she fell on her back in the road.

The spectators were talking.

“Wot a left!” said the porter.

“O-oo, that right!” said the salesman.

“Biff-Bosh! One, two, three—Biff, biff, bosh, bosh, bash, bang!” said one of the spectators, bobbing and weaving and striking the air. “—’Fight fair!’—‘I won’t fight fair’—‘Yes, you will’—‘No, I won’t’—‘Yes, you bloody will!’—‘No, I bloody won’t!’ — Biff-bosh-bash-bosh-crash-slosh-smash-bong-clonk-bang!”

“‘Did you address that remark to me? Then take that’—biff, bang, wallop!” said another porter. “Smashetty-bang. Up ’e gits. ‘Now I’ll do yer, bloody-blimey if I don’t do yer.’ ‘Ai swear bai mai mother’s laife Ai’ll bloody do yer.’ ‘Try it ’n see: ’ave a go—yer mother won’t know’, says Nat. And—slosh, bang, biff; biff-bang-bosh—and skwollop! Spark out.”

Nat was saying to Pym: “One thing I like, and that’s a nice clean fight. What d’you want to sort me out for?”

“You shouldn’t have struck the lady,” said Pym.

“It ain’t etiquette, is it?” said a porter.

Lil, having straightened herself, foot by foot like a carpenter’s measure, threw a handful of garbage into Nat’s face, screaming: “Man? You a man? You’re a dirty-filthy-rotten Woman! You dirty Woman! Slosh, don’t bloody talk!”

“I beg your pardon; did you call me a woman?” said Nat, and knocked her down again.

“Come away,” said Proudfoot. “Let us go elsewhere.”

“By all means,” said Pym.

“Are you hurt?”

“Only my nose: I think it’s broken.”

“How do you feel?”

“Never better, oddly enough.”

“What, in God’s name, made you pick a fight with Nat the Terror?”

“I simply couldn’t stand by and see him hit the lady, Proudfoot.”

“‘Lady!’ They call her Spitting Lil.”

“Well, the woman, then.”

“The trouble with you, Pym—

“Oh, yes, I was going to tell you. The trouble with me is——”

“Ah! The Horseball. We’ll have a drink here and you can wash your face. You’re covered with blood, Pym. ‘Sorry’ Pym! Come and have a wash and a drink. He knocks out Nat the Terror and calls Spitting Lil ‘a lady’, and says he’s afraid he lost his temper. Come on in, come in!”

*

“The trouble with me,” said Pym, “is that—Good God!”

“What’s the matter?” asked Proudfoot.

“I beg your pardon, but do you see that little man over there?”

“Well?”

“The little fellow with the flageolet.”

“The busker with the tin whistle—yes?”

“I’d like to hear what he’s saying.”

“Come to the bar, then.”

*

Two old women and a fat old man, who had been buying tomatoes, and a worried flower-seller, nervous as a whippet, who had invested his last pound in chrysanthemums, listened sympathetically and shook their heads sadly as the little fellow held up a broken tin-whistle and delivered his peroration:

“If I had a couple of shillings I could get a new instrument and buy some sausages to take home, and then get an hour or two’s sleep and start again this evening like a lion refreshed, as the saying goes….”

The fat old man said: “’Ere y’are; catch ’old,” and gave him a shilling. The old women lifted their skirts, rummaged in dirty canvas bags hung next to their flannel petticoats. One of them gave him fourpence. The other gave him sixpence, saying: “It’s the pore what ’elps the pore.” But the nervous flower-seller took out a half-crown and said, tragically, “’Ere y’are. ’Ave a tosheroon and buy yourself a bleed’n saxerphone … That’s all right. If I don’t do no good to-day I’m Rogered, so it don’t make no difference.”

“I’m more than grateful, I’m sure,” said the little man with the broken tin-whistle.

The fat old man said: “You’re right, Nelly. It’s the pore that ’elps the pore. Remember the song, eh, Nelly?” The old woman sang:

“It’s the pore that ’elps the pore

When Poverty knocks at the door.

Those that live in mansions grand

Orways fail to understand

The meanin’ of that little word—’Unger!

I’m shore

It’s the pore that know the meaning and so

It’s the pore that ’elps the pore.”

The flower-seller said: “It makes you fink.”

Then Pym began to laugh. The tin-whistle player looked up at him and glided away, while the fat old tomato-buyer said: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“I am,” said Pym, “I am, I am! That little fellow got a meal and my last few coppers out of me the other day on that same story, word for word the same story. Wouldn’t you laugh?”

“Well, would you believe it!” said the flower-seller. “I mean to say—I ask you!”

“’E’s making it up,” said one of the old women.

“Come and sit down,” said Proudfoot.

“I gave him twopence,” said Pym, shaking with laughter.

“Let’s have a couple of rums, double,” said Proudfoot to the barman, making his voice gruff. “Come and sit down, Pym. The trouble with you, as you were saying, is …”

*

“In a nutshell, I’m not strong enough to be what I want to be,” said Pym. “I don’t hang together in the shape I was cut out to be. I can’t explain. People have too much power to hurt me.”

“To hurt you. Yes?”

“Oh, not by what they do to me. They hurt me by suffering themselves, and by what they do to other people. For instance: you saw me fighting a little while ago with that man Nat?”

“I did, and I can tell you that no one but Nat could have stood on his feet after what you did to him, Pym.”

“Well, it wasn’t what he said to me, you know.”

“I know. It was because he struck Spitting Lil. Incidentally, she went to prison not very long ago for attempting to throw vitriol into another woman’s eyes. The lowest of the low! Well?”

“I’m sorry, Proudfoot; I can’t help it. Women, women…. I don’t know, Proudfoot, I don’t know. Did I ever tell you that I practically killed my mother?”

“With what?”

“Good God, with nothing! She was a fragile little thing,” said Pym, dabbing at his broken nose with a reddened handkerchief, “and, not to dwell on the subject, I was a difficult boy to get born. I was hard to bring up, too. She was never the same afterwards, Proudfoot. If it hadn’t been for me she’d be alive to-day. As it was, she died at forty-three.”

“Everyone kills his mother,” said Proudfoot. “Did you turn head-over-heels in the womb with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm? Childbirth involves an inevitable risk as you must very well know.”

“I know, I know. But … it’s hard to put into words….”

“Was your mother an invalid?”

“Why, yes, she was, Proudfoot. An invalid, that’s right.”

“And your father disliked you on account of that?”

“Well …” said Pym.

“Did they sleep together?”

“Why no, no, they didn’t.”

“Separate rooms?”

“Yes, separate rooms. But they were very devoted to each other.”

“Your father regarded you as the unhappy cause of this separation?” asked Proudfoot. “He hated you for it?”

“He didn’t seem to be particularly in love with me. But——”

“—But your mother made up for that. She did not dislike you because you had separated her from her husband?”

“Good God, no! She was fanatically in love with me. The weaker she got, the more she was devoted to me.”

“Worshipped the ground you trod on? Worried about your woollen underclothes, kept warning you to take care how you crossed the road when you went out, stayed awake until you came in at night? Made a fool of herself over you, and made no secret of it, eh?”

“Yes. You’ve got it exactly, Proudfoot.”

“No brothers or sisters, of course?”

“My mother couldn’t have any more after me. You seem to know as much about it as I do myself. Were you——”

“My mother disliked me intensely, for which I am not sorry and do not blame her. I disliked her in return. But go on,” said Proudfoot. “Did your father use to beat you?”

“Good Lord, no! He was a mining engineer, by the by. Talking of being beaten, I’ll tell you something that’ll make you laugh, Proudfoot. It’s by way of being àpropos. When I first went to school I heard another boy yelling his head off while he was being caned for impudence, or something of the sort. Do you know, it made me sick? And a little later we were asked who drew a certain picture and wrote a certain word on a wall: would the culprit confess? I was so terrified of hearing any more screams that I put up my hand and said: ‘It was I, sir.’ And I got six. My father was informed and he said to my mother: ‘You see the sort of son you’ve given me. Some men are blessed in their families. I’m cursed.’ Oh, the tears, Proudfoot—the weeping, the wailing, the hair-tearing, the reproaches! What was I to do? How could I explain? Mother said: ‘I can forgive, but not forget.’ Dear God, how I cried myself to sleep! You know, I wasn’t allowed any pocket-money. Father said I didn’t need it. There was a boy called Nicker Tott with a hare-lip who liked me. One Guy Fawkes Day he gave me some fireworks, and we let them off together. A few days after, he told me he’d stolen five shillings from his mother to pay for those fireworks and that hell was to pay. So I stole five shillings from my father and gave the money to Nicker Tott, and confessed. I said I’d spent the money on fireworks. Mother wouldn’t let me have fireworks because they were supposed to be dangerous. I did get beaten then all right—Oof!—with a malacca cane, Proudfoot. I was born that way, you see—soft, silly, sorry. You see what I mean? It was always easier to take a beating myself than to see someone else suffering or even to think of it. My father said he wanted me to be—don’t laugh—a barrister. I never could have been, never in a million years! I wanted to be a writer, a writer of books. My father was dead by then. We had nothing to live on. One of my father’s brothers gave my mother a pound or two a week, and a lecture with every shilling, Proudfoot, I give you my word of honour. The shame of it, Proudfoot—the misery of it—the hate! I tried to hide myself. No use. I’d sold my father’s watch to buy a typewriter, and I worked, Proudfoot, as God’s my Judge, I did! ‘Patience,’ I said, ‘patience, Mother; in a little while everything … everything …’ God Almighty knows I wasn’t a lazy man, Proudfoot. But they thought there was a sort of devil in me—something to be driven out. ‘What does Pym do?’ ‘He types all night.’ ‘Types what?’ ‘Types stories.’ One day when I was out … Oh dear, oh dear, poor woman! Poor woman!”

“Well?”

“Proudfoot, I swear to you that I was earning as much money as I could.”

“So?”

“Well, one day when I was out—it was not her fault—they tore up everything I’d ever written.”

“They?” said Proudfoot. “Who were ‘they’?”

“Well …”

“You mean she.”

“I suppose so. I’m afraid so. Poor woman, what a state she must have been in to go and do a thing like that! The idea was that she might cure me of this writing madness by tearing up what I’d written,” said Pym, with a tearful laugh. “The pity of it, eh? There’d been a family conference or something of the sort—Mother wouldn’t have done it of her own free will. She never had any free will.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went into a mad rage, packed my things, and left the house. It was heartbreaking to hear her cry. But I walked straight out,” said Pym, not without pride. “But my conscience gave me hell, especially when Mother died a year later.”

“I put it to you that your lady mother would have died in any case.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I kept my whereabouts secret—I didn’t dare to let her know where I was. She’d have written, you know; oh, the most pathetic letters!”

“‘Didn’t dare’ is what you said, I think? That is the operative word in your case. You are a cringing little creature in many ways, Pym, I’m afraid. I begin to believe that your so-called Pity, your fear of hurting other people, is nothing more than fear of hurting yourself.” Proudfoot, now, was Proudfoot For The Prosecution. “I put it to you that you have systematically misrepresented yourself, and over a period of years falsified the true state of your emotions. Your much-vaunted Pity is nothing but Self-Pity: weakness, looseness, slackness of soul. Selfishness, Pym—flabby egotism! A great man must master himself before he can do his own bidding and fulfil his destiny. You are not master of yourself. I warn you, Pym, that you are destroying yourself. You are making yourself impotent with your damned diffidence—your incapacity to meet your own eye!”

Pym said nothing.

“Speaking of impotence,” said Proudfoot, in a changed confidential voice, “reminds me of something I intended to talk to you about.”

Pym nodded.

“You’re dead beat,” said Proudfoot. “Better get to bed. I’ll tell you about it to-morrow, or the next day. I’ll see you home now.”

“Whatever you say,” said Pym, drowsily. In the taxi he said: “Poor Win; she was ever so decent to me once upon a time, Proudfoot. She was a fine girl. It was my fault, really….”

“That young lady,” said Proudfoot, “is a born cheat, a congenital petty-larcenist, an accomplished liar, and a prostitute by vocation. She has been in and out of bed with every blackguard in London, and is designed for jail like a convict’s uniform. ‘Poor Win’—you poor fool! Are you in love with her, or what?”

“I can’t bear the sight of her,” said Pym. “Only it seems a pity … such a pity….”

“Stop that and go to bed. Get some sleep, get your typewriter out of pawn, and go to work. Do you hear?”

“Yes. I’ll do what you say.”

“To-morrow, or perhaps the day after, I’ll put you in the way of earning—honestly, mind you—some real money. Now go and sleep.”

“My one and only friend!” sighed Pym.

Too tired to undress, he threw himself on his bed and slept heavily for ten hours, snoring in his throat because he could not breathe through his broken nose.

*

Through the keyhole and under the door crept an oily, malodorous smoke which hung in a white curdy cloud, obscuring that end of the room. The cloud contracted. It blew bubbles. The bubbles blistered and became swollen breasts. A twisted neck of smoke swung like a glass-blower’s pipe, and let a shimmering bladder which burst with a slobbering gasp and shrunk into the likeness of a face—Mrs. Greensleeve’s face, disgustingly scorched, with black-edged flames in the eye sockets. She was smiling and licking her shrivelled lips. Her left nipple puffed a smoke-ring: it came over like a lariat photographed in slow-motion, and crept taut about Pym’s neck. Smoky coils encircled him. He could not move. “Now, dear,” said a voice that sounded like frying meat, and the ponderous smoke enveloped him. He struggled and sat up, striking right and left.

The dream had been so horrible that he was happy to find himself alive in Busto’s house.

“Yes,” he said; and looked at the table at which he worked.

Then Pym rolled off the bed and looked again. “What? What?” he said. The typewritten pages of his unfinished novel were not there: the table was clean and bare. “Hey!” he shouted. “Thieves!” He opened his door and howled like a dog. People came running.

“Wassup? Whassamatta?” said Busto.

“My book!” cried Pym, striking the bare table with his fists. “Two years’ work! Who took it? Where is it? Quick, or by Christ——” He gripped Busto by the lapels of his coat and shook him. “Quick! My book!”

“Oh, Annie,” said Busto.

“To hell with Annie! Where’s Maud? Where’s Maud? Who took my papers? Where’s Maud? By——”

“Maud’s left, two days-go,” said Busto. “Gotta betta girl; Annie.”

A thick-lipped, thin blonde girl with heavy eyelids and upturned eyes said: “Well?”

“Did you touch my table?” asked Pym.

“I cleaned your table up—and about time, too.”

“Did you move any papers?”

“Papers! You ought to talk about papers! All over the floor.”

“How—all over the floor? When—all over the floor?”

“Don’t you shout at me in that tone of voice. Nobody could ever call me dirty. I swep’ up.”

“You swept up! Two years’ solid work! Two years’ hard labour!”

“I don’t know nothing about two years’ hard labour. I see paper all over the floor, I sweep it up.”

“And what’s my window doing open, wide open?” said Pym. “Who opened my window without my permission?”

“I did—to air the room,” said Annie.

“And it didn’t occur to you that the paper all over the floor blew off the table, you idiot?”

“I put the clean paper back under that plate, if you don’t mind,” said Annie. “And I put the dirty paper in the dust. Nobody could ever call me dirty, or a thief, either.”

“I must get it back!” shouted Pym. “I’ve got to get it back! Christ above!”

“You can keep your filthy talk to yourself, if you don’t mind, because I’m not used to it,” said Annie.

“In the dust! In the dust! She put the dirty paper in the dust! What dust? Where? When?”

“In the dustpin.”

“That was my work; do you understand? That was my book!”

“How was I to know, with it all over the floor? I thought you’d threw it away.”

“Where’s the dustbin.”

“In the yard. Where d’you think?” said Annie.

“Show me—quick!”

“You never gotta touch paper,” said Busto, with perfunctory severity, half yawning. “I forgotta tell you before. Okay, you know now. Never no more touch paper.”

Annie led Pym downstairs to the backyard. There was a heap of broken matchboarding that had been painted red, a rain-soaked tea-chest battered into a splintery rhomboid, a burst tub of dirt with a dead shrub in it, some broken bricks, the rusty frame of a ruined bicycle, and a dustbin.

“Don’t blame me,” said Annie, lifting the lid. “I’m new here.”

“I don’t blame you, said Pym. “I’m sorry I was so abrupt with you. But you don’t know what I went through to dirty those bits of paper.”

“What’s the matter with your nose?”

“Nothing—some man kicked me in the face.”

“And you cut your hand.”

“A graze, a skinned knuckle … I see no paper here.”

“I daresay they came and got the dust.”

“‘Came and got the dust?’” said Pym.

“I’m very sorry, I’m sure,” said Annie. “But I wasn’t to know, was I? I wouldn’t do it on purpose.”

“No. Don’t let it worry you, Annie. But after this, be a good girl and leave things alone, will you?”

“Now you’re sad. You’re annoyed with me.”

“No, I’m not annoyed with you—only fed up.”

“Don’t be fed up,” said Annie.

“All right, I won’t be fed up.”

“Promise?” said Annie, brightly.

“Yes, yes. How were you to know? My own fault: should have put it away,” said Pym.

“What was your book about?”

“Oh, about a man and a woman and a child.”

“Oh, that?”

“That. Where does the dust go when they take it away?”

“I don’t know I’m sure. Why? You’re not going to try and find them papers, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“On my God’s honour I didn’t know you wanted all them papers. They was on the floor. I mean, how was I to know? And now you’re sad.”

“I’m not sad, and it wasn’t your fault. There now, you mustn’t cry,” said Pym, giving Annie five shillings.

“You’re so nice I can’t help crying,” said Annie, blowing her nose.

“There, there, there,” said Pym, stroking her hair.

“Oh, you must have electricity in your hands!”

“Good-bye,” said Pym. He returned to his room, turned away from his empty table, and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. The light faded and he fell asleep again.

He was awakened by an exploratory caress and became conscious of an odour of “Ashes of Roses”.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up,” said Annie.

“No, no, of course not.”

“You didn’t look well and I wanted to see you was okay.”

“Thanks.”

“I like you because you’re nice and kind. Can I sit down on your bed?”

“Sit anywhere you like.”

“Are you tired?”

“I was. I’m not now.”

“I’m ever so sorry about those papers.”

“Never mind. It may be all for the best.”

“Do you mind if I kiss you?”

“Not at all.”

Having kissed Pym, Annie said: “I’m lonely.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No, you don’t care.”

“Why do you ask? Should I care?”

“If you think I make a practice of making myself cheap … Oh, I know! I know!”

“There, there …”

“It’s only because I was so sorry about all your papers.”

“It doesn’t matter. It can’t be helped.”

“You don’t mind if I take my shoes off? Just for a second?”

“You can take anything you like off. Take yourself off. Only leave me alone.”

“Was it a long book, that book of yours?”

“Yes, long.”

“I heard about somebody once, so they lost a diamond brooch in the dustpin, and so they went to where all the dustpins are emptied out and there it was in a salmon-tin. Should I go to where all the dustpins are emptied out and try and find your book?”

“Don’t talk about it any more. Just go away and leave me alone.”

“You looked as though you wanted to kill me, but you’re ever so kind really,” said Annie. “And then you went and gave me five shillings. I wouldn’t of accepted it only I was so surprised. Why did you do that?”

“You looked so sorry for your silly self.”

“Would you do me a favour?”

“What—what now?”

“Stroke my ’ead again like you did in the yard.”

“You can get plenty of people to stroke your empty little head. Leave me alone.”

“Not the way you do it. Just one stroke.”

“Oh all right, all right!” Pym felt like a saintly hero in one of Dostoevsky’s novels—crazier than all the wild Rogozhins put together, stroking the bullet-head of Ignorance, sucking the sour mouth of Misery, and—epileptic self-swindler—toying with the flat little teats of Frustration, peeling off the knickers of Hunger, and pretending to enfold in a Christ-like embrace the suffering of all womankind.

About ten minutes later Annie sighed and said: “I never knew what love could do till I met you, my dear!”

“Isn’t that a song?” asked Pym.

“That’s right. Isn’t it true? Isn’t it funny to think I’m not a Maiden any more?”

“Do you mean to say——” said Pym, sitting up.

“—Lay your weary head upon my shoulder, just remember I love you. Every cloud must have a silver lining—wait until the sun breaks through. My Melancholy Baby! Do you tingle from head to foot? I do. Isn’t it nice to think I gave you my body? Utterly, didn’t I? Don’t you glow?”

“Absolutely,” said Pym.

“Tingle?”

“Sure. Look, Annie; am I the first man you ever went to bed with?”

“What did you take me for?” said Annie. “Do you think other fellows ’ave their way with me? Oh, what am I regarded with now? Contempt. Lover——” She twined her moist arms about Pym’s neck: “—Dear lover of mine, you took me when I gave myself utterly; for you know, honey, you’ve always had your way——”

“More magazines? More songs?”

“What if it is, if it’s the truth?”

“You think I’m soft, don’t you? Well, I’m not. I’m hard,” said Pym.

“You were the only living creature that was ever kind to me, and I gave myself to you utterly, and you cast me off!”

“You read that in a twopenny paper!”

“What if I did, if it happens to be God’s honest truth?”

One of her shoes would not slip over the heel of a swollen foot. She kicked off the other, drew herself up and said: “One of these days you’re going to miss me, honey.”

“Another song-lyric?”

“I’d be better off dead. I better end it all.”

“Now look here,” said Pym, pleasantly exhilarated by his own firmness, “I want to tell you once and for all that you can’t shake me with that sort of talk. You don’t know me. No doubt you think I’m soft. Well, I’m not. You never made a bigger mistake in your life. Did I ask you to come creeping in? Didn’t I tell you to go away? Did I invite you to come slobbering over me? No, I didn’t, and you know I didn’t. You came to my room uninvited, of your own free will, with a set purpose in mind——” He had fallen into a slow, implacable, scrupulously-weighed manner of speaking, strongly reminiscent of Proudfoot. “You achieved your object. There is the end of the matter. Now go home like a sensible girl and let me go to sleep.”

“All right, you wait,” said Annie; and went out silently, her shoes in her hands.

Pym lay back, smiling. He had never felt so strong and self-assured. This was the way to be: hard as steel. In order to cut his way a man had to beat himself into a blade. Whoever shaped a statue with a rubber chisel, or hacked a path through a jungle with a wooden machete?

Pym went back to sleep, feeling strong and victorious.

INTERLUDE

WHEN the forewoman of a paper-box factory had told Annie to go and get her cards because she was a Dreamer, Annie had replied: “I’m a dreamer, aren’t we all?” She talked in song lyrics. When she was pleased there was a rainbow round her shoulder and it fitted her like a glove. When she was sad it was: “Can’t go on, everything I had is gone, stormy weather.” Most of her dreams were of love. Once, having wriggled to the front of a crowd outside a stage door, she had said hullo to Ivor Novello, and he had smiled and replied: “Hullo.” This was the most wonderful moment of her life. She was drunk with the glory of it for weeks afterwards. At that time she was working for a manufacturer of radio sets: she had nothing to do but put a looped wire on a terminal and tighten a screw every ninety seconds. But the terminals became fingers, the copper-wire loops were transmuted into golden rings, and the foreman was metamorphosed into Ivor Novello. Annie got the sack. Similarly, she could not keep her job in a potato-crisp factory, where she was paid good money to screw up pinches of salt in little squares of blue paper which were to be dropped into unsealed greaseproof crisp bags. She was in love with John Barrymore then, and would have given herself to him freely if he had but said the word. Here, again, she was described as “dreamy”, and sent home with her insurance cards and a week’s wages. In the paper-box factory (she was doing her hair like Greta Garbo then, and talking in a deep voice) she was hopelessly infatuated with Milton Sills. Annie confided to a girl friend that she had given up beautiful men, experience having taught her that the big, brutally virile types were much more reliable. However, it was not long before she threw over Milton Sills and flung herself into a mad affair with John Boles, who went the way of the rest when she discovered that it was Victor MacLaglan she really loved. Yet, for many months she had regarded Victor as just a friend. “Good pals—let us be just pals,” she had said on the night of the party in her palace when Ricardo Cortez and Adolphe Menjou came to blows during a quarrel about a dance. With what whimsical sweetness had she brought them back to good humour! “I will dance with you both together, you naughty boys,” she said; and surely enough, with Adolphe on her left and Ricardo on her right, she danced a new, undreamt of sort of waltz. This, as the whole world knew, was the Three-Handed Waltz that swept the world. But how Buddy Rogers had glared and ground his teeth! And why should Joan Crawford call her “a cat”, just because Ramon Novarro had kissed her hand?

On this occasion—in an interval, just before Annie, ever so sweetly, told Wallace Beery that he could be a brother to her if he liked, while John Gilbert was drinking champagne out of her tiny slipper—her father cuffed her head and shouted: “’Oose going ter keep yer, yer bloody lazy little bitch? Eh? Whadda ya take me for? The Dook o’ Westminster? Eh? You lazy little cow, do I look like the Dook o’ Westminster?”

“No.”

“Whadda ya mean—no?” He slapped her again. “Not good enough for yer? No bloody respect for yer parents? That’s what you get fer edjucatin’ ’em! Read, read all the time! I’ll read you!” He tore up Annie’s library—thirty-two copies of The Lover, published at fourpence a copy and bought secondhand for twopence. If you brought your copy back clean, you could get another for a penny.

“I’m sick and tired of it! I’m going to end it all!” said Annie.

“End it all? End it all? Is that what you get out of books? I’ll end you!” said Annie’s father, hitting her in the face. “You go and do some work; go on! Go into service—that’s all you’re good for. To-morrow, my girl, you go into service. Got that straight?”

Now it happened that Annie had seen a screen version of Tolstoy’s Resurrection. When her father said “service” she saw herself seduced by a handsome officer and romantically suffering. She was already in the snow on her way to Siberia, faithfully followed by Rod la Roque.

“Yes, father,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t call me ‘father’! Isn’t ‘dad’ good enough for yer?”

“Dad.”

“Firs’ thing termorra mornin’ you go orf to the Labour Exchange. Go to bed and shut up.”

Annie did as she was told. She went to work for Busto. She would have preferred a lady’s household with a garden to catch moonlight. It made no difference, however. She was a martyr, a martyr miscast. Now she had only to wait and the Prince would come along and seduce her, and that would be lovely. (Busto caught her in an attitude expressive of agonised supplication in front of his Mona Lisa, on the very first day: she was already Katusha, six months gone. He said: “Say your bloody prayers in bloody church; don’t you say no prayers to my bloody Madonna. I don’t pay you to say prayers.” He was half-inclined to take something out of her wages for wear-and-tear of his Madonna, as he would have done if she had broken a saucer.)

Annie picked up her broom and went out of the wash-house, dragging her feet in an oddly deliberate way. “Crazy cow,” muttered Busto. He did not know that she was already on her way to Siberia and that her broom was the staff upon which she supported herself in the endless wastes while the Prince, very sorry indeed for what he had done, walked by her side, sharing her punishment.

Katusha, in the film, was always neat and clean, always on the go, sweeping here, dusting there, up to her eyes in work, yet unaccountably immaculate about the hands and face. Hastily remaking her mouth, which she had shaped to resemble the mouth of Dolores del Rio, Annie went to work. She scrubbed with all her might and swept with such vigour that Busto began to believe that he had got a bargain. From time to time she burst into song: Could I Reveal Exactly How I Feel, and Ramona, Lover Come Back To Me, and Rose Marie, I Love You, The Indian Love Call and Less Than The Dust Beneath Your Chariot Wheels. Busto did not need to stand over her and supervise the work. He relied on his ears rather than his eyes, and he knew enthusiasm when he heard it. While Annie was washing the stairs she kept an eye open for princes. None appeared—not one. She worked her way from floor to floor, washing, dusting, sweeping, making beds, and tidying up. She was Katusha, the gem.

The Prince came home—travelling under the name of Pym. It happened in no time at all—in fact, she had beaten the motion picture by a short head—and here she was, betrayed and cast aside like a worn-out glove in twenty-five minutes.

Well, she had lived her life and had no regrets. A short life and a merry one, ha! ha! Annie went into the little kitchen of her father’s three-room flat in Stumps Buildings to make herself a cup of tea and get a slice of bread-and-cheese (a foaming bottle of champagne and a pineapple). Waiting for the kettle to boil she dreamed on. Now she was overtaken by melancholy.

Annie saw herself lying, white and beautiful, on black velvet between two stately candles that burned with smokeless, clear white flames. She was surrounded with lilies. In the shadows stood men, bare-headed, broken with grief. The nobility and gentry were paying homage. Starred and bemedalled bosoms heaved. Royalty was represented. Prince Pym, Ramon Novarro, Milton Sills, Buddy Rogers, Victor MacLaglan, Ivor Novello, Ricardo Cortez, Adolphe Menjou, Rudolf Valentino—they were all there, all her old lovers, speechless with sorrow….

“Yes, Olga of the Volga, your time has come. Breaker of hearts, courtesan and spy in the pay of a foreign Power, will you make your exit gallantly, like a noblewoman, or die like a common felon on the gallows?”

“Your Royal Highness, I have lived a lady, and a lady I shall die.”

“Have you made your peace with God?”

“Yes. Leave me, please. Oh, have no fear: I shall still be here when you return.”

There were tears in the stern eyes of the Grand Duke. He kissed her hand. “Before heaven, Countess, you are a gallant woman.”

“I did what I did for love.”

… Mary, Queen of Scots, swept with queenly grace up to the scaffold; knelt and bowed her beautiful head to the block.

Annie turned on the gas and put her head in the oven.

She breathed deeply. After the first breath the gas did not smell at all bad—in fact it smelt good. Princes, dukes, toreadors, pirates, bandit chiefs, Sheiks of Araby, Don Cossacks, millionaire playboys, highwaymen and film directors—a multitude of brilliant and fantastic people danced out of their little bedrooms in the cardboard Kremlin of her head and came up to kiss her good-bye. The crowd grew dense. It made a circle, and whirled faster and faster until it became a smooth dark disc streaked with the passing of medals and diamond necklaces; and this disc was a gramophone record, playing the Marche Mystèrieuse to which the exiles marched away through the artificial snow in the film about Katusha.

Hearing this, Annie started back, struck her head on the roof of the oven, and sat on the floor, coughing and retching. What a fool she was not to have remembered that she was taking things out of their proper sequence! In the film, the heroine ran away, reappeared in a house of ill fame, and did not get to Siberia until considerably later, after she had been wrongly accused of poisoning and robbing a fat man with a moustache.

She turned out the gas, went to her room, put an artificial silk dress, a skirt, a jumper, a pair of knickers, thirteen strings of beads, a sixpenny ring and seventy-two picture postcards of film stars into an exile’s bundle shaped like a pudding, and went away to play out the rest of the drama.

CHAPTER NINE

NEXT day Pym went to talk to the Features Editor of the Sunday Special. “It struck me,” he said, “that there might be possibilities in an idea I had the other morning in Covent Garden.”

“Make it snappy,” said Mr. Steeple.

“I happened to be in Covent Garden at about six in the morning. Well, it occurred to me that there were lots of stories flying around at that hour——”

“Just found that out? Write a book about it. Call it ‘Sketches’, and I’ll give you a good nom de plume—call yourself Boz.”

“No, do listen. I had the idea of writing a series of pieces, about a thousand or fifteen hundred words long, under the title: Before Dawn, All sorts of things go on. There are the markets, to begin with—Covent Garden, Billingsgate, Smithfield. Then there are the bakers. There are the flower-sellers, the printing presses, the night clubs, the dairy people, and all that sort of thing. Do you get what I mean?”

“Human stories? Stories that are stories? None of your ‘Sketches’ by Boz. Have you got any real stories in mind with real people in them?”

“My idea was that you should make me your Midnight Correspondent, and pay me such-and-such a sum per week for a regular feature. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?” said Pym.

“It’s been thought of before,” said Steeple. “It’s not a bad idea, but far from new. It would all depend on the sort of stuff you turned in. You’d have to write two or three specimen stories. Better do that.”

“But if you liked those specimens, would you consider making something regular of it?”

“I’d consider, certainly,” said Steeple. “I’d consider. I say no more than that. I think you’ve got it in you if you only put your mind to it and stopped worrying about literature. Have a go at it. I’m not commissioning anything, mind. Turn in one or two bits and let’s have a look. You can write a fairly decent story when you want to. But, for God’s sake, find something real to say—tell stones! You’re too much of a highbrow. Cut it out. You go in for too much description. Skip it. There’s too much ‘I’ in your stuff. Who the hell do you think wants to read your opinions? Now, if you were lucky enough to be a divorced duchess, or an acrobat, or the heavyweight champion of the world, or something, your opinions about philosophy, morality, and all that kind of thing might be worth twopence of our readers’ money.” Mr. Steeple was in a sardonic mood this morning. “But there you are—a writer, buzzing about like a blue-arsed fly trying to pick up a few guineas here or there. And this geezer who couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag gets three thousand five hundred pounds for his story!”

He threw a shiny photograph on to the desk so that it slid between Pym’s eager hands. “If you want to make yourself some ready money out of writing, why don’t you go and do what Pryor did?”

Pym said: “I know that face! Isn’t that a man called Tom Paine Sherwood?”

“Don’t be silly! That’s Sedley Pryor.”

“I’d swear I knew that man,” said Pym, “under the name of Sherwood, Tom Paine Sherwood. Writes poetry.”

“That’s Sedley Pryor, and the Old Man has just bought his story for thirty-five hundred quid. Now that’s the way to do it, don’t you see? Nobody ever paid me thirty-five, let alone thirty-five hundred, for a story. Nor did they you. Go out and do something. Why don’t you do what that little Hungarian did—be a professional polygamist? He was a bald-headed mouse, and you’ve got curly hair. Better still, why don’t you nip off and be a Jack the Ripper, and get away with a short sentence after a sensational trial? Then we’d pay you thousands instead of lousy pounds, shillings and pence. Go on; why don’t you? I’ll lend you a razor, if you like.”

“No, seriously, who is this man Pryor, and what did he do?”

“Where did you meet him? How?”

Pym coughed and said, after a moment of hard thinking: “There you are again, you see. I met him around Covent Garden early one morning. We got into conversation. But he told me his name was Sherwood, and more or less indicated that he wrote poetry.”

“He’s called himself all kinds of things,” said the Features Editor. “But he’s known as Sedley Pryor, generally. He’s given us the lowdown on eight big swindles. He did the jobs. It’s all confirmed. Sherwood, did you say? He’s the man who hit on the idea of calling himself Cheetham. No one would ever suspect a man with a name as crooked as that. He’s been in everything, including the Watered Oil Scandal, which was a little before your time. You might remember the Furniture Case, though: he got seven years for it. ‘A Home for Fifty Pounds.’ A choice of five different styles—Queen Anne to Ultra-Modern: bedroom, sitting-room, dining-room, spare bedroom and kitchen—fifty quid the lot: ten pounds down and the rest in easy instalments. Enormous showrooms all over the country, and a couple of big names on the board of directors. Tens of thousands of mugs paid their tenners down. He was a bright boy in his time. He was one of the best salesmen in the world in his time. Made history here, in the States, and in one of the International Exhibitions in Belgium. Used to go around selling things that did not strictly speaking belong to him. Had some sort of information service about visiting suckers. He sold that millionaire widow woman—yes, Daffodil Isaacs—Charing Cross Station. It makes remarkably good reading. Took her down, showed her everything; the oldest trick in the world, only Pryor could put it over better than anyone else. You know: you say to the ticket-collector: ‘Everything all right, my man?’ Naturally the ticket-collector says: ‘Quite all right, thank you, sir.’ … Pryor sold Charing Cross Station to Daffodil Isaacs for seventeen thousand two hundred and fifty pounds. Early in 1918 he sold Nelson’s Column to an American colonel for five thousand dollars, and by the time the Yank started to put up scaffolding to have it taken away—he was a Scandinavian-American by the name of Nelson, of course—good old Pryor was out of the country, doing a currency deal in Switzerland, buying jewellery from a Viennese with his dollars. Good God Almighty!” said the Features Editor with enthusiasm, “it was Sedley Pryor who worked that variation of the Spanish Prisoner Trick—the Russian Crown Jewel Racket. You know: an indubitable nobleman knows where the great white diamonds of his little White Father the Tsar are tucked away and can smuggle them out. It only costs you two or three hundred quid. As far as the police know, at least four hundred people (most of them clergyman) fell for that one. He must have got away with millions in his time.”

“If that’s the case, what’s he doing giving the game away now?”

“He’s supposed to be going straight. He convinced the Old Man that he was, anyway. Getting old, wants to die respectable, all that kind of stuff. Fact of the matter is, he’s scared to operate any more because he’s losing his grip, and the Yard knows him a little bit too well. Otherwise, naturally, he wouldn’t want to print his story—let alone his picture. You ought to read it when it comes out. The bit about the Crown Jewels racket is quite funny. But, look here; scram now, will you? Let me see a sample. None of your so-called brilliant descriptive passages. And no long words. Last time you used the word ‘valetudinarian’. Do you think our readers know whether that’s supposed to be a vegetable or a new religious denomination? I wish somebody could write me a good vivid human story in words of one syllable. Well, knock out a specimen and shove it in, and I’ll see what the idea’s worth. Good-bye.”

*

Pym was happy, calm and confident, so full of tremendous and thrilling ideas that his head felt as he imagined an egg might feel when the bird is on the point of pecking its way out. It throbbed joyously with bright and radiant life. The time was ripe. Now, having pecked his way out of the dark he was ready to shake himself free and fly. Everything was clear and easy. He had only to write one article a week and a new book, a better book. Fleet Street was full of sunlight, and the people in the street were good-humoured and beautiful: he was ready to be a brother to all the men and a husband to all the women. He smiled and nodded at a total stranger (who shrank away, terrified) and walked, humming a song of his own composition, to the Jack Cade, for some glorious bread and delicious cheese and a glass of ambrosial bitter. Waiting for the traffic to pass before he crossed the street, he said aloud: “Ah! the sun, the sun, the lovely sun!” A policeman gave him a long, hard look. “It’s all right, quite all right,” said Pym. “I just feel good, that’s all.”

The policeman said: “I thought you was ill or something. Many happy returns of the day.”

“And the same to you. If you weren’t on duty I’d ask you to come and have a drink with me.”

“Well, if I wasn’t I would.”

*

The Jack Cade was one of the oldest public houses in the world. It stood in a queer dark alley between the Strand and the river: a show place, in its way, frequented by visiting Americans, for whose benefit the waiters were dressed in knee-breeches and green waistcoats. The landlord had made a fortune out of earthenware mugs. If you ordered a pint of beer it was served in an impressive glazed vessel, stamped with a picture of Jack Cade at London Stone. A firm in Derbyshire made these mugs for ninepence-halfpenny apiece. Tourists, rolling their eyes in the Jack Cade, lusted after them, and said to the barman or the waiter: “Listen—I want to take one of these home. How about it?” The attendant would reply: “Why, you see, sir, it’s not allowed. But I tell you what, sir, I’ll do my best. I’ll get you a beer-mug all right; only don’t say anything, will you? It’d be as much as my job is worth.” The tourists always said: “You bet,” and talked loudly of other things until the waiter, or barman, with trepidation, thrust a little newspaper parcel into their hands. “How much do I owe you for this?”—“I’d rather leave that to you, sir.” Any tourist who paid less than a pound was persona non grata forever after. Even the smell of the place was worth money—the haunting acrid smell of stale beer and smoke; as for the ceilings, tobacco-smoked to a mellow golden-chestnut colour, bulging like the bellies of old violins and criss-crossed with rough-hewn, adze-scarred oak beams, they were a property in themselves. Only the landlord and his wife knew where the house began and where it ended. There were undreamed-of entrances and unheard-of ways out; and more bars than could be found in any other tavern in London—saloon bars, public bars, private bars, bars for ladies only, bars for gentlemen only, commercial bars, smoking-rooms, coffee-rooms, snuggeries, side bars, upstairs bars, back bars and the Dive Bar.

The Dive Bar was an excellent place to think, or talk business in. It was full of quiet corners. It was a plotters’ bar. Down there unprosperous lawyers relaxed with questionable-looking clients, and the underworld of Fleet Street, Temple Bar, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields held economic conferences in undertones. The man who built the Jack Cade had been dead six hundred years; no one will ever know why he designed the stairway to the Dive Bar the way he did—you had to turn twice, sharply, to get to the tenth and last stair. When a barman in the Jack Cade outlived his usefulness, or became rheumatic or feeble-minded, he was not pensioned off—he was sent to the Dive Bar, as aged and decrepit waiters in the big cafés, if they be found worthy, are sent to the gentleman’s lavatories.

Pym had a whimsical affection for the place. He went down, whistling, got his bread-and-cheese and beer, and invited the barman to join him in a drink. The old man stared incredulously, looked Pym up and down several times, shook his head, raised pale-blue horrified eyes to heaven, and turned away, struck dumb by the temerity of the fellow. But Pym, laughing with delight, and quite unabashed, took his food and drink to one of the little old round tables in an alcove and began to make plans, nobly ambitious plans of the first magnitude. He was full of virtue and power. To-day he had the nose of a dog, the eyes of an eagle, and the ears of an elephant. He was ready to swallow the world like a pill, take it into his system and give it back out of his fingertips, bigger and better, cleaner and brighter. One day a week for the best journalism in the world; six days a week for immortal prose—it was all clean cut and dry, framed and varnished, sharp and conclusive as a Dutch painting. Now he had perspective. Now he could see things at their proper distances. The yellow and pink and blue bobs and smudges had come together to make a heaven; the brown and yellow and black dots and dashes had closed ranks to form solid earth; wriggling streaks of blue and green were co-ordinated in trees; and above all, out of the vapour, the universal Light had hammered itself into an arc of six perfect colours. There was poetry in barmen, glory in spit and sawdust, music in cheese, poetry in cigarette ends, and loveliness in chipped plates.

“Do you happen to have a bit of paper?” he said to the barman.

“There’s a stationery shop across the road.”

“Oh, is there? Thank you very much, thank you very much indeed,” said Pym, grinning from ear to ear.

Then the barman gave him a little wad of perforated bar checks.

Pym wanted to write a poem. He wrote: White clouds caught on the hard horizon like lamb’s wool on barbed wire.

But then a voice that stirred up the sediment of an uneasy memory said: “Proudfoot.”

Pym listened.

*

It was the voice of Thomas Paine Sherwood, or Sedley Pryor, who was talking in the next alcove and saying: “I have been in consultation with my friend Proudfoot, and I can assure you that the time has come to go ahead.”

Another voice, insanely shrill and emphatic—if a parrot could whisper it would whisper in such a voice—said, in a strange accent: “Yes. Good. But you vill arrange? You vill arrange me, please? I am not for ever. So you vill arrange? Yes, please, no? My English is colloqual, should it? Literature, no. Not yet. So you vill arrange. In hand is all. I vould know vhat then. Colloquialism, in English, yes. I do not choose this abasement. So?”

“My dear doctor, rest assured, rest assured.” Sedley Pryor’s voice had the quality of a lullaby played on a ’cello. The person called ‘dear doctor’ grunted and was silent. Sedley Pryor went on: “You may rest assured, my dear, that the matter is in hand. My friend Proudfoot has a very worthy writer who will do justice to you, and I give you my word of honour on that. You must understand, my dear doctor, that I am investing all I have in this little venture; and I believe that you know me well enough to accept my assurance that I am not altogether a fool.”

“I have already suffered enough, please. I am already persecuted sufficient, please. I have devote my life to the good of mankind, and am persecuted—persecuted everyvhere. Dey have spied on me,” said the foreign voice, vibrating with passion; “dey have sent spies to vatch me. Dey have tried to steal my notes. Dey have tried to stop my Vork, but dey did not stop my Vork. No. Once dey try to poison me, in Vienna. Dey pay a vaiter to put poison in my fish, but I vas too clever for dem—I vent out and svallow salt mit vater so I bring up dis poison. Dey vatch me. Dey follow me. No one knows how I suffer. At night I must leave the lights burning. All for my Vork. I finish Geschlechtliche Verirrungen Im Verhaeltnis Zur Kunst Im Lauf Der Zeit Einschliesslich Spezial Faelle In Der Zeit Zwischen 1675 Und 1935 Mit Einer Bemerkung Ueber Auto-Erotik. And den? Dey suppress me. Even in Vienna, even in Berlin, even in Paris!”

Sedley Pryor said, in his beautiful, soothing voice: “Dear doctor, everyone knows that you are the victim of a conspiracy of silence. They suppressed your book because they were jealous of you. They had good cause to be jealous of you, doctor. You went deeper than Freud, farther than Hirschfeld and Stekel. They had not your courage. You are a martyr to pure science like Semelweiss and Madame Curie. Where the other sexologists merely observed, you observed and experienced. Consequently, your book is the most valuable contribution to science, of its kind, in the whole world. You must trust me absolutely, because I am your friend and your admirer, and I intend not only to give your book the circulation it deserves, but also to make you comparatively rich. I say ‘comparatively’ because, as a man of business—a tolerably honest man of business—I hesitate to commit myself, and dislike wild promises such as unscrupulous men are in the habit of making to unbusinesslike people. I have told you what I propose to do, doctor, and I am not in the habit of saying more or less than I mean. You must therefore take it or leave it. As I have already told you, you must have complete confidence in me or no confidence at all; in which case I must ask you to find another friend and admirer whom you trust. I have told you before, doctor, and I tell you again for the last time—the very last time, mind—that although it will be quite impossible to publish all the illustrations, especially the photographic illustrations, at present, the text will be faithfully put out in excellent English. A little later, perhaps—I say, ‘perhaps’: I make no definite statement or promise—later perhaps, if all goes well, we may publish a very limited edition of your Work in its entirety. Well?”

Pym had forgotten his lamb’s wool and his barbed wire. He yearned for one glimpse of these people’s faces as some men yearn for women, drink, or drugs. There were no mirrors in the Dive Bar, so he swallowed his beer and went back for another. While the barman, with his sullen air of injured innocence, was drawing it, Pym turned, leaning back nonchalantly on the bar, and looked. Thomas Paine Sherwood, whose real name was Sedley Pryor, was sitting with his back to the wall. He was beautifully dressed in brown. There was a fascinating careless elegance about the man—a certain premeditated looseness of tie and collar suggestive of the fine arts. He was almost—not quite—the man Pym had met in the police court. Then he had the air of an easy-going businessman on holiday. Now a casual observer in the know would have put Sherwood down as a publisher, or as the proprietor of an unconventional but highly prosperous art gallery. On his right sat a man dressed all in black—a tiny man with a big bare head, heavy eyebrows, and fat V-shaped lips which he constantly sucked into his mouth, tasted and pushed out again with an affectionate lick of a thick brown tongue. On Sherwood’s left, nearest to where Pym had been sitting, sat the foreigner, a woman who wore a starched collar and a black tie. She had close-cropped woolly red hair and, although her face had the coarse, dirty whiteness of a neglected bath tub, she reminded Pym of a negro witch-doctor. Something about her compelled him also to think of a bit of gristly fibre out of which all the goodness had been chewed, spat out by a glutton with bad table manners. She was drinking lager beer. Sherwood had a glass of whisky. The other man was sipping tonic water.

Pym returned to his table unobserved: Sherwood was writing something in a notebook with a gold pencil.

Then Proudfoot came in with another man and said: “Ah, Sherwood, there you are, are you? My dear fellow! How are you, Mr. Fury? How are you, my dear Doctor Weissensee? What will you have? How are things? You have already met Bellamy Gee, I believe? … I beg your pardon, no, of course Doctor Weissensee has not. Doctor Weissensee—Bellamy Gee … possibly the greatest living authority on comparative religion.”

Proudfoot was wearing a new suit and a bowler hat. He radiated confidence, indescribable satisfaction, like a gambler who has drawn three cards and made four aces. He was in one of his brilliant moods, and he struck Pym as having slid an inch or two over the frontier of sobriety. There was no mistaking the significance of his suave, sly, bold good-fellowship.

CHAPTER TEN

UNQUIET, almost worried, Pym got up quietly and hurried out of the Jack Cade. He wanted to be alone. He would go into the Temple and piece together the shattered shards of his exalted mood: that softly glowing, round, radiant thing that had gone “pop” like an electric bulb. Like lamb’s wool on barbed wire he began again. Then a man hit him on the back and said: “Johnny! Long time no see.”

“Who the hell——” began Pym; but he recognised the man and said: “—Oh, Rocky.”

“You don’t sound pleased to see your old pal.”

“I was thinking,” Pym said. “I’m sorry if I seemed abrupt. How are you?”

“Johnny, old boy old boy old boy, I wake up worrying in the middle of the night—things are bound to get worse as far as I’m concerned because they couldn’t be better.”

“Why, what the devil!” cried Pym, “what are we coming to? That’s twice in ten minutes I see a friend in a lovely new suit when his backside ought to be sticking out of his trousers. Rocky, you look terrific. You didn’t get that outfit off the hook in a Natty Gent’s Outfitters,” said Pym, feeling the lapel of Rocky’s jacket and tut-tutting like a Hounsditch clothier. His cheerfulness was taking a malicious turn. “Pure silk handkerchief and all—God bless my soul! Old Harrovian tie——”

“It isn’t Old Harrovian: it’s just a striped tie.”

“—And look at his shirt! Wheee! … Hand-sewn gloves, eh? And where did you get that hat? Adorable! Allow me, moddom, to turn down this brim the teeny-weeniest bit more.”

Rocky caught Pym’s snatching hand and pulled himself towards the Jack Cade, saying: “Cut that out and come and have a drink.”

“All right; but not in here, if you don’t mind. Some other place,” said Pym.

“Anywhere you like,” said Rocky. “No, but seriously, as man to man, do I look all right?”

“Honestly, you look like a millionaire playboy. I am inclined to ask you how about the seven-and-six you owe me.”

Rocky laughed long and heartily with his mouth wide open, like a conceited man who has been told that he has beautiful teeth; and when he slapped Pym’s back for the second time he knocked tears into his eyes. Rocky was a giant with powerful hairy hands, big bright eyes, great gleaming teeth, large ears, a vast mouth, and a blue chin as thick and blunt as the toe of a diver’s boot. He had the charm that goes with cheerful shamelessness. Rocky was a shameless borrower, drunkard, liar and fornicator; a shameless wheedler of credit under false pretences; a shameless utterer of worthless cheques and worthless promises of marriage; a shameless beggar and a shameless chooser— a lion among jackals and a jackal among lions, a beggar among princes and a prince among beggars—a putter-on of acts. He was, in fact, an actor by profession. No one knew anything about him except that he was an Irishman; his name was Rockwell Gagan. On second thoughts, people decided that they did not know if even this was true, because he had sworn dreadful oaths on convenient occasions that he was a Cascon, the illegitimate son of a nobleman. Rocky was not real: he was a servant-girl’s love-story, an errand boy’s public-school story, a schoolboy’s adventure story … a dummy dressed in dreams.

Pym said, with sudden resolution: “Yes, Rocky, as God’s my judge, you shall pay me that seven-and-six.”

“Look,” said Rocky, taking out a red morocco wallet in full view of the passers-by. It was full of new banknotes. “There’s nearly a hundred pounds in there, Johnny, old pal old pal old pal. Seven-and-six! Come and have lunch. Have some champagne. And oysters—have some oysters. Let’s go to the Heinrich Heine. They know me there. Luigi saves a special sort of oyster for me. Do you know what? They’re lousy with iodine, and you know what that means, eh? That’ll put hair on your chest—that’ll put lead in your pencil! Come on, come and have a noggin of oidine! Where did you get that nose, speaking of hats?”

“I was just naturally kicked in the face by a gentleman friend. Where did you get that suit?”

“Johnny,” said Rocky, with thunderous gravity, “it has happened at last.”

“You made a hit? I always thought you would, one way or another.”

“One way? Let’s say another,” said Rocky, laughing again. A passing typist looked at him with round eyes. Rocky smiled at her. She looked back over her shoulder. He blew her a kiss. She went on, reluctantly, to the post office, but never forgot him. She thought of Rocky when she was about to conceive her second child nine years later. “Another is right! … Johnny, old son old son old son, all that has been is past.”

“Who denies it?”

“I’m finished with all this hand-to-mouth existence. It wasn’t living, Johnny: it was existing. Oh, by the way, I thought up a good gag yesterday. Stooge says: ‘Haven’t I seen you in Captains Courageous?’ Then I say: ‘No, you mean Barber’s Rash.’ Or is that too subtle?”

“If you remember rightly, Rocky, it was I who gave you that gag about three years ago.”

“Did you, Johnny? I daresay you did. And that is just what I was wanting to talk to you about. Not the gag, as a gag, in itself, but something bigger.”

“—And for your information, Rocky, I gave you that Henry the Eighth gag, when Catherine Parr says: ‘Thank goodness, Henry, you’ve finished chopping and changing.’”

“Too intellectual. Come and have a drink in here.”

In Ogden’s Saloon Pym said to Rocky: “What is all this about? And what brings you to Fleet Street at this hour of the day?”

“I came to see a man about my publicity,” said Rocky.

“Your publicity? Since when did you have any?” said Pym, irritated. “You know perfectly well that you were never anything more than a tuppenny-ha’penny corny comedian. Don’t give me that stuff, Rocky.”

“You’re quite right, old Pym old Pym old Pym, but times have changed. I’m going to need a good publicity man before very long.”

“Like a cat on a roof. Like a bitch on heat, that’s how you need publicity. Like a tart on a street corner under a lamp-post. Like a foghorn. Don’t be silly.”

Rockwell Gagan smiled and said: “You heard of Sissy Voltaire? We’re looking for a play. You’ve heard of that agent Albutt in Northampton Street? He had an idea. Sissy and I are looking for the right sort of thing—a tragedy that is partly a comedy. Or, if you like, a comedy that is partly a tragedy.”

“Sissy Voltaire must be at least seventy years old,” said Pym.

“Never you mind. We want a play. Seventy years old my eye! What of it, anyway? Sissy has the … the spirit of eternal youth.”

“The rumour goes,” said Pym, “that she’s popped in and out of bed with every young actor in the British Isles since about 1880, or some such date.”

“Johnny, I don’t want to talk like that about Miss Voltaire,” said Rocky. Then he laughed. “Well, okay, old boy old boy old boy. I’m fed up with midnight flits and hocking the last decent suit of clothes and not knowing where I stand next. She happens to love me. It’s true love, Johnny; and I love her, too … No, what the hell, to hell with that. I’m anything you like, but not a hypocrite. Put it in a nutshell: I’m living on the old girl. Never mind your 1880’s, by the way: Sissy’s only about fifty-four or five at the most. And, by God, she’s still the best actress that ever set foot on a stage—by Mary and Joseph she is! So cut out your sneers—they’re unworthy of you, Johnny.”

“I wasn’t sneering: I was just repeating what I’d heard. I should think, Rocky, that it might be a very good match. After all, you’re both comedians.”

“Comedians me foot! Well, yes, comedians if you like. But there are other things we want to do, Sissy and I, and we’re looking for a play.”

The light was out, the shards were scattered. Pym said: “You would want a tragi-comedy, Rocky. About ninety-nine times out of a hundred a clown is a would-be Hamlet with a yellow streak.”

“Where do you get that ‘yellow streak’?”

“Yellow streak: scared of being laughed at as a tragedian: saving an emergency exit.”

“Don’t be silly. Once you can make a man laugh you’ve got him by the short hairs,” said Rocky.

Pym said: “You got that from me, too.”

“Sure I did,” said Rocky, showing twenty sharp white teeth in an enormous smile; “and that’s why I’m so glad to see you now. Why don’t you write a play? And why don’t you have another drink?”

“Play? I can’t write plays.”

“Look: may God strike me down dead on this spot this very minute—I was thinking about you, Johnny. Why don’t you write me a play? A play for me … I mean, a play for Sissy Voltaire and me. We’ve got the money, we’re ready to take a theatre, and all we want is a play: something suitable for the two of us. My God! If I only had your grasp! Your flow of thought!”

Then Pym began to laugh. Laughter overtook him while he was swallowing a mouthful of beer so that he had to turn away. At this Rocky became angry: comedians hate laughter. He said: “I’m a good-natured fellow, Johnny, but I give you one word of warning——”

“No, excuse me, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I wasn’t laughing at you, Rocky, but at something I just thought of. Let me tell you about it: there’s a play called That We May Not Weep.”

“It’s not a bad title. Come to think of it, I’ve heard of it. Yes, of course, Johnny—now, who was it wrote it?”

“You never heard of it in your life, Rocky, because it’s unheard of. Shall I tell you what it’s about? The plot is rather like the plot of Esther Waters.”

“Esther Waters but my boots leak!” shouted Rocky. “There’s a gag there, except that no one ever heard of Esther Waters.”

Pym said: “Here is a rough idea of the plot. A clergyman’s wife falls in love with a clown. She has children, a fine home, property, everything you like; but she’s so much in love with this clown that she leaves everything and runs away with him. The clown is on tour, earning about three pounds a week while it lasts, and they meet in a cathedral town. The clergyman’s wife, who has never left the cathedral town in her life, is the only person on earth who ever laughed whole-heartedly at his silly old jokes. He is, by the way, a rotten clown and a third-rate actor in general. He becomes devoted to her. If everyone was like her, what a great man he would be, do you see? They go away together. She is a lady, you understand—a woman of refinement. So she refines him and teaches him certain subtleties; she shows him how to say ‘How do you do?’ to people, and how not to drink tea out of a saucer, let us say, so that with her charm and personality—he is, incidentally, a tall, dark and handsome man—he becomes famous and rich. Then he falls out of love with this sweet but inconspicuous clergyman’s wife, and runs off with a young and passionate-looking tragic actress. See? He always wanted to be a gentleman and a tragic actor. His discarded mistress dies in the gutter. He marries a millionairess and lives happily ever after. That We May Not Weep. You know: We laugh that we may not weep! The clergyman’s wife, who has read very widely, gives him all his best gags. You could even go in for a long title à la Pirandello and call it We Laugh That We May Not Weep.”

Very quietly for him, Rocky said: “Johnny, old boy, where is this script of yours?”

It was significant that he said “old boy” without two or three uproarious repetitions. He did not even slap Pym on the back.

“Where is it? Under my bed—in a box.”

“Under his bed in a box! Christ Jesus! Under his bed in a box! (That wouldn’t be a bad line for an act—‘Under my bed in a box’). Now listen. You go under your bed and you get out that box, and you let me see that script of yours. D’you hear?”

“It isn’t a script of mine,” said Pym. “I didn’t write it. An old lady wrote it. Why,” he said, amazed, “I was only pulling your leg when I told you about it. I never imagined for one moment that you’d take it seriously.”

“When you say pulling my leg—do you mean to say you haven’t got that script under your bed in a box?”

“No, I’ve got it all right, but it’s rubbish. I grant you that it’s not a bad idea to turn Pagliacci upside down, but she had no idea of how people talk. It reads, in fact, corny.”

“Who is she? Where is she?”

“She’s dead and buried.”

“We Laugh That We May Not Weep—who’s handling it?”

With a self-conscious laugh Pym said: “Well, she gave it to me before she died.”

“—And may she rest in peace; God have mercy on her soul. Can I have a look at it?”

“You can, if you like,” said Pym.

“Come on, then,” said Rocky, punching him in the ribs.

“No, excuse me: I’d rather you didn’t come along to my place just at the moment. It’s in a devil of a mess.”

“To hell with the mess, old son old son old son! You know me—I’m a bohemian. Lead on, lead on, old boy old boy old boy! Where are you staying? Where’s your flat?”

“Flat?” said Pym, startled. “Not far from here; but if you don’t mind I’d rather make a date and bring it along to you since you seem to be interested.”

Rocky’s eyes became shrewd and full of secretive understanding. “Cherchez la femme,” he said “cherchez la femme, cherchez la femme! Okay, okay, old boy old boy, come along to my place.” He took out a cheque-book, tore off one of the corners, borrowed a pencil and wrote:

*

62a, Brow House,

South Street,

Park Lane.

He underlined Park Lane so that the pencil broke. “Can you make it six o’clock this evening, Johnny? Six o’clock exactly?”

“Yes, if you like,” said Pym.

Rocky paid for the drinks with a new five-pound note. He flicked three florins and three sixpences out of the change and bellowed: “The seven-and-sixpence I owe you, old pal old pal old pal!”

Pym, with exaggerated irony, said: “Rocky, you are too kind.”

“Don’t be silly, don’t be silly; what do you mean—‘too kind?’ No more than just, old duck old duck old duck! I pay my debts! Jesus, Mary and Joseph know that Rockwell Gagan keeps his word. I said I’d let you have it back, didn’t I? And I did, haven’t I? All right, then, Johnny—see you at six. Remember the address. Got it? 62a, Brow House, South Street, Park Lane. Park Lane.”

On his way home Pym began to work out a horror story about a stray lamb caught on barbed wire. But when he squared up to his typewriter and began to batter it mercilessly with both hands, he wrote:

BEFORE DAWN. No. 1

Bloodshot Celery and Naughty Boys

This, he decided, was a good, intriguing title for a story about Covent Garden Market. ‘Bloodshot Celery’ is Covent Garden for rhubarb, and ‘Naughty Boys’ are Savoys. Pym made it rich and slangy, racy and crisp, and finished it by five o’clock.

Then he pulled Mrs. Greensleeve’s box from under his bed and took out the typescript of her play. Looking at it, Pym shook his head and smiled a little. Upon its soiled manilla covers the dreary history of That We May Not Weep was written in blotches and stains: a guilloche of teacup-rings, a cuneiform inscription by someone who was cleaning a pen-nib, a black constellation of ink blots—one of them was shaped like a huge exclamation-mark—from an ejaculatory fountain-pen, and a cloud-bank of finger-prints … all the hieroglyphics and symbols of contemptuous rejection. Pym knew them well. He sighed, opened the typescript at random, and read:

VICAR (thunderstruck): Woman! You know not what you do. This is madness, raving madness! You are insane, Phyllis, insane! You—you—you are out of your mind! I am your husband, the father of your children.

PHYLLIS (calmly): That is the reason why I am going away with Frederick.

VICAR (in a voice of thunder): Take off your hat and coat at once, or I will restrain by force!

PHYLLIS (gripping a small bronze ornament): Try it, Edward, if you dare … Ah! You are a coward, I see, as well as a fool!

VICAR (grinding his teeth): Harlot!

PHYLLIS (smiling): Hypocrite!

VICAR: Adultress!

PHYLLIS: Idiot!

VICAR (weeping): Can you bear to leave your children?

PHYLLIS (laughing): Yes: I don’t like them.

VICAR: May God forgive you!

PHYLLIS: You mean may God damn me. You bless as a matter of form, and curse me in your heart. (Provocatively.) Will you forgive me my trespasses as I have forgiven you who have trespassed against me?

VICAR (infuriated): Damn you——

PHYLLIS (lightly but coldly): You see what I mean. (Putting the bronze ornament back on the mantelpiece and arranging her hat in the overmantel mirror) … Good-bye, Edward.

VICAR: You will die in the gutter like a common prostitute.

PHYLLIS: Your much-vaunted Christian charity should not allow such things to be, Edward. Are there no jails? Are there no workhouses? Why the gutter?

(The clock strikes four.)

Once and for all—good-bye, Edward.

(Exit.)

Pym slapped the typescript shut and walked slowly to Park Lane. “The poor old lady,” he said. “Her and her poor old play.”

*

Sissy Voltaire was a little red-haired woman with feverish black eyes. She filled the drawing-room with a faint, pungent, disturbing odour that might have emanated from hot iron, dead flowers and pepper. Slender and, in the dim pink light, still beautiful, she came forward, dancing rather than walking, and took Pym’s hand in both of hers, crying: “And this is Johnny whom Rocky is always talking about! Sit down, Johnny dear, and have a drink. Darling! Give Johnny a drink. He’s terribly sweet,” she said, opening her mouth an inch and a half and clinging by suction to Rocky’s chin, hooking one sharp-nailed hand over his left ear so that he let out a yelp of pain. “Mwa! … that’s what I think of you. Kiss me.”

Rocky kissed her cheek.

“Properly! … That’s better. Now you can go and get Johnny a drink … He’s an awful idiot in many ways you know, Johnny, but so sweet in other ways. Ah! isn’t he sweet, then? Mmm? Little great big silly sweet? Mmm?” She bit Rocky’s finger. “I want to eat him, Johnny, he’s so sweet.”

“Hey!” cried Rocky, “that hurt!”

“Ah, darleeng, darleeng! Naughty Sissy bit naughty Sissy’s dray big Rocky Mountain? Bad, bad Sissy!” She slapped herself sharply on the wrist and pretended to cry. “Boo-hoo! … naughty Sissy sorry … Do you like your whisky like that, Johnny dear? He’s so thoughtless … but so sweet——”

“—No biting,” said Rocky. “Cigar, Johnny?” He wiped lipstick off his chin with a silk handkerchief and rubbed his bitten finger.

“Well, thank you, yes; I will have a cigar.”

“And I don’t blame you, Johnny, old boy old boy. Triple Coronas, by God! They cost——”

“Rocky!”

“Sorry, Sissy darling.”

“Who’s mummy’s dray big little tiny baby? Silly Rocky! … He’s an awful idiot, really, Johnny. But, you see, I happen to love him. Isn’t he a pet?”

“Oh yes, yes, indeed, Miss Voltaire. Certainly he is. A pet—that’s right.”

“I’m so glad you and Rocky are such good friends. There’s something so lovely about true friendship. Tell me, Johnny, has he had an awful lot of women?”

“I couldn’t say, Miss Voltaire.”

“Call me Sissy, Johnny. No, on your word of honour now, tell me——”

“Cut it out, for Christ’s sake!” said Rocky. “Let’s have a look at that play, Johnny old pal.”

“Let us change the subject, by all means,” said Sissy Voltaire.

“I’ve got it,” said Pym, “but I don’t want you to imagine that I have anything to do with it. It was written by an old lady named Mary Greensleeve——”

“But that’s charming, Johnny dear! Mary Greensleeve! One thinks of a fluffy, pretty little blonde thing in a frilly flowery dress. Mary Greensleeve … how sweet!”

“I should imagine that’s exactly what she used to look like,” said Pym.

“Did you have an affaire with her?”

“Good God!” said Pym, “no!”

“I see you did. Nice Johnny! Go on.”

“Miss Voltaire! The old lady was over seventy years old, and not much over seventy pounds in weight——”

“The older the fiddle the sweeter the tune, eh? The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat, eh, Johnny?”

“Here’s the play,” said Pym, rising, “and that’s all there is to it. Now you must excuse me—I have to go.”

“No, by Jesus, no, you won’t,” said Rocky. “Pay no attention to Sissy. She likes to pull your leg. She likes getting your goat. The more she can hurt you the better she likes it. Sissy, you let my pal Johnny alone, do you hear? He’s a guest in my house.”

“A guest in whose house, darling?”

“He’s my guest,” said Rocky.

“In your house?”

“My guest in your house. Your house, but my guest … I’m sorry, Johnny. She’s got one of her moods on. Sissy, cut out the drinking for to-night,” said Rocky.

She half-filled a tumbler with whisky, drank most of it in three gulps, and threw the dregs into Rocky’s face. He wiped himself with his silk handkerchief and said nothing; sat back in a velvet easy-chair and looked sullenly at his feet, while Sissy Voltaire refilled Pym’s glass and her own. She was still smiling wistfully: her expression had not changed.

“Rocky was telling me about your lady-friend’s play,” she said coolly in a measured voice. “I adore the plot, you know, for certain reasons. Certain reasons. Do you believe in Fate, Johnny? Or God—call it God. Do you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Johnny, you know that my husband is a Baptist, I suppose?”

“No, I didn’t know. But——”

“A tobacco-broker, a millionaire. Does that convey anything to you, Johnny?”

“I’m sorry: I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

“I left him for that,” she said, pointing.

“Oh, cut it out,” muttered Rocky.

“—Because I love him, love him!” screamed Sissy Voltaire. “Oh, Rocky, lover of mine—oh, Rocky!” She threw herself down and wept on Rocky’s knees, untying his shoelaces with wild fingers, and caressing his ankles. “Take everything, only forgive me!”

“Sure, sure, sure I forgive you. Only be a darling girl and cut it out.”

“Be a what?”

“Darling girl.”

She got off her knees, laughing. “No, no, don’t go, Johnny,” she said, pulling Pym back from the door. “Rocky—dearest, darling Rocky—get us all another drink and let’s look at this.”

Sissy Voltaire opened the typescript and, after a quick, narrow-eyed glance, started to read the play aloud. At first she read perfunctorily; but soon, having involved herself in the adultery of the vicar’s wife and her passionate love for the worthless actor, she melted and changed shape like wax in a mould; and at last, when she—sick at heart and forsaken—said: “Oh dear me—poor Edward! If only he could see me now, I’d have made him happy. ‘In the gutter,’ he said. Edward is among the prophets … But oh! I have been so happy …” Rocky shook open another silk handkerchief and cried like a boy, snuffling and gulping, gasping and protesting: “I couldn’t hold back any longer, Sissy darling—you broke me down.”

“But what does Johnny say?” she asked.

Pym said: “I never thought much of the play, as a play, until I heard you read it. You make it sound wonderful.”

“But what’s the matter with the play as a play?” said Sissy Voltaire.

“Well, frankly, I don’t know. People don’t talk like those people talk.”

“I suppose,” she said, “you know how a vicar talks when his wife tells him that she’s going to run away with a small-time comic?”

“Well, no, I don’t.”

“Or what wives say when they die in gutters?”

“Yes,” said Pym, “I know what they say then. They say: Designer infinite! Must thou then char the wood ere thou canst limn with it?”

“Johnny could hot up the dialogue in places,” said Rocky.

“Of course he could. He must, you clever darling!” cried Sissy Voltaire, gnawing at the lobe of Rocky’s right ear. “Eh, Johnny dear?”

“You don’t really mean to say you want this play, do you?” asked Pym.

“An option, certainly,” said Sissy Voltaire.

“But, Miss Voltaire … Rocky … I didn’t write the wretched thing!”

“Shut up, Rocky! Tell me, Johnny darling, whose is it, then?”

“It’s my property, I suppose,” said Pym.

“—In which case we’d negotiate with you for an option, eh, Johnny darling?”

“Will you forgive me?” asked Pym. He had drunk too much whisky. “I am somewhat overwhelmed. If we could talk about this to-morrow, or the next day . . You were so wonderful, Miss Voltaire, that I can’t quite gather my thoughts just now. So——”

“—Take your own time,” said Sissy Voltaire, making a little pink almond-shaped mark on Rocky’s throat with her lips; “—take your own time, Johnny darling … Oh, Johnny, doesn’t he taste nice?”

“I don’t know, ma’am: it must be a matter of taste. I never tasted him,” Pym said, while Rocky grinned and winked from his stuffed chair.

“What’s your address, Johnny darling?”

“I’d rather ring you, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“She’s jealous, eh? I daresay she has good cause to be. Rocky would ask for you, you know.”

“If I may I’ll ring you.”

“Aha, aha! It’s you who are jealous, is it?” said Sissy Voltaire. “Oh, men, men! But this other woman—Greensleeve: tell me something—have another drink before you go and tell me something. Was she awfully good in bed?”

“I couldn’t possibly know, Miss Voltaire; and even if I knew I couldn’t possibly answer such a question,” said Pym, stiffly.

Kneading the loose flesh of Rocky’s forehead, Sissy Voltaire said: “Would you terribly much mind going now, then, Johnny? We’ve got to dress, if you’re sure you really don’t terribly mind.”

“Johnny’s a bohemian, like me,” said Rocky, starting to get up. But Sissy, who had unbuttoned his shirt and was exploring his ribs, said:

“No, don’t move, Rocky.”

“Give us a tinkle, then, Johnny, old pal old pal old pal, okay?”

“Yes; and thank you so much,” said Pym.

Half-turning as he closed the door, he saw that Sissy Voltaire had let herself slide supine on the thick carpet between Rocky’s feet. She was kicking off her slippers and Rocky was anxiously running his fingers through her hair, doing something to his nose with his disengaged hand. “Say something—do something!” said the woman’s voice. “Tell me something! Oh, love, love!”

“Look, wait just a minute,” said Rocky.

The servant closed the street door, and Pym was sucking in the comparatively healthy petrol-vapours and dust-clouds of the sooty, dung-strewn street.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BY ten o’clock next morning Pym had finished another article in which he described with feverish gusto the Caledonian Market, that clearing-house of the junk of the world. He was dazzled by his own brilliance. Reading and re-reading the descriptive passages, Pym was convinced that no one in his right mind could fail to be impressed; for here was the real stuff, the honest-to-God dope—one could almost taste the rusty iron, the green brass, and the twelfth-hand plated cutlery. One could smell the derelict beds, sofas, and stuffed chairs and feel the dull edges of the unwanted notched sabres and tulwars on the stalls. At least, Pym could smell and see and feel these things, and hear their tinkling and grinding and clanking and creaking as he read aloud to himself what he had written about them. So he was in a good humour. He had paid another week’s rent and still had a few shillings in his pocket. Something—some instinct—told him that the Features Editor would fall on his neck and take him out to lunch. In the Café Royal the Features Editor would say that the time had come to stop fiddling about with piddling little articles here and articles there, and get down to something regular—one story a week for certain, twelve guineas and expenses. Pym felt lucky this morning. He knew that the worst was over.

In the passage he looked at the dusty baize-covered board, criss-crossed with pinned down lengths of dirty tape into which Busto stuck his tenants’ letters, if they had any. This board had been bare for the past three months, except for a little buff “Final Notice” from the Income Tax collector addressed to Thomas Dobkin, Esq., who was in prison for stealing books in Charing Cross Road. He, poor fellow, had believed that he had evolved a new technique. He would walk about with a book of his own under his arm and pretend to browse around the shelves, with what he fondly imagined to be the abstracted look of a scholar and a gentleman. In due course when he thought no one was looking he would put the most expensive-looking book he could find under his arm next to the volume he was so ostentatiously carrying. Then, blinking owlishly like the absent-minded professor of fiction, he shambled out, vaguely nodding to everyone and talking to himself under his breath. But Dobkin had been watched: his was a discovery, not an invention. His trick was older than Charing Cross Road. They caught him creeping out of the medical department, absent-mindedly hugging two enormous volumes on gynæcology, which not even a strong man could have picked up without premeditation, for they weighed fifteen pounds. The other volume, his stock-in-trade, was a Greek lexicon. Since he had previously been found guilty of absent-mindedly exploring the overcoats in a cloakroom, and forgetfully keeping the contents of the pockets, he got three months. But he was proud of his Income Tax Demand, and left it there for all the world to see.

This morning there was a clean new envelope on the board. Pym was surprised when he saw that it was addressed to him. It was a heavy, long envelope cut in the American style. His name and address were beautifully typewritten in green. In the top left-hand corner was the name of a company: THURTELL HUNT, MAYERLING & CO. LTD., Publishers, 302, ADAM STREET, ADELPHI. This was die-stamped on expensive paper, pale-green paper.

Pym’s heart beat itself against his ribs like a mouse in a wire trap. He tore open the envelope—it was a pity to spoil it, but it had to be done—and took out a large sheet of beautiful pale-green paper that crackled like a new banknote. No jobbing printer had worked on this letter-heading: it was tasteful, costly, magnificent. You could read it like Braille by running your fingers over it, it was printed in such rich relief. There again was the name and the address, with a colophon ingeniously composed of an eye inside an ear. There was a telephone number. On the left there was a list of directors:

Chairman: THOMAS PAINE SHERWOOD.

Directors: E. Fury (American).

F. T. O. Proudfoot.

T. I. von Mayerling (Czech).

Doctor O. Weissensee (Austrian).

“Oh! Oh!” said Pym, reading the beautiful green typescript. It said:

MY DEAR JOHNNY,

You may or may not remember our conversation concerning a project in which I was interested and from which you might derive some benefit. You will observe that I am one of the Directors of Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling & Co. Ltd., Publishers, of 302, Adam Street, Adelphi. I am happy to tell you that I can now offer you lucrative employment, if you are still in need of it. Would it be convenient for you to telephone me any time before one o’clock or after three any day except Sunday?

I am,

Yours as ever——

PROUDFOOT.

Pym felt a cold breath on his neck. Busto was peering over his shoulder.

“Am I in your light?” asked Pym. “Would you like me to strike a match or something? I’m glad private correspondence interests you.”

“I can’t read,” said Busto. “But you don’t wipe your behind with that stuff.” He jerked his thumb at the letter. Then Pym saw big black smudges on the envelope where Busto had been feeling it. Busto, who had an instinct for the cost of things, was impressed by the costliness of the paper.

“Ah-ha!” said Pym mysteriously, putting the letter in his pocket. “Ah-ha!”

It was as well to be respected by Busto. Who could say when it might be necessary to bluff him into staking another couple of days of grace before he called you? Busto shrugged and Pym went out, whistling through his teeth. He was at once excited and depressed, elated and nervous; as a man is, sometimes, when he feels that something tremendous is going to happen. Soldiers feel like that on the eve of a battle; young brides feel like that when the key clicks in the chamber door and the groom’s embarrassed fingers twist the link button of his hired cutaway coat.

He was confident that the Sunday Special weekly feature was as good as settled. On his way downstairs Pym had intended to go directly to the Features Editor and settle the matter. But now he told himself that it would look better if he appeared nonchalant, or at least not over-anxious. He went to a telephone-booth and made an appointment to meet Proudfoot in his office in half an hour.

The offices of Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling & Co. Ltd., General Publishers, were on the ground floor of a gracious old house near the river. There was a blue-and-white plaque on the wall which said:

*

Thurston Bidpond,

Man of Letters,

1799–1829, lived here.

The publishers’ nameplate was not of staring brass, but of some darker alloy; and it was large and massive—the plate of a firm founded on a rock; substantial; calculated to last for ever. The outer office smelt strongly of paint. A dreamy-eyed, anxious boy took Pym’s name, blushed, said: “Just a minute,” and, after an absence of fifteen or twenty seconds returned, his face glowing like a Neon sign and asked him to step in.

A young lady said, in cool, measured tones: “Oh, Mr. Pym. How do you do? Mr. Proudfoot is expecting you, but he’s detained for two or three minutes, so won’t you sit down?”

“May I smoke?”

“Please do. Mr. Proudfoot won’t keep you long, I’m sure.”

“I’m probably too early. I’m always too early,” said Pym.

“Not more than five or ten minutes,” the lady said. There were papers, neatly arranged in an ingenious nest of wire baskets to the left of a brand new typewriter on her desk. Her telephone was new; the directories were new; the inkwells were clean, the pen nibs were bright, and the pencils were all of equal length. There was a little new vase of new flowers on the desk.

“New here?” said Pym.

“We’ve only recently moved in, yes.”

“Would it be indiscreet, Miss …?”

“Bowman.”

“—Bowman. Would it be indiscreet, Miss Bowman, to ask just what kind of set-up this is?”

“Not at all, Mr. Pym. This is simply a publishing company. I believe it’s connected with a firm called Mayerling, of Vienna.”

“I can’t say I know anything about Mayerling of Vienna. Do you?”

“I’m told they were one of the most important publishing firms in Austria, Mr. Pym. I don’t know any more than that. I’m new here myself, you see.”

“Practically everything looks new here,” said Pym, sniffing at the fresh paint. “Tell me, Miss Bowman, what do you do here? Secretary?”

“I’m Mr. Sherwood’s secretary, and I make myself useful in general. You’re a writer, I believe?”

“After a style, yes. I am an apprentice.” Suddenly he wanted to talk about himself. “I write a bit here and a bit there. You couldn’t possibly have heard of me. Most of what I write, I write anonymously: ashamed to put my name to it.”

Miss Bowman said: “If I found myself doing anything I was ashamed of I’d stop it like a shot.”

“But——” said Pym.

Then the door opened and Proudfoot came into Miss Bowman’s office, with a melodramatic gesture, and gripped Pym by the shoulders. “Johnny!” he said, “the one man on the the face of the earth I really want to see! You have met Miss Bowman? Joanna, you’ve met John Pym? Good! good! Come in, Johnny, come in and meet Sherwood! Come in, come in!”

Proudfoot opened a mahogany door and followed Pym into Sherwood’s room.

*

The keen-eyed elderly man was turning over some papers. He was dressed, now, in an old gingery tweed suit with leather patches on the elbows: a flannel shirt and a woollen tie; and still he looked well-dressed. There was something like a pinch of salt on his upper lip—he was growing a moustache. “Ah-ha!” he cried, “my dear colleague! Brother in exile! Come in and sit down and tell me—how does the world use you? We have met before, Mr. Pym, when we were both the victims of judicial misunderstanding, I believe. When I quoted that poetry to you … those lines—have you forgotten? You said they were good. I quoted a line or two and he said they were good, Proudfoot old friend!”

“Oh yes, I remember distinctly,” said Pym.

“One of the greatest books in the English language,” said Sherwood, laughing heartily as he took a bottle, syphon, and three glasses out of a cupboard in his walnut and red-leather desk, “one of the very greatest books in the English language—which I have had the opportunity to learn by heart—is Roget’s Thesaurus. The lines I quoted on that occasion, to which we need not refer, Mr. Pym, are made up of words repeated in their proper order out of Roget’s Thesaurus—Number 954: Intemperance. There is a work! There is a work indeed! There is pure poetry. Read your Roget, Mr. Pym; read your Roget:

Bad man, wrong-doer, work of iniquity——

Wretch, reptile, viper and devil incarnate!

Enough of this nonsense. A drink, Mr. Pym. I’m delighted to meet you, delighted and relieved—and this is another reason why I have occasion to be indebted to our common friend Proudfoot. And I hope, Mr. Pym, that you, too, will feel that you owe Proudfoot a thank-you for this meeting … you, as a writer, a man of letters. I am nothing but Barbabas. Barbabas was a publisher, eh? Ha-ha-ha! Hated by those he loves—willing to wound—and yet afraid to strike, eh? So well-bred lap dogs civilly delight in mumbling of the prey they dare not bite—what? Drink up! drink up!”

Proudfoot said: “Johnny, we are friends, I hope?”

“Yes, we are. Do you need to ask, Proudfoot?”

“This, Tom,” said Proudfoot to Sherwood, “is a real writer. I don’t like to ask him to do what I want him to do but I have an idea—a crazy idea, if you like, that out of friendship he might accommodate us … Look Johnny, this is nothing but a hack job. I proposed you as the writer because you can write it the way it needs to be written, and also because there really is some money in it … Sherwood, my dear fellow, I’ve explained that Johnny Pym is a very fine writer indeed, who is going to establish himself. Only—we are among friends now, Johnny, and you mustn’t mind my talking like this—Johnny needs a little money, Sherwood, my dear fellow, in order to afford to sit down and write what he wanted to write. Johnny—this is a hack job and nothing more: a piece of nonsense as far as you are concerned, but of great importance to my friend Sherwood and to me. It is, in fact, a rewrite job.”

“Proudfoot, anything I can do for you I will, as you very well know.”

“Thanks! Thanks! Now, tell me—have you heard of Dr. Weissensee?”

Sherwood said: “The author of Geschlechtliche Verirrungen in Verhaeltnis zur Kunst im Lauf der Zeit Einschliesslich Spezial Faelle in der Zeit Zwischen 1675 und 1935 mit einer Bemerkung Ueber Auto-Erotik. Dr. Weissensee has the approval of three of the greatest psychiatrists in the world. We want to publish Weissensee here, but we have the work only in a scrappy form in English and in—to be frank—a sensationalised French translation. It is,” said Sherwood, looking grave and drumming his fingers on the blotting-pad, “a purely scientific work of the first order. It is, in fact, a necessary work, and we propose to circulate it very widely in England and America. In order to do this we must put it into clear, vivid English. The Personal Case Histories alone need the touch of a first-rate writer. You are a first-rate writer, Mr. Pym. I have read only a few of your pieces in the Sunday Special—I have myself had certain dealings with that excellent paper——”

“I know you have,” said Pym.

Sherwood and Proudfoot exchanged glances and then Proudfoot said: “You do, do you?”

“You sold them a story about yourself. I saw your photograph on somebody’s desk the other day.”

“Well,” said Sherwood, unperturbed, “you only know what I was on the point of telling you. I have been young and now I am old. I have been foolish and now I am wise. Crime, Mr. Pym, crime does not pay. Vanitas vanitatum et omnes … What fools we mortals be! How vain—how silly to imagine that one’s weak self can stand alone against the gathered might of the Law of God and man! Observe, I am absolutely frank with you, Mr. Pym. All that is over. Part of the capital I have put into Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling & Co. Ltd., is the six thousand pounds I was paid by the Sunday Special for my full and true confession——”

“—Thirty-five hundred pounds,” said Pym.

“Experienced as you are, Mr. Pym, you have not yet grasped the fact that editors underquote the prices they pay in order to discourage exacting contributors.”

Proudfoot looked at Pym, frowning, sucked in the corners of his mouth, and nodded slowly; and then he said: “Quite simply, Johnny, we want you to put Weissensee into good clean-cut English. Geschlechtliche Verirrungen im Verhaeltnis zur Kunst im Lauf der Zeit Einschliesslich Spezial Faelle in der Zeit Zwischen 1675 und 1935 mit Einer Bemerkung Ueber Auto-Erotik is an established scientific work, and you have nothing but credit to get from it—and money, of course.”

“What does that mean in English?” asked Pym.

Proudfoot said: “It means Sexual Aberration in Relation to the Arts through the Ages, Together with Case Histories from 1675 to 1935 and a Note on Auto-Erotism.”

“What would there be in it for me?” asked Pym.

“Two hundred and fifty pounds,” said Proudfoot.

“But how long is it?”

“About a hundred thousand words.”

“I don’t know if I could do it. Could I look at some of the stuff?” asked Pym.

Sherwood looked at Proudfoot, who nodded. Then, unlocking the drawer, Sherwood found a manilla folder full of violet typescript on onion-skin paper. “Naturally,” he said.

“If I could let you know to-morrow …?” said Pym.

“Of course,” said Proudfoot. “We are friends, Johnny, I hope. You have been a good friend to me and I—in my way—have tried to be a good friend to you, I flatter myself.”

Pym said: “Proudfoot, you’ve been a better friend to me than any friend I ever had.”

“Twelve o’clock!” said Sherwood, looking at his gold watch. “What do you say to lunch?”

“Unfortunately I have a date,” said Pym, rising, with the folder under his arm.

Proudfoot insisted upon seeing him to the door. They parted affectionately. Pym walked to the Strand and walked back again. He said to the blushing boy: “An envelope … foolscap envelope—about this long and this wide”—he drew a diagram with a finger-nail—“did I leave it here?”

“Just a minute.”

Miss Bowman came out and said: “I don’t think there’s any envelope in my office. Perhaps you left it in Mr. Sherwood’s office.”

“Miss Bowman, I beg your pardon! I really am ever so sorry, but now I come to think of it I posted it this morning. For the moment I would have sworn I had it with me, but I’ve just remembered—I posted it this morning. That’s it—this morning; I put a stamp on it and posted it. But I put it in my pocket and, thinking of other things, I got the idea into my head it was still in my pocket. I am so sorry.”

“So glad you haven’t lost it.”

“Oh, Miss Bowman, I don’t suppose you’d like to have lunch with me?” said Pym, swallowing saliva.

“Yes, I’ll have lunch with you, if you like,” said Miss Bowman.

“What time?”

“One.”

“Where?”

“Pick me up here, if you like.”

“One o’clock, then,” said Pym, and hurried away to the Sunday Special.

The Features Editor was still there. He said: “Look here, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times—who the hell wants Prose Poems? Who wants Descriptive Passages? Who wants long words? Who wants catalogues? Who wants your logomania? (You see, I can use long words, too, if I want to.) This stuff has possibilities, but you’d better take it away and purge it. I can’t use this stuff as it stands. Get some life into it—get some human stuff into it. I’m sorry, but as far as I’m concerned you can bore a little hole in this stuff and hang it up with a piece of string in a certain place. You know better than this, son. You know a hell of a lot better than this Pym. What’s the matter with you? Spring fever? Do me a favour—will you?—and take this Immortal Prose away and bung in another specimen.”

“But, damn it all——”

“—My sentiments exactly. Damn it all, and let’s have a story. You’re on the right line. Keep on it and you’ll be okay. Oh, and by the way: no doubt you were carried away by your Prose Poems but, in case you didn’t notice, you made a coster say ‘Not bloody likely’. This is a family paper.”

“Family paper!” cried Pym. “Con-men and whores and murderers and white-slavers and dope traffickers can spill their guts all over your lousy paper and get paid through the nose for it! And I use a harmless ‘bloody’—a perfectly harmless ‘Not bloody likely’ and you go Puritan on me!”

“No ‘bloodies’ in this paper.”

“What about Bernard Shaw?”

“Go and grow a long white beard. Go and write plays. This is a family paper. No ‘bloodies’! ‘Blasted’—yes. ‘Bloody’—no. Similarly, no ‘bastards’. ‘Illegitimate’, perhaps, if necessary. ‘Bastard’, definitely no. And no ‘pregnant’—‘certain condition’. First be Bernard Shaw, then say ‘Not bloody likely’ as much as you bloody well like. You go away and do it again. Scram now, like a good fellow.”

“Very well, if that’s the way you want it.”

“Oh, Pym—you might as well take these with you,” said the Features Editor, poking at Pym’s articles with a thick black pencil. “You could sell them to a magazine … Now, don’t be silly—don’t lose your temper. Would I bother to talk to you if I didn’t think you were all right? Go out and have a drink and go back to work. Oh, by the by, if you want a couple of quid I can let you have it.”

“Thanks, I’m all right.”

“On account, you know.”

Pym said: “I assure you there’s no need at all. Thanks, all the same. Au revoir.”

“So long.”

Pym walked downstairs jingling the money in his pocket. In the vestibule he stopped as if he had walked into an invisible wire. Having felt the edges of all the coins in his right hand it occurred to Pym that he had only five shillings, two sixpences, three pennies and a halfpenny. The hands of the big electric clock pointed to twelve thirty-five. He thought of his typewriter but hesitated, remembered Proudfoot and went to a public telephone. Pym dialled feverishly. A woman answered. He pinched his nostrils, twisted his mouth and disguised his voice. “Tell Bister Proudfoot it’s urgent,” he said. Then, portentously, Proudfoot said: “Who is it?”

Pym whispered: “Proudfoot, don’t say anything. Listen, can you lend me a little money—just a little money?” As Proudfoot began to reply Pym said hastily: “Don’t mention my name. Don’t say anything. Simply say yes or no. I only want a pound—just for a day.”

“Yes, of course,” said Proudfoot. “Come right along now.”

“No, do you mind,” whispered Pym; “do you mind terribly much meeting me in about ten minutes in the Buckingham?”

“Well, it isn’t altogether convenient, you know; but if I remember rightly I do owe you——”

“No, no, no! Please, please, Proudfoot! You don’t owe me anything. I just want to borrow a pound.”

“Not in trouble again, I hope?”

“No, no trouble at all. Well—yes—yes, I am in a minor way in trouble. Will you do this for me, Proudfoot?”

“One moment,” said Proudfoot; and then Pym heard him saying: “Oh, Joanna, how much have we in the petty cash?” The reply was inaudible, but Proudfoot said: “With pleasure. Where you said—in ten minutes. Don’t make it more than ten minutes, will you?”

“I won’t! I won’t, thank you very much! I don’t know how to thank you! I’m on my way now.”

When Pym reached the Buckingham Proudfoot was waiting for him.

“Here you are, Johnny,” he said, pressing a square of folded paper money into Pym’s coat pocket.

“You’re the best friend any man ever had,” said Pym, pretending to fumble for a cigarette; “—but, I say, Proudfoot, there’s more than a pound here.”

“There’s a fiver there,” said Proudfoot.

“A pound would have been enough.”

“Oh come, come, come, my dear fellow, what is a pound or two between friends?”

“But——”

“—You owe me nothing—it’s on the firm. We’ll take it off the book. You haven’t had a chance, of course, to cast your eye over the material yet?”

“Good God!” said Pym, “I must have left it up at the office.”

Proudfoot clasped his hands behind him and stared, speechless. “You had better get on the telephone at once,” he said.

Pym did so. The Features Editor’s secretary said “Yes, that’s right, a manilla folder; you did leave it on Mr. Steeple’s desk. I’ve got it here.”

“It’s perfectly safe, Proudfoot,” said Pym. “I’ll go along and get it this afternoon. No need to worry: it’s perfectly safe.”

In his harshest voice Proudfoot said: “You must be completely out of your mind, Pym! Are you aware that you might have lost one of the most valuable contributions to modern science? You had better keep your wits about you, my friend.”

“I really am awfully sorry, but I seem to be what you might call distrait this morning.”

“Sorry, Pym, sorry again, always sorry! Well, well, have a drink.”

“Do you mind awfully, Proudfoot, if I don’t? I have a lunch date.”

“Not at all, my dear fellow. We look forward to seeing you to-morrow.”

“Yes, to-morrow,” said Pym, on his way out.

He reached Adam Street at five minutes to one and waited on the other side of the road.

“What on earth were you hiding in that doorway for?” asked Joanna Bowman when they met.

“I don’t know,” said Pym, feeling foolish.

“I bet you do know,” she said. “You were saying to yourself: ‘I don’t want anyone in the office to see me waiting for the secretary in case they think I’m interested in her,’ isn’t that right?”

“I don’t know. Possibly. Very likely,” said Pym. “Where shall we eat?”

“Just anywhere. What about the George and Dragon? You can get a perfectly good lunch there for one-and-six.”

“I was thinking of Vidocq’s,” said Pym.

“Well, then, stop thinking of Vidocq’s and let’s go to the George and Dragon.”

As they walked down Adam Street Pym, looking sideways at her, said with some astonishment: “Why, you’re nearly as tall as I am!”

“Why not?”

“It’s rare.”

She laughed and said: “Tall men don’t like tall women, do they? They’re bad for that dark male dignity, or whatever they call it, that we used to hear so much about. Nothing to look down at, even physically. Don’t let it bother you. With our shoes off I should probably measure about four inches less than you, if that’s any comfort.”

“What an extraordinary woman you are!” said Pym, not without asperity.

“Don’t tell me why: just let me guess. What an extraordinary woman I am! You ask me to lunch and I say Yes—without chi-chi, just like that—without even pretending to look at a little diary to see whether I’m previously engaged. That’s extraordinary. It would have been ordinary and comfortable if I’d giggled and blushed and twisted my toes and looked at my fingernails and put on one of those coy expressions, and hummed and hawed and said ‘Well’ and ‘Let me see’; and rolled my eyes when I met you and suggested the Savoy or something. As it is, you ask me to lunch. I say Yes, and so we go to the George and Dragon—which is as good as I’m used to—for some Irish stew or Lancashire hot-pot. Extraordinary. Well, God save me from your ordinary.”

“Incidentally, apart from being extraordinary, you sound like an angry sort of woman,” said Pym.

“I’m a tired sort of woman.”

“Tired of what?”

“I’m tired of nonsense. I’m tired of lies, fakes and false pretences. I’m tired of fools, cowards, and weaklings. I’m tired of cheats and swindlers. I’m tired of people who put on acts. I’m tired of people who hide in doorways on the other side of the street. I’m tired of people in general.”

Pym said: “For a woman who’s tired of the things you’re tired of, you’ve chosen a funny sort of place to work in.”

“Have I?” she asked, with real interest. “How’s that?”

“Sherwood is the confidence man—swindler, trickster, cardsharper, anything crooked you like—the twister who last went to jail under the name of Sedley Pryor. Some of the capital behind Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling & Co. Ltd., comes out of what he got for his story. I rather fancy he informed on one or two friends, too. You know—the crook, reformed because he’s lost his touch, doing a bit of the old Judas Iscariot on the side.” Pym was angry: he did not like what she had said about “people who hide in doorways”. “And Proudfoot, speaking of fakers, has perverted more truth in his time than any other man in England. He was Proudfoot the Mouthpiece. I don’t know anything about the rest, but I can’t say I like the look or the sound of them.”

“I’ve only been working there a few days,” said Joanna Bowman, “and I don’t know anything much about them. But you seem to know them all and dislike them pretty thoroughly. And still you’re on the best of terms with them. How’s that?”

After an embarrassed silence, Pym said: “Proudfoot has been a good friend to me.”

They had arrived at the George and Dragon, where they found a quiet table. Pym ordered drinks and food, and hoped that in making her laugh at his whimsical commentary on the misspelling of an item on the menu he had changed the subject of conversation.

But while they were eating the main dish she asked: “In what way has Proudfoot been a good friend to you?”

Pym left a piece of bread half-broken and said: “That’s a long story.”

“I don’t believe it, you know. None of these stories ever are very long—not as stories. One makes them long to make excuses. The stories are short. Only the explanations are long.”

“I don’t agree with you,” said Pym. “Explanations are short and stories are long. Proudfoot helped me when I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t help myself because I didn’t know how. I got into trouble because I compounded a felony. I compounded a felony because I was sorry for the wrong people at the wrong time. (Proudfoot calls me ‘Sorry Pym’ because I’m sorry for people.) I’m grateful to Proudfoot because I can’t help being grateful; because I see ingratitude as a piggish sort of vice—and I hate it. Ingratitude is the Mark of the Beast. There are explanations; but where’s the story?”

“I daresay you’ve done a good turn or two in your time?”

“I suppose so.”

“Did you expect gratitude?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then you expected to find your Mark of the Beast on your friends?”

“I hoped not to.”

“You didn’t look for gratitude. You were ready for ingratitude. You just said so.

“I suppose so—yes.”

“And yet you regard gratitude as a good thing.”

“Yes, a good thing—a necessary thing. Even dogs——”

“—And you were always grateful?”

“Only too grateful, always.”

“In other words, you make a virtue of it. You say it’s a necessity, yet you make a fuss about it. You believe a man to be a crook, but because he did some little thing for you at a given moment, you are prepared to follow him into crookery. Is that how it is?”

“No, indeed! That is not how it is,” said Pym.

“If it isn’t, what are you doing where you don’t want to be, talking about your friend Proudfoot when his back is turned? What are you doing with his five-pound note in your pocket? Don’t imagine I didn’t recognise your voice when you spoke on the phone before. What were you doing? Chewing a pencil?”

“No,” said Pym.

“You may ask me what I’m doing here. I’ll tell you exactly. I’m a shorthand-typist earning my living. I’ve been working at this job about three days. If I find it in any way offensive, I shall get to hell out of it. That’s where we differ, you and I: I get to hell out of things, you get to hell into things. Now, before I got myself involved with a cheap crook, I’d cut my throat.”

“Without paying your debts?” said Pym.

She said: “What debts? How do you pay the sort of debts you’re talking about? If I had to lie down in the gutter so as to be on the same level as someone before I could pay a debt, I’d think of myself as belonging to that gutter. In any case, I don’t have debts. I’d put my head in a gas-oven before I had debts like that. It’s the old business of losing the whole world rather than your own soul. If these people are what you say they are, why do you think they’re kind? They put a pound’s worth of kindness on an idiot like you as an idiot like you might put ten shillings on a horse—gambling on something to come. Only in your case, there isn’t any gamble—you are a dead cert. A horse can break its leg, but you won’t let them down. Oh no, I know you! You’ll stand up for your crooks, or whatever they are, to the bitter end. You’ll give away all you have. And why?—Because you like to see yourself like something you read about in a book somewhere. I don’t think it’s a good thing to do. I’m tired of this kind of faking. I don’t like it. Don’t do it any more!”

Pym said nothing. The waitress had brought the bill, which amounted to four-and-eightpence. He left five shillings and fourpence.

She said: “All the same, you know and I know that you’ve got Proudfoot’s fiver in your pocket.”

“I have,” said Pym. “My idea was that I wanted to offer you a good meal and a bottle of wine.”

“Did you imagine that would make an impression on me?”

“I wasn’t thinking of making an impression on you,” said Pym. “Make an impression—in clothes like these! Try and fool you with a lunch! My dear lady, a number of things you’ve said about me are pretty near the truth, but don’t let that kid you into believing that you’re right all the time. If I offer anything I like it to be good. If I play at being host, I do my best to have a satisfied guest. When I asked you to lunch I was under the impression that I had more money in my pocket than I really had. Since you insist on dragging the matter on to the dirty tablecloth, I thought I had a pound note, but I’d forgotten that I’d paid my rent. I didn’t want to cancel the date, and I wasn’t going to humiliate myself. So I borrowed from Proudfoot. And now you know.”

He was angry and uncomfortable now.

She said gently: “Forgive me if I hurt you. I’m the last woman on earth to sit down with at a little friendly lunch. I’m a rotten guest.” And she reached out and squeezed one of Pym’s wrists for a second in a strong cool hand; it was an asexual gesture expressive of friendly sympathy. “I didn’t come rushing out to lunch with you after a two-minutes’ chat because I wanted a free meal, you know.”

“I didn’t imagine for one moment that you did,” said Pym.

“Why, as a matter of curiosity, did you think I did?” she asked.

“Ah-ha! Here we go again! You don’t imagine that I invited you to lunch after two minutes’ conversation with a view to making passes at you and luring you to my divan, do you?”

“I don’t know. It wouldn’t be very extraordinary if that were the case, would it? … No, don’t get angry. That has been known to happen before, hasn’t it?”

“I don’t doubt it, Miss Bowman; but a woman of your high-velocity nickel-plated sharp-nosed-bullet penetration—a woman who has seen so much of people and life in general—a woman like you, ought to have as much common savvy as it takes to tell the difference between a man like me and a gutter-crawling skirt-chaser. Your big bright eyes, lady, ought by now to have informed your big bright brain of the difference between me and the man who makes the date with the waitress or waits outside the Carreras factory when the girls are coming out; or seduces servant girls; or toys with typists.”

“Is there really so much difference?” she asked.

Before Pym had cleared his throat of suffocating indignation, she went on: “No, I don’t think that you’re fundamentally so very much different. Don’t fly off the handle yet! All this is just talk—silly talk. No … I should think you asked me out to lunch for the same reason as I accepted your invitation. I should say you rather liked the look of me and thought that it might be a nice thing to sit down and talk to me—you being a solitary sort of person.”

“I admit I liked the look of you, and I can’t deny that I thought it would be nice to sit down and eat something with you and talk to you,” said Pym; “but I was thinking in terms of a restaurant, not a police court—conversation, not cross-examination.”

“I know: you’d like me better if we chattered about, admiring each other and being polite. But just think of all the bother and all the waste one saves by a few words of straight talk. Ten minutes of straight talk cuts out weeks and weeks of lies and shame and creeping into corners. Didn’t your big bright brain tell you that if you’d said: ‘Come out to lunch; I’ve only got a shilling; let’s have a bit of bread and a cup of coffee’ I’m the sort of person who would have admired you for it? But no, you change your voice over the telephone—you are a very bad actor, by the way—and hide in doorways, and go in for all sorts of unnecessary diplomacy. And it’s so much more comfortable to go directly to the point, as the crow flies. And that’s why I said all that I said about weakness and faking and being crooked.”

Pym could only say: “Remarkable woman!”

“I suppose I am. I try to be an honest woman; but I’ve got so sick of littleness in people that I’ve got brutal in my way of speaking. But I hate to hurt, you know; I’m not cruel by nature.”

“Tell me about yourself.”

“There isn’t time now. I have work to do.”

“I seem to remember your saying that stories are short and only excuses are long,” said Pym.

“I don’t want to talk about myself now. I’ll talk about myself next time we meet.”

“Soon?” asked Pym.

“Yes.”

“To-night? To-morrow?”

“I’m not certain until a week-end. Ring me at the office—or would you rather I rung you?”

“I haven’t a telephone. I live …”—Pym swallowed a high stomachful of pride—“I live, as a matter of fact, in Busto’s Apartments, Routledge Street, W.C. It’s a hole, a dump. Where do you live?”

“I live at 9, William and Mary Square, Victoria. I haven’t a telephone, either, so ring me at the office.”

Before they parted, Pym said: “I’m very glad I met you, Joanna.”

“You’d better call me Jo.”

“Your friends call you Jo? Mine usually call me Johnny.”

“No, I just prefer Jo. I don’t like Johnny—I don’t like these tenderised names. What’s the matter with John?”

“Nothing; but if you’re on friendly terms with a man it’s as hard to call him John or Charles or Richard as it is to talk plain English to a baby.”

“The more’s the pity, John. See you soon. Thank you for the lunch—that was a nice lunch.”

When Pym went back to the Sunday Special to collect Dr. Weissensee’s typescript, the porter said: “You back a winner, or what?”

“Winner? What winner?”

“You look as if you just won the Irish Sweep.”

Pym laughed and said: “I just want to nip upstairs and pick up something I left behind this morning.”

The porter said: “That’s all right.” He was an ex-sergeant-major and was notorious for his dour inflexibility; but he knew something of men, and he knew that a happy man is a man to be trusted. “You go on up,” he said to Pym.

CHAPTER TWELVE

AS he opened the door of the big room in which the Features Editor used to sit at a littered desk while he kept an eye upon his department, Pym heard strange noises. A man was crying “Whooo!” in a high falsetto; a woman was screaming, and another man was laughing. Only one typewriter was ticking, and Pym knew without looking that at this typewriter sat Hoffer Blake, a worried old man who wrote and edited a column entitled Give Youth A Chance. Hoffer Blake was typing from morning to night: he was a hack of the old school who had the stunned look of a punch-drunk boxer. He arrived at ten o’clock in the morning, hopping first on his left foot and then on his right; threw himself into his chair, and worked like a madman until seven o’clock, when he went out, drooping in such a manner that one expected to see him pause in the doorway to spit out a tooth and wipe the blood from his nose. Then he went to the Star and Garter for sausages and mashed potatoes and a pint of beer; and it was said that if you rang a glass in his ear he would sit up with a start, remembering the bell that rings when a typewriter platen jerks to the end of a line, and plunge his gnarled fingers into his plate.

Hoffer Blake was hard at work, as usual, but the others had made a group at the Features Editor’s desk. The Woman’s Page Editor, Jennie Tully, was saying: “Well, who would have thought it?”

“Talk about dirt!” cried the Assistant Features Editor.

The Leader Writer, with a grave expression, said: “I have had occasion in the course of my work to read erotica. Yes, as a man whose duty it is to be informed, to know just a little of everything. I am pretty well acquainted with filth; but of all——”

Catching sight of Pym, the Assistant Features Editor said: “Hey, Pym! Come and look at this bit.”

Pym went to the desk and there he saw a thumbed pile of onion-skin paper, closely covered with violet typewriting, lying upon an open manilla file.

“What the hell are you doing with that? I left that here this morning. I came back to collect it. What the hell do you think you’re doing, fiddling about with other people’s papers?”

“You don’t mean to say you wrote this?” said Jennie Tully, with wide-open eyes.

“You?” said the Leader Writer, with horror.

“It isn’t mine,” said Pym. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t even looked at the stuff yet. It’s supposed to be part of a book by Dr. Weissensee. They want me to rewrite it. Why, what’s the matter with it?”

“Come and look at this bit,” said the Assistant Features Editor.

Pym read twenty lines, and his face was red as he looked toward Jennie Tully and said: “Good God!”

The Assistant Features Editor slapped his thigh. “What a man! ‘Good God!’ he says. Go on the stage, Pym; go on the stage!”

“This isn’t mine,” said Pym, taking hold of the typescript, jostling the Leader Writer aside and covering it in the folder. “It has nothing to do with me. I swear I haven’t even looked at it—if I had, do you think I’d leave it lying around?”

“Who’s Dr. Weissensee?” asked the Assistant Features Editor.

“I don’t know,” said Pym. “I don’t know anything at all about her or it.”

“Her?” said the Leader Writer.

“A Viennese, a woman: that’s all I know.”

“A woman! A woman wrote that?” said the Leader Writer. “A woman?”

“Name and address, name and address!” said the Assistant Features Editor; while Jennie Tully shook her head and whistled.

Pym said: “I just came in to collect this. I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”

The Leader Writer said: “I see that you are interested in erotica. I have a friend, a Doctor of Medicine, who has one of the finest collections in England. He corresponded with Havelock Ellis. If I might borrow——”

“It’s not mine to lend, word of honour it isn’t,” said Pym.

“Then if I might copy a few pages …?”

“How can I let you copy pages of someone else’s work?”

“Work!” said Jennie Tully.

“Damned hard work,” said the Assistant Features Editor, “if you ask me!”

“No, please—you must excuse me,” said Pym.

Gripping the manilla file between his elbow and his ribs, he left the office and went out. In the passage he met Steeple, who had been eating and drinking with a general because there was talk of war. Steeple clapped Pym on the shoulder and said: “Come on, come on, come on now! No more Prose Poems, eh? No more Little Gems of Prose, eh? No more Little Flowers of Saint Pym—all right? More story, less adjectives—okay?”

“Whatever you say,” said Pym, bitterly. “No adjectives at all, if you like. No adverbs, either. All nouns and verbs, none of them to exceed two syllables.”

“That’s the spirit! That’s the spirit! Buckle down to it, my boy.” Steeple went to his office in a rosy mist of Chambertin and new ideas, and Pym went home.

*

There was a Puritan hiding under Pym’s bed. In his brain there were certain raw spots—live wires scraped bright and dangerous which, when touched, gave him shocks.

Turning over the pages of Dr. Weissensee’s typescript he remembered a hot afternoon at the seaside, eighteen years ago, when he was in his eleventh year. Sand castles, much as he liked to build them, were undignified. It was unbecoming for a man of his years to play kids’ games, squatting on his haunches and moulding turrets in a tin pail, and cutting out battlements with a wooden spade. He lingered with secret yearning at the edge of a group of nine-year-olds who were building a vast walled edifice with a moat and a drawbridge, wanting to give them a few useful hints. But he turned scornfully, with a sardonic laugh, and went for a walk on the pier, where the slot machines were. He had ninepence. One penny he squandered on the fortune-telling machine: a black-browed wax gipsy with a fly-blown face passed a dusty wax hand from side to side; there was a grinding and grating inside the green cast-iron case, and a rusty slot poked out a pink oblong of cardboard on which was printed these words: You are brave and generous, far too generous. Take care of your health. If you work a little harder you will be rich and happy.

He put the card in a secret pocket, along with a lucky pebble with a hole in it.

There was a machine which invited him to guess his weight: if he guessed his weight he would get his penny back. He knew that he weighed five stone thirteen pounds, because his mother had had him weighed in a chemist’s shop the day before; so he turned the indicator to 5st. 13lbs, stood on the platform and put in his penny, cupping his hand under the slot marked Returned Pennies Here. Something clanked and the lying finger on the false dial pointed to 5st. 8lbs, He kicked the machine—forgetting that he was wearing white canvas shoes—and hurt his foot.

Scowling at the sea, he imagined that he was the captain of a rakish ship flying the black flag: he boarded the pier, put everybody to the sword, smashed the weighing machine to pieces, took out all the pennies, and sailed away to the Dry Tortugas with a “Yo, heave ho! and a bottle of rum”.

Cheered by this fantasy, he went to what he called the Cat Machine. There were five grotesque cats on a wall, and a silver pistol: you inserted your penny and pulled a lever, and the pistol loaded itself with five steel balls. All you had to do was hit the cats between the eyes and they fell down and back came the penny. It was virtually free entertainment. He took careful aim at the first cat’s forehead and missed it clean. The second shot hit it in the belly. He singled out another cat and winged it in the left shoulder. His fourth shot bounced off the middle cat’s nose. He was angry. There was only one shot left. The hot sun scorched his neck. He was Captain Crouch in Major Charles Gilson’s story, who carried no luggage but a pound tin of Bulldog Shag, a big revolver and a box of bullets: who had a cork foot and did great deeds up the Kasai River … The rhinoceros was charging, it was twenty yards away, ten yards away, five yards away—he could feel its burning breath on his forehead … Then—bing!—right between the eyes!

One cat fell down. Pym was content: he had something for his penny. There was another shooting-machine with a revolving mechanical hare. This iron animal had a white spot painted behind its shoulder. You put your penny in the slot and the hare ran round and round. The directions said that if you hit it on the white spot it would utter a lifelike shriek and you would get your penny back. But there was only one shot.

Alan Quartermaine Pym, dying of starvation in the mountains, threw his last cartridge into the breach and, raising himself on his skinny old elbows, drew a bead on the bounding impala. Crash! The hare stopped dead and the penny did not come back: he had missed.

Before he lay down to die in the eternal snows he looked about him and saw a disconsolate little boy of about his own age, picking his nose and moping, as if he contemplated suicide, against the rail of the pier. Pym still had fivepence. “What’s your name?” he asked.

The other boy, moving his forefinger and thumb like an expert testing the shape of an invisible pearl, said: “Augustus.”

“My name is John.”

“That’s a common name.”

“Do you want to play football?”

“What with?”

“I mean that football over there. We each put a penny in the slots and a ball comes out. Then you wiggle the handles and all the little men kick. The one that scores the first goal gets his penny back.”

Augustus looked at him contemptuously and said: “Ain’t got a penny.”

“I’ll lend you one,” said Pym.

Augustus (young Pym was reminded of his mother, hastily recorking a bottle of Scrubb’s cloudy ammonia) put his finger back into its proper nostril and said: “If you like. I don’t mind.”

“If you pick your nose you get worms,” said Pym.

“I like worms.”

“My mother says it’s a dirty habit.”

“I thought you said we was gonna play football. You promised faithfully we was gonna play football. Why did you ask me to play football if you didn’t mean it?”

“All right, come on, then, I’m ready—let’s play football,” said Pym, without enthusiasm.

Augustus said: “I’m Aston Villa. You’re the Wolves.”

“I want to be Aston Villa,” said Pym; “I’m lending you the penny.”

“Mingy!” said Augustus. “Mingy, stingy, mean!”

“Oh, all right, then—you be Aston Villa. You know how to play? I’ll put the pennies in, and then the ball comes out. If you knock the ball into my goal you get your penny back. If I knock the ball into your goal, I get my penny back. Are you ready?”

Augustus grunted a grudging assent and Pym put two pennies into the slots and pressed the lever that released the ball, which rolled towards Augustus, who instantly caused all his players to kick; whereupon the ball flew into the goal on Pym’s side and one of the pennies came tinking down. Augustus put it in his pocket.

Pym was indignant. “You cheated,” he said; “you’re a fouler. You didn’t give me a chance!”

“I done what you said and I won.”

“I’m not going to play with you any more. Give me back my penny.”

“I won it.”

“I only lent it to you.”

“I won.”

“I lent it to you to play with.”

“I won it. I won it off of you, playing for keeps.”

“I lent it to you!” shouted little Pym, nearly crying. “You’re a thief!”

“I’m a what?”

“You’re a thief!” Pym came close to Augustus and, pale with anger, said: “You give me back that penny.”

Augustus, who had been investigating one of his ears, scrutinised the operative finger, put it back again, looked at Pym and then screamed: “Oh Mum! Mum!”

A big woman in black said: “What is it, Gus?”

“’E called me a thief!”

She said to Pym: “You go away and leave people alone, you little liberty-taker! You run away, or I’ll give you something to cry for!”

Then Pym realised that he was crying and he was ashamed; but he said: “He had no right to steal my penny.”

“Gussie, did you steal that little boy’s penny?”

“God’s honour, Mum, I never stole nothink.”

Before he could explain, Pym found himself alone and disconsolate by the football machine with only threepence left of his ninepence. He had intended to spend at least twopence on ice cream, but now he had no appetite for ice cream. The enchantment had died out of the day, and he was very sad. Remembering the weighing machine he went back to it, set the indicator at 5st. 13lbs, and put in another penny. The same machine could not lie twice. Yet it did: his penny went down and away for ever.

Misery took possession of the soul of the ten-year-old Pym on the pier. He went away, sat on one of the free seats and wept. While he was weeping he dreamed evil day-dreams of revenge … penny for penny, eye for eye, injustice for injustice, tooth for tooth, insult for insult, trickery for trickery. Soon someone said: “What’s the matter, little boy? What are you crying for? Britons mustn’t cry. What’s the matter? Are you lost? There now, wipe your eyes and tell me all about it.”

A fine linen handkerchief, delicately perfumed, fell on to Pym’s lap: it was too beautiful to blow into, so he dabbed at his eyes with it and, raising his head to say ‘Thank you’, saw a magnificent military-looking gentleman standing over him. He was wearing a blue flannel blazer with golden buttons and his breast pocket was covered by an enormous badge in the shape of a shield, heavy with gold thread. His trousers were of perfectly white flannel, sharply creased, and Pym wondered how he had managed to keep his white buckskin shoes so clean. The gentleman’s face was as fresh and pleasant as his clothes. He had brilliant blue eyes, wide open and disconcertingly candid; a healthy red skin, unwrinkled like the skin of an apple; and a half-moon of silky white moustache. His hair was white, too, and he held himself erect. The hand with which he took back his handkerchief was square and strong, with manicured nails, and a gold ring set with a round yellow stone in which was cut a coat-of-arms. In his other hand he held a panama hat and a gold-headed malacca cane. He said: “Come on now, my boy. Speak up.” His manner was brusque, but his eyes were kind. “Speak up now, little fellow—what are you crying for?”

“I wasn’t crying.”

“It’s not manly to tell lies, my boy. You know you were crying. What were you crying for?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Anybody been ill-treating you? Anybody been ill-using you? Who was it? Tell me.”

“No, sir; nobody.”

“You must learn to keep a stiff upper lip. Come on now, smile. That’s the style,” said the gentleman, as Pym forced the corners of his mouth upwards, licking a tear from his upper lip; “that’s the style. Smile, boy; that’s the style. What’s the use of worrying? It never was worth while. ‘So pack up your troubles in your old kitbag and smile, smile, smile.’ Do you like ice cream?”

Pym nodded.

“Strawberry? Vanilla? I know what you like—you like fruit-and-nut sundæ, that’s what you like, don’t you, my boy?”

“Yes, sir,” said Pym.

“Could you manage a fruit-and-nut sundæ? Be frank now: tell me honestly,” said the gentleman looking straight at Pym with his brilliant blue eyes; “look me straight in the face and tell me: could you manage a fruit-and-nut sundæ?”

“I think so, sir,” said Pym.

“You think so? Don’t you know? You only think so? Come now, speak up. Say yes or no.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then come along with me.”

They went to Mufti’s, and the gentleman bought Pym a fabulous confection of coloured ice cream, cherries, chopped walnuts, tinned peaches and chocolate sauce. Drinking a small cup of black coffee, he nodded benevolently while Pym ate. “How old are you?” he asked.

“I shall be eleven in nine months,” said Pym.

“Ten years and three months. Tell the truth and shame the devil, my boy. Do you live here?”

“No, sir; I’m here with my mother for holiday. We live in London.”

“And what do you want to be when you grow up?”

There was something encouraging about this gentleman. Pym said: “I want to be an explorer.”

“And quite right, too. A very healthy ambition. Fresh fields and pastures new, that’s the style. An explorer, eh? And what do you want to explore?”

“Africa.”

“Africa, by Jove! Africa, eh? Why, I know Africa better than I know the palm of my hand. Where do you want to go? Rhodesia? Basutoland? Damaraland? Nyasaland? Ask me: I can tell you all about it—Mashonaland, Tanganyika, anything you like.”

“Zululand.”

“Zululand, eh? Ah! You’ve been reading Rider Haggard.”

“Yes, sir,” said Pym, blushing.

“Good healthy reading, too. The very thing for a boy. Read him myself—everything he wrote. Which of his books have you read?”

“King Solomon’s Mines, Marie—A Tale of the Great Trek and Alan Quatermain.”

“Jolly good books! Thundering good books, by Jove! But haven’t you read The Ivory Kloof, by Guy Russell? There’s a story for you! You’ve heard, no doubt, what they say about elephants?”

“No, sir, I haven’t.”

“Why, nobody’s ever seen a dead elephant that died of natural causes. I’ve shot many in my time, but I’ve never seen an elephant dead of old age or sickness. D’ye see? And the story goes that when an elephant feels death coming on, he goes away to a secret place known only to the elephants—because, as you must have heard, elephants know a great deal.”

Pym gazed at him with round eyes, too fascinated to speak.

The gentleman went on: “Well, when an elephant knows that he is going to die he goes to a certain places and dies there. He might travel five hundred miles through the jungle, but he’ll get to that place somehow, and there he will die. And for hundreds of years men have been trying to find this place where the elephants lie down and die, because there must be millions and millions of pounds’ worth of ivory there. D’ye see?”

Pym had never been more delighted in his life. He was smiling, and his eyes were shining as he nodded without speaking.

“Think you could manage another ice? No? You mean yes, I think. Hey, waitress, bring my young friend another of these things … Yes, as I was saying: if any man could find the place where the elephants go to die he’d be a very rich man indeed, on account of the ivory. And this fellow Guy Russell wrote a story called The Ivory Kloof in which a fellow called Jim—about your age—goes off with his father on a hunting expedition and befriends an old Xorsa”—the gentleman pronounced it with a peculiar click of the tongue—“an old Xorsa witch-doctor, who tells him the secret. A rattling good yarn. You must read it. I’ll give it to you.”

“Will you really?”

“Yes, I will. I daresay you’re interested in hunting?”

To the most charming man he had ever met, Pym said: “Oh, yes!”

“I have hunted practically every known species of wild beast on the face of the earth—including the Hun, ha-ha! including the Hun! Buffalo—now, there’s a dangerous fellow, if you like! When you go out for buffalo, you kill that buffalo or that buffalo kills you—the African buffalo, I mean, of course; most dangerous animal in the world with the possible exception of a really angry grizzly bear. I’ll tell you what: eat up your ice and I’ll show you a few heads—lion, tiger, buffalo and whatnot. Oh yes, and I’ll give you that book. And if you like, I’ll show you my guns.”

Pym swallowed a quarter of a pound of fruit-and-nut sundæ in five mad gulps.

“Never wolf your food. Worst thing in the world for the stomach. I always chew each mouthful thirty-two times, once for every tooth. You should do likewise. Can’t chew ice cream, of course—but let it melt on the tongue. Eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

They went to the gentleman’s house, a pleasant little villa in a well-kept garden. A manservant opened the door and the gentleman took Pym into a drawing-room in which there were carefully-arranged trophies and strange weapons and many bright cushions. The place had an odd smell which reminded little Pym of the small cone-shaped pastilles his mother used to burn on certain occasions in his bedroom when he had chicken-pox. “First of all, the book,” said the gentleman, and gave him a brown cloth-bound volume, which Pym clasped to his breast. He was dumb with gratitude. “Now. Would you like some milk, or tea, or something? I know what you’d like: you’d like a peach. Have a peach. Don’t eat it with the peel on: give you diarrhœa. Always peel peaches … Oh, yes, guns and whatnot. Come upstairs.”

Overwhelmed with joy and full of ice cream, Pym could not eat the peach, so he put it carefully on the mantelpiece before he followed the gentleman upstairs; but he still clutched the book, The Ivory Kloof. While they were going up, the gentleman said: “You go to school, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They teach you a whole lot of things, I suppose—science, art, and that sort of stuff, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” said Pym, thinking of lions and tigers and rifles.

“But do they teach you anything about Life my boy?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

The gentleman said: “You don’t know? But you must know! What’s the use of education if you don’t learn anything about Life? Do you know who you are, what you are, how you are, why you are?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

The gentleman was indignant. He said: “There you are, you see! Education, education, education! What for? O tempore, O mores! I daresay you don’t even know how you came into this world of ours, do you?”

Pym had been told by a schoolmate that babies were born through the navel; but he said nothing.

The room in which he found himself was furnished with nothing but a cupboard, a divan covered with a leopard skin, and several racks full of guns.

The gentleman now was very angry. He said: “Scandalous! Scandalous, by Jove! Outrageous, by God!—That was a slip of the tongue, my boy: never take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh His name in vain.”

Pym stroked the blue barrel of a short, heavy gun, feeling vaguely uneasy. The gentleman said impatiently: “That’s a Theodore Philip 44–70. The one next to it is a Mannlicher … But that can wait. Education, eh? God bless my soul, boy, don’t you know what you are and where you came from?” He opened the cupboard and took out an album. “Not innocence, but ignorance,” he said, “crass ignorance. You pick up all kinds of filthy dirtiness from your chums at school, I daresay, eh? And you imagine you were found in a cabbage, do you?”

“No, sir.”

“Or the stork brought you—is that it?”

“No, sir.”

“Then how d’you think you got here, eh?”

The gentleman opened the album. He was breathing heavily. “Look here,” he said, pointing with a finger that was no longer steady; “does this convey anything to you? Look … this is your father and that’s your mother … And that’s your mother—the fellow with his back turned is your father. Do you take me? Now,” said the gentleman, watching Pym closely as he turned a page, this is your father and mother again——”

“No!” cried Pym, stepping back as the gentleman reached out to hold him. No!” He ran out of the room and fell downstairs. As he found his feet he caught a glimpse of the manservant, who was wringing his hands and saying: “Oh, dzear! Have you hurtz yourtself, my dzear?” Pym pushed him aside, and opened the street door and ran. A quarter of an hour later, sobbing for breath on the promenade, he felt something hard in his armpit. It was The Ivory Kloof. He threw the book from him with all his strength: it fell on the beach, close to a woman in a red bathing costume. “Hi!” she cried; but Pym was running again.

That evening he disconcerted his mother by saying: “You didn’t! … You didn’t! You never did, did you?”

“What didn’t I, Johnny?”

He burst into tears and would not let her comfort him.

Reading the work of Dr. Weissensee he remembered the gentleman in the blue blazer and the album in the gun-room—which he did not want to remember.

“Not on any account,” said Pym. “Oh no!” He put the typescript back in its folder and threw the folder into the empty, musty-smelling wardrobe.

*

Then he went back to work. The meaning of the language was lost—he was like a feverish man with sticky fingers, playing a game of skill with paper patterns. Sky fitted flesh; water fell into place with grass—everything meant nothing. There was mutiny in the alphabet; King Lud on the keyboard of the typewriter—syntactic anarchy, verbal nihilism, grammatical delirium; heat without fire, flame without direction, high temperature with a chill.

All the same, he rewrote the article about Covent Garden Market.

Someone knocked at the door and said: “Do you mind? After all, I mean to say—quarter to one in the morning, after all! People want to get a bit of shut-eye, if you don’t mind. Do you mind?”

“So sorry; I didn’t realise it was so late,” said Pym. “I beg pardon.”

The man at the door, made bold by Pym’s humility, said: “All right, then; that’s all right. But you just have a little consideration for others in future. Remember—you been told once.”

“Why, you snotty-nosed bastard!” said Pym, opening the door. “You lousy mouse!”

A small fat man, recoiling, with out-thrust hands, said: “Now, now—no violence. None of that, now!”

“Go to hell!” said Pym.

“Legitimate complaint,” said the other man. “Banging away all night long. I know my rights.”

“Stick your rights——”

“No foul language, now!”

“One last word: go away quick,” said Pym; and the small fat man ran downstairs.

After this Pym wanted a cigarette; but his packet was empty. It was lying on the floor with twenty or thirty crumpled and discarded sheets of paper.

He tore open and teased out four cold cigarette-butts, rolled the damp, stale tobacco again in an oblong of tissue-paper torn from the inner wrapper of the packet, and smoked.

He would have gone out to buy a fresh packet but he had only elevenpence-halfpenny. Proudfoot had said that five-pound note was something on account, something on the firm. Therefore Pym could not touch it. He had elevenpence-halfpenny. “Thank God I’m so tired!” he said, lying down and looking at the ceiling. It was as well for him that the paper was coarse and the tobacco damp. he fell asleep with the cigarette between his fingers. It became black and extinguished itself ten seconds after he stopped sucking it.

The pennies in the meter spent themselves, the electric light turned itself off, and Pym slept peacefully in the stuffy darkness of his squalid room.

INTERLUDE

HE was awaked by an insistent tapping at his door.

“Who is it?”

A heavy voice, harsh and sad as a death-rattle, said: “Me.”

“Mr. M’Gurk?”

“In person, Mr. Pym.”

“What d’you want at this hour of the night?”

“It’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

“Good God! … One moment.” Pym had no dressing-gown, so he pulled on his trousers before he opened the door. “So sorry,” he said, “I didn’t realise it was so late.”

“Pray pardon the intrusion,” said Mr. M’Gurk. He was a long, lank, suicidal man who appeared to have resigned himself to some ineluctable woe. In the profession he was known as ‘Miserable M’Gurk’—he was an entertainer: M’Gurk & M’Gurk had been printed in blunt blue letters in the lower corners of numerous double-crown bills pasted on boards outside provincial theatres and suburban ‘Empires’. He played a trombone, with comical grimaces, while his wife—a buxom giantess—burlesqued arias from the most dramatic operas. Her name was Nina; she played the piccolo and danced with amazing agility considering her vast bulk. The piccolo, in her hands, looked like a pencil: that was why she played it. They had a fifteen-year-old son—a ghastly, wizened, undersized boy, who was learning to play the double-bass fiddle. The incongruity was funny: Babe M’Gurk had to stand on a step-ladder when he played. The three of them had been living in Busto’s second-floor room for two months. Three weeks before, Mr. M’Gurk had asked Pym for the loan of a match.

“Keep the box, if you like,” said Pym.

M’Gurk did so; but two days later he sent Pym a brand-new box of matches in an envelope, with an invitation to “Come and take wine” with his family. It was only a bottle of pale ale, provocative of urine rather than conviviality, but Pym was attracted by the M’Gurks. Mr. M’Gurk had a funereal face and a bacchanalian soul: Pym relished the contrast; and he liked Nina M’Gurk for her uninhibited laughter and her coarse, kind, shameless talk. He saw her as an honest woman, and he loved honesty.

“No intrusion, Mr. M’Gurk,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Nina, Boysie and I would like to say good-bye to you.”

“What? Are you thinking of leaving?”

“We are on our way.”

“Where are you off to?” asked Pym.

“We are going from Hither to Thither,” said M’Gurk. “Come and say farewell to the Little Woman.”

“Ten minutes,” said Pym. Having shaved and dressed he went downstairs with his rewritten article in his pocket. Nina M’Gurk greeted him with a wet, noisy kiss and shouted:

“Here we go again, Mr. Pym—off again! Off on our travels again! Here to-day and gone to-morrow! That’s life for you. Come along in, dear, just to say good-bye.”

Pym saw then that Mr. M’Gurk’s cadaverous face was more lank and rigid than usual. The boy, Boysie, was tying up an insecure suitcase with a length of cord.

“Is anything wrong?” asked Pym.

Boysie answered him; he said: “The usual.”

“Usual?”

“On our way again,” said Nina, laughing. But she sucked her laughter in—she did not let it out. “On our way again, thank God! Don’t you pity the poor beggars that get stuck in steady jobs? Payments on the house, payments on the furniture, endowment policy, burial society? Burial society!—I ask you.” She choked on a big, fat laugh. “Burial society!”

“Nina,” said Mr. M’Gurk; and his macabre face came alive and became sad. “Neens, darling!”

She could not stop laughing. “But I ask you—burial society!” she gasped. “Can you imagine me?”

Boysie rose with a sigh, threw down the cord, dipped a sticky tumbler into the jug on the washstand and threw water into her face. She stopped laughing and began to cry. Boysie went back to work.

“The little woman,” said Mr. M’Gurk, tenderly wiping her face with a coloured handkerchief, “is fed up and I, for one, can’t blame her.”

“I’ve never had anything,” said Nina M’Gurk; and she turned and hid her face in a pillow. Her husband made an apologetic gesture.

“It’s the old, old story,” said Boysie. “We flopped again—Acton Hippodrome. Nearest we ever got to the West End, wasn’t it, Pop?”

“Willesden,” said Mr. M’Gurk in his sepulchral croak, “that was the nearest.”

“And so here we are again,” said Boysie.

“I’m sorry,” said Nina, sitting up. “I’ve never behaved like this before.”

“Oh, no,” muttered Boysie.

“—But I get tired. Twenty years I’ve had to put up with it. Boysie was born in the Intake Infirmary. I was on the stage until . . the labour pains started before I finished my act … but I went on. Didn’t I?”

“Neens, love!” said Mr. M’Gurk.

Boysie said: “If you want to know, the act’s corny. It stinks—that’s what it does—pooh!” He held his nose and pulled an imaginary lavatory chain.

“I’ve never had a house or any place of my own; I’ve never had any furniture of my own; I’ve never had any credit—I’ve never had anything,” said Nina. “And this is the thirty-first time we’ve been kicked out into the street for not paying our rent. One pound a week, and we haven’t even got that! And I can’t pawn the instruments again! I can’t do it! How did I get them out last time?”

“Stop talking,” said Mr. M’Gurk.

“Why don’t you change your act?” said Pym.

Nina went on: “Do you know how I got his trombone out last time? I——”

“Listen,” said Pym, dreading what he expected to hear, “listen. I have an idea, only you must listen. Will you listen?”

“Listen to Mr. Pym,” said Mr. M’Gurk.

Pym thought hard and fast. “You’ve had setbacks—troubles,” he said; “why not make capital out of them?”

“How?” asked Mr. M’Gurk.

“Well, you say your act flops: you say its ‘corny’.”

While his father hesitated the little boy said: “Did I say ‘corny’? It’s a twenty-two-carat bastard and a three-star stinkeroo. The trouble with the old man is he’s too conservative. And the trouble with the old woman is she’s got no ideas, except when it comes to talking about her troubles.”

“Have more respect for your parents,” said Mr. M’Gurk.

The boy replied: “Why should I? What have you done that I should have any respect for you? I’m fed up to the back teeth with the two or you, and if you want to know I’m only waiting till I’m a bit older and then I’ll scram out of it so fast you won’t see my arse for dust. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

“We’ve done the best we can for you, you wicked boy,” said Nina, beginning to cry again.

“Oh, shut up, for Christ’s sake, or I’ll chuck some more water over you!”

Pym said: “If this precocious little ape will allow me to get a word in edgeways, I’ll give you an idea for a new act.”

“I’d give everything I’ve got for a suitable idea,” said M’Gurk; at which the boy laughed sardonically.

“This one might work,” said Pym. “Here are the bare bones of the thing—it would need any amount of elaboration, of course. You know how other people’s troubles, when they get to a certain point, become comical? Well, that’s the basis of the idea. I’m reminded of the story about the man who got into the railway carriage with two little boys, calling them all the dirty names he could think of. He gave one of them a smack in the face and knocked him into one corner saying: ‘Sit there, you dirty little bastard’; and he smacked the other one into another corner and said: ‘Not another word from you, you rotten little clod.’ Gentleman in carriage says: ‘How dare you treat those poor children like that? Do you realise that if I made a complaint I could get you into trouble?’ And the man said: ‘You could get me into trouble. You could get me into trouble! My old woman’s in the luggage van blind drunk, being sick into the portmanteau; my daughter’s in the carriage be’ind, in the fambly way and won’t tell us ’oo the bloke is; that little rat’s wet ’isself, and the other one’s swallowed the bloody tickets. Go on, get me into trouble.’ You see what I mean: trouble is very funny indeed when it happens to somebody else. Now, why don’t you make an act out of your troubles? You, M’Gurk, you get yourself up like an English nobleman of the 1890’s, with a long miserable gingery moustache, miserable droopy ginger side-whiskers, miserable black frock-coat down to your ankles and a ridiculous little bowler hat. And—yes, so help me God!—little Caligula over there could be the dog. You dress him up to look like an extra melancholy bloodhound on yards and yards of chain, looking miserable as sin. Mrs. M’Gurk, also, looks like the wrath of God in very heavy widow’s weeds and red eyes and red nose. She keeps crying all the time and blowing her nose with a trumpety noise, and every time she does so she takes out a fresh black-edged handkerchief. Something of that sort. Get it? The scene is a pub. She’s the barmaid, if you like, and you’re the customer. You come in, making the most of that graveyard voice of yours, and ask for a drink of water and an arrowroot biscuit for the dog. You’re muffled up to the chin in a sort of old school scarf and you talk like Lord Dundreary. Your voice, M’Gurk, dragged out into a Piccadilly Johnny drawl—well, you try it and see. Say: ‘Gwoss cawicatuah—no fellah evah saw such a fellah!’”

M’Gurk said it, and the effect was indeed ineffably comical. Even the little boy smiled.

“Go on, darling,” said Nina.

“Now the detail has to be worked out later,” said Pym. “But it goes something like this. The old Johnny with the dog is chock full of the most preposterous troubles. Anything you like—you can’t lay it on too thick. No need to elaborate now, but it has to be outrageous—his ninety-year-old grandmother has died in childbirth, but the baby lived to inherit the family fortune—that kind of rubbish. But Mrs. M’Gurk, also, is bubbling over with her own misfortunes. (Incidentally, the dog, also, is always in trouble, choking himself on his chain, wanting to pee, getting trodden on, and whatnot.) Well, you interrupt each other with a list of absolutely shocking catastrophes, getting drunker and drunker all the time; until at last M’Gurk, gulping his last drink with a hollow croak, says something so awful that you say. ‘If I were you, deary, I’d cut my froat.’ And M’Gurk says: ‘I have.’ Exeunt, pursued by a cat.”

Nina M’Gurk cried: “Why, I like that!”

Her husband said: “So do I; but what about the wardrobe?”

The boy said: “This man’s got more brains in his little toe than you’ve got in both your heads put together, you couple of washouts. What do you mean—‘What about the wardrobe? Sell the trombone, sell that soppy little fife and the silly old bull-fiddle. We can get a good price for the trombone. Go to Isaacson; give him something on account, and tell him George Black gave us a sub. We don’t want much. The most important thing is the dog-suit.”

Pym looked at the boy with respect: here was the real master of the house. “Little Caligula will go far,” he said. “In fact, he may even go too far.”

“We need to sketch out the act, weigh up the gags, and rehearse the routine,” said M’Gurk.

“This man will write us a piece,” said the boy.

Pym said: “Well, I don’t mind roughing the thing out for you, if that would be helpful.”

“—Sell the instruments! Sell every damn thing,” said Nina. “Mr. Pym, you’re a darling. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” said Pym.

M’Gurk grasped him by the hand in a painful, uncomfortably wet grip and said: “I’m a fatalist; I always was. I knew—a little voice whispered—I knew this house would bring us luck. Didn’t I say so, Neens?”

“You’re a clever old darling,” said Nina.

The boy said to Pym: “Look; do you think you could manage to let us have something to work on in a day or so? … What a change it is to meet a really clever man! You see what I have to put up with, with these two. I do want to get somewhere and be somebody, and I’m so grateful to you.” Then he did something embarrassing: he kissed Pym’s hand.

“All right, all right,” said Pym. “I’ll see what I can do.”

As he left the room he heard Mr. M’Gurk saying: “Well, I’ll go and flog these instruments. As a matter of fact they never brought us any luck.”

The boy said: “We’ll go to Roseneck. You carry them, and I’ll go in. You wait outside and I’ll do the talking.”

Visualising himself as a dealer in musical instruments, Pym imagined that he was standing behind a counter, fitting a new reed into an old clarinet when the little wizened boy came in carrying a double bass and a trombone, with a piccolo sticking out of his breast pocket. Give him a good price? Roseneck would probably give him the shop.

Pym left his article with the porter at the Sunday Special and walked towards Adam Street. But he remembered then that he had left Dr. Weissensee’s typescript in the wardrobe. He was not sorry: he feared the inevitable unanswered argument, the ratiocination and the cajoling of Proudfoot. So he telephoned the office. Joanna Bowman said: “Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling?”

“John Pym here. How are you?”

“Oh, hullo; how are you?”

“Look, will you tell Proudfoot I can’t get along to-day and I’ll ring him to-morrow morning?”

“You can’t get along to-day and will ring Mr. Proudfoot to-morrow morning.”

“When do we meet?”

“To-night, if you like.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere you like, within reason. Come up to my place, if you like.”

“I will, if I may.”

“Make it about eight o’clock, then.”

“I was hoping to take you to dinner or something.”

“I don’t feel much like going out in the evenings these days. I’ll make an omelette. Good-bye.”

As he left the telephone booth Pym could feel his heart beating. He wished that he was better dressed. Now say—merely for the sake of talking—just say something impossible came to pass and circumstances arose in which it became necessary to take off his clothes in Joanna Bowman’s presence. His underpants were torn and frayed and there was a hole in his left sock … Thinking about embracing Joanna, Pym realised that there was nothing in the whole world that would give him deeper pleasure—always excepting the production of a great and famous novel. That went without saying. He knew that there was not the remotest possibility of his making love with Joanna at such short notice: that she had invited him to her flat in order to hammer home the point that a woman is as good as a man. She was a pricker of masculine vanity. He could almost hear her coolly incurious voice saying: I suppose you imagine I invited you to my place to make love to you? Well …

Still, it was a nice thing to dream about—a pleasant little Bank Holiday for the imagination—and he really was uneasy, remembering his shabby underpants and the hole in his sock. There was something peculiarly sordid about a hole in a man’s sock.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PYM knew the name, although he had never seen the face, of a man who was also thinking about clothes, in a near-by barber’s shop—the foolish, crooked-souled little man who was proud to be known as American Henry. This poor frustrated fellow had spent most of the money he had ever got, on smart clothes. Most of his dreams had been of clothes. He had plunged into dirty water and dived to the bottom of the world in search of slick suits and bright shirts. Most of his eighty-nine hundred hours of wakefulness in prison had been filled with anxiety for the clothes they had taken from him before locking him up for twenty months; and when they released him and let him dress up again he was choked with happiness, because he was free—free to wear fine clothes.

He had gnawed his fingernails in anguish because, having spent his share of the swag in buying the things he loved, the police had not given him time to soil the cuffs of the pale blue silk shirt with the Barrymore Roll Collar, or crumple the burgundy pure silk tie as worn by Adolphe Menjou. The pale blue New Yorker athletic singlet and shorts patterned with poinsettia blossoms were almost as good as new; he had never had a chance to display them to a lady friend; he had not even had the pleasure of admiring himself in them, because the police had picked him up two hours after he left the American shop in Shaftesbury Avenue. There, too, were the shoes, bright yellow under the instep and scarcely soiled at the soles: he had found courage, after a drink or two, to strut into an ancient establishment in St. James’s that made boots for crowned heads and ask a gentleman in a high collar if there was anything they happened to have that might fit him. As it happened, they had one pair of wild boar-skin shoes in an exceptionally small size, into which he squeezed his feet. That pair of shoes cost him ten guineas—two guineas more than the suit, which was the best that money could buy at short notice ready-made. It was a powder-blue double-breasted suit draped (as the salesman had assured him) in the American style. He remembered that, putting out his little narrow foot, he had pulled up his trouser-leg and made the most of his socks for which he had paid fifteen shillings. What had the nobility and gentry got that he had not? The shoes were a little too tight then. The gentleman in the high collar said so, but he had replied: “They’ll give. They’ll give all right. I sort of got kind of stranded, if you understand what I mean. You know how it is with these goddamn railways. God knows what they do with your god-damn luggage. I’ll make do with these for a bit.”

“Will you wear them now, sir?”

“Well, yes, I think I will.”

“And these … sir?”

“Oh, sort of chuck ’em in the garbage can.”

“Yes, sir. With pleasure.”

“When I’ve got time I want to come back and order a dozen, maybe two dozen pairs of your shoes.”

Having paid, he went out. In the window of an antique shop in Jermyn Street he saw something that made him stop: a tie-pin set with a large pearl. This pearl, which was shaped like an onion, seemed to be blown out of the bowl of a tiny gold bubble-pipe. He went in, asked the price, paid thirty-three pounds twelve shillings, and walked out, strutting and kicking out his feet. His sharp, protruding chin came between him and his pearl, so he paused to look in the window of a book shop; saw himself from head to knees, and walked away. He was in Jermyn Street, a man about town, wearing a silk shirt with the Barrymore Roll, shoes by Belgrave, and a museum-piece of a tie-pin with a pearl as big as his little fingernail stuck in Adolphe Menjou’s tie of burgundy silk. Near Piccadilly Circus he bought a walking stick with an ivory knob; looked for a long time at his own reflection in a silversmiths’ window, and went away to buy a genuine Vicuna-hair overcoat for sixteen guineas. It made him look twice his size. After this his gloves appeared inadequate. He took them off, stuffed them into his pockets and bought another pair, obviously hand-sewn.

Then, well-dressed, his pockets full of money, he went to show himself about town. He strolled to the Pimlico Bar in Rupert Street, sauntered in, manipulating his ivory-knobbed stick. Two of the boys and three of the girls were there. He shrugged and hitched the belted coat into position, advanced a pace or two, felt a gentle pressure on the upper half of his left arm and turned with a sudden sinking of the heart to confront a big man in a fifty-shilling overcoat. This man had a pale face like a pudding, colourless eyes, and short hair. A quiet voice, calm and full of scorn and pity, said: “Hullo, do you mind if I have a word with you?”

“What about?”

“Would you mind if we discussed that outside?”

He saw then that there was another man standing just behind him; a dark, heavy-jawed man wearing ungentlemanly boots and a mackintosh. This man took him persuasively by the elbow and urged him out of the public house while the man in the fifty-shilling coat opened one of the swinging doors with an ironical bow.

“Say, what the hell is all this?”

“All right, Harry. You know. You know!”

“I don’t know what the god-damn hell you mean!”

The first man said: “I’ve got a warrant here for your arrest, Harry, and it’s my duty to tell you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used as evidence against you.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Nobody ever does, Harry. Come along and don’t waste my time.”

There was a discreet car waiting. In half an hour he had been charged and locked up, accused of having helped a crook called Three-Fingers Laylock to get away with a safe. Three-Fingers and three other men were also under arrest—all of them more or less skilled craftsmen. One of them, Australian Toddy, was a first-rate engineer, an ex-armourer, a deserter from the Navy. Another, whose real name was Gabriel, but who was called Pulley, was an expert finder of points of balance—a man who could take a grand piano downstairs without scratching its surface. Three-Fingers had been a motor mechanic. The fourth, nicknamed Keyster, a bull-headed dog-faced man with hands like skinned rabbits, knew all about locks: at the tip of every finger he had something as sensitive as a dog’s nose.

They borrowed a one-ton van which they plastered with advertising matter; went to their destination, dressed as workmen; got out, shouting and laying down planks; went in, in broad daylight, carried out the safe, and drove away with it. Three-Fingers organised the affair. American Henry drove the van; he got off lightly.

When he was sentenced he muttered: “God damn it, I never did have any luck ever since Zoe turned me in, that cow!” He had served a short sentence a little while before, for living on the earnings of a prostitute named Maria Puccini, otherwise known as Zoe. She had disappeared: someone had said that she had married a man from Hull, but no one really knew.

*

Now American Henry saw, with relief, that his light hair, of which he was inordinately proud, was growing long again, so that the waves were coming back. After a haircut, shave, friction, and face massage, he felt better, but still he was worried. He needed money; he needed clothes; and he did not know where to turn. His expensive shoes were still elegant, but his hat was no longer new. There was a spot of grease on one of the lapels of his coat. He was uneasy.

Having paid the barber he went to Briquette’s Café in Soho and ordered a ham sandwich and a cup of white coffee, knowing that after he had paid his bill he would have only ten shillings left. While he bit his way through the four triangles of the sandwich he watched himself in one of the spotted mirrors. The austerity of life in prison had refined him. He considered himself with approval. His was a clear-cut face, and if the skin happened to have crept a little nearer to the bone, there was no harm done.

But he needed money.

He had finished his coffee and all but the crusts of his sandwich, when a big man came into the café and nodded at him. He went to the counter and took a handful of large chocolates wrapped in silver paper—the ones they used to call Cioccolato Baci that have little amorous mottoes printed on slips inside. Then he walked slowly to American Henry’s table, sat down, ate a chocolate, and—without moving his lips—said: “Well, Harry? How’s the Big Shot?”

“Fiddling along.”

“How long since?”

“Since what?”

“Since you know what. Nobody told me you were around.”

“A few weeks.

Something had happened to the big man’s face: his nose and mouth were horribly scarred. The lobe of his left ear was missing and on the left-hand side of his jaw there was a ragged white cicatrice. And yet this man had the air of a businessman; a decent, sociable, prosperous man of affairs, honourably injured in an honourable war. He was dressed like a good bourgeois in blue serge, and wore a heavy old-fashioned watch-chain on his comfortable convex stomach. His thick hairy hands were half covered by honest linen cuffs, and his hat was a severe, unindented grey homburg. American Henry, who would not have been seen dead in such a hat, was ill at ease in the presence of this middle-aged man. He said:

“Well, Leo, how’s every little thing?”

Leo smiled and said: “Harry, don’t be surprised when you find out that Three-Fingers is looking for you.”

The little man’s face became white and glossy as candle-grease, but he said: “Ah, my old pal. Glad to see him. Jesus, four or five years from now, maybe! I wish to God it was four or five minutes.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. And I shouldn’t be surprised if the Keyster wanted to say how-do-you-do to you, too, Harry. And the Australian. And Pulley too, sonny-boy.”

He said this in such a way that American Henry had to moisten his lips before he replied: “Good pals. Glad to see ’em, drunk or sober, any hour of the day or night.”

“You’d better make it day, not night, Harry,” said Leo, offering him a cigarette. “What’s the matter, Harry? What are you so shaky about? A thick night?”

“I’ll say I had a thick night!” said American Henry, laughing a little too loud. “No, but honest to God, Leo—what do you mean, Three-Fingers’ll be glad to see me? I don’t get it.”

“You’ll get it all right. Oh yes, you’ll get it. Good and proper, little man.”

“What do you mean? Get what?”

“It,” said Leo, smiling.

“What for?”

Still smiling with his torn lips, but speaking with menace, Leo said: “You wouldn’t happen to know who shot off his mouth, would you, Harry?”

“By Christ, I’d murder the bastard if I knew!”

“That’d be suicide, Harry. There’s a law against it.”

“I’d like to see the son of a bitch that called me a nark! Jesus Christ Almighty, I’d murder the bastard who called me a pigeon!”

“Well, Harry, you’d better get ready to murder Three-Fingers, Pulley, the Australian, and Keyster.”

“Harry Fabian never squeals—I never said a word.”

“I never said you did, Harry. Only a little bird told Three-Fingers. I know what liars little birds are, but there it is. A friendly word of warning, that’s all; just a friendly word.”

American Henry Fabian bit his lips and muttered: “Another frame-up. I swear on my mother’s grave I never opened my mouth. Christ knows I’m no squealer. Me, a pigeon! Me! Didn’t I go up with the others?”

“Have I said you didn’t, Harry? Only not for anything like as long, you know. And that little bird I told you about….”

“I can prove——”

“—Go on, go ahead and prove.”

Fabian was silent until the waitress had brought more coffee, and then he said: “Leo. Listen. As a matter of fact the trouble is I can’t prove.”

“I know you can’t, Harry.”

“I’m as innocent as that ash-tray, I swear on my mother’s grave!”

“Don’t be silly, Harry. Your mother never had a grave.”

Swallowing this insult Harry Fabian said: “Look, Leo, what I want to do is, get myself a bit of dough and scram out of the country. There’s nothing doing in this country any more. It’s dead. There’s no money about.”

“Speaking of not talking,” said Leo, carefully sifting sugar into his coffee, “what’s that I hear about a lady friend of yours who got a carpet for a typewriter?”

Fabian sweated. “Jesus, Leo!” he said, “ask yourself the question! There am I, fresh out. So this dame gives me this typewriter to hock, and she says it was given to her by some steamer. So I hock it for her. Just put yourself in my position, Leo. What would you have done in my place? Got another lagging? All I said was, the machine wasn’t mine—nothing more, I swear it on my father’s soul.”

“You never had a father, and he never had a soul, Harry.”

“I’ve been a good friend to you, Leo,” said Fabian, “I’ve put thousands in your pocket. You got no right to talk to me like that, Leo. God Almighty, Leo, even if you believe those god-damn dirty lies—Christ above, even if you believe I could be such a god-damn rat as to squeal—who gains by it? You gain by it, Leo. If it was true. Just say it was true. There was another thousand to come. Okay. Three-Fingers is away for a bit, and so are the others. Anything might happen. They’ll never get that thousand. By rights I’ve got a hundred and fifty quid to come. Jesus God, Leo, you ought to thank me on your bended knees instead of insulting me. Look,” he said, inspired, “let me have a hundred.”

He might have been telling an exceptionally funny story: Leo put down his cup and shook with laughter. He coughed, beat his breast and rolled in his chair, gasping and coughing.

“I’ve got a proposition,” said Harry Fabian.

“Go on?”

“I need a stake. I got a proposition, I swear on my—I give you my oath, I got a proposition.”

“You always did have prospositions, Harry. What have you got this time?”

“It’s a proposition. I can’t tell you more. You just got to trust me.”

“I wouldn’t trust you, Harry, if you were sitting on your mother’s grave with your father’s soul up your sleeve and your pocket full of diamonds. But I tell you what … You tell me something, and I’ll think about letting you have a stake.”

“Well, what?”

“Take a walk along the street with me and I’ll tell you.”

Harry Fabian put down half-a-crown for the cups of coffee and the sandwich, and followed Leo out of the café, with a jaunty swagger and a heavy heart.

“What is it, Leo?” he asked.

Leo had stopped to stroke a tabby cat. “What’s that, Harry?”

“What was it you wanted to know?” asked Harry Fabian.

Leo looked at him blankly, and said: “Know? Know what?”

“You said you’d stake me if I told you something,” said Fabian.

“Did I? I’ll tell you something, little man—you’re getting good at repeating what people said. You’re getting better than a shorthand notebook.”

“Cut my throat if—”

“Go and cut your mother’s throat,” said Leo, still smiling. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“You wanted to ask me something,” said Fabian.

“Walk along here,” said Leo, leading Fabian into a quiet turning. “Now tell me—what was it you wanted to tell me?”

“You wanted to know something.”

“What did I want to know? Make it quick.”

“Would it be about some white paper-money?”

“How much?”

“A fifty-pound note and eight hundred in fivers and tenners. Is that it?” asked Fabian.

“Who’s got it?”

“Would I get my hundred and fifty now?”

“Who said anything about any hundred and fifty?”

“I’ve got to have a hundred, Leo.”

“If it’s worth it, we’ll see. Come on, now: who did Three-Fingers give it to, that money?”

“It was a fifty-pound note, seventy ten-pound notes, and twenty fivers,” said Fabian.

“I know. Go on.”

“It was eight hundred and fifty pounds——”

“In big notes. Go on, Harry, who’s got it?”

“You know me, Leo,” said Fabian; “they couldn’t get anything out of me with red-hot pincers. You know me, by Christ—I’d god-damn well tear my tongue out with a plumber’s wrench before I dropped a single solitary word. And there you are, where does it get you? Where the hell does it get you to be a strictly honourable guy? You know me, Leo——”

“—I know you all right. Save it for your girl friend. Come on, let’s have it. You know where that money is, and I know you know.”

“Leo, for the love of Jesus, put yourself in my shoes,” said Fabian, in agony.

“Little man,” said Leo, stopping to stroke another cat and grunting with the effort, “I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a half-share in the Bank of England. Not if you double-cross me, little feller. You know what’ll happen to you, don’t you, sonny boy?”

Fabian dabbed at his cold wet face with a silk handkerchief.

“You’re shaking, little man. So would I if I were you,” said Leo. He had picked up the cat and was tickling it under the ears. “Nice pussy, nice little pussy.”

Fabian felt as a man must feel who is caught in a quicksand and, having screamed his voice away to a whisper, feels the mud closing about his neck and straining desperately upwards sees nothing but the night. On the one hand there was Three-Fingers; when he and the Australian learned that he had betrayed them to Leo, their anger would be terrible. On the other hand there was Leo, and he was the most dangerous man in England to cross. Three-Fingers was murderous in his rage; violent, cruel and reckless. A trickle of sweat that felt like ice-water ran down Fabian’s spine as he remembered a gruesome night when Three-Fingers, with horrifying deliberation, poured the contents of a boiling coffee-urn over the head and shoulders of an enemy in the Greek Dive. The Australian, too, was resolute and vindictive; and hideously strong. Fabian could almost feel the steel tip of the Australian’s boot heel on his teeth. They would not kill him, no—they would make him wish that they had killed him, before they were done with him. Yet Leo was more terrifying than all the rest put together. He never raised a finger. He never lost his temper. He smiled quietly, said “All right”—if that—and went home to his motherly little wife and three growing daughters in Hampstead, where he lived in a pleasant old house near the Heath. But somehow, somewhere between here and there a word was spoken through those torn-up ventriloquist’s lips, and someone else went to work. Leo was known to the police as a sort of Jonathan Wild—a great organiser of robberies and receiver of stolen goods: they knew that he had arranged the Great Bullion Robbery, and a dozen other brilliantly conceived and perfectly executed crimes, including four murders. They had known Leo for twenty years, and he had never been convicted. He had never even been accused. His was the wisdom, the cunning, the strength and the intuition of a King Rat, that senses traps, and lets smaller rats taste the poison put down for it. Leo’s whisper between Oxford Circus and Regent Street sent diamond cutters in Antwerp scuttling underground and made mysterious commotion among fur dealers in Hamburg and silk merchants in Paris. The devil knew the geography of his underground runs. He had a bright-eyed, sharp-toothed agent behind every wall and under every floor. And he was a man of principle, too, fastidious as the book-keeper of a bank in the matter of a penny gone astray—he would spend a pound to trace it and put it in its proper place, which was in his pocket.

Leo was at large, and always would be at large; whereas Three-Fingers and the others were locked behind iron doors for a year or so.

Harry Fabian said: “Hell, Leo, I wouldn’t double-cross you or anyone else, not even my worst enemy. But—hell, well, you know how it was. Three-Fingers was the boss. I was taking orders from Three-Fingers. And Jesus, Leo, I’m no double-crosser….”

“Where did he leave that money?” asked Leo, letting the cat fall and looking at his watch. “I’ve got two minutes. This is your last chance, little feller. Hurry up. I want that money, little feller.”

Fabian swallowed saliva and said: “Okay. Three-Fingers left the dough with Little Ziggy.”

“What for?”

“Well, there were seventy tenners, twenty fivers, and a fifty; eight hundred and fifty quid in all, all in big notes. The idea was, that there was a note of their numbers—see? So Ziggy was going to give us sixty per cent of the money. Only as you know, Leo, there wasn’t time.”

What would you do with such people? said Leo to himself. Can’t they read? Didn’t they see in the papers that the man never mentioned any eight hundred and fifty pounds? Didn’t anybody ever tell them that two and two make four? God save us from fools! Didn’t they stop to think that there’s no easy way of tracing the serial numbers of money a bookie takes on the course? Didn’t they stop to think that he’s got a partner, and that he was holding out—just the same as they were? That’s why the money was in his private safe on Sunday; and that’s why the other stuff was mentioned in the papers, but not that money. Oh no, the silly little men—they want to be clever. They think the Yard kept it out of the papers to put them off their guard until one of them, the mugs, tried to crack a big note. He said aloud: “Ziggy. That’s all I wanted to know, sonny boy.”

“What about my hundred and fifty, Leo?”

They had reached Wardour Street. Leo said: “You know, little feller, I made a mistake about you. There was a time, not very long ago, when I thought you were all right. But there you are, you see. Truth will out, little man. They knocked all the fight out of you when you went on that little holiday. You’re no good, Harry. You’re no good to me. Here you are—catch hold of this,” said Leo, giving Fabian some money, “put it in you pocket. It’s all you’re going to get. And if you take my advice, you’ll stay out of Soho.”

Leo walked on. Fabian looked at the money in his wet hand and saw that Leo had given him crumpled and soiled notes to the value often pounds ten shillings.

“And some people say there’s a God!” he said.

*

Enraged, humiliated, damp with fright and palpitating with resentment, he went to a News Theatre, to calm his nerves, clarify his mind and get away from his troubles with the help of Donald Duck. Instinctively he made his way to a seat next to a young woman. Donald Duck, that most unfortunate of birds, was caught in a washing-machine, which filled its mouth with bubbles and covered its backside with suds. The duck went under with a bubbling quack, came up again with a Santa Claus beard of froth and a venerable wig of foam; was dragged down on steel hooks, rinsed thoroughly, and hurled into a wringer from which it emerged flat as a pancake; whereupon a metal hand pegged it on a clothes line. Donald Duck wept. Fabian took advantage of the universal laughter to kick the young lady on the ankle and say: “My old pal Walt! My pal Walt! What a boy, what a boy!”

The young woman turned her head very slowly and said: “I beg your pardon!”

Harry Fabian said: “I beg your pardon, Miss. Did I kick you? Hell—well, look, I’ll kick myself, and that makes us even Steven.” He kicked himself and pretended to writhe in pain. The young woman, who had appeared to be properly haughty and self-contained, could not hold back her laughter. She snorted, choked, and then giggled. Fabian put a reassuring hand on her thigh, pressed his right shoulder to her left, and said, in a confidential whisper: “No, but honest to God. You see the way that duck moves? That’s what they call animation. I was Walt’s animator up to the time colour came in. Ever hear of a man called Ub Iwerks? The man who invented Flip the Frog? He worked with Disney too. I walked in when Ub walked out. And there’s no use talking, that boy’s got something. What do you think?”

The young woman said: “Perhaps. I don’t know.”

Fabian slid his hand down to her knee and felt her leg under her skirt. She said, whispering into his right ear: “Let us go away from here.”

“Where to?” whispered Fabian.

“Anywhere, anywhere away from here.”

“To hell with that,” said Fabian, investigating her bosom with an experienced hand. He felt her heart beating. She felt very young in the dark. “Where do you live?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” said the young woman.

Donald Duck disappeared, honking disconsolately, hung up by the tail. Something told Harry Fabian that God was with him again. “Okay,” he said, “come to my place.”

She said, imperiously: “Wait. I want to see Mickey Mouse.”

“You can see anything you like,” said Fabian, tickling her backbone with an urgent little hand. “You can see anything, any place, any time. Get me?”

Pushing his other hand away, she said: “Not here. Not now. Patience.”

“Okey the Doke,” said Fabian. “Hokey-da-dokey.”

She giggled.

“Dokey-the-hokey. Hokey-the-poke,” said Fabian. “Pokey-the-wokey. Wokey-the-oke.” He blew into the young woman’s ear and, as she wriggled and laughed, tickled her abdomen. “Let’s get way out of here—let’s get (to be crude) the hell out of here,” he said. “Come to my place. I could tell you in one word what I like about you.”

“What?”

“Personality. What’s your name?”

“Catussher.”

“How d’you spell it?”

“K-A-T-U-S-H-A.”

“Unusual name, that.”

“It’s Russian. What’s yours?”

“Harry. Ooky-da-wook!”

“No, don’t be silly—Ooky-da-wook!”

“Ssh—don’t laugh so loud, Pritt. People want to listen to the news.”

“What sort of talk is Pritt?”

“Short for ‘Pretty’—get it? That’s what they all say on the Coast right now. Okey-the-soakey?”

Mickey Mouse faded out sheepishly, half-drowned in a prodigious cream cake with which Minnie Mouse had beaten him over the head. Fabian took advantage of the introductory music to a travel film, and let Katusha into the lobby, where he looked at her with an experienced eye and said: “Jesus, it seems funny, somehow, to look at this stuff here in this town. It sort of gets you kind of ashamed. Could you have any respect for me if I told you I animated that duck? Hell, if I knew then what I know now—God Almighty, that duck would jump out of the screen and lay an egg on your lap. Sometimes, Katusha, I think I was a mug to quarrel with Disney, and then again, on the other hand, some people say that Walt was a mug to quarrel with me. The trouble with us was, we were just a couple of geniuses, and geniuses never get on together. I grant you, Katusha, that I couldn’t of drawn Donald Duck in six months; whereas Walt could draw you anything—ducks, mice, bloodhounds and even squirrels. But where, I ask you, would your Silly Symphony be if I hadn’t animated it? You know what I mean—brought it to life. Oh, I know you’re laughing at me deep down inside. And mind you, it does seem like a god-damn silly job for a grown man to do—making Donald Duck move like a duck. But believe me or believe me not, Katusha, you sort of get to be kind of proud of a job that sort of gets to be kind of world-wide. Go on. Laugh at me and have done with it. Laugh, go on.”

“Well,” said Katusha, “I should think you could do better if you tried.”

“Well, hell, that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? Between ourselves, Kat, I’ve come over here to put British sound cartoons on the map. Hell, you know as well as I do that an animator—I mean a real animator—is like finding a pearl in a oyster. You know what? All the same, you get sort of homesick—and shall I tell you something? Walking past that place I sort of couldn’t resist the kind of urge to go in and look at some of my old stuff. Jesus, you don’t know what a relief it is to me to talk to an intelligent girl like you. Tell me all about yourself, Kat. From now on I’m going to call you Kat.”

In the taxi she said: “My father was a beast and a bully. My poor mother died when I was a little baby. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I went out to service. Well, then I met a gentleman. He was the lady of the house’s nephew. He was in the Army. I can’t tell you their name: he’s a titled man. He was engaged to a titled lady. I was only a servant girl and he was the son of an Earl. I knew it couldn’t come to anything, but I couldn’t help falling in love with him, could I?”

“You couldn’t. No more than I could help falling in love with you,” said Harry Fabian.

“Don’t be silly, you won’t fall in love with me.”

“Don’t be too sure about that.”

“Well, as it happens, he fell in love with me—see? And I gave myself to him. Well, he was called back to his regiment, and … well … there I was. You don’t know what it feels like, when you feel the baby under your heart, and look up and pray to the Virgin, and you know all the time nothing’s going to happen. I felt the baby under my heart. So this officer’s aunt, she gave me some money and she told me to go away. So I went away, but I wouldn’t take the money.”

“That’s right,” said Fabian.

“Well, you see, the baby was born dead, because of what I’d been through. D’you know what? I ran after the train for miles and miles, and it was snowing—would you believe it? He was in a first-class carriage with two other officers and three women, and they were drinking champagne. He never saw me.”

“Who did you go to, to get rid of the kid?” asked Fabian.

“It was born dead. It was his son. He went abroad with his regiment. After that I didn’t care what happened to me. I didn’t care about anything. Do you know what I did?”

“No, what did you do?” asked Fabian, deeply moved.

“I became a prostitute. And if you want to know, that’s what I am now—a common prostitute.”

“No, is that so?” said Fabian.

“What else was I to do?” she said, clasping her hands, and looking upward.

“You poor kid. You know what? I’m funny that way. I can’t bear to see a fellow creature suffering. If anybody does me a bad turn, or tries to push me around, that’s different—I’d knock his god-damn block off if it was the last thing I ever did, if he was Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney rolled into one. If he tried to do me dirt, or if he didn’t show me the proper respect I’m accustomed to, I’d smack that guy right in the kisser wherever he was—even if I was in Buckingham Palace at the time. I used to be fly-weight champion of Carolina when I was a kid; but it’s a mug’s game: the managers grab the big end, and what have you got? I don’t take the sucker’s end of any racket. But as I was saying, I can’t bear to see women and children suffering. Did you say you were all alone in London? No father? No mother?”

“My mother died of a broken ’eart,” said Katusha. “She was a lady. She was the iggilitimate daughter of an earl, but she fell in love with my father although ’e was only a poor Army officer in the cavalry and eloped with ’im because ’e fascinated ’er, but ’e was a bully and a beast, and ’e took to drink, and lost all the regiment’s money playing cards, and killed ’imself—’e shot ’imself through the ’ead with a pistol; and so I went to work in a factory, but the son of the feller what owned the factory fell in love with me and wanted to possess me, but I wouldn’t let ’im, and so I went into service and got seduced. I’m just an outcast, reely.”

“How long have you been on the game? Where d’you lumber?”

“Lumber?”

“Lumber. Where d’you take your clients?”

“I ’aven’t got a room of my own yet.”

“Oh, you haven’t, haven’t you? And how old did you say you were?”

“Twenty-one.”

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! sang the rejoicing heart of Harry Fabian. “What d’you charge?”

“You want someone to look after you,” said Fabian.

“I’m all alone in the world.”

“Oh no you’re not. Don’t you believe that for one minute. I’m your pal, see? I’ll look after you. See? I’m like that: I don’t mind spending fifty-sixty pounds in an evening on champagne and orchids, when I relax; but Jesus, I hate inefficiency! That’s the god-damn trouble with the god-damn world to-day—inefficiency. Now what you want is some snappy clothes and some high-class hairdressing, and a fur coat. How would ya like that?” One glance at her face told Fabian how she would like that. He went on: “Yes, god-damn it, a fur coat, that’s what you need. Tell me, kid, what kind of fur d’you like best?”

“Ermine.”

“Okay, ermine it is. What colour?”

“Snowy ermine.”

“Oke!” said Fabian, in a brisk, business-like voice. “White ermine. Okey-the-doke. Full length? Three-quarter? Or one of those wraps? Say the word.”

“I dunno,” she said. She did not want to say too much in case she spoiled the dream and awoke in the stuffy darkness of the sixpenny news cinema.

“I should say three-quarter length,” said Fabian. “I know a bit about furs. Remind me to tell you, one of these days, about the time me and a man called Wolfe Larsen went seal hunting way up in … whatsaname. I owned a schooner then: Jesus, those were the days, when I was a kid of your age. Adventure! Excitement! Christ, the fights we used to have! I can tell you, kid, I never regretted being the flyweight champ of … of Carolina. Dokey-da-hoke: three-quarter length ermine. I’ll make a note of it. Any jewellery you want you’d better pick out for yourself. Because what I say is this: one person’s taste isn’t another person’s taste. But for colouring I’d say star sapphires. Diamonds are always okay, of course, but Jesus—every rich bitch in town wears diamonds, and to tell you the truth, honey, I kind of get fed up with diamonds. They’re sort of common. Star sapphires. What say?”

“Yes, star sapphires.”

“Oke. Sapphires … star. Don’t worry, I got it all fixed in my mind. Don’t you worry, kid. I’ll take care of you. Jesus, it makes my blood boil—a well-bred, ladylike kid like you lousing about with all them sixpence-and-find-your-own-railings mob of layabouts in Tottenham Court Road, when it sticks out like a punch in the mouth that you were born and bred for better things. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Stick by me and I’ll put a gold spoon right in your kisser. Ah! Here we are!”

Fabian felt like Saul, who lost a donkey and found a kingdom, or Gow, who dug for water and found a gold mine. While he was opening the street door he said: “I live pretty quiet here. I don’t entertain much these days. I got a hell of a lot to think about. I like to be quiet. To hell with the Savoy—I don’t give a twopenny god-damn for all that whirl of gaiety. You sort of get sick of it, kid—you’ll see. Stick around with me. Well, here we are.” He opened the door of Number 802 Wardour Street. “Besides,” he said, “it’s convenient here for business. No luxury—just clean and simple. Good enough for me. Come on in.”

Harry Fabian’s room was on the ground floor. Poking absent-minded fingers into holes in the pockets of cast-off years, most men find cracked and greasy pictures of such rooms; and then they remember certain sordid afternoons and sticky twilights when, having done up the last button and cast the last worried glance at the clock, they hurried away to Leicester Square Station, hoping that their necks were not marked with lipstick. They remember how the woman was lying, puffing cigarette-smoke toward the ceiling, with thirty pocket-warmed shillings cooling under her pillow, while soapy water rocked itself to sleep in the bucket under the sink behind the screen. They will not forget the stained pink cushions on the shot-rayon divan; the wide-eyed, loose-legged doll perched up on the topmost cushion; the blunt oblong cake of olive-green soap by the tap that was marked Hot but ran cold; the terrified scouring, frantic lying, and furtively-pinching self-examination. Whenever they smell rotten flowers, musty bedding, neglected laundry-baskets, hot feet, stale breath, sixpenny face-powder, gin and lysol, they remember the fading light behind the vieux-rose curtains and the bilious bulb under the fly-blown pleated lampshade; and they fold their Sunday newspapers a little tighter and cry: “No, this is a bit too thick!”

Fabian said: “Take off some of them heavy outdoor garments,” and pulled down one of her stockings.

She had never met such a fascinating man. A little later she said: “No, but ooky-da-wook!” and giggled.

“You see?” said Fabian, severely; “now this is just the wrong sort of time to get on the god-damn giggle with a dumb-cluck crack like that. Now listen….”

Presently she said: “Tell me—do you love me?”

“Now there you are again,” said Fabian. “Whaddaya want a guy to say? You don’t ask such questions, dope! You say: ‘Oh, darling, darling, I do love you, darling! Darling, why are you so wonderful? How did you learn to be such a sweet lover?’—Jesus, you’ve got a lot to learn!”

He spoke like a schoolteacher, but felt like the man of whom it had been said: If he fell into the River Thames he’d come up in a dry suit of clothes, with a pocketful of fishes.

“Do just what I tell you,” he said, “and you’ll get that ermine coat. See? Do just like I tell you, get it?”

“Whatever you say.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

STILL thinking about the hole in his sock Pym went back to the office. The Features Editor was in an abominable temper. “Well, what is it?” he said.

“I rewrote that story along the lines you suggested,” said Pym. “I didn’t use two syllables where one would do, and there isn’t a semi-colon in the whole thing. Short, sharp, staccato—a sting in every sentence—just like a boxer with a punch-ball … rat-at-at, rat-at-at. Pithy. Factual. Gutty. Human.” Pym spoke with irony. “Brusque, snappy, quick and bright as an electric spark. Okay?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That story.”

“Look here,” said Steeple, “are you under the impression that you’re the only man trying to write for this paper? Have you somehow got the idea that they employ me to be your guide philosopher and friend? Has it ever occurred to you that once in a while I might have something better to do than improve my mind with your Tone Poems? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that I’ve got to look at stuff from everybody in the world? But that’s how these people are,” he said, in a bitter apostrophe, looking at the palm of his right hand, “give ’em an inch—just give ’em an inch, and they take a mile. Why can’t you wait a couple of days, the same as everyone else does? Why should you get preferential treatment—you with your Resonant Prose?”

“I followed your advice,” said Pym, with an injured air, “and I was anxious to know how it had turned out. That’s all. If I’m bothering you I’ll go away. If you said that I was to come upstairs just so as to let off steam on me, I’m not having any of it. Give me back the story and go to hell. It would have been more gracious to send it down with a boy. I’d rather have a formal rejection slip—I’ve had plenty of those anyway.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” said Steeple, rubbing a corrugated forehead with a nervous hand, “but you don’t know what I have to put up with. Story, story, story … You mean that market story. Well, I read it.”

“You read it, and you found that somewhere I used a word of two syllables. You haven’t time to give me a little talk on construction, and syntax, and all that sort of thing, so give me the bloody thing back and have done with it.”

“No, as a matter of fact, this one’s all right. I can use this one.”

“I’ve got dozens more in mind.”

“Good, good. Smack ’em in. But simplify, simplify. Make ’em more human. You understand? Human. More incident, more story. More immediate value. For instance: you talk about vegetables—cabbages, savoys, lettuces, rabbit food in general. Why don’t you tie that kind of thing up with something? For instance: there’s some talk of an infectious disease in clover. You know, clover—it puts back nitrogen into the the soil. A thing like that could be dramatic. You say, for instance, just say that there was a real epidemic of that sort of thing. All the clover dies. All the grass dies. There’s nothing for the animals to eat. No roots to hold the soil. Top soil turns to dust, and dust storms destroy the world. It’s not a bad idea, when you come to think of it,” said Steeple, brightening, and making a note on a scribbling pad. “If you have the right approach, you know, you can see the end of the world in a cabbage. You put forward the theory, and it makes, as a matter of fact, a bloody fine story.”

“There’s another man,” said Pym, still angrily, “who has been looking into the Mosaic Disease of the tobacco leaf. As I see it, the Mosaic Disease is caused by crystals—but these crystals are not like any other crystals—they can reproduce. They can give birth. Take that to its logical conclusion and there you are: the world invaded by crystals. A great ball of washing-soda rolling in space.”

“That’s right. You’ve got the idea. Find out more about it.”

“And my story?”

“I can use that one. I’ll pay you ten.”

“Look, would you mind if I drew the money now?”

“All right, I’ll give you a note to the cashier. But I wish you wouldn’t. They don’t like it.”

“How about having lunch with me to-morrow?”

“Can’t manage it. Lunching with General Baker—tank expert.”

“The day after?”

“Out of the question: I’ve got to eat with Professor Sack-man who knows all about molybdenum. Stuff they call ‘Molly-be-damned’—they put it in steel—civilisation would crash without it. Modern warfare would become impossible.”

“When, then?”

“… After that I’ve got this geezer who calls herself Madame Sparrow, the rejuvenation woman: old charlatan, if you ask me, or more likely a plain crank. Some time next week perhaps. There’s your note. Good-bye. And remember—keep it crisp—actual, factual, snappy, human. So long.”

Pym left the cashier’s office with a hop, a skip and a jump, and went to a hosier’s shop in Fleet Street where he bought a pair of beautiful woollen socks, a noble tie, and a pair of bright blue artificial silk underpants. Then he went to the public baths in Endell Street and bathed luxuriously in very hot water.

After this he felt capable of anything except work; so he telephoned Rockwell Gagan and said: “Hullo, Rocky. What news?”

“Johnny, old boy old boy old boy, the best news you ever had in all your life. Can you come right up?”

“I daresay I could manage it.”

“You’ve got the address—Brow House, South Street, Park Lane, Park Lane—got it?”

“I’ll come along.”

*

Rocky was wearing a satin smoking jacket with a long gold-tasselled sash. There was pink sticking-plaster on his forehead and a broken vase in the fireplace. Sissy, wrapped in an iridescent green dressing-gown embroidered with golden beetles, was reclining on a chaise longue, sipping a golden drink.

“About that play of yours,” said Rocky.

“I told you before, it isn’t a play of mine.”

“All right, Pym old son old son old son, Mary Greensleeve’s play then, you old fox!”

Sissy said: “You know, darling, I’m quite sure you were making up all that about her being an old woman, and dead, and all that.”

“You wrote it yourself, you old fox!” roared Rocky. “You old genius, you old genius, you old genius! … He had me in mind, darling, and he wrote it himself. Didn’t you, you old liar? Admit it, old son old son old son!”

“I’ve told you already I didn’t, and there’s an end of the matter.”

Sissy Voltaire said: “Well, whoever wrote it, dear, it’s your property, isn’t it?”

“It was given to me, yes, Miss Voltaire; so I suppose it’s my property. I thought you were only joking,” said Pym, “when you said you were interested in it the other day. Do you still seriously mean to tell me——”

“—We’re crazy about it,” said Rocky, “we’re raving mad about it, aren’t we, darling?”

“Frantic! I cried all night,” said Sissy. “It’s … it’s so perfect. It makes one believe in, in reincarnation. That woman might have been me! And the vicar! I can hardly believe he isn’t drawn from my husband. And that cheap comedian, that great big idiot whom she takes out of the gutter (kiss me, darling)! It couldn’t be better. The great, big, tall, dark, handsome, virile, dirty parasite … (kiss me, Rocky) … the third-rate cross-talk idiot who shows her the meaning … (kiss me again as if you really mean it, dear love; oh, I do love you, I do I do I do!) … and whom she picks up out of the gutter, and makes a man of! And you’ll desert me too, won’t you, Rocky, you rotten parasite—won’t you, darling? You will, you will! I know it. No, but to talk business, Mr. Pym. (Tickle me here, just under this ear.) To talk business,” said Sissy Voltaire, with a sigh, “I want an option on this play of your girl friend’s.”

“What do you mean by an option?” asked Pym. Rocky said: “We pay you such-and-such a sum of money to reserve the right to buy the play in such-and-such a time.”

“What do you mean by we?” said Sissy Voltaire.

“Oh, all right. Miss Voltaire pays you a certain sum for the right to consider the play with a view to putting it on within such-and-such a time.”

“Oh, really? How much?” asked Pym.

Sissy Voltaire cut short an amorous nuzzling of Rocky’s cheek and said: “I’ll give you fifty pounds for a three-months’ option.” Then she refreshed herself with a bit of his thumb.

“I take it this option means that for three months you have first refusal of the play. Is that it?”

“You’ve got it old boy old boy old boy,” said Rocky. “—Hi! That hurt, darling!”

“Hurt? You cheap bastard, I’d like to cut you into little bits and give you to the cat, I love you so much,” said Sissy Voltaire.

Pym said: “When you say fifty pounds, I suppose you mean fifty pounds in cash, on the nail?”

He supposed nothing of the sort, in point of fact, and was half-stunned with amazement when Sissy Voltaire said: “But, of course.”

“That’s only option money, old son old son old son,” said Rocky. “All being well, when we—when Sissy—takes up that option, then you get another sum of money in advance, and you get a contract—five per cent of the takings. Shall I tell you something? It’s the easiest way in the world to make a fortune. Look at Bernard Shaw. Look at Somerset Maugham. Look at … look at any of them. Well? How about it?”

“Well, I accept, of course.”

“Well, what are you looking so sick about?”

“He wants a drink. Stop strutting up and down and showing off, and give him a drink, you idiot,” said Sissy.

“I didn’t know I was looking sick,” said Pym. “It came as a bit of a surprise to me, that’s all.”

“Here, old son old son old son, catch hold of this and let’s drink to it!”

They drank solemnly to the success of That We May Not Weep, and then Sissy Voltaire went to a little papier maché and mother-of-pearl desk and returned with ten five-pound notes and a piece of paper, which Pym signed. Now he had nearly sixty pounds. This was a vast and important sum of money. He had always told himself that if only he could lay his hands on fifty or sixty pounds everything would become simple: he could take a cleaner, quieter room, sit down uninterrupted, and in six weeks hammer out a masterpiece. Yet, as he put the money in his pocket, a strange, oppressive unhappiness took possession of him. He said: “Oh dear, poor little Mrs. Greensleeve! To think that she hawked this piece of tripe up and down the town all those years, and then——”

“—What do you mean, tripe? It’s a masterpiece, you fool!” said Sissy Voltaire.

“Did I say tripe? I’m sorry, I meant masterpiece,” said Pym. “Well, that’s that. Thanks very much. When shall I get in touch with you?”

“How do we get in touch with you?” asked Rocky. “He’s a man of mystery. Johnny’s got some woman tucked away somewhere. He won’t let anybody see her, Sissy darling—Johnny’s insanely jealous, that’s the trouble with Johnny.”

“Jealousy is a sign of true love,” said Sissy. “I admire him for it. This big lout isn’t jealous, Johnny. If he came in and found me in bed with you he’d just sit down and read a magazine.”

“Now, darling.”

Pym said: “I’m moving to a quieter place, you see. I’ll let you know my address in the next two or three days. Well, I’d better be going now. Thanks again, and I’ll see you soon.”

As he closed the door, Sissy said to Rocky: “Come here!” And Rocky said: “Yes, darling.”

Pym reached the street in a state of profound melancholy. The first considerable sum of money that had come his way had been earned by Mary Greensleeve, and his masterpiece remained unwritten.

He crossed the road and went into the park, inhaling the autumnal odours, and thumbing the bank notes in his trousers’ pocket; sat on a twopenny chair, and looked at the cloudy golden sunset. In this sunset he felt that he was caught and fixed for ever like a fly in amber. His gold became red, the red grew grey like cold iron. Night was coming down, shutting out the sunset, like a furnace door. To-night there would be no moon: everything would be black, with a threat of approaching winter. Yet the glow of the day stayed with Pym for a little while, in spite of his melancholy. He felt—God knows why—that he had caught a glimpse of something immeasurably vast, unfathomably deep, and grand beyond human understanding. He said to himself: “If the night seems to be dark, it will be because the beauty of it has blinded me.” He knew then that the world of men is made up of particles, like the grains of a dust storm or the drops of a deluge, too small to count or separate, too fast to identify, but joined in a unity too great to comprehend.

A wind began to blow and Pym got up and walked to the road. The glow was dead. Pym was confused and sad. Life bewildered him. He remembered that even in the tiniest thing there is more than the sum of its known parts; that you may count the tears and never know the grief; mark every leaf yet never know the tree; record the throbs, and still be a stranger to the heart. Yes, the glory eludes us and the dream evades us: it is here and yet it is not here, like a half-forgotten song. He said to himself: “We also are like scattered seeds trodden into the dirt and waiting, cold and blind. What can a seed know of the thing to come? If an acorn could think, it would be tormented by a dream of blue sky and green leaves, and wonder why it was trodden down, humble in the dust and alone in the world.”

Pym walked across the grass in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. No man, he thought, had ever been less proud of the money in his pocket. It made him uneasy: it made him think of the hungry old humiliated woman, dying in agony of body and mind, buried by a cut-price undertaker in a suburban grave-yard. The money was hers; she had made it. But Reason told him not to be a fool: What do you want to do? Go along to the cemetery, exhume her, and bury it with her? She gave you that play of her own free will after making you promise not to let her be buried in a pauper’s grave. Take it, and cut out this maudlin sentimentality. Sit down, get back to work, write that good book you are always talking about, and grow great. Since you are so damned touchy on this subject, put up a little gravestone—or a big one if you like, with angels on it, and compose her a nice epitaph.

Reason was interrupted by a terrible scream. Pym stopped. He was standing, now, in the shade of one of the trees that line the Walk that leads to the bandstand. Two women were fighting with fists and nails, teeth and feet, fearful curses and filthy imprecations. One of them was tall and fat, and the other was short and thin. Neither of them could have been less than fifty years old. Even as he stopped, the words ran together and became a babble. Their rage was too great for words. The big woman picked up a green-painted iron-framed chair and swung it at the head of the little one, who caught it dexterously in both hands and wrenched it away. Then, snarling and spitting, screaming like a lynx, she hooked herself on to the big woman and they rolled in the dust, while another woman, about sixty years old, danced about them like a referee, wringing her hands and crying: “Don’t Maggie! Don’t. She’s not worth it I tell you! Why can’t you talk it over?”

They did not hear. The little woman was bleeding from the nose; and the big woman’s scalp was marked with a raw red patch—a lock of her grizzled hair was clutched in one of her opponent’s bony little hands. The noise brought the young couples out of their amorous trances. They came running from the shadows, made a crowd, and looked on. Two policemen, clumsily running in their heavy boots, broke through. But the women had gone berserk. One of the policemen staggered back with a red scratch on his cheek, and his helmet fell off. Someone in the crowd laughed derisively, and everyone else laughed. Two more policemen came. One of them blew a whistle. They caught the big woman and held her by the arms; but the little woman, tearing off her clothes, threw herself down, kicking and writhing, sobbing and screaming, like a woman in an epileptic fit, until a man came with a stretcher, and they strapped her down and carried her away. The big woman went quietly, weeping bitterly, and saying, between sobs: “I’ll kill ’er, I’ll kill ’er!”

“What’s it all about?” asked Pym.

The elderly woman, the referee, shook a deprecatory head, pursed her lips, and said in an affected voice: “These girls! I don’t know, some of them seem to have no pride at all, making exhibitions of themselves like that.”

“But what were they fighting about?”

Her face was like a painted walnut. She replied: “Pitches.”

“Pitches? What pitches?”

She simpered. “A stranger here? … You see, us girls sit on chairs along here. You see, most of us have our Regulars, so we always sit on the same chair, so they know exactly where to find us when they want us. Well, Maggie has sat on that chair for five years to my certain knowledge. But Sheila won’t let anybody live, you know. She’s selfish. She comes early and takes the other girls’ chairs. And you saw what class of girl she was. Mad Sheila. But I will say this for Maggie, she’s not afraid of Sheila. Maggie has a Regular who gives her ten shillings. Well, Sheila tried to get Maggie’s chair. One thing leads to another, you know. It seems that they came to blows. Are you a stranger here?”

“Not exactly.”

“Are you feeling lonely?”

“No, not a bit lonely.”

“Ten shillings?”

“No.”

“You’re such a nice-looking boy, I wouldn’t mind going with you for nothing, only I’ve got to live, you see.”

“Here’s your ten shillings,” said Pym. “Good-bye.”

She took the ten-shilling note, looked at him resentfully, said “Thank you” in a ladylike voice, and went away to her chair.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” said the last of the remaining policemen to Pym.

“Lovely,” said Pym.

“I’d have to be pretty hard up before I was seen dead with one of them. As a matter of fact, you’d have to be in a pretty bad state before you touched one of them with a barge pole—a disinfected barge pole.”

“Who are they? What are they?” asked Pym. “I mean—I know what they are, but how do they get that way?”

“Why,” said the policeman, “a lot of ’em are respectably married women. Husbands in regular jobs. They go on the bash for a little bit of extra pin money. There’s one round here that wears glasses! Most of them are just old tarts. That big one, Maggie, she used to be pretty good-looking twenty years ago. But you know what they are—they never save a penny, and sooner or later, well—there you are.”

“Lovely,” said Pym.

“Yes, bloody lovely, isn’t it?” said the policeman.

As Pym walked to Joanna Bowman’s flat near Victoria, he prayed: “Oh Lord! Thrust me into the furnace—hammer me flat—grind me down—beat me into a surgeon’s knife and let me cut some of the rottenness away from this sick, suffering world!”

*

Joanna Bowman said: “If you don’t mind roughing it, I’ll make an omelette.”

“If you’re sure you wouldn’t rather go out to eat,” said Pym. “I have a suspicion that you’re being diplomatic so as to save me money. I’ve got some money now. No, not the fiver I borrowed from Proudfoot. I haven’t broken into that—I’ve got that here in my pocket. It goes back to Proudfoot to-morrow.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t so much a loan as an advance on what they wanted to pay me for the job they wanted me to do. But I’m not going to do the job.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like it.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“They want me to put that woman Weissensee’s muck into attractive English,” said Pym, indignant at the thought of it.

“I must say you sound as though you don’t altogether approve of it. I’ve never read any of it myself.”

“I should think not!”

The horror in Pym’s voice amused her. “Are you afraid it would corrupt me?”

“I don’t think anything could corrupt you. But it’s the sort of stuff that makes you feel unclean. It makes you feel sick. I should feel embarrassed, somehow, to see a woman reading it.”

“But it wouldn’t embarrass you to see a man reading it?”

“No, not quite so much—now don’t start asking me why not, because I don’t know.”

“I see that you’re quite an old-fashioned boy at heart.”

“I am, I suppose. I hate dirt, scientific or otherwise. As I see it, shit by any other name smells no sweeter … I even don’t like to use that word in the presence of a lady. It’s in my nature to want to protect women. All right: old-fashioned.”

“I believe I dislike dirtiness as much as you do,” said Joanna Bowman. “It disgusts me too, you know—dirtiness, I mean, not honest dirt. I suppose you’ve seen what they call ‘feelthy peectures’?”

“An old gentleman showed me some when I was young,” said Pym.

“Filth, eh?” said Joanna.

“Uncleanliness,” said Pym, “filth, as you say. Dirtiness. There really is a difference between dirt and dirtiness. Dirt is what you dig in and turn over to plant things in. Dirtiness is what clean people scrub away.”

“Misplaced matter,” said Joanna.

“No: matter that has no right to a place anywhere—stuff that sneaks into any crack that’ll hold it, and needs to be scraped away. You can call pus in a pimple dirt, can’t you? You can call wax in your ears dirt, or you can call what you find in a tramp’s trousers dirt, or you can call what you blow out of your nose dirt. Call them anything you like. But are they misplaced? No, by God, no! They’re exactly where they belong … where they belong if you won’t lift a finger to wipe them out. Misplaced matter, my foot! Dirt!”

Joanna said: “On the whole, you’re not far wrong.”

“Well then—away with it! Down with dirt!” cried Pym.

“Shake,” said Joanna Bowman, offering her hand. “But don’t try to save me from the ‘facts of life’; don’t protect me. I won’t stand for that.”

“There are facts of life that shouldn’t be facts of life. Being sick is a fact of life. But you try to suppress it—you try not to be sick at the dinner table, for example; and still being sick at the dinner table is what you might call a fact of life. In any case I am not trying to protect you.”

“I’d rather be sick at the dinner table than die a ladylike death of ptomaine poisoning in the ladies’ lavatory. In any case, I see no earthly reason why women should be protected. As a matter of fact they never are protected. They do most of the protecting; even when they’re being protected they’re doing most of the protecting.”

While they were eating the omelette Joanna said:

“Men! Why wasn’t I born a man? If I’d been born a man I’d have been a man. But as it is I’m what they call a Weak Woman. I don’t like men.”

“And women?”

“I don’t like women either. I don’t like myself for being a woman. I don’t like anybody. I wish I could be about fifty people at the same time. Then I’d show you how men and women ought to be. I wish there was a third sex. I’d rather be something else. Miserable creatures! All my life I’ve been hoping to come across someone I didn’t despise. I never have. Every now and again I’ve thought I’ve met somebody I could talk to as an equal. And I’ve been wrong, wrong every time. When I was a kid I admired my father; but by the time I was twelve I recognised him. He was a soft fool and my mother could twist him round her little finger. So I got around to admiring her, and she was even softer and even more of a fool, because he could twist her round his little finger. And then I thought I had some sort of respect for my husband. He was no good either.”

“You have a husband?”

“Yes. A sort of bulldog. A pig-headed, silly bulldog … one of those weepy, whimpering, whining, bulldogs.”

“I like bulldogs.”

“So do I—I love them. But I won’t let them own me. I’ve always been terrified of emotional ties.”

“You didn’t love your husband, then?”

“Yes, I believe I did, at first, at least.”

“Not for long?”

“For a little while—until he began to whimper. I thought I loved him for just about as long as I believed he was one of those iron men that you read about—one of those self-contained, strong, not-too-silent men. It was all right until he fell in love with me. Before I knew where I was he was making sacrifices for me. It didn’t take any time at all. Things came to a head quite soon: he started telling me about how he’d stayed in England for my sake instead of going to China. He was a metallurgist. There was a big job of some sort waiting for him in China, and he’d wanted to go to China. But he didn’t go. He stayed behind for the sake of the Little Woman … Me.”

“What happened then?”

“Why, what do you think happened? I said: ‘You must be an absolute bloody idiot. You are telling me that you wanted to go to China, but you didn’t go to China for my sake. You know perfectly well that you’re lying. If you’d really wanted to go to China, you’d have gone—and you know it. What you really wanted to do was stay here. You must know me well enough to know that China, or anywhere else, would suit me down to the ground. I despise people who try to make me feel guilty about this kind of rubbish. I don’t like you any more. Go to China; go to hell. Go away. As far as you and I are concerned, it’s all over. Good-bye.’”

“And since then you’ve been alone?”

“And intend to stay alone—I’ve had enough of being pushed around. I live my life the way I want to, without interference from anyone.”

“You’re profound and you’re beautiful, but still you’re a fool. Who lives alone? What’s the use of men without women? What’s the point in women without men?” said Pym.

“What’s the point in women with men merely for the sake of convenience? What the hell is the use of a combination where the woman despises the man and the man wants a mother? He’s had his mother! Why must men always be rushing back and back? Why don’t they want to be fathers instead of sons? Alone, you say; live alone, you say. Well, when I live alone, at least I’m living with my equal,” said Joanna. “I’m so tired of living with babies.”

“I’m no baby, Joanna.”

“I shouldn’t be inviting you to bed with me if I thought you were. I like you, Pym.”

“Are you inviting——”

“Yes.”

“It is a very good thing to be with you,” said Pym, after they had made love together.

“Very good,” said Joanna Bowman.

“—But there’s one thing.”

“Oh-oh! I thought as much.”

“It wasn’t because I had a little money that I turned down Proudfoot’s offer. I give you my word of honour. What I have I got——”

“—Please let me go to sleep.”

“I want you to know that I’d decided to turn Proudfoot’s offer down before Sissy Voltaire gave me the advance on that play. I wouldn’t have done it, you know—I’d never have written Dr. Weissensee’s rubbish for her—I’d just as soon have starved. Don’t misunderstand me, please, Jo.”

“—Pym, let me go to sleep now.”

“God bless you, Jo, my sweet.”

“I don’t believe in God; but God bless you, Pym. I like you. I’m calm and happy with you. Thank you, Pym. Would you like to kiss me here, on the forehead, before you go?”

Pym kissed Joanna and said: “Good night.”

“You might meet a man called Swan,” she said. “My husband. Don’t be afraid of him. He won’t hurt. Good night, Pym, my dear. I like being with you. Good night.”

“Thank you for being so sweet, Jo.”

“Soon again, Pym….”

*

Pym closed the street door behind him and felt the cold night breeze on his face. A shower of rain had fallen, and there were patches of wet yellow under the lamp-posts. One crescent-shaped piece of the road, filmed with oil, shimmered like a damascened sabre, in twenty colours. Big Ben struck three o’clock, and a cat howled like a soul in the Pit. On the third floor of a house fifty yards away, a lamp went out and a rose-coloured oblong disappeared. The cat cried again.

A man crossed the road, stood in front of Pym, and said, in a strange, strained voice: “Were you with Mrs. Swan, by any chance?”

“Swan?” said Pym. “Swan, Donald Duck, or Francis Drake—Dame Clara Cluck or Mickey Mouse—what has it got to do with you?”

“Were you with Mrs. Swan?”

“Who are you, anyway? Why do you ask?”

“My name is Swan.”

“My name is Pym. Glad to have met you. Good night.”

The other man said: “Look here. I’ve been waiting. I’ve been watching the windows. Keep away, or I’ll——”

“Or you’ll what?”

“I’ll break every bone in your body. She’s my wife, d’you hear? Stay away from my wife or——”

“—Or you’ll break every bone in my body? Go ahead,” said Pym.

“—Or she’ll break your heart,” said Swan, and, hiccuping up a sob or two, began to weep.

“That’s better,” said Pym. “Come on, now, old man—bear up. There, now.”

“She … she hasn’t got a heart,” said Swan. His back was turned to a lamp-post; his voice was the shadow of a voice, coming from the darkest part of a shadow. “I’m telling you for your own good. Stay away from my wife. Or I’ll break——”

“—Excuse me: you said that she’d break …”

“—She’ll break your heart, and I’ll break every bone in your body. Do you hear?”

“I don’t like being spied on,” said Pym. “And I don’t like being threatened. Be a good fellow and go away.”

“Answer me first,” said Swan, taking hold of Pym’s sleeve. “Were you or were you not with my wife?”

“None of your business,” said Pym.

“Better tell me—or do you want me to knock it out of you?”

“In any case, take your hands off me,” said Pym.

“I keep watching and watching,” Swan said. “Oh, Christ, Christ Jesus, oh Jesus Christ—how I hate that woman!”

“Go home, go home,” said Pym, sadly.

Swan went sniffling and sobbing into the dark, and Pym walked towards Busto’s.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE drug cannabis indica, or hashish, is not used in medicine because its effect is unpredictable; variable according to the constitution and the temperament of the person to whom it is administered. It plays queer tricks with the nervous system. One man, dosed with cannabis indica, will be filled with peace and a sense of well-being; another has erotic dreams and a glowing sense of invulnerability and mighty strength. But the third man may have frightful nightmares, monstrous visions of amorphous, malevolent things that do not belong to this world. In the imagination of the fourth man, it may subtly twist loose one of the microscopic screws that keep Space and Time in their proper places; so that he will gather himself for a standing high jump to get over a match-stick on the floor, or step calmly off a roof because the house appears to him like the kerb of a pavement. In some heads, this dangerous stuff makes music—it makes things sing—chairs and tables, books, weighing machines, match-boxes and wastepaper baskets lift up unimagined voices in wild choruses, more or less ecstatic. Some men become sad with a cosmic sadness, and feel cold and lonely. Some men just go raving mad.

Therefore physicians do not use cannabis indica. It is unreliable: a hallucinant to-day, a hypnotic to-morrow, a stimulant on Wednesday, a sedative on Thursday and on Friday the wine of madness. Savage people burn it and suck up the smoke; which does terrible things to their mental balance. Civilised people purify it meticulously and swallow it. In its civilised, purified form it is less directly harmful. But it is always hashish—incalculable in action, unknowable in effect; deadly.

Alcohol, too, is idiosyncratic in its working. It makes you happy, miserable, calm, agitated, tearful, or fighting drunk—according to the way you are made.

They are all more or less dangerous, these drugs … these screwdrivers of fog and pincers of mist with which men secretly make illegal entry into their lock-up imaginations when the policeman is changing his beat—when the will is off duty.

The effects of love, also, are beyond calculation. They may be good or evil.

Love goes up into the attics or down into the cellars and turns up whatever you happen to have buried; your mother’s love-letters, worms, dead moths, gems, forgotten masterpieces, rats, money, or springs of tears. Love also is incalculable. A good man falls in love and becomes bad; a criminal falls in love and becomes honourable. A brave man falls in love and becomes a coward; a coward in love becomes a hero. Love may make a weak man strong, or a strong man weak. It may destroy the healthy, heal the sick, or drive sane men crazy. Love may drive you out of yourself, in which case it makes you great—or it may suck you back into yourself; and then you see yourself through the wrong end of a telescope: you become little. Love has been known to give patience to an impatient man, energy to a lazy man, nobility to a rat, and ferocity to a mouse.

Facing the issue and forcing himself to the conclusion that he was in love with Joanna Bowman, Pym became angry with himself. Then, without falling out of love, he began to dislike Joanna Bowman.

He disliked the unshakeable calm of her face; but he admired it, and despised himself for admiring it. He detested what she said, and loved her for saying it. He wanted to spit on her shadow, but he found himself bowing ceremoniously from the waist to the shadow of an honest woman. He knew that she was wrong and he was right; yet, as soon as he closed his eyes, a little monotonous voice squeaked: She’s right and you’re wrong, she’s right and you’re wrong, she’s right and you’re wrong. He wanted to kill her and he wanted to cure her. He wanted to humiliate her in order to apologise to her for having humiliated her. He wanted to attract her in order to repulse her, and to be be invited again to her room in order to say: “Go to the devil.”

He wanted to show her how great he was.

*

Walking along Buckingham Palace Road towards Whitehall, Pym saw bright visions. An old idea that had been hanging in his head like a crystal in a saturated solution took form. He knew exactly what he was going to do. The book was to be called The Road To The Iron Door, and it would preach a terrible sermon.

… There is a turbulent midnight, somewhere on a lonesome road, with a great staring moon making bayonets of grass. There is a sort of wriggling maggoty patch of iridescent light ahead. As the front wheels of the car touch this blotch of diseased reflected moonlight, everything slides away. Everything slides to the left. The driver of the car, jerked out of a delicious dream and twitching spasmodically like a fish on a hook, spins the wheel; just as a great square-cut truck thunders round the bend and then—a blinding white light, and a sickening descent in wild spirals into blackness, and through blackness into nothingness.

… Out of this blackness; out of this nothingness; a Man emerges. He is stunned and shocked. He does not know who is or where he is. Parched with thirst he goes to a pond to drink and sees a face which is strange to him—a blank, plain, stunned face that belongs to a man of forty-five, beautifully dressed, and decorated with elegant jewellery. As he bends to drink something cuts him under the ribs. The blank-faced Man is puzzled: he thrusts a hand up his coat, unbuttons his waistcoat, drags up his shirt and uncovers a belt. In this packed canvas belt he finds amass of paper. What is this? He does not know. It is money, to the value of five million pounds. The stunned Man who has walked so far has no idea of the meaning of this paper. He drinks greedily from the pond (from the other side of the pond two anxious cows, also drinking, look at him with great melancholy eyes). The Man looks back at the cows. He is full of a strange uneasiness. Then he goes to the road, instinctively, and walks—he does not know, nor does he care, where he is walking. At last an old gentleman, a man of intrinsic sweetness, travelling up or down this unknown road in a trap, stops and offers him a lift….

… The Man is lost, bewildered. He does not know who he is or where he is. Where is he going? He is not quite sure … Where has he come from? He is not certain … The old gentleman in the trap is a Doctor, returning from a visit to a patient in an outlying farm. The doctor observes the grazed bruise on the Man’s forehead, and the torn and bloodied condition of his clothes. Has the Man had an accident? The Man does not know. Where was the man a few minutes ago?—The man does not know. The old Doctor takes the man to his house, bathes his wounds, feeds him, and gives him something that makes him go to sleep.

After a sleep full of turbulent dreams the Man goes back with the Doctor to where the Doctor picked him up on the road. Going back, landmark by landmark, he remembers what has happened between the Doctor’s bedroom and the passing of the trap.

… Thereupon, of course, the Doctor taking charge of the packed money-belt of the Man whose memory is lost, tries to take him back—back and back up the roads down which he was driving. A pattern becomes visible, as in a length of wallpaper let loose. Clue by clue they trace the Man’s career backwards, point by point. He is confronted with evil after evil. Here is the child he ill-treated in This Town … There is the woman he betrayed in That Town….

… In This Hotel he slept with a girl he betrayed … In That Hotel he destroyed the reputation of a married woman, wantonly sliding away before dawn. Always his pockets were full of money. Always, he was never quite undressed because there was a great canvas belt full of Bearer Bonds.

… The Doctor has become great and terrible. At X the Man wants to stop. But no, he may not. He must go on. He, the lost soul, must find himself. He must go on and on down this dreadful road. But the Man is afraid. The road unrolls like a scroll, uncovering horror after horror. “I don’t want to see any more of myself!” the Man cries.

One night, while the Doctor is asleep, he takes his money-belt and runs away. Alone in the dark he is tortured by raging curiosity. No, there is no escape. He returns to the hotel, and the Doctor, with a friendly smile, says: “I was expecting you earlier.”

“I was running away.”

With a kind smile the Doctor says: “Come, friend, let us be on our road.”

Again, at a certain desolate crossroads, remembering the memory of a sin over which he chuckled when he passed that way before, the Man recoils and cries: “No! No! I can’t go on! I won’t go on! Let me go!”

“On, brother, on to the bitter end,” says the Doctor.

Inexorably the great grey Scroll unrolls as the two men go on into the mist which clears in front of them and closes behind them, and the Man, step by step, is forced to look upon things that make his soul sick. Into his clean-scraped mind come memories of things recollected, recollections of emotions; lurid, abominable images of himself. “This was not me—this could not possibly have been me!” he cries, weeping.

“Oh, son,” says the Doctor; and the Man, throwing himself backwards in a blind panic, finds that the light touch of the surgically-scoured hand in the old-fashioned starched cuff stops him like a stone wall.

He must go on. And he knows that as he goes on the Scroll will reveal more loathsome things. He tries to run away again, one bitterly cold evening, when, passing through a sad little town, a fog comes down upon them. He runs blindly … and when the fog drifts away at dawn he is back where he started, and the Doctor is saying: “Just in time, old friend. Let us be on our way.”

And the Scroll unrolls until it is no thicker than a pencil; and the Man is appalled by the monstrousness of himself. He is sick with loathing when he looks at himself. He hates himself so bitterly that he wants to take himself by the throat and murder himself—hang himself as the vilest of men, bury himself deep in a lonely place, shovel dirt upon himself, let the coarse moorland grass grow over himself so that he may be forever forgotten.

“If this was me—my God, how I’d despise myself! I would not have such a man in the same room with me,” he says.

“This was you, brother,” says the Doctor. “Come on, son. We have not all the time in the world, friend. Forward, comrade.”

The Man looks at the clouded radiance that comes before the blaze of pitiless black-and-white light-and-shadow ahead. He looks back at the thick woolly mist and yearns towards it as a man dying of cold yearns towards a blanket. But he bows his head and goes on with the Doctor; the last curl of the Scroll is smoothed out and flattened down and, in clear black and cold white, shocked like a man caught unawares by a photographer’s flash, the Man is revealed to himself.

He is where he started. Now he remembers. He is Oliver Rudge, blackmailer and embezzler.

“Give me back my belt,” he says. The Doctor gives him his belt. They are standing in the blue light of a lamp outside a police station. The Man asks: “What was I, for God’s sake? A devil?”

“Yes, my son, you were a devil, and you were also a soul in torment.”

“But it was like looking at a peep-show of Hell.”

“Of purgatory,” says the Doctor.

The Man smiles. He says good-bye, gripping the Doctor’s hand … And then he finds that he is holding nothing but a handful of mist. But he walks firmly under the lamp, up the three wet stone steps, past the big middle-aged policeman at the door, and goes to the inspector’s desk. He puts down the canvas bag and says: “I am Oliver Rudge.” … And so, at peace with himself, he goes down a cold stairway. The light from the naked bulb catches his dishevelled hair, which, beaded with moisture from the mist, looks for a moment like a halo. Radiant, he goes into his cell and the iron door closes.

*

A story like that, thought Pym, could involve all mankind. It could—it should—be a stupendous thing, with a background as long as the horizon and as wide as the sky.

And that would give her something to think about.

Pym remembered certain early experiments in elementary inorganic chemistry. Potassium chlorate, heated in a test-tube, gave out oxygen. You put a little potassium chlorate in the tube and heated it. When it began to melt you thrust a smouldering splinter into the mouth of the tube. The splinter, somewhat reluctantly, became incandescent and caught fire. But if you mixed a little black oxide of manganese with your potassium chlorate the oxygen was liberated in a great gasp and the glowing splinter popped into blinding flame. Yet analysis demonstrated that the black oxide of manganese was unchanged, although in some mysterious way it hastened and intensified the comparatively sluggish reaction of the other chemical.

Joanna Bowman had provided the black pinch of catalytic anger, and Pym was alight.

He would wring a little grudging admiration from that intolerable woman if he burnt to ashes in the attempt.

It was too late to go to bed: day would break in an hour. Pym sharpened a pencil and began to make notes.

At nine o’clock he went out and called upon an estate agent near Piccadilly, who told him that there was a furnished flat in Battersea—a bed-sitting-room, kitchenette and bathroom—to let at thirty-five shillings a week.

“I can give you an order to view——”

“—It doesn’t matter. You say there’s a bed-sitting-room? A kitchenette and a bath? The place, you tell me, is furnished?”

“Oh, yes. Plate and linen.”

“Thirty-five shillings a week you say? How do I pay it?”

“Monthly.”

“That would be seven pounds a month.”

“That’s right, sir: payable in advance.”

Pym put down seven pounds and said: “Well, all right, I’ll take it.”

“Don’t you think you’d better look at it first?”

“No need at all. When can I move in?”

“Whenever you like.”

“In that case, I’ll move in to-night.”

“There are certain formalities. It is customary to take up references….”

“Well, if you want references there’s Mr. Steeple, Features Editor of the Sunday Special, and Mr. Proudfoot, a director of Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling & Company. Will they be sufficient?’

“Quite sufficient.”

“Well, look. Here’s the month’s rent, and I’ll ring you a little later in the day. They have pots, pans, and all that sort of thing?”

“I think so, yes. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather view the place first?”

“No,” said Pym, “I’m prepared to take your word for it. If you say it’s all right, that’s all right. What do I do? Do I give you the money now?”

“Thank you, sir,” said the estate agent, “I think it would be just as well, if you don’t mind. But really, hadn’t you better have a look at it?”

“No need, no need. A place is a place,” said Pym. “Go ahead.”

“There’s likely to be a delay of two or three days, you know, while we take up references. I suppose that’s all right?”

“Oh, quite all right. You get in touch with me, I suppose. Pym. P-Y-M, care of Steeple, the Sunday Special. And my address will be 35, Leopold Crescent, Battersea—is that right?”

The agent was uneasy. He said: “You mustn’t blame me if it doesn’t quite suit, sir.”

“I’ll blame nobody,” said Pym. “I’ve no time to bother.”

“Very good, sir.”

As the door closed behind Pym the agent telephoned Steeple at the Sunday Special. Steeple said: “Mr. Pym? Don’t worry about him. He’s all right.”

Proudfoot said: “My dear sir, I have not the slightest hesitation in assuring you that Mr. Pym is in every way a thoughly desirable tenant. I have known him since his infancy. You need have no hesitation in recommending him strongly to your client.”

They both knew that this kind of reference left them free of obligation. It cost nothing, and made them feel good.

*

Pym took Dr. Weissensee’s typescript out of his wardrobe and walked slowly to Proudfoot’s office. At the corner of the street he paused, smoked a cigarette, and walked away again. He drank three cups of coffee before he found courage to go on, and then he threw himself rather than walked into Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling & Co. and said to Joanna Bowman:

“I want to see Proudfoot.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Pym, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait,” she said. “Mr. Proudfoot is engaged.”

“Oh, I see. Engaged. Engaged for long?”

“I couldn’t say. Mr. Proudfoot is with a lady.”

“I wonder if you would mind telling Mr. Proudfoot that I am here?” said Pym.

“Not at all.”

She opened a door and disappeared; opened it again, came back, and said: “Would you like to go in?”

“Oh, by the way,” said Pym, “it begins to occur to me that I am by way of falling in love with you. What do you say to that?”

“Pym, don’t be stupid—go in.”

Pym went into Proudfoot’s office. Dr. Weissensee was there, and she looked old and unhappy.

“Well, my dear fellow?” said Proudfoot.

After a pause Pym said: “Proudfoot. I’m sorry, but no. No, Proudfoot, I can’t do it. I don’t like it, and I can’t do it. You’ve got to forgive me, Proudfoot, but it isn’t possible.”

“My dear fellow, my dear Pym; I beg your pardon—what isn’t possible? What can’t you do?”

Pym pointed to the folder under his arm and said: “This.”

“Do I understand that you cannot put Dr. Weissensee’s opus into clear English?”

“You must excuse me, Proudfoot, but I can’t.”

“But why not?”

Pym looked at Dr. Weissensee, and he looked at Proudfoot, and shrugged his shoulders and said: “I’m sorry, Proudfoot.”

“Let us go into this,” said Proudfoot.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

HE put his brand new respectable black elbows on the edge of the brand new desk, and carefully placed the fingertips of his right hand on the fingertips of his left until he had made a little triangle. Pym observed two things: Proudfoot had been manicured; and Proudfoot had already taken three or four strong drinks.

Proudfoot saw that Pym was nervous, anxious and miserable. Very deliberately Proudfoot waited, looking at him patiently, but reproachfully. Nearly half a minute passed while he shook his head very sadly, sighed, and assumed the dejected air of a man whose last illusion has been blown away, and who cannot even try to put on a bold front. His mouth drooped, his face sagged; his forehead broke itself into furrows as his eyebrows went up over his nose and down at the corners of his eyes. “I was relying on you, Johnny,” he said. “I’m very sorry indeed to hear you talk like this, old friend. A good deal depends on you, you see. In point of fact, my dear fellow, a great deal depends on you, now, as far as I am concerned. You see, Johnny, Mr. Sherwood has some little faith in me, and that faith is partly founded on assurances which, in their turn, had their foundation in the faith I had in you. Sic transit gloria mundi! Poor me. How strange it is,” said Proudfoot, with a broken laugh, “how strange it is! Like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods—they slay us for their sport. Yes, Johnny, leg by leg and wing by wing they pull us to pieces. Or you might say that as mice to tired cats are we to Fate. It plays with us—it lets us go only to catch us again. Ah, Johnny Pym, Johnny Pym! Did you ever read a story by Joras Karl Huysmans, a story entitled The Torture of Hope? It is a very good story—horrible, but very good. One day, when you have time, you must read it.”

“I’ve read it,” said Pym heavily.

“You remember, then,” said Proudfoot.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Pym.

“Never mind, Johnny. Forget it. Banish it from your mind. We are still good friends, I hope?”

“My dear Proudfoot, try and understand this little thing. You understand so much. Understand this. I can’t rewrite this book for you. It’s a filthy book. I hate it. I couldn’t look myself in the face again if I did what you wanted me to do. Anything but that, yes. But I simply can’t help you to put that book out.”

He had forgotten that Dr. Weissensee was in the office. She rose, buzzing like a blow-fly, and said: “Vat do you mean, please? Tell me, vat is it that you are saying?”

Before Pym could reply, Proudfoot said: “Oh, nothing, nothing, Doctor. For the moment Mr. Pym does not altogether approve of your book.”

“Book? Book? It is more than a book. These are facts, of life the facts! You too! It is truth you do not like, murderer!”

“Put it that way if you like,” said Pym.

Turning to Proudfoot Dr. Weissensee screamed: “Liar! You tell me this is a good man! Liar! Thief! You make conspiracy vid this one, yes? So. So it is. But you shall not! I vill not! I——”

“Dr. Weissensee,” said Pym, “please try and understand me also. You’re a psychologist, and you surely must be able to understand.”

“I understand that you are laughing at me.”

Pym said: “Listen, Dr. Weissensee. If I don’t want to rewrite your book, why should I? I am a free man, and this is a free country. You must understand that surely?”

“Now you laugh at me. Free, free, free, free, free! To me, you say free! To me, I should have liberated, made free, gone into exile! Me who give myself for freedom—for this.” She beat her hands on the folder that contained her typescript. “And this, my last hope! I am old, I am not vell. I have a little malignant growth down here and this little boy, he makes vid a finger at the vork of my life, and he laughs at me. Let me die.”

Proudfoot’s face was rigid but his eyes were flickering like voltmeters. He said nothing. Pym continued: “I can’t rewrite your book myself. I’m not capable. If I can’t I can’t, Dr. Weissensee.” He spoke firmly, but when he saw a tear upon the preposterous little woman’s ugly face his will wobbled like a broken chair, and he went on: “But if you like I’ll find someone else for you who will write it much better than I could.”

Now Proudfoot cleared his throat and said:

“Pardon my obtuseness, my dear fellow, but I do not quite see what the Germans call the Inwardness of your morality. Let us take a hypothetical case. Let us assume for a moment that I am … let us say a physician and surgeon. You, let us say, are a young woman who has got into trouble and happens to be pregnant. You say to me: ‘It is out of the question for me to bear the child of this unknown father because my papa is the Archbishop of Kent and my mother is the daughter of the Bishop of Chelsea. Will you be so good as to procure me an abortion?’ And I say: ‘My dear Miss Muffet, in no circumstances will I abort you. Abortion is evil. I disapprove profoundly of abortion, which I regard as a species of murder—in short, a criminal act. I would cut my hand off before putting it to such an improper use. I will not do what you ask me to do because what you ask me to do is utterly detestable to me. The very thought of it repels me. I am sorry for you, but my word stands. I disapprove of abortion on principle. But go next door to Dr. So-and-So, and give him my card, and he will do whatever you ask, at a cut price.’ My dear fellow, what an extraordinary fellow you are!”

Pym bit his lip and said nothing. Proudfoot continued:

“Johnny, I don’t know why it is but I love you like a son—and, as you know, I admire you as a master. If I had your gift of language I’d be able to make myself tolerably clear. Here is a job that is going to be done. Whatever you say or do this scientific work of Dr. Weissensee will be put into decent English and published by Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling & Co. My partners and I, together with some of the best-respected scientific thinkers in the world, consider Dr. Weissensee’s work to be a genuine contribution to Science. It will not be available, I may say, to every adolescent that pokes his, her, or its nose into a book shop. It will be published in a limited edition, carefully sealed, at three guineas a copy. It will be carefully and conspicuously marked as being published for serious students of psychology only. There will be no attractive presentation—the readers of Dr. Weissensee’s work, Geschlechtiche Verirrungen Im Verhaeltnis Zur Kunst Im Lauf Der Zeit Einschliesslich Spezial Faelle In Der Zeit Zwischen 1675 Und 1935 Mit Einer Bemerkung Ueber Auto-Erotik, will read it as a textbook, and not as casual reading matter. But—I beg pardon. This is beside the point. Some of the deepest thinkers, some of the most far-reaching intellects in the world, approve strongly. You, however, disapprove of this book. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“You disapprove strongly, I take it?”

“I’m afraid I do, Proudfoot,” said Pym.

“How strange, how passing strange!” said Proudfoot, smiling and shaking his head. “I thought I knew a little of men until I met you, Johnny. And now I know that the more I know, the less I know. Disapproving as you do, you are prepared to hand the rewriting of Dr. Weissensee’s work over to someone else who, you assure me, will rewrite it more effectively than you could. In other words, you are prepared to give your blessing and your support to that which you hate and despise—provided you are not called upon directly to touch it with your fastidious fingers. Well, well, well! My dear fellow!”

Pym said: “Proudfoot, I feel indebted to you. I can assure you that I say ‘Well, well, well’ also. If you were a stranger I’d simply walkout of the office. But you’ve been good to me. You keep telling me this thing is important to you. If you’re a publisher you must have a list—there must be other books——”

“—But this is a book of the first importance,” said Proudfoot.

“—I told you once before,” said Pym, in agony, “I’m soft. I absolutely must pay back a good turn. I don’t like the book, Proudfoot. I do hate it, Dr. Weissensee. I’m sorry to have to say so to your face, but I do. But there it is. Proudfoot, you tell me it will come out in any case. All right. I’m not going to touch it myself. If I introduce you to someone who will, won’t that acquit me?”

Proudfoot moved his hands as if he were playing inaudible five-finger exercises in the air, and said: “I don’t think you quite understand, my dear fellow. You are the man who can put this book into clean English, pure and clean English. You’re a faithful writer with a highly developed conscience. You can retain the doctor’s factual material and still keep the book clean. We have no objection whatsoever to your adding footnotes and chapter indices, or even commentaries. I believe, Johnny, that you alone can make this scientific work acceptable to the English-speaking people. And still you want to give it to a hack writer to write.”

“I’m sorry, Proudfoot: I really don’t want to write it,” said Pym. “For instance: haven’t you ever come across a brief you’d rather not have taken?”

“No,” said Proudfoot. “No, never. The harder the game the better. I, my dear fellow, am a lawyer—I am Rhadamanthus—I am impartial—I hold the scales. I defend, and I prosecute, according to the weights in the pan on my left hand or my right hand. I kill or I cure, I hang or I revive, strictly in accordance with the evidence.”

“I live, Proudfoot, according to my instincts. Honest to God, I can’t write your book.”

“Yet you will let it be written?”

“Yes. For you, Proudfoot, yes—let it be written. But not by me.”

“I cannot begin to see how you, Johnny, reconcile this with your delicate conscience.”

“No more can I, Proudfoot. But you’re my very good friend. Meanwhile, now that I come to think of it, here is a five-pound note I owe you.”

Pym put a five-pound note on the desk. Proudfoot looked at it, saw that it was new, and said: “Ah. Oh-oh! I see, I see! You have come into money, is that it?”

“It isn’t that at all.”

“Ah well, there it is. You’ve come into money. If you could have brought yourself to say so before, everything might have been simpler: you would have saved my time and yours. Don’t trouble to give me the address of your friend. I daresay we’ll manage. Now let me congratulate you on your good fortune and bid you good day. This——” said Proudfoot, touching the five-pound note with a fingertip—“this is yours. You were so good as to lend it to me. But let there be no ill feeling….”

Proudfoot took a bottle and two glasses out of a cupboard in his desk and said: “Will you, at least, have a farewell drink with me? I believe, Johnny, that we have been very good friends in our time?”

“By all means,” said Pym. “—No, no, much smaller than that, Proudfoot, please!”

Proudfoot had half-filled a tumbler. He pulled it to his side of the desk and poured half an inch of brandy for Pym. They drank. Proudfoot swallowed his drink like medicine, blew his nose into a fine linen handkerchief, and said, with a curious shudder: “We’ll leave this book in abeyance, Johnny. It’s far too important a work to scamp. Think it over carefully, my dear fellow. Think it over for a week, a month, two months if necessary.”

“All right,” said Pym, “let’s leave it at that.”

“God bless you, then,” said Proudfoot. “Will you have lunch with me to-morrow?”

“I’d love to, but I shall be working terribly hard from now on,” said Pym. “By the way, my new address is 35, Leopold Crescent, Battersea. I’ve taken a little flat. From now on I shall be working like stink on a book. Yes, I shall be working like hell.”

*

Dr. Weissensee rushed out of the office spitting and hissing “Persecution! Persecution! Persecution!” and Sherwood arrived, smoking a pipe and wearing a studiously unconventional suit of dark grey flannel with a yellow waistcoat. He was carrying an ashplant and a portfolio, and somehow the ashplant made him look like an up-and-coming energetic young publisher with plenty of nerve and an inexhaustible supply of good ideas. Proudfoot looked at him with approval and said: “God knows how you do it. You could have made a fortune on the stage, my dear fellow.”

“Well, how goes it?”

Now Thomas Paine Sherwood spoke in a hurried undertone—in the quick, quiet voice of a man accustomed to saying a great deal as quickly and quietly as possible in public lavatories, prison corridors, and hotel lobbies. Proudfoot said:

“Very well indeed. Auto-Erotism In The Female has gone to press. So has Sex Life In Renaissance Italy, and The Forbidden Frescoes At Pompeii. We ought to have Gee’s Secret Rites of the Asmodeists and Women and Satan in proof next week. I am having a little trouble with our young friend Pym. He has some qualms about rewriting Dr. Weissensee’s book.”

“For that matter, so have I.”

“My dear fellow, you need have none at all. I give you my word of honour, we’ll get away with it.”

“If you say so, all right. But look here, Proudfoot, who the hell cares whether this pipsqueak does it or not? You can find a hack in any pub in Fleet Street. Why waste time running after this one?”

Proudfoot looked at him with pity and said: “You are a very clever fellow, my friend, but not quite clever enough. This isn’t one of those smash-and-grab, snatch-and-run affairs. An average hack is just what we do not want. This young man is a real writer, a brilliant writer. Only by turning that stinking muck into literature can we get away with it. You will be guided by me in this, my dear fellow. Do you hear? You will do as I say. Have you ever known me to fail?”

“Once,” said Sherwood, with a grin.

“Have I ever failed you?”

“Have it your way,” said Sherwood, “I still think you know more tricks than a wagonload of foxes.”

“I know more tricks, my dear fellow, than ten wagonloads of foxes. I know the law as few men on this earth have ever known it. Be guided by me and we’ll make tens of thousands—legitimately at that. Don’t worry. Pym will do as I tell him to do. I’ve got him like this,” said Proudfoot, squeezing an empty matchbox with such force that it broke in his hand. “Mark my words. Have a drink.”

“Isn’t it a bit early to start knocking it back as hard as this?” asked Sherwood.

“Yes, my dear fellow, it is a bit early. But you know me, I believe. Drunk or sober, have you ever come across any man born of woman whom I couldn’t handle?”

“All the same, it might be a good idea to go easy on that stuff just for a bit, just until we get started, don’t you think?”

“As you say, my dear fellow, it might be a good idea in general. I should advise anyone else to take your hint. But I am so constituted that this stuff has not the slightest effect on me. In fact, since you drag the subject up, it clarifies my mind. So if you won’t, I will. Your very good health!”

Sherwood watched his partner as he threw back his head, gulped his drink, and put down his glass noisily with a lordly gesture; and he thought: I’m not so sure about that “clarifying” part. He clarified himself just a little bit too bloody much with that stuff, once upon a time … And so did I. But he said nothing. He was still convinced that Proudfoot was one of the three greatest men of the age. The other two were Ivar Kreuger and Thomas Paine Sherwood, both of whom, like Proudfoot, had been the victims of malignant fate. He also had a great respect for Alphonse Capone but regretted that that public character had recourse to violence, which he detested. Incidentally, if Sherwood had had the choice of a wife he would have chosen Lily Langtry, and if, in lawful wedlock with the Jersey Lily, he had begotten a son, he would have wanted him to be a great master of words, like Roget, whose Thesaurus he had learned by heart in jail.

“I’ll have one too, just a small one,” he said.

*

Pym hurried away to Battersea to look at his new home. There was a stuffed sofa upon which masterpieces might be conceived, and two easy-chairs to match, in which one might lie back and talk about them; a little oak table upon which masterpieces might be written, and a big divan upon which a toil-worn master might sleep and dream of masterpieces. The lavatory was good enough for Shakespeare. The bath was a better bath than Chaucer ever had. There was a Dickensian quality in the gas stove. In the kitchen cupboard the previous tenants had left the best part of a packet of salt, a good tablespoonful of tea in a tin box painted with Chinese landscapes, and three quarters of a packet of pepper; part of a jar of mustard pickles, only slightly mildewed, and a small quantity of perfectly good Worcester sauce in a bottle. There were knives, forks, spoons, three tin-openers, and one of those little steel trestles upon which our fathers used to rest the great two-pronged forks with which the Sunday joints were carved. Pym found six glasses, all different; four cups, eight saucers, nine plates of interestingly odd shapes and sizes, a big brown teapot, and a little blue teapot-lid. There were fifteen ashtrays printed with brewers’ and distillers’ advertising matter—a collector had lived here, a collector and a humorist, for on the bathroom wall just above the fixture that was supposed to hold the toilet paper, he had fixed a little sign which he must have unscrewed from a railway compartment. It said: To stop the train pull chain downwards. Penalty for improper use £5. He must have been a brave man to help himself to a thing like that; and a resourceful man too, for he had made a bookcase out of an orange box, tastefully painted red. The flat was full of delightful surprises. In the bathroom cabinet, which was of white painted metal blotched with rust, there were thirty-two used razor blades, with which Dostoevsky himself might have sharpened pencils; three aspirin tablets in a perfectly good bottle, admirably designed to fit the waistcoat pocket; a collapsible tube with at least two good squeezes of shaving cream left in it, and a generous quarter of a bottle of lysol.

Pym chuckled with sheer delight, and went out shopping.

He went to Woolworths, that kindly institution, and a bought a big tin kettle, a set of carving knives, a new frying-pan, some soap, and—he never knew why—an electric torch that went into the breast pocket on a clip like a fountain pen. (Years later he found this in a bootbox full of buttons, nails and unidentifiable bits of metal, and sat for two hours wondering what made him buy it.) He spent a mad quarter of an hour in the nearest grocery shop, spending like a paid-off harpooner in a saloon after a two years’ voyage. He bought pork-and-beans in prodigious quantities, sardines, anchovies, tinned milk in case of emergency, orange juice in case of thirst, tinned strawberries, strawberry jam, strawberry jelly, strawberry blancmange, tinned steak-and-kidney pudding, boxes of cheese, tinned plum pudding, a tin of paté de foie gras, coffee packed in an airtight tin, four tins of pineapple chunks, two tins of pineapple rings, a tin of crushed pineapple, a tin of pineapple juice; six tins of corned beef, three tins of stewed beef, two tins of spiced beef, on tin of devilled beef and a bottle of Beefo. As an afterthought he added a pound of sausages, a pound of butter, a pound of tea, and a pound of cooking fat. Then, on his way out, he stopped and spun round like a man shot between the eyes, ran back and ordered six tins of herrings in tomato sauce, three tins of herrings in mustard sauce, two tins of Norwegian brisling, and a bottle of anchovy sauce. Even then he was not satisfied, for, looking into the window—he could not tear himself free from this fascinating shop—he saw a display of tinned soup. Having ordered six tomato, four bouillon (no, make it five), three mulligatawny, two mock turtle, two chicken and one beef broth, he stopped out of shame; but hesitated again and said: “Oh, and three of those tins of marrow-fat green peas … and if you don’t mind, I want this delivered immediately, in about ten minutes.”

“Deliver it about six this evening if you like, sir.”

“That’ll be fine. Oh, and you’d better let me have two tins of spinach. That’ll be all, I think.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Oh, yes, how silly of me! I better have a pound of that bacon.”

“Ham, sir?”

“I suppose I’d better have a pound of ham. Oh-oh, yes—and a pound of sugar,” said Pym, “and now that really is the lot.”

Ten seconds later he returned, blushing, and said: “I forgot. A pound of bread—I mean, a big loaf of bread, one of those large loaves over there. Oh, by the by, is that cake any good? Better send a pound. Ah, yes, I see you have beer. Will you send me one of those quarts? No, better make it six.”

It occurred to Pym that he was a man with a flat, now, and people might turn up. It was a good thing to have something in the house to offer people when they turned up, he thought, as he went to Busto’s for his typewriter.

*

“Busto,” said Pym, “before I go I want to tell you that of all the unmitigated old bastards on the face of the earth, you just about take the cake.”

“You tellin’ me?” said Busto. “Keep it! I ’eard-a it before.”

“Often, I bet,” said Pym.

“Sure. I care what you think? You think a-what you like, I think a-what I like for you. I don’t care. You go to ’ell your way, I go to ’ell my way. Okay?”

Pym said: “All the same, Busto, one can’t help somehow liking you—you’re such an unmitigated bastard; you’re such a thorough-going, hundred per cent, undiluted, dyed-in-the-wool, yard-wide, intransigent bastard. You’re such a cast-iron bastard. One knows where one is with you. You’re a bastard with no nonsense about you.”

Pym was drunk with joy. Busto looked at him without emotion and said: “Sure. Okay.”

“And d’you know what? If the pubs were open I’d ask you to come out and have a drink with me.”

“I give you a drink,” said Busto.

Pym was shocked into silence. Busto, impatiently tapping the floor of the passage with one of his shapeless feet said: “You wanna drink?”

Pym nodded. Busto nodded too, and beckoned. They went downstairs into the basement. Busto thrust a cracked teacup into Pym’s hands and filled it with something from a bottle. “Drink,” he said.

“And you?” asked Pym.

Busto made a gesture with the bottle, put the neck of it to his lips, swallowed noisily two or three times, sighed, and said: “Cheerio.”

Pym emptied his cup, holding his breath.

“Whasa matter? Wine,” said Busto.

“Thank you, that was very good indeed,” said Pym, retching and gasping.

“Where you goin’?”

“I’m going to live in Battersea. I have a self-contained flat.”

“You come into-a money?”

“I’m settling down to do some work.”

“Writin’ alwiz?”

“Always writing.”

Busto looked at Pym for several seconds; then he distorted his face so that he seemed to be smiling and said: “I tell you: you’ll a-be back. I’m a bastard? Okay. You’ra bloody fool. You’ll a-be back. What for you writin’? What you make? What you do? Where you get? Don’ be silly. Give it up, cut it out. Don’ be silly.”

“It’s always a pleasure to see you,” said Pym, “but what with one thing and another I hope I’m saying good-bye and not au revoir. Here’s my address in case of letters. Good-bye, Busto.”

“A rivederci,” said Busto.

Then Pym went to Battersea, and spent nearly an hour placing his typewriter in a certain position, and arranging the chair upon which he proposed to sit and work. The groceries came and he made a great display of the tin cans in the kitchen. This display was so beautiful that he could not leave it. He played. On walls of tinned fruit he built battlements of bully beef. He boiled a kettle, made tea, and ate cold steak-and-kidney pudding out of a tin, lying on the sofa in front of the gas fire.

He had never before had two rooms, a kitchen, and a lavatory all to himself.

Now was the time to work.

He put a sheet of paper into the typewriter, lit a cigarette, and settled himself. He adjusted the margin with the meticulosity of a biologist with a microscope, and began:

The …

Two hours later he was still sitting at the little oak table, with five sheets of paper torn out and thrown on the floor between his feet. There lay The, on top of an In spite of. There was an Although, a Notwithstanding, and an As he walked … The house sounded empty. The typewriter made too much noise. The table vibrated, the vibrations went into the floor, and the rafters drummed out a, pas de charge at the end of every sentence. Pym felt something of the terror that overtakes the forester on a lonely plain. He went into the kitchen and decided that he did not love it now as he had loved it at first sight. The lavatory worked or did not work as the mood took it. He opened a tin of strawberries. They were pulpy, insipid, and soaked in thin syrup; a mass of pips and purple mud. He poured the rest of them into the lavatory and pulled the chain. Somewhere in the bowels of the house something groaned; a pipe made a sucking noise, and the pan regurgitated a wad of newspaper upon which, still legible, was printed an advertisement for washing powder. Pym pulled the chain again. Sweating and shaking he watched, while strawberries and syrup, water and paper and excrement rose up and up. He rushed into the kitchen, picked up a saucepan and returned in a panic. The tide was still rising. He turned back his shirt-sleeves and waited. From an incalculable distance came a gurgle and a groan. The water receded, Pym pulled the chain again and everything disappeared. He smoked a cigarette before he went back and he pulled the chain quickly and sidestepped, half expecting that something horrible, something very old, would leap up to disgust him. But nothing happened. The cistern tinkled like a cistern in a Persian poem, and the water at the stained mouth of the outlet was crystal clear.

Pym said: “Ah!” He went to the bedroom, undressed, and returned with a book and a cigarette. Having finished the cigarette he put out a hand, fumbled found nothing, and groaned like a damned soul.

He had remembered everything but toilet paper. The book was only a sixpenny book with advertising matter at the back. All the same, Pym did not like to mutilate books. He went to bed in a bad temper. One of the springs of the divan had grown loose—it protruded from the middle of the mattress. Pym rolled away from it and slept. Later, when the night was darkest, he awoke with a pain in the side. Another spring had come up to meet him. Exploring the bed with his hand he found that it was full of wayward springs. He remembered that he had forgotten to buy a clock. There was no moon. He wished he had never been born. In the morning, when he awoke, looking about him, Pym was convinced that he had talked himself into renting the most detestable flat that man had abandoned since all the sons of God shouted for joy.

He took the half-filled packet of damp salt out of the kitchen cupboard and hurled it out of the window, and he rolled his five rejected sheets of paper into a tight ball and threw that away too—into the lavatory, where, he felt, it belonged. Later he had to dig that ball out with his bare hands.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A FEW days later, anxious for a pretext to leave his barren work-table in that sickening, that utterly hateful flat, Pym went out and telephoned Rocky Gagan. He said: “I’m sorry to disturb you so early”—it was ten o’clock in the morning—“but in case anything materialised in the matter of that little play I thought it might be best to let you know about a change of address.”

But before he could spell out his new address Rocky shouted: “You lucky old so-and-so! Give me the address of your astrologer, Johnny, old boy old boy old boy! Tell me where I can find one of those lucky stars you got yourself born under! Ah, Johnny, you old fox you old fox you old fox!”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“What’s the matter with me? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! D’you hear that, darling? Johnny wants to know what’s the matter with me!”

Pym heard a thin, querulous voice say: “For Christ’s sake stop shouting, you noisy oaf!”

Pym knew that Rocky had clapped one of his heavy, loose hands over the mouthpiece of his telephone, because that great voice, finding its way through an accidental chink between two fingers, sounded like a gramophone playing through a blanket. It said:

“Oh, shut up!” Then the hand was lifted from the mouthpiece and Rocky Gagan roared into it: “Why, Johnny, old boy  old boy—you old wolf, you! You old red fox! There you are  with the option money still in your pocket, and here we are …  sorry, darling, here Sissy is taking up the option. And you  know what that means to you, don’t you, Johnny?”

“You mean to say you’ve decided to put the play on, is that it?”

Sissy Voltaire’s distant voice said: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, idiot—tell the man to come and talk about it at a civilised hour, for Christ’s sake!

Rocky said: “I tell you what. Look here, Johnny, come around at …” There was a muffled noise. “… Could you manage to come around about half past eleven?”

“Quarter to twelve, lunatic!” said Sissy Voltaire in the distance.

“About quarter to twelve,” said Pym.

“Call it ten to, and be on the safe side … Excuse me a moment….”

A quick hand rang off. Pym could see the flat near Park Lane. There was Rocky, naked, and Sissy Voltaire dressed only in slippers. There was a breakfast table elegantly laid but ignored. Only the coffee cups had been used. Under shining silver domes fried eggs were becoming flaccid and cold, bacon was going limp, and toast was already hard and cold. Two or three sectors had been picked out of a split grapefruit, in which a spoon was still embedded. This was a well prepared grapefruit with a cherry in the middle. The cherry had fallen into the spoon, which was full of pale juice and crystallised sugar. Sissy Voltaire was on her way to the bathroom to bathe and paint herself and compose herself to graciousness. Rocky, smoking a cigarette, stood and watched. He listened. He was waiting for the click of the bathroom lock, and for certain other sounds that satisfied him that she was sitting still for a few minutes. Nodding his big head Rocky crept to the table and swallowed three of the eggs, four rashers of bacon, a piece of toast, and the contents of one of the milk jugs—all in forty seconds—replacing the domed covers in a circular, hovering way, so as to make no noise. For Sissy Voltaire hated people who ate heartily in the morning.

*

At ten minutes to twelve Sissy Voltaire said to Pym: “Darling, I do hope you will forgive my beloved oaf here. He has talent, you know, darling. I shouldn’t be surprised if he had genius. But—oh God!—Johnny dear, poor Rocky’s had such a rotten time of it. I do so want you to understand. He’s had such a filthy time of it … hanging about dirty little Hippodromes and Empires, and filthy little provincial places. He’s had to struggle so hard, you see, Johnny, my love, and he doesn’t quite, as yet, belong to our sort of people. I do so very much want to make something of him. Even if I didn’t happen to love him, I’d still want to do something for Rocky. He’s so naïve. He’s such a helpless idiot. He relies on me for everything, every penny. And this play of yours ——”

“—Not mine, madam, as I’ve already told you.”

“Well then, this play—this play then. It happens to be perfect for poor Rocky, and I don’t mind toying with it myself, if only for poor Rocky’s sake.”

There was a broken saucer near the door and a broken cup by the window.

“So, Johnny darling, your option is taken up.”

“What does that mean?” asked Pym.

Rocky shouted: “Why, Johnny, you old fox you old fox—as if you didn’t know, Johnny, old son—you get a hundred pounds down and five per cent of the proceeds. And that means to say that as long as the play runs you can’t possibly draw less than fifty pounds a week. You see we—that is to say Sissy—Sissy’s got the Pegasus Theatre. Whaddaya think of that, Johnny boy, eh? The Pegasus! The Pega-blood-sus! If we only take a thousand a week you’re on a nice steady fifty, fifty-pound note every week. Two thousand gets you a hundred a week, Johnny, old son old son old son! Three thousand——”

Sissy Voltaire said: “You notice, Johnny darling, how generous my poor idiot is with other people’s money. Shut up, fool!”

“Did I say something wrong?” asked Rocky, with one foot in the air. He had started to dance. Sissy Voltaire’s voice stopped him as the crack of a whip stops a half-trained pup. He was beautifully dressed, now, in bottle-green hopsack, cut to emphasise the bigness of his chest and the littleness of his hips. Aware of the menace in Sissy Voltaire’s voice, glancing from the broken cup to the shattered saucer, Pym—tactfully, as he thought—said: “I like your suit, Rocky. Where did you get it?”

‘This suit of clothes, old man, come from Penhaligon in Savile Row. Look at that lining——”

“Oh Christ, what a vulgar beast it is! Yes,” said Sissy Voltaire, “look at the lining by all means, Johnny darling. He wanted a yellow suit with red stripes. Have you ever heard anything like it in all your life? But, yellow! And red stripes, Johnny darling—but red! Dear Rocky, he can’t ever forget that he isn’t saying: ‘Who was that lady I saw you with last night?… That was no lady that was my grandmother’ at the Barking Palace. He needs watching, don’t you, darling? I have to do every little thing for him—he’s just like a little baby, or a savage … aren’t you, little Lillybums? I daren’t let him out of my sight.”

Blinking uncertainly at Pym, Rocky said: “It’s a fact, Johnny, old boy. I don’t know what I’d do without Sissy. She’s got all the brains and all the taste in this family.”

“But to get back to the play,” said Pym.

Sissy Voltaire waved a hand and went on: “I daresay I should have come around to offering you rather better terms, Johnny, because you’re Rocky’s friend, and I hope you’re going to be my friend too, because I like you. But let it be as Rocky said. It’ll make him happy, the darling. Won’t it, Snuggles? A hundred pounds advance and five per cent. But there are four or five passages, not more than sixty or seventy lines of dialogue, that have got to be rewritten. You said you’d do that, didn’t you, Johnny darling?”

“I’ll do it with pleasure. But always remember that it isn’t my play. I don’t want my name connected with it in any way. It may belong to me as a property, but all credit goes to Mary Greensleeve.”

Rocky roared: “You should worry, you old fox, you! Take the cash in hand, old son old son old son. Once you’ve got a successful play Hollywood’ll jump arse-over-tip to give their shirt off their back for the film rights—ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand——”

“—In which case, of course,” said Sissy Voltaire crisply, “I am entitled to thirty-three and a third per cent. That’s perfectly fair, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” said Pym, as calmly as he could, although he felt his hands shaking. “I’m quite sure that whatever you say is right. Tell me, exactly what do you want me to do?”

“Johnny darling, you have only to sign the agreement, draw your advance, alter those few lines, and sit back and put your royalties in your pocket.”

Pym said: “I’ve done less congenial jobs in my time,” and then he began to laugh.

“All right, then. Rocky, Miss Sweet swore she’d have copies ready by half past twelve. You see, Johnny darling, I had a few copies made, because I had a Thing about this play. Something told me. Rocky, put your hat on, your black hat, and run around to Miss Sweet and pick up two of the copies. You can put those black-stitched kid gloves on, you baby, since you seem to have set your sweet little heart on them, but please, lover, for my sake, not to carry that stick. He went out and bought himself a yellow cane with an ivory skull and cross-bones on top, Johnny—what would you do with a child like that? Hurry, and don’t come back without those copies. Johnny’ll wait.”

Rocky Gagan went out. Pym’s heart was touched: he thought of a kicked mastiff.

*

“Tell me all about Rocky,” said Sissy Voltaire. “You’re such old friends. He likes you so much. I do love true friendship. Tell me all about it.”

“Why, Miss Voltaire——”

“—Unless you call me Sissy I refuse to talk to you.”

“Why, then … Sissy, there isn’t anything much to tell, that I know of. We’re not such intimate old friends as that, you know. Old acquaintances, you might say. Rocky’s a very nice fellow, and more than that I really can’t say.”

“Johnny, come here and look me straight in the eyes while I ask you something,” she said, beckoning.

Pym went and looked her straight in the eyes. “What do you want to ask me?”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“I am.”

“Tell me, hasn’t Rocky been in love with an awful lot of women?”

“I give you my word, I don’t know anything at all about it,” said Pym, “and even if I did know (which I don’t) I couldn’t talk about my friend’s affairs. Could I?”

“Johnny, my darling, you’re nice. I like you. You won’t be disloyal to your old friend—my darling Rocky—but you’re taking the nicest way you know to tell me that he’s been in love with lots and lots of women. Thank you, Johnny darling—I appreciate that. Oh, but I do, I do!”

“I tell you,” said Pym, cold with anger, “I tell you once and for all that I don’t know anything at all about his private affairs. I wasn’t his intimate friend.”

“So he lied to me then. He told me you were his best friend.”

“Oh, Miss Voltaire, Miss Voltaire! Don’t you understand the way people talk? Rocky’s just a big exuberant sort of baby. I really believe he thinks everybody’s his best friend. Surely, Miss … surely, Sissy, you understand people well enough to understand that? When Rocky calls me his best friend it means no more than when (for instance) you call me your darling Johnny. It’s a way of talking.”

“Oh, I see. You think I go around dearing-and-darlinging every Tom, Dick and Harry. That’s your opinion of me, is it? I’m sorry to hear it. Yes,” said Sissy Voltaire bitterly, “oh yes, that’s the way things go. You see me here, living in what your nonconformist conscience would call Sin, with poor Rocky. But he’s more like a son to me than anything else, Johnny darling. Ah, you see? It slipped out. I’ll take it back. Mister John Pym. I’ll remember that. Mr. John Pym, I’m a lonely, ugly old woman.”

“You are a very beautiful woman,” said Pym.

“One of the reasons why I took a liking to you, Mr. John Pym, was that you looked so bloody honest. You know, I don’t meet many men who strike me as being honest. Now you know, I’m an honest woman.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Are you, Johnny? Are you really? Are you truly and honestly sure? Because I am, you know. Too honest for this rotten world. Tell me, when did you first begin to think that I was honest?”

“I don’t know,” said Pym, looking at the electric clock on the mantelpiece. “I daresay Rocky will be on his way back by now.”

“I don’t think so: I made a mistake; Miss Sweet didn’t promise those copies for twelve-thirty, she promised them for half-past one, and it’s only a quarter to one now. I forgot. So relax. Pour us both a drink. Rocky will wait. I told him to wait.”

Pym brought her a drink. She said: “Sit down and tell me all about yourself. You know, I’ve been thinking about you. Do you have a hard time of it too?”

“No, not very.”

“And tell me now, honestly, did you really and truly love this Greensleeve woman? I don’t know why it is, but I’m almost jealous of her somehow. Johnny darling—I beg your pardon, Mister John Pym—d’you know what? I think … Sit down here, please; I feel so old and lonely this morning … I think your life is the most wonderful kind of life in the world. You do things; you make things, and I admire you for that, Johnny darling. I could kiss you for that.” She kissed him on the forehead, and continued: “But tell me; how do you like my new perfume?”

She presented her red head. Pym sniffed at it and thought of something he had never seen: a private dining-room in a gay restaurant in Moscow in the year 1900, at nine o’clock in the morning, when unwashed cleaners came in to open the curtains and clear away the evidence of an orgy. There was a smell of hot feet, vases of dead lilies into which guests had thrown cigarette butts, alcohol, oranges, armpits, sandalwood, soap, cigars, fish, femininity, spice, stale leather, urine, and incense.

“Magnificent,” he said.

“I’ll tell you what I like about you. You’re good, good and honourable. You tell the truth and shame the devil; and you don’t know what that means to me. Tell me, Mr. John Pym, do I disgust you?”

“Very far from it.”

“As an act of charity, Mr. John Pym, could you bring yourself to kiss an old hag like me?”

Pym kissed her hand.

But then the outer door opened and closed with a bang. With the speed of a quick-change artiste she adjusted her dress sat upright, picked up her glass, crossed her legs, leaped back, and laughed as Rocky Gagan came into the room with two buff-covered typescripts in his hand. Sissy Voltaire said: “Oh, Johnny darling!”

Rocky said: “Here’s the masterpiece. I was reading it again in the taxi, and I cried like a child.”

“Miss Sweet works fast,” said Sissy Voltaire.

“That reminds me: she said you said you wanted this stuff by one-thirty. You said she said twelve-thirty,” said Rocky.

“She said twelve-thirty,” said Sissy Voltaire, stamping a vicious little foot.

“But, darling,” said Rocky, “I mean … what is there to be annoyed about? I mean, darling, she got the stuff ready earlier than she said. Darling, I mean to say, there’s nothing wrong in that.”

Sissy Voltaire picked up a glass cigarette box and Rocky instinctively ducked. But she only took out a cigarette and said: “Very well.”

“How about your lunch?” asked Pym.

“We lunch late. We keep late hours, Johnny darling. We’ve only just had breakfast,” she said. And so they sat on the big sofa, turning over the pages of Mrs. Greensleeve’s play That We May Not Weep. Freshly typed and beautifully bound in blue and buff, it looked impressive and sounded better than before. At last Pym said: “As far as I can see there isn’t a terrible lot for me to do—nothing that I couldn’t do in half a day. It’s merely a matter of scraping off a bit here and smoothing out a bit there. And one or two cuts, I should think. Take, for example, this bit:

There was a time when, as a young girl, I imagined that if I had a home of my own in the country I should be happy. And here I am in a midland slum, in a temporary bed-sitting-room with an iron bedstead and a coke fire within and nothing but fog and darkness outside—knowing that next week I shall be on my way again in a cold third-class carriage to another slum, darker and dirtier even than this—and yet I’m happy. I want the fog and the cold, the little furnished room with the smoky little fire fed with coal at sixpence a scuttle. I want the black tea, skim milk, burned toast and rancid margarine sent up on a cheap tin tray from the kitchen underground, and thrown down by a worn-out charwoman. Because I love you, you see I love you.

Now that, I think,” said Pym, “is a little bit too much of a good thing.”

There were tears in Sissy Voltaire’s eyes as she said: “You’ll leave that alone, you know.” Then she read the passage and, looking up at the end, kissed Rocky on the tip of the nose and called him Lillybums because he was wiping his eyes with his expensive handkerchief. “No, Johnny darling, you’ll leave that alone.”

Pym said: “Just as you say. It isn’t my play: I didn’t write it.”

*

Thus, ten days later, Pym was able with a clear conscience to order two suits and a light overcoat at Redbird & Shipman, late of Savile Row. His credit was good; he had a hundred pounds in the London & Suburban Bank. He paid cash for two pairs of thirty-shilling shoes, six pairs of socks, twelve handkerchiefs, three ties, and half a dozen absorbent cotton male support underpants; and for two new typewriter ribbons, two reams of quarto paper, fifty sheets of carbon paper, five hundred white metal paper clips, and two hundred and fifty brass paper fasteners of assorted sizes. With these clips and fasteners a man might clip and fasten a four-page prose poem or a Boule de Suif. He spent eight-and-sixpence on a looseleaf notebook with attached propelling pencil, in case of inspiration. One never knew. All of a sudden, in a train, in a lavatory, in a restaurant, there might be a stab of dazzling light out of the clouds in the skull, and if there were not pencil and paper to hand a great thought might be lost. This thoughtfully devised notebook and pencil, five and a half inches long by three inches wide, might fit into the pocket of a pyjama suit. Samuel Taylor Coleridge conceived poems in his sleep. If he had not happened to have pencil and paper handy the world might have lost Kubla Khan.

Pym went to the Five Shilling Shop and bought a suit of pyjamas. The cheapest pyjama suit with pockets cost seven-and-sixpence, but he bought it. It was maroon-coloured with grey collars and cuffs, and the notebook fitted the pockets perfectly. Now he found that he had a yearning for stationery. He vacillated ten minutes outside another shop and bought a ream of pink paper, a ream of yellow paper, a gazetteer of the world and an address book bound in artificial leather.

(Seven years later the address book was still almost unused. The gilt on the edges had gone black. The thumb-index looked like dead leaves. He pitied himself, then, for having bought it; but could not part with it. So he placed it next to the gazetteer of the world and left it alone. Looking back, then, he remembered many things that made him want to laugh, and cry.)

That stationer sold everything. Pym bought a copy of Van Gogh’s Bowl of Sunflowers in a pale oak frame and ordered fifty visiting cards. He did not forget to buy four rolls of toilet paper. In every roll there were a thousand leaves, and every leaf was medicated in case of infection. The salesman told Pym that much of the unhappiness of the world came out of unmedicated toilet paper. Some paper was full of sharp fibres, which gave rise to irritability. Other brands melted, so to speak, at a touch. There were degrees, Pym was informed. “Put your tongue to it and see how it takes up the moisture, sir, without losing its toughness.”

“Make it six,” said Pym.

From the tobacconist near where he lived he bought five hundred cigarettes, twelve boxes of red-tipped matches (the sort that strike anywhere), and a bottle of gum; and he ordered The Times, to make a good impression, and the Daily Express, to be delivered every morning.

The newsagent had a public telephone. Pym rang Joanna Bowman. “Come and have tea?” he said.

“If you like.”

“Five o’clock?”

“About five-fifteen, if you like. Where?”

“What about my place?”

“All right, your place if you like. Is it that Battersea address you gave me?”

“Shall I pick you up?”

“No, that’s all right—I’ll find my way. By five-thirty, then.”

“I shall be ever so glad to see you.”

“Five-thirty? Good-bye.”

Pym bought five shillings’ worth of flowers, and a dozen assorted pastries. He went to a crockery shop and selected four cups and saucers, delicately fluted and imprinted with little gold clover leaves. Seeing that there were accessories to match he bought a teapot, a water jug, a slop basin, and—on an afterthought—two egg cups. The shopkeeper had made up the parcel when Pym, with an idiotic smile, picked up a pair of pink-and-white cylindrical vases and said: “These things—how much are they?”

“Do you those three-and-six each, sir.”

“Those. I’ll have those. And this,” he said, delicately lifting a china toast-rack.

“Will that be all, sir?”

“Absolutely.”

“What about a nice tray?” said the salesman, showing Pym a massive tray of pressed iron, stamped with little Japanese girls playing with apples. “This is a snip. Only two left. Do you this one two-and-nine.”

“Oh, all right, do me that one for two-and-nine,” said Pym, humorously, “but don’t show me anything more.”

“Nice nest of ash-trays? Genuine Japanese. Six ash-trays in a nest—two-and-three. Have a nice nest of ash-trays, eh?”

“All right then, a nest of ash-trays.”

While the salesman was making up the parcel he said, with a leer: “Little tantalus?”

“No, thanks ever so much.”

“I always think it’s kind of common to have a bare bottle on the table—like plonking down a sticky jam jar with the label on it, so that everybody can see how much you paid for it. Why don’t you let me do you a pair of cut glass decanters?”

“No, really, thanks all the same.”

“Nice little cruet? Or what about one of those dainty little breakfast sets? Teapot, water jug, milk jug, sugar basin, plate, cup, saucer, butter dish, jam pot, for one—nine pieces, complete with tray, eleven-and-six.”

Pym had a sneaking hope that Joanna might still be with him next breakfast time. “All right, I’ll have one of those.”

On his way home he stopped at a draper’s shop to buy a small tablecloth, and came out with a fancifully scalloped tea cloth and six dainty napkins. Then he spent a tormented half hour in his sitting-room, putting an ash-tray here and an ash-tray there, arranging his flowers in precise geometrical patterns, moving vases, and shaking cushions. Then, remembering that he had no hammer and nail with which to hang up his new picture he ran breathlessly to the ironmonger’s and came back twenty minutes later with a two-pound claw hammer, a box of brass-headed nails, a box of tintacks, a patent tin-opener with which it was impossible to cut the fingers, a knife sharpener, and (cursing himself for a fool) a hand-saw and a steel tape-measure, to justify the purchase of which he neatly trimmed a splintered corner of the deal table in the kitchen and measured every room in the flat. He was interested to discover that the sitting-room was sixteen feet long and eighteen feet wide—a fact which he solemnly recorded in his new notebook with the propelling pencil, which broke under the strain and never worked again.

At twenty past five he began to worry, and to listen for footsteps in the street. Joanna Bowman arrived at twenty-five to six. He was greatly relieved, for he had begun to fear that, being of a scornful and reckless disposition, she had not taken sufficient care in crossing the road. By five thirty-two he was already shuddering away from a vision of Joanna Bowman hideously mangled under the wheels of a double-decker bus. And when he heard her footsteps on the stairs he went to the door like a man kicked in the behind.

*

After tea he said: “You remember that night?”

“What night?”

“That night when I was at your place.”

“Oh, that! Well?”

“Your husband was waiting outside.”

“He would be,” she said, laughing. “What happened?”

“Nothing. He threatened to break every bone in my body.”

“He would. Were you impressed?”

“In a way. The poor fellow sounded so miserable.”

“That’s the way it goes. You’re sorry for him because he’s unhappy without me—not that he’d be much happier with me, I assure you. And if I let him come back you’d find a great deal of pleasure in being sorry for me because you’d think I was unhappy with him. What did you say when he threatened to break every bone in your body?”

“I just told him to go home.”

“And he went?”

“That’s right.”

“And what would you have done if he’d hit you?”

“I don’t know. Feeling sorry for the man I’d probably have done nothing—just held his arms till he cooled off, and told him to go home again.”

“You would, I daresay. Yes, that would be your reaction.”

“And yours? How would you react in a case like that?”

“Me? If anyone hit me, my reaction would be … say, like the reaction of a rake-handle when you step on the rake: I’d fly up and hit back as hard as I could. I won’t take that kind of tiling. I simply won’t submit to tyranny. I’m not made to. I’d rather die.”

“And I,” said Pym, sighing. “I’ll submit to almost anything. I’ll be still, and wait.”

“Wait for revenge?”

“Oh, no. Wait until I see what’s to be seen. If anyone came up to you out of the blue sky, so to speak, and slapped your face, you’d instinctively hit back. Wouldn’t you?”

“And how!”

“If somebody did the same to me, I’d wonder what the devil made him want to do it. I’d begin to ask myself if he had a reasonable reason for slapping my face.”

“And if you decided that he had?”

“My hands would be tied. I couldn’t fight if I believed I was in the wrong … that I was not in the right.”

“You’d let him beat you.”

“No, I wouldn’t let him beat me. But I couldn’t beat him. I’d hold him until he got calm.”

“As it might have been in the case of Swan?” asked Joanna.

“Yes.”

“And if he wouldn’t be held? If he wouldn’t get calm? What’d happen then?”

“I’d have to force him to be calm,” said Pym. “If necessary I’d give him a swift, painless punch on the chin.”

“Even if you were too weak? If you were a woman?”

“Naturally I couldn’t,” said Pym.

“Ah-ah! But what would happen if you knew that you were in the right? The man attacks you. What happens?”

“Of course, I’d fight till I dropped. Naturally. What else could I do?”

“Tell me, Pym—why?”

“A matter of human dignity. Nobody in the world has the right to push me about. Better dead than pushed about. That’s why I’d fight until I dropped,” said Pym. “No matter who it was … as long as I felt indignant—I mean, as long as I knew I was right. But I don’t think I could have brought myself to hit your husband, even though I happened to be jealous of him. In his way he’s in the right … My dearest Joanna—who wouldn’t make a fool of himself for you?”

“No, no—not just yet,” said Joanna Bowman, pulling aside Pym’s hand.

“Beg pardon.”

“No, please—don’t beg pardon, Pym. I like it when you hold me. Shall I tell you something? You’re about the only man I didn’t mind being touched by. I’ve always hated being touched. But for some reason or other I like you to touch me. Only I was thinking. I wasn’t trying to convey to you that I didn’t want you.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Here I am, Jo; all yours,” said Pym, “and I’ve been thinking of practically nothing and nobody but you since I met you. I really am getting around to falling very much in love with you, Jo.”

“Don’t. I’d rather you didn’t fall in love with me, Pym.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, Pym, Pym! I don’t like it. So many men have fallen in love with me, or said they had; and the deeper they fell the more I had to despise them in the long run—it brought out the worst in them in the end. Please don’t fall in love with me, Pym.”

“Love makes weak people weaker and strong people stronger, Jo,” said Pym. “And in any case there’s nothing you can do about it. I have already fallen in love with you.”

“I don’t want to be in love with you,” said Joanna. “I don’t like Love.”

Pym said: “Even fishes and birds know the meaning of love—even wolves—even foxes and cows and mice. That’s about the only thing that ever makes them noble!”

“I’m not a cow or a fox, or a mouse. I don’t need any spurs to make me run, or any calves to make me brave; or any litter of sucking pigs to make me bite. I don’t need any man to stimulate me. I daresay I shock you.”

“Not exactly,” said Pym. “In a way you make me laugh.”

“Do you know what?” said Joanna Bowman, “I’m very glad I make you laugh.”

“Are you? Why?”

“I’ve made so many men cry. I hate making men cry. If I’d made you cry I couldn’t possibly have anything more to do with you. And I like you, Pym,” said Joanna. “I’d dislike you if you cried over me. Go on laughing. Don’t ever on any account let me make you cry over me … Go on letting me make you laugh.”

Later Pym said: “I won’t repeat this if it’s offensive to you, but I want to put it on record that I am deeply devoted to you, and love you.”

Joanna Bowman said: “You are something like what I was led to believe that a man might be, physically and otherwise.”

*

Soon she was gone. Pym sniffed at the pillow upon which her head had rested, and then went to his typewriter and began to write. Relaxed and happy, he wrote calmly until he was tired. This was at five o’clock in the morning. He ate sardines and strawberry jam, drank bottled beer, and went to bed, where he slept happily. He had written the first two thousand words of The Road to the Iron Door; big work was begun, and he was in love.

Pym slept as honest workmen sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MR. MELLISH spent most of the morning in bed. His housekeeper knocked at his door at eight o’clock, by which time he was invariably wide awake, reading a book, sitting upright against three fat white pillows and buttoned up to the chin in a blue-and-white flannel sleeping suit. “Come in, Mrs. Moore,” he said, and she came in with a tray that had four moveable legs, which she arranged so that he could reach without effort a pot of tea, a boiled egg, six fingers of hot buttered toast, the Daily Telegraph, and the letters. Then he always said: “Thank you very much, Mrs. Moore. And how are you this morning, Mrs. Moore?”

She replied: “Thank you, Mr. Mellish, and how’s yourself?”

“Blooming, blooming, Mrs. Moore.”

Mrs. Moore used to stand smiling at the old gentleman while he opened his egg. He always insisted on her eating the top of it, saying: “Albumen, albumen Mrs. Moore. Good for the blood, good for the blood.” They talked a little while he opened his letters. Most of his correspondence was with fellow architects. Most of the letters he received were addressed in familiar handwriting. Mr. Mellish was afraid of typewritten addresses, franked envelopes and strange handwriting: he always left them till the last and sighed with relief when his little ivory paper-knife cut out something harmlessly commonplace. Mrs. Moore always sat with him when he opened his letters: he liked her to do so. If she didn’t talk while he was reading he would say: “What’s the matter with you this morning, Mrs. Moore? Are you in love? He-he!”

She always said: “My loving days are over.”

So he looked at his mail, putting one letter on his left knee and another on his right, and (having examined the postmarks) neatly folded the fastidiously-cut envelopes before throwing them aside. When he had eaten his egg, poured himself another cup of tea, and opened his newspaper Mrs. Moore went out, very quietly, and went downstairs. About an hour later she came up again and asked him what he would like for lunch. “Now let me see. What would you suggest, Mrs. Moore?” he always asked. She pretended to think and then said brightly: “I know. What about a nice cutlet?” It was one of their little jokes. For the last forty-seven years Mr. Mellish had eaten a cutlet for lunch every day: he had a harmless passion for lamb cutlets very well done.

Then he would dress slowly and carefully and, if the weather was warm, went for a walk smoking a purple calabash pipe comfortably curved like the top of his old walking stick. If it was raining he sat by the fire and read the Daily Telegraph—every word of it. Mrs. Moore bringing him a cup of coffee and a biscuit at eleven o’clock always found him poring over the small advertisements, and invariably said: “Don’t tell me you’re looking for a job, Mr. Mellish!” And he invariably replied: “Well, I don’t know, Mrs. Moore. I may yet come to want in my old age.”

When he had finished his newspaper he refolded it neatly and put it aside for Mrs. Moore, and then sat smoking his pipe and thinking, sometimes looking up at the gold-framed portrait of his wife; the pretty little widow whom he had married so late in life and who had died so young. Then he grew sad and went to the window to look at the rain and think of flesh and grass, youth and old age, life and death, the world and the hereafter.

Sometimes his friend, a fiery, decrepit retired admiral, also a widower, came to play chess and stayed to lunch, and then Mr. Mellish opened a bottle of claret. “What’s this, hey? Lamb cutlets? God bless my soul, this is a surprise!” said the admiral, and the two old men laughed heartily and settled down to eat and drink and talk of things that had been in times that were so woefully changed. But this day started badly.

Mrs. Moore knew that something was wrong when Mr. Mellish tore open the flimsy blue envelope instead of cutting it, and with an unsteady hand ripped out its contents as if he was gutting a rabbit. One of the sheets slipped through his fingers and floated to the floor. Mrs. Moore picked it up. She recognised the handwriting—that loose, self-conscious scrawl so expressive of idleness, from the lines of which little curly flourishes sprouted in all directions like hairs in an armpit … that dreaded, routine-wrecking writing which made her think of spiders and was associated, in her mind, with treachery, selfishness and conceit. It made her think of all the things she instinctively hated—two-facedness, untruthfulness, unscrupulousness, greediness, cowardice, thievishness, false sweetness, and sluttishness. Above all, it upset Mr. Mellish, her kindly, clean old gentleman. She gave him the sheet of notepaper, holding it between two fingertips, and said: “I couldn’t help recognising the writing, sir. Don’t tell me it’s from Miss Winifred!”

“I’m afraid it is from Miss Winifred,” said Mr. Mellish.

“I should never have thought anybody could have the impudence!” said Mrs. Moore, “after all that——”

“Mind your own business, Mrs. Moore!” cried Mr. Mellish, in a breaking voice, “Why can’t you mind your own business, Mrs. Moore? What do you want to have a finger in every pie for? My family affairs are … my family affairs, and not your affair, Mrs. Moore. I’ll thank you to mind your own business, Mrs. Moore!” He waved a shaky old hand so that the unread letter crackled and rustled. “Take all this stuff away, Mrs. Moore. Why don’t you take this infernal rubbish away? What has my correspondence got to do with you?”

She took away the tray and, when she saw that the old gentleman’s eyes were heavy with tears, her tightened mouth relaxed and she said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Mellish. I didn’t mean to poke my nose in where it wasn’t wanted. I’ll just clear this away. Now don’t you upset yourself, please now, don’t.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Moore. I didn’t mean to speak to you like that. I apologise. You must forgive me. I’m very sorry.”

“God bless your heart, sir, that’s all right.”

“Don’t go, Mrs. Moore. Stay. I’d rather you stayed.”

He smoothed the letter on his knees, glanced at it and looked away, turning his head. He was afraid of it. There never had been a letter from Winifred, or about Winifred, that had not been a forerunner of trouble, sordid, disgusting trouble. He covered the upper sheet with his hands and, as he looked at Mrs. Moore a heavy old tear found its way out on to his cheek.

“Ah, there now …” she said, shaking up the pillows behind him. “Poor thing, don’t you read it, then. Don’t read it, Mr. Mellish. You only upset yourself.”

“I must read it, Mrs. Moore. How do I know what it is this time?”

“Well now, look at it like this, Mr. Mellish: it couldn’t be any worse this time than what it was last time—now could it?”

“I daresay you’re right, Mrs. Moore. I don’t suppose it could be very much worse, could it?—But it might be, though, it still might be. And of course, it could be better news. There’s always a possibility. No, I’d better see, if you wouldn’t mind leaving me alone now, just for a minute or two, Mrs. Moore. And forgive me if I was a little hasty just now.”

“Bless your heart, there’s nothing to forgive,” said Mrs. Moore, going out with the tray.

*

Mr. Mellish compelled himself to read:

… I hope you are satisfied now that I am punished and broken. I hope you are happy now that you have made me a convict and an outcast. I am out of prison now, but I don’t suppose you’ll be any too pleased to hear that, because I happen to know for a fact that you put me there, but I know you always hated me and wanted to get rid of me. I know and everybody else knows that I was always in your way, you didn’t want me, only my mother, you were jealous of me because my mother loved me more than she loved you and you always wanted to get me out of the way. Well you did. I never did anything wrong but you had me thrown into prison like a common criminal just to get me out of your way, but now I am out of prison a free woman with a criminal record thanks to you my dear stepfather. I am writing this not to reproach you but to comfort you and make you feel happier, because I know you will not be sorry to hear that I suffered the Agonies of the Damned, have been very ill and am still weak and penniless. I was going to have a baby, but I was so weak and miserable I had a miscarriage. He would have been your grandson. I am pretty sure it was going to be a He but he is dead, and I envy him. I wish I were dead too and I’m glad he is dead because that makes one person less to interfere with your nice little comforts or come between you and your Mrs. Moore. I am glad Mother is not longer alive to see it. I shall never see you or speak to you again and do not want to hear from you. You cannot communicate with me because I have no home. The only address I have is Poste Restante, Charing Cross Post Office. Set your mind at rest, I’ll manage to struggle along as I always have. I have not quite lost the few good looks I used to have, and have made several useful friends in the prison to which you sent me, so eat your little cutlets in peace, with your Mrs. Moore, because I will never trouble you again. Good-bye once and for all.

WINIFRED.

P.S.—Do not attempt to find me.

*

“Oh, unjust! Unkind!” cried old Mr. Mellish, and then Mrs. Moore came in, deliberately calm, consciously composed, and asked him what he fancied for lunch that day.

“Cold meat.”

She put a hand to her bosom and tried to laugh. “How about a nice cutlet?” she said.

“Cold meat. And will you please send Roberts to Admiral Pope and ask him if he’d care to step across the street for luncheon?”

“The cold beef, Mr. Mellish? Not a nice lamb cutlet? They’re lovely to-day. Just one little teeny lamb cutlet, eh? Just one.”

“The admiral will have the cutlets. To-day I want cold meat.”

“With a nice salad?”

“Bread.”

“Shall I open a bottle of claret?”

“Yes, open a bottle of claret by all means.”

As soon as Mrs. Moore left the bedroom she began to cry. When she came back, half an hour later, old Mr. Mellish was lying on his back. The Daily Telegraph was still unopened. She said: “Admiral Pope will be glad to come, sir. And you left these three letters on your tray.”

“Good, Mrs. Moore. See that the angostura bitters are out. … Letters? I don’t want any letters. Put them on my desk. I’ll deal with them another time. Just leave me alone for a minute, Mrs. Moore.”

“Oh, Mr. Mellish, let me get you some Bovril. Or a nice glass of nice warm milk.”

“Go away and leave me alone.”

“Very good, Mr. Mellish.”

“Oh, Mrs. Moore!”

“Sir?”

“Once again, I’m sorry if I’ve been a little short with you this morning, but the fact of the matter is, I’m a little upset.”

“I know you are, you dear kind soul.”

In the kitchen Mrs. Moore threw her apron over her face and wept. Mr. Mellish got out of bed. He dressed perfunctorily. His collar was a nuisance and his buttons were a burden. Mrs. Moore lifted his feet on to a little padded stool. He smoked his pipe mechanically. When she came in with coffee and a biscuit at eleven o’clock she saw that the Daily Telegraph was still unfolded. “Aren’t you looking for a job to-day?” she asked.

He replied: “Job? No, Mrs. Moore, I’m not looking for a job to-day.”

“Aren’t you going to read your paper?”

“I think I have had all the news I can assimilate for to-day, Mrs. Moore, thank you.”

*

The admiral arrived at twelve o’clock, brushing raindrops from the silky surface of his fine white beard. “Well?” he said, according to formula, “what dirty trick have you thought up this time, hey? Not another Queen’s Knight gambit, I hope.” Five years ago Mr. Mellish had opened a game of chess with a Queen’s Knight gambit, and the admiral had beaten him.

“I hope you don’t mind if we don’t play this morning, Pope,” said Mr. Mellish.

“Lost your nerve, hey? Lost your nerve, is that it?” said the admiral. Then he saw Mr. Mellish’s face and said: “You look a little hipped, young feller,” and put the little bundle of veins and tendons that was his right hand on his friend’s shoulder. “What’s the matter, young feller?” He was on the churchyard side of seventy, five years older than Mr. Mellish, who urged him forward with a hand in the small of his back, saying, mechanically:

“Age before beauty.”

The admiral had lived thirty years in an iron corset. His spine had been broken in an explosion off Trieste. An old manservant who had been a Master-at-Arms—a tattooed pessimist with eyebrows like dried pine cones—washed him and dressed him, laced him up and sent him out in the morning, and, having unlaced him at night, listened to his every sigh.

“How is the back?” asked Mr. Mellish.

“Improving, improving. What’s up with you?”

“Pope,” said Mr. Mellish; and choked.

“None of that, none of that!” The admiral saw a letter in his friend’s hand and said: “Ah!”

Mr. Mellish gave him the letter and said:

“Can you tell me what I ought to do, Pope? This isn’t fair. It’s not right. It isn’t just. For the life of me I can’t see what I’ve done wrong, Pope. I’ve tried to do everything for the best. What can I do? It’s cruel. It’s unkind. How could she speak of her dear mother like that? How could I possibly have been jealous of her? What does she mean by that? Of course her mother loved her more than me. Who denied it? I never denied it—I know it. Why should her mother have loved me? What was I but a silly old man? And her mother was very young and beautiful. She was fond of me, yes, but love me? I never hoped for that. I never expected it. I was just a husband, somebody to be comfortable and contented with. Pope, it stands to reason I expected she should love her child better than me, doesn’t it? Then why say things like that? I tried to make them both happy. I do honestly assure you, Pope, I loved her mother very dearly, and I gave Winifred all I could, within reason. How could she say what she said about … the grandson? It’s not true, you know. She says that she’s glad he’s dead, because of my comforts! It’s not fair, Pope—it’s untrue, it’s unjust, it’s unkind! But how can you tell these things to these young people? Anybody who knows me ought to know that all I ever wanted was a child about the house. When I was ever so much younger I used to think how nice it would be to have a son who’d get a Prix de Rome, a great man. Laura and I often talked about it. … And Winifred writes to me about cutlets! Why cutlets? What do I care about cutlets? I’d gladly have given everything I have. I’d have sold everything to keep the little fellow alive. And then she talks about one person less to interfere with my nice little comforts and come between me an my Mrs. Moore! My Mrs. Moore! Why, Pope, you know as well as I do how much Laura, her mother, liked Mrs. Moore. Is it decent, Pope? Pope, is this proper?”

“Be damned if it is.”

“—And at the end—perhaps you notice—she says something about managing to struggle along, and not having quite lost good looks; and something about making several useful friends in the prison I sent her to. I sent her to! I went and I almost fell on my knees before one of these bohemian fellows to keep her out of prison. I paid out money, I pulled strings to keep her out of prison. Pope, if only she’d wanted to be honourable and decent she could have done whatever she liked, if only for her dear mother’s sake. But she doesn’t want to. She hates me. ‘Eat your little cutlet in peace with your Mrs. Moore’ she says. My little cutlet! My Mrs. Moore!”

“Young feller, this isn’t a thing to upset yourself about.”

“It may not be. You’re accustomed to dealing with people, Pope. Tell me: why not?”

“Why, look at the postscript. Do not attempt to find me, she says. She protests too damn much. ‘You can’t communicate with me because I have no home. The only address I have is Poste Restante, Charing Cross Post Office’ she says. Bah! She’s inviting communication, you mark my words. All this ‘weak and penniless’ and whatnot! Bait, bait, Mellish—bait, young feller! Take my advice, don’t be impressed. You can take one of two courses. Send her a letter to her Charing Cross Post Office, enclosing a ten-pound note for immediate expenses and offering her a hundred a year if she behaves herself—or ignore her absolutely. Mark my words, young feller, a gel who writes a letter like that is determined to be a thorn in your flesh anyway. Stop looking so hipped, and make your mind up. Send her a few pounds and wait and see.”

“I don’t like to think of the girl with the mark of the jail on her. Say I send her twenty-five pounds to buy clothes with an offer of ten pounds a month as long as she keeps out of trouble? You know the world, Pope. Advise me.”

“Damn generous,” said Admiral Pope.

“Then I’ll do that … Poste Restante, Charing Cross Post Office. Poor girl, poor girl! Will you excuse me, Pope, while I write a note? Did you see what she said about having good looks and useful friends? If you don’t mind I’ll send this at once…. I have only about twenty pounds in cash here—will you lend me five pounds, Pope?”

“Of course. But register it.”

“Naturally I’ll register it. But——”

When they sat down to eat, the admiral said: “What’s this, hey? Lamb cutlets?… Why, what the blazes? I’ll be damned! God bless my soul, cold beef!”

“There are some cutlets for you, Pope. Somehow I don’t seem to fancy cutlets to-day.”

The old admiral trembled with indignation, and his eyebrows and beard seemed to bristle as he said: “What? What?” He could not live without swearing, but disapproved of blasphemy and indecent language. “What! By the seven snotty orphans and the nine blind sons of Brian Boru, do you mean to say that you’re going to let that damn bit of hysterical claptrappery come between you and your cutlets? By the Lord Harry, fifty thousand madwomen might pelt me with fifty thousand pages of poppycock before I’d concede one iota of cutlet! Don’t be a damned fool, Mellish. Be a good boy and eat your cutlet.”

“No, I’ll have cold beef to-day.”

Mr. Mellish picked up a square inch of beef on his fork, and put it to his lips, but took it away again and said: “Ten pounds a month. Two-pounds-ten a week … Tell me, Pope, in your considered opinion, is that reasonable?”

“Reasonable, young feller? Reasonable? More than generous. Much more than generous.”

“She’s her mother’s daughter, Pope. It’s my duty to look after her. I wouldn’t want to have on my conscience——”

“—To the Dickens with your conscience—to the Thackeray with your thundering conscience, Mellish! If a woman won’t go straight on fifty shillings a week, fifty pounds a week won’t make an honest woman of her. Mark my words. I know. I knew a seamstress who hanged herself by the neck until she was dead—hanged herself on a yard and a half of clothes line—rather than commit adultery. And I knew a countess with ten thousand a year in her own right who gave herself to a nigger. If a hundred and twenty pounds a year won’t keep a gel honest. a hundred and twenty thousand a year won’t. Eat your cutlet.”

“If she did something desperate, how could I ever forgive myself, Pope?”

“She won’t do anything desperate, set your mind at rest.”

“You think two-pounds-ten is enough, then?”

“Beyond one iota of a shadow of a doubt. Come on, young feller, have a cutlet.”

“As a matter of fact, Pope, I haven’t any appetite.”

“Just this little one.”

“As a matter of fact I don’t feel any too well. You eat it, Pope. Please eat it. I only want a bit of cheese and a biscuit.”

“Here’s to your very good health,” said the admiral, raising his glass of claret.

Mr. Mellish moistened his lips with the wine and sat playing with his glass.

“Eat your cheese.”

“Don’t think me discourteous, Pope, but I really can’t. I think there must be something wrong with my stomach.”

“I have yet to come across a situation that was improved by any man’s starving himself to death, you know.”

“I ate a great deal at breakfast time.”

“Ha!”

*

The old gentleman sent twenty-five pounds in banknotes to Miss Winifred Joyce, Poste Restante, Charing Cross Post Office. He wrapped the money in a hastily scribbled note:

… It was neither just nor kind of you to write to me in such a bitter vein. Surely you will realise, on reflection, that, in my small way, I have endeavoured to do everything in my power to assist you. You must know that I exerted myself to the uttermost in the hope of averting your recent calamity. If my efforts were in vain I beg you to believe that it was not because of any lack of effort on my part. You must not labour under the delusion that I have anything but affection for you. When you are quite calm you will, I am sure, regret having said all the terrible things you said in your letter to me. They wounded me more deeply than you will ever know. I tell you this, not that you may reproach yourself when you realise that you have done a foolish but well-meaning old man an injustice, but to assure you that I deserve your better opinion. I enclose twenty-five pounds. If you will let me have your address I shall see to it that you receive ten pounds on the first day of every month. This, I hope, may help you to find your feet. I am sure that in spite of this little contretemps you will settle down and do well yet.

Your STEP-DADDY.

Win went every day to the post office in Charing Cross Road. In her loose way she had always referred to this office as the Charing Cross Post Office; but the Charing Cross Post Office is in Duncannon Street. Therefore she never received Mr. Mellish’s letter.

Two weeks later he received a letter in a ready-stamped post office envelope. It was written on telegram forms.

… I suppose I ought to have known. What a fool I was ever to write to you at all. I shall always hate you because you are a cruel, miserly, mean, thoroughly rotten, treacherous, deceitful, dirty old man. I despise you, and hate myself for ever having liked you. Mother hated you too. She only married you because she thought you would look after me, but you only married her for sexual reasons. I shudder at the thought!!!! You will laugh when you get this letter, and tear it up, and go on stuffing yourself with your cutlets and sleeping with your Mrs. Moore. But if there is a God he will punish you!!! But there isn’t a God. If there was a God how could he let a rotten beast like you live in comfort, rolling in money and making a pig of yourself with your cutlets and your Mrs. Moore while I am compelled to sell my body on the streets? I am glad Mother is dead, and I wish she had fallen down dead the day before she married you. She cried and cried as if her heart would break, because she hated you, you disgusted her! It was only for my sake she married you, and I wish that I had never been born, because if I had not been born, Mummy would not have married you, and then she would not have died of a broken heart, you Miser, you Beast!

WINIFRED JOYCE.

Mr. Mellish had been waiting for a letter from his stepdaughter. He opened this and read it before he ate his breakfast. Mrs. Moore screamed when, having read it to the end, he crumpled it in his right hand, and fell back, drawing up his knees so that the tray crashed to the floor. She called the doctor. Later the admiral came, carrying four hot-house peaches and a concoction of old brandy and the yolks of fresh eggs.

“What do you think you’re playing at, young feller? Pull yourself together.”

Mr. Mellish looked at him, but did not speak.

“Hurry up, young feller, take hold of yourself. I’ve thought up a new opening … Pawn to Queen’s Bishop three. Let’s have the board up and try it out, what? Hey?”

Mr. Mellish could not speak.

Later the admiral said to the doctor: “There’s nothing seriously wrong, of course?”

The doctor shrugged: “Mr. Mellish is no longer a young man,” he said. “He must be very careful, very very careful. The least excitement might be dangerous.”

“But I should have thought Mellish was sound as a bell.”

“Appearances are often deceptive. When the arteries harden up and the heart gets tired, it’s as well to look out for yourself.”

“That little bitch!” said the admiral, with such vehemence that he made the doctor jump.

*

He referred, of course, to Win, who was sitting in a café in Charlotte Street drinking coffee and hoping that some old friend might come in and offer her a meal or even lend her some money. She had fifteen shillings, and could not imagine what she would do when that was gone. She was worried and angry; the most ill-used victim of man’s injustice since Hagar.

A woman came in and pretended not to see her.

“Why, hello, Loulou!” said Win.

“Win darling, how nice to see you. How are you?”

“Pretty awful.”

“You look fine.”

“I feel absolutely dreadful. Sit down and have a cup of coffee and talk to me. You don’t know what a relief it is to meet someone you can talk to.”

“Well, it’ll have to be a pretty quick one,” said Loulou, grudgingly, “I haven’t got much time. I’ve got a date.” When they were sitting she asked, in a confidential undertone: “How was it? They tell me it isn’t really as bad as people make out.”

Win laughed without mirth. “They ought to try it and see,” she said, bitterly. “It was absolutely frightful. The wardresses are absolute beasts—but absolute bitches, Loulou darling. And the food is vile. I couldn’t eat for ten days, you know … And then as a matter of fact, it wasn’t only the food, you know, Loulou darling—it was the misery, the injustice of it all. What have I done to be cooped up with thieves and prostitutes?”

“Well, if you took away the thieves and prostitutes round here, Win darling, the pubs would be empty and there’d be nobody left to talk to. Personally, I don’t mind thieves and prostitutes myself, as long as they’re amusing.”

“… And then I was so ill. I was going to have a baby, you know. I did so want to have that baby, Loulou. Oh Loulou, I did want that baby!”

“What for?”

Win could not answer that. She said: “I don’t know. I just wanted it.”

“Why, what would you have done with it when you got it?”

“I don’t know, I’d have managed somehow.”

“How?” asked Loulou, who was a quick, bright, practical little woman.

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know anything, I’m all muddled in my head as a matter of fact. I suppose it’s just as well. I wish I’d died too. And my stepfather has been an absolute beast, Loulou, as a matter of fact. It half chokes me when I think of it.”

“Then don’t think of it, darling.”

“How can you help thinking of these things, Loulou?”

“Have it your own way, Win darling.”

“After all,” said Win, pretending to laugh. “I mean, why should I bore you with my troubles?”

“I don’t know. Why does everybody bore one with their troubles? Go on, bore me with your troubles—I don’t mind, bless you.”

“No,” said Win, bravely, “you tell me about yourself.”

“I’ve got a job. Guess what?”

“Oh, Loulou darling, I’m so happy for you! Do tell me,” cried Win, clapping her hands.

“I’m a demonstrator. You know those sixpenny lipsticks and rouges and stuff they sell in Woolworths? I demonstrate ’em. I make myself up with the muck to show people how good it is. The idea is that if they spend eighteenpence they can look just like me.”

“Oh, not in films?”

“Films? I’ve made exactly six pounds out of films in five months.”

“I do so admire you, Loulou darling. Nothing ever seems to get you down. I do so wish I had your strength of character. You are awfully strong, aren’t you? I do wish I was like you, Loulou; oh, I do, I do!”

Loulou looked at her with an understanding eye, finished her coffee quickly, and said: “I’ve got to be going.”

“As a matter of fact, Loulou darling, there’s something I wanted to ask you. As a matter of fact it’s rather urgent——”

“—I tell you what; I’ll be around to-night or to-morrow. Tell me all about it then, eh? I’m one of the world’s workers,” said Loulou, talking fast and gripping her bag tightly under her left arm. “Cosmetic workers of all lands, unite, you have nothing but your virginities to lose and not a damn thing to gain. See you soon. Bye-bye.”

“I’ll walk to the corner with you.”

“Not going to the corner. I’ve got to fly. Be seeing you around, eh?” said Loulou; and the door slammed behind her.

Win visited two or three other cafés frequented by people she knew. She met only one old acquaintance, a little bookseller who lived by selling back numbers of American magazines. As soon as she greeted him his night-bird’s instinct warned him. that he was in danger. He said: “Hello there, Win. Glad to see you around again. How’s things with you? With me they’re lousy. How’re you fixed? I’ve got to get some stock. I’m pretty ribby just now. I don’t suppose you could manage to let me have a couple of pounds till Friday?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Win, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Coincidence, eh? Life is like that, isn’t it? Life just don’t mean a thing, does it? There we are both in the same boat. Literature is a mug’s game,” he said, hitching up his bundle of secondhand copies of Vogue, Startling Detective and Snappy Stories.

Then he went briskly in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Win, remembering that American Henry Fabian lived in Wardour Street, decided to try her luck there. It was twenty past twelve: she had tried twice before to find him at home. Fabian slept late: he was there when she came.

*

He said: “For Sweet Jesus, what the hell do you want?”

Fabian was ready to go out. He was elegantly dressed in a brand new suit of pinkish cheviot and a silk shirt.

“I did so much want to say hello to you, Harry, because … well … I just came to say hello to you, Harry.”

“Okay. You said hello. Beat it.”

“Harry!” said Win, wet-eyed, with a catch in her voice, “I want to talk to you. It’s such a long time since I talked to anybody worth talking to.”

“Okay then, you can come in if you like, but make it snappy, will you? I got a date with a film distributor. I got to see a man about an animated cartoon, so make it snappy.”

In his room Fabian fixed his hat more firmly over his right eye and made certain adjustments to the brim. He had taken to wearing his hat like Bing Crosby—jauntily, casually, in a devil-may-care way, as if he had absent-mindedly clapped it on to his head in the dark. This could not be achieved without trial and error, and patience. He squinted at himself and turned the hat a fraction of an inch to the right, like a biologist at the fine-adjustment screw of a microscope.

“Don’t you look beautiful?” said Win.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IT was only a few days since a man called Clipp had stopped Fabian in Cranbourne Street and said: “Look, Harry; got a pound?”

Fabian said: “What for?”

“I want the loan of a pound.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Fabian, half closing one eye and opening the other wide. “I wish I had a pound for every time I wanted the loan of a pound.”

“Be a sport, Harry,” said Clipp, “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t find a pound.”

“You don’t know what you’re going to do if you don’t find a pound,” said Fabian. “Who lends me pounds? Jesus, the money I’ve loaned to every layabout in this god-damn town! And what have I ever got but the double-cross? Go and fiddle your own god-damn pound, Clipp, and stop worrying me. What am I? Henry Ford? John D. Rockefeller? Do I pick money off trees?”

“I know you had a rough time, Harry, but I’ve always been your friend.”

“I haven’t got no friends, and neither have you. Skip that bull. On your way, little feller.”

Fabian had got little feller from Leo, and used it now whenever it was expedient. Clipp knew this, and smiled. “Make it half a nicker,” he said.

“Go to hell.”

“Lend me half a nicker and I’ll tell you something, Harry.”

“You’ll tell me something?”

“You give me half a nicker and I’ll tell you something.”

No one knew how Clipp lived. He collected bets for a bookmaker on the street corners between Attenborough’s pawnshop in Wardour Street and the French pub in Dean Street. Everybody knew him. He was all things to all men. There was nothing Clipp would not do. Sometimes he assisted a peanut vendor; sometimes he helped to distribute picture postcards. Occasionally he pretended to be a racing tipster. He was so petty, so ridiculously small of body and soul that he was not regarded as a human being. In the underworld he was a Gulliver in Brobdingnag; women exchanged shameful secrets and performed messy and malodorous functions in his presence. Petty criminals, habitual whisperers and talkers in mysterious sign-language forgot that Clipp was there when they laid out guttersnipe strategies. He was conspicious, yet he remained unobserved, like gaudy wallpaper in a familiar room. Everyone knew him (or thought they knew him) but nobody knew the colour of his eyes. How old was he? … How many buttons are there on a policeman’s tunic? What clothes did he wear? … How many eyelet holes are there in a postman’s boot? Clipp was a fixture and a fitting. He was sat on, leaned against, spat into; used as a receptacle for dust and ashes; employed as a runner of errands, a carrier of messages; a stooge and a laughingstock. If a coward wanted someone to hit, he hit Clipp. If a beaten harlot wanted to express her loathing for mankind she remembered that Clipp was in a way a sort of man—at least he was not a woman—and she abused him. He had no feelings to hurt: a few small coins settled everything. He was an animated pig-nut; something next to nothing in the centre of a shell as hard as stone. He was a backside to kick, and a dirty hand into which you threw your small change. If you spat into his beer he would drink it, and he would smoke your chewed cigar-butt with enjoyment.

Fabian gave him five shillings and said: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, here you are. But if it’s a horse, Clipp, you know where you can stick it. I know all about your lousy horses, little feller. I don’t want a horse. I had one for breakfast.”

Clipp said: “If you want a horse, put your shirt and your grandmother’s drawers on Sweet Caporal in the 2.20 to-morrow at Doncaster. I know it for a fact—it’s on the job. But that wasn’t what I was going to tell you. If you really want to know something, make it half a nicker and I’ll tell you.”

Clipp grinned and winked. Fabian gave him two more half-crowns and said: “There you are, that makes half a nicker. Go on, spit it out, little feller—not that I’m interested.”

“Thank you very much, Harry, I appreciate that. You’re one in a million, Harry—apart from being the best dressed man in the West End. One in a million! Now let me tell you something. You know the Australian?”

“So what?”

“Well, you know his brother?”

“I never knew he had a brother. Why?”

“Oh, he’s got a brother all right. He calls himself Dicky Dart. You know Dicky Dart? He used to be a scrapper.”

“Jesus Christ Almighty, little feller, what the hell do I know about these lousy slap-happy leather-pushers?”

“Well, Dicky Dart’s just come up from Brum, and he wants you.”

“He wants me? What the hell for?”

“Well, somebody passed Dicky Dart the word, and he wants you. He wants to have a word with you. You know what I mean by a word? He wants to have a nice quiet chat with you, just you and him, all alone. See what I mean? You know Dicky Dart, if you get what I mean. Even the Brummagen mob was afraid of Dicky. Well, so now you know, Harry—Dicky Dart wants you.”

“I don’t get it,” said Fabian, “I never did anything to him. Jesus, I don’t know him!”

“Somebody passed him the word about his brother, the Australian. There’s no love lost between Dicky and the Australian, but Dicky wants to see you as a matter of principle, just for a nice quiet chat.”

“What harm did I ever do the Australian?” cried Fabian.

“I don’t know, Harry, but there you are; that’s the way it is.”

“Nuts! I don’t give a good god-damn!”

“I just thought you’d like to know, that’s all. Dicky said—I’m only repeating what Dicky said—Dicky said you wasn’t worth hanging for, and you wasn’t worth ten years. He said he’d just give you the boot until your own mother wouldn’t recognise you and break a few of your arms. He said he might sort of accidentally kind of scratch one of your eyes and kick you in——”

“—Scram, little feller! Who gives a good god-damn? It’s a misunderstanding.”

“That’s what I thought at the time. Well, don’t say I didn’t give you the word, in strict confidence. Take it or leave it: you know best. And I’m much obliged to you for these four tosheroons,” said Clipp, jingling the ten shillings in his pocket.

Clipp sidled away and disappeared, and Fabian killed time in crowded places until Katusha, who was now known as Russian Katty, came to report. She had accommodated three clients and had already earned nine pounds.

“Now you see, kid,” said Fabian, “you see for yourself whether I was right or wrong. Didn’t I tell you all along? Stick by me and I’ll put a gold spoon right in your kisser. But listen—don’t you kind of get sort of fed up with this lousy city? Don’t you sort of feel it’d make a kind of change to get the hell out of it?”

“I like it,” said Katusha. “You meet such interesting people.”

“Interesting people? Jesus, kid, you call these people interesting? I want to take you to Hollywood. I want you to get some place. Hell, I’ve got to admit I made a mistake coming here. Jesus, there’s nothing for me to do here. Christ, kid, I want to get the hell out of it. Frankly speaking, I don’t mind telling you I’ve sort of had just about enough. Let’s pack everything up and scram out of it, and go to Hollywood. Christ, a girl like you—you’d be in the bright lights inside of six months. I could introduce you to the right people. Whaddaya say? How’d ya like it?”

Now every prostitute between Hyde Park Corner and Cambridge Circus knew Harry Fabian and had discussed him freely with Katusha. A girl called Star had told Katusha how Harry Fabian, living on the earnings of a girl called Zoe, had made love to her one night when Zoe, having been arrested, was in a cell under Vine Street Police Station. Another girl said that Fabian was a rat, a rat and a liar; he came of a Cockney family and was no more American than Neville Chamberlain; and he had given her a horrible disease.

Yet Katusha said: “Could we really go to Hollywood?”

“On my mother’s grave. Only, look—money’s going to be tight, kid, till we get over there to the Coast. So we’ve got to get some scratch. We’ve got to dig for it. I want everything we can lay our hands on, because I’m so fed up to hell with this town I want to get the hell out of it. Okay?”

“Take it all,” said Katusha, in her most Russian voice.

Fabian said: “Oh, no. Oh, no no no! Oh, Jesus, no! What d’ya take me for?” He took seven pounds. “Take it all? Jesus Christ Almighty, you don’t know me! Don’t I realise that a girl needs shoes and stockings and panties and things? And where d’you get that take it? D’you think I want your lousy money? I don’t want your lousy money! I don’t want your god-damn money. This is for you more than for me. And that’s what I mean when I say work! Work like hell, kid, because the harder you work the sooner we’ll get the hell out of this lousy city. Jesus, what a crummy town this city turned out to be!”

Fabian added the seven pounds to a hundred and twenty pounds in a secret wallet. For the first time in his life he was saving money. Looking at the carefully arranged banknotes, he loved them. But a hundred and twenty-seven pounds was an awkward sum. He took away two pounds and made it a hundred and twenty-five; and bought a pair of extra-special silk-web braces for a guinea in Bond Street. It was true that he needed money to get out of London, and that he was very anxious to go a long way away. Still, Russian Katty, with her youth, her beauty, and her credulity, was worth her weight in gold anywhere.

*

“Don’t you look beautiful? Oh, you do know how to carry your clothes,” said Win.

Harry Fabian, having arranged his hat, tightened his tie and said: “Well, what is it? What d’you want?”

“Harry, you know where I’ve been, don’t you?”

“Well?”

“You know why I went where I went, don’t you?”

“You got a carpet, three months, for a typewriter. That’s all I know. So what do you want me to do about it?”

“I’ve been very ill, Harry. Oh Harry, Harry darling, you don’t know how ill I’ve been. As a matter of fact I nearly died. If it hadn’t been for the doctor, I should have died. He saved my live with a blood transfusion.”

“Look, I’m a busy man. What do you want?”

“I wanted to talk to you, Harry. It’s such a long time since I talked to anybody worth while. Please be nice to me. Say something nice to me. As a matter of fact, Harry, I’m terribly unhappy.”

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No, as a matter of fact, it isn’t. It’s about that typewriter. You know who I took it for, don’t you, Harry darling? Oh Harry, Harry, you know I took it to give it to you, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Jesus Christ!” cried Fabian, looking at the ceiling, “take a dame out of the gutter and she bites the hand that … Listen. Scram, will you? You bring me bad luck.”

“I won’t scram,” said Win, crying. “I won’t. I’m hungry. I’m starving. I went to prison for you. And I won’t scram, I tell you I won’t!”

“Stop it. Shut up, for Christ’s sake. What is it you want?”

“I’m ill. I’m hungry and I’m miserable. Help me, Harry, for God’s sake help me!”

“Hungry, are you?” said Fabian.

“I haven’t eaten for two days,” said Win.

Fabian opened her bag, took out her purse and emptied it into his left hand. “All I’ve got,” he said, counting quickly, “is fourteen and sixpence. Here’s five bob for you. Go and get yourself something to eat.” He put back five shillings into the purse and dropped nine and sixpence into one of his pockets. “Now scram. Go and get yourself some spaghetti. Get the hell out of here, you dirty little double-crossing chiseller—I’m busy.”

“Give me back my money or——”

“—Or what?”

“Or I’ll call the police.”

Fabian closed his left eye, took careful aim, and slapped her face with his bony right hand. Before she recovered from the shock he slapped her with his left hand; took her by the collar, dragged her to her feet, and kicked her.

She said: “You’re hurting me.”

Pushing her towards the door Fabian said, dispassionately: “Hurt you? By Jesus, I’ll tear your god-damn legs off and tie them round your neck, you bitch! Scram!”

“Give me back my money!”

“You haven’t got any money. You just told me you didn’t have the price of a meal and I gave you five shillings. I can prove it. Get the hell out of here. I’m a busy man. You worry me. Scram!”

“Give me back my money!”

“Here’s something to go on with,” said Fabian, and slapped her again. Then he opened the door and pushed her out into the street.

Before the door closed she said: “Don’t do this to me, Harry darling—I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Will you? I’m glad to hear it. I say scram—so god-damn well scram,” said Fabian, and closed the door. He readjusted his hat and went out. Win was waiting for him.

“Harry, darling Harry, please give me back my money,” she said.

“Oh, your money. What was it I gave you just now?”

She said: “Five shillings. But you’ve got another ten shillings of mine.”

“Ah-ah! Oh yes, I see. Well, look——” said Fabian, taking some paper money out of his pocket, “—give me that five bob.”

He took the five shillings from her damp palm, put them in his pocket and said: “Now will you scram?”

“You thief! You mean little thief!”

“Go to hell.”

“I’ll call a policeman!”

“Fooey!” said Fabian, with a contemptuous wave of the hand.

Half-stunned by shock, Win went in the direction of Cambridge Circus. Her cheeks still tingled, and one of her teeth had started to ache. A heavy, warm autumnal rain began to fall and she took shelter in a doorway, just before the downpour. It rained as if the sky, having lost patience with piddling little routine drizzles and showers, wanted to empty itself of a whole winter’s rain at one go, and be done with it. Win wept without restraint and then, when she wanted to blow her nose, she discovered that she had lost her handkerchief and wept harder still. She wanted to die. But the rain stopped abruptly and she walked on. She went to Busto’s and asked for Pym. Busto said: “’Im? ’E’s a-gone.”

“Gone? Where?”

“’E leave-a dis address for letters,” said Busto, taking a filthy scrap of paper out of one of his mysterious pockets. But he kept it hidden in his hand and asked, suspiciously: “What you a-want ’im for? ’E owe you a-money?”

Win knew instinctively that if she said yes, that terrible little old man would tell her nothing. She said: “No, on the contrary, I owe him money. But it isn’t that. You see, as a matter of fact, I have a rather important message for him.”

Busto stared her out of countenance with his stony old eyes and said, grudgingly: “Okay.”

Pym was working happily. He had eaten a tin of greyish beef stew and a tin of apricots, washed down with tea, and was full of inspiration. He had already written ten thousand words of The Road to the Iron Door. He had only eighty thousand words more to write, and then the book would be written. He intended to work all night. Then he heard a knocking at the door. He was sure that it was Joanna. He hid the empty tins under the table and went to the door, smoothing his hair with his hands. But when he opened the door Win said: “Oh, Johnny, Johnny!” and fell on his neck, weeping.

“Oh Christ!” said Pym.

*

“What brings you here?” he asked.

Win said: “As a matter of fact, Johnny, I don’t know, quite. I suppose you know I’ve just come out of prison?”

“Have you?” asked Pym, uneasily.

“Well, Johnny darling, I must have, mustn’t I? I mean, I don’t suppose you imagine I don’t know what you did to put me there.”

“I didn’t put anybody anywhere,” said Pym.

“As a matter of fact, Johnny, I happen to know all about it. I happen to know, Johnny darling, that you charged me in that typewriter business. Don’t bother to lie, Johnny, I happen to know. How could you have done such a thing to me, Johnny? As a matter of fact, after all there’s been between us, I couldn’t have thought it was possible. Anybody else, yes. But not you, Johnny. I never thought you could be cruel and revengeful. And as a matter of fact I happen to know that my stepfather gave you money to do it. Don’t take the trouble to lie to me about it, Johnny darling. I just happen to know, as a matter of fact.”

Pym shouted: “You happen to know! You happen to know! You and your ‘matter of facts’—you happen to know nothing whatsoever. You happen to be absolutely wrong, as a matter of fact.” (Now I’m starting matter-of-facting, he said to himself.)

“As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why I wanted to see you, Johnny darling, was because I was sort of interested to know what made you do it. I’m sort of all mixed up. It doesn’t make sense to me. It kind of doesn’t sort of add up. It’s sort of like two and two making five, as a matter of fact. It was so out of keeping, so absolutely unlike you, Johnny. I couldn’t imagine what I’d done to make you hate me so much. Let’s face it, Johnny. However much you regret it, the fact remains that we were … well, sort of friends once upon a time … it feels like a thousand years ago, after all I’ve been through, Johnny. And when you’ve lived with a man—sort of slept and eaten with a man for months and months——”

“—Ten weeks to be precise,” said Pym.

“—I’m sorry, Johnny. As a matter of fact I’m all mixed up inside. I’m sort of all broken up, as a matter of fact. Ten weeks, then. They were ten lovely weeks for me, Johnny. They were the happiest weeks in my life. You were the only person who was ever kind to me, and I was very, very, very happy. As a matter of fact I loved you. And that’s why this has been kind of worrying me, because I sort of didn’t know what to … well, make of it.”

“Look here,” said Pym. “You know as well as I do, Win, that you behaved like an absolute swine. You know perfectly well that when you were supposed to be more or less faithful to me you messed about with every Tom, Dick and Harry in London. And I proved it to you, if you remember. And then when I was desperately hard up, and when all I had to live on was my typewriter—you don’t know the trouble I had getting that typewriter out of hock——” Pym stroked the keys of the machine, which seemed to chatter understandingly in response to his touch—“when I had nothing in the world but this, I gave you my room and my bed, and went to sleep myself in a doss-house, what did you do? You stole my typewriter. You behaved worse than the cheapest, dirtiest little crook. There is a little bit of honour among thieves, but you don’t seem to have even that little bit of honour. You take advantage of everyone’s good nature. It isn’t fair. If I could have got hold of you then I should probably have hit you right in the mouth, for a rotten little cheat. And when I come to think of it I feel like doing so now. You stole the typewriter and you upset tinned strawberries all over my novel. But even then I wouldn’t have done anything, if a Scotland Yard man hadn’t come along. So I charged you with stealing my typewriter while I was still angry with you. I’m not angry with you now: I only dislike you. Besides, they made it clear to me that you needed a little bit of punishment, if only for other people’s protection. You’ve been stealing practically everything you could lay your hands on—people’s watches and chains, people’s microscopes. And you stole my typewriter, knowing how much I needed it, to give it to your American Henry, whoever he may be.”

“I didn’t steal it, Johnny, I swear! I borrowed it!”

“You ‘borrowed’ it to give to American Henry, eh?”

“American Henry? Oh, him. Oh yes, Johnny, as a matter of fact I remember him. I was going to get a job as a mannequin, and he was going to get me some clothes on credit, only we had to put down a deposit. I would have paid you back all I ever owed you and given you your typewriter back in a week or two, I swear it, Johnny. I meant to, but I didn’t like to mention it as a matter of fact. Please believe me, Johnny—I’m so lonely and miserable—do please believe me.”

“Job as a mannequin? You told me you were going to have a baby.”

“That was just it,” said Win, readily. “There’s a shop near Bond Street that specialises in dresses for women who are going to have babies, and they wanted someone young and—as a matter of fact, good-looking—to show them off.”

“What shop is that?” asked Pym, with interest, thinking of a possible story.

“I forget the name of it for the moment, but it’ll come back.”

“But surely, if they were going to give you a job, you must remember?”

“Oh yes, yes, yes! But I’ve told you already I’m sort of all mixed up in my head. And the baby——”

Win wept heartbrokenly.

“Well, what about it!”

“Dead. Dead, Johnny darling, dead. And I did—oh, I did so want it! And there I was locked up with prostitutes and thieves and shoplifters in a common prison. Oh, Johnny, Johnny, darling Johnny—because I can’t help loving you in spite of everything—I know that most people around here are thieves and prostitutes, and I know that if they were all taken away there’d be nobody interesting left to talk to as a matter of fact, but to be locked up with them, and treated the way I was treated … Oh, Johnny darling, how could you have done it to me?”

“I never did anything to you.”

“I happen to know, as a matter of fact, that you didn’t do badly out of it, Johnny. Oh—don’t misunderstand me—I’m glad of it. I’m glad someone got something out of all this, Johnny. As a matter of fact I know you were well paid, and I was delighted to hear it, because in a kind of way I felt I was sort of paying you back a little of the sort of money I owed you.”

“Look here,” said Pym. “As a matter—I beg your pardon. In point of fact, I got nothing but trouble out of you. Your stepfather, Mr. Mellish, a charming old man——”

“—As a matter of fact, he is an absolute swine. But go on, Johnny.”

“Your stepfather, who is not a swine at all, but who happens to be a very charming old gentleman, begged me to withdraw the charge I made against you in a moment of anger, and I was only too pleased to withdraw that charge. And then, as a matter … and then, if you want to know, I nearly went to jail myself for compounding a felony. Your stepfather insisted on paying me what he thought you owed me—thirty-seven pounds two shillings. I didn’t want to take it, but he insisted. If you want it, you can have it. In fact I insist on your taking it. Here, let me give it to you.” Pym opened his cheque book and began to write.

“You never used to have a banking account,” said Win.

“I’ve got one now. Here. Thirty-seven pounds two shillings. It’s an open cheque, and you can cash it to-morrow.”

“You’re rich now, Johnny darling, and as a matter of fact, in spite of everything, I’m glad. I’m glad for your sake. I’m very happy for you, Johnny.”

“Rich? I’m rolling in it,” said Pym, with a harsh laugh.

“I’m penniless, Johnny.”

“No you’re not, if you’ll excuse me. You’ve got thirty-seven pounds two shillings.”

“May I use your bathroom.”

“Through there.”

“I don’t suppose I could have a bath?”

“Here’s a pound to see you through until the banks open to-morrow.”

“Thank you, Johnny darling. You can be very wicked sometimes, but I always did like you because you were so good, really, as a matter of fact. Look—I feel sort of soiled, kind of unclean. I feel like a jailbird, as a matter of fact. Can I use your bath?”

“If you like, all right. But would you mind being fairly quick? I’m working, you see.”

Having put the money in her bag, Win went to the bathroom. Pym showed her how to operate the geyser, and stood in the sitting-room, looking out of the window, angry with Win and disgusted with himself. He stood like this for ten minutes, and then someone knocked imperiously at the door. It was Joanna Bowman.

“Joanna!” cried Pym. “My heart leaps up! Look, by the purest chance——”

At this moment Win came out of the bathroom. She was naked. In her right hand she flourished a safety razor—one of those single-edged razors that used to be given away free of charge with a tube of shaving cream. “Johnny darling, how do you put the blade in this?” she asked. Then she saw Joanna, uttered a little scream, and ran away.

“Damn that woman!” cried Pym, “wherever she goes there’s sure to be some misunderstanding.”

“It’s all right, there’s no misunderstanding. I understand,” said Joanna Bowman. “Let’s make it another time. Don’t look so horrified. It’s quite all right. Some other time. Give me a ring, eh?”

“Joanna! I give you my word of honour!”

“Don’t be silly.”

Pym followed her downstairs. “Upon my word of honour, Joanna, she came along and asked if she could have a bath. It sounds incredible, but it was like that. That’s Win, the girl I told you about.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. How could it possibly matter?”

“She’ll go in a minute.”

“What for? Why should she? Have you got some crazy idea that I might be jealous? Me? Jealous of you? That would be the day, when I was jealous of any man on account of any woman!”

“But, Joanna——”

“I assure you, it’s quite all right. Let’s meet some other time. Give me a ring. I’ll be seeing you.”

Pym wanted to follow her, but he was wearing nothing but his trousers and a shirt; in which dress he preferred to work. He ran back to the fiat. The door had closed itself, and he had to knock several times before Win opened it. Now she wore a towel. She was still holding the safety razor.

“Oh Johnny, Johnny darling, if you only knew how wonderful it felt——” she began.

“For God’s sake get out of my way!”

“But, Johnny!”

“Wherever you go you make trouble. Wherever you go,” said Pym, putting on his shoes, “you make unhappiness and misunderstanding. I never want to see you again as long as I live. Go away—for God’s sake go away, will you? You’ve got money. Will you get out of here, please, quickly! Get out! If I find you here when I come back I’ll throw you out. Dressed or undressed, I’ll throw you out!” He remembered what had happened the last time he had left Win alone in his room, and closed his typewriter and put it under his left arm. “Get out of here,” he said, and ran towards William and Mary Square, Victoria. “This is the second time you’ve ruined my life!” he shouted over his shoulder.

*

Joanna Bowman paused on the bridge to look at the river and think. She loved the river, and saw something beautiful in the spidery silhouettes of the cranes that broke the milky sky above the wharves. Then she went on her way and stopped again at Millbank, where she watched the cigarette packets jostling the driftwood on the face of the water. She was sad, but calm. Why on earth shouldn’t he take a blonde home? she asked herself. I took him home. He is entitled to do exactly as he pleases. Surely, that’s what one lives for. I do as I please; he does what he likes. But the thing I’d like to know is, what on earth can a man like that see in a thing like her? Good God, when she came out of that bathroom with nothing on she looked like a maggot, a hairless maggot; narrow in the shoulder, narrow in the hips, narrow in the head—not a good woman for him. Good for some old man. A dead end. What on earth could he want her for? A blonde, scraping herself with a safety razor and making exhibitions. What for? What use? She’d deceive him with the milkman, and get away with it. But of course, I ought to know: the thing to do is, make goggle eyes and look as if you admire. I’ll see myself in hell first. I’ll see myself in hell, if I die this minute.

Looking at a seagull, she wished that she had been hatched out of a pure, loveless egg. She wanted to be alone, upheld by her own white wings, somewhere between air and water, out of sight of land, in the middle of a grey sea. She wanted to find herself in some crack in a remote rock, blanketed in herself, warmed by her own heat, alone and at peace.

But when she reached the front door of the house in which she lived a hoarse voice said: “Jo! Once and for all, Jo. This is once and for all. I want one word with you, one final word, once and for all.”

It was Tom Swan, her husband. She said: “You want one word? All right then; here it is—No.”

“Who is it you’re in love with now?”

“Nobody. Go away.”

“But there’s somebody else. I know there is. I know it. I tell you I know. Isn’t there?”

“What has it to do with you if there is?”

“I’ll kill him.”

“Well, Tom, good night.”

“I’ll kill you, Jo.”

“Kill me or don’t kill me, but for God’s sake stop moaning about it. And take your hands off me, will you, please?”

“Is this your last word?”

“I’ve told you a thousand times already.”

“Oh, Jo, Jo—where do you keep your heart?”

“Oh Tom, Tom—where do you keep your head?”

“You can see how I’m suffering. It makes you happy,” said Tom Swan. “You want me to suffer. You want me to be unhappy. It makes you feel clever when you make me miserable.”

“Look, Tom: I’m somebody—a person, a woman. You want me. I don’t want you. So you impose your sufferings on me. You want me to make a martyr of myself for the sake of your well-being. You want me to stop being myself so that you haven’t got to be miserable. You want me to be miserable for you. Well, I won’t. Just because you want me—so I’m heartless because I don’t want you? Tom, you may go to the devil.”

“You said you loved me once.”

“I don’t love you, Tom.”

“You said you did.”

“I thought I did. But I don’t. Poor Tom, dear Tom, if I hurt you I’m sorry. But be sensible, for God’s sake. What’d be the use if I went back to you? I couldn’t be more than just patient with you, even if we were together again. And you’d eat your heart out trying to make me love you; and the more you tried to make me love you the more you’d get on my nerves. No, no, no, Tom—break it up once and for all. I never wanted to be unkind to you. I know I’ve hurt you. I’m as sorry as hell, Tom. But positively, no.”

“You’re in love with somebody else.”

“That’s neither here nor there.”

“You are!”

“The point is, I’m not in love with you; and I’m not going to live with you.”

“You’re in love with somebody else!”

“So will you be, Tom. Just be patient.”

“I won’t let you be in love with anybody else,” said Tom Swan.

“Let me? But how could you stop me? Be reasonable, Tom. Even if I went back to you to-night, how could you stop me being in love with the policeman on the corner, or the milkman, or the Prime Minister, or the postman, or Clark Gable? How?”

“I won’t let you, Jo. I swear I won’t let you.”

“Good night, Tom,” said Joanna Bowman,

Her husband took from his hip pocket one of those sheath-knives that are sold in the novelty-shops for five shillings—something like a hunting knife, with an imitation-leather handle. “Does this convey anything to you?” he said.

“I rather think you’re going completely out of your mind. Go and sleep it off. Good night.”

“I daresay you think I wouldn’t use this.”

“I don’t think, I don’t know, and I don’t care. I don’t give a damn what you would or wouldn’t do. Only go away and leave me alone.”

“Oh Jo, Jo, I can’t live without you. Jo, can’t you understand that I can’t live without you?”

“And can’t you understand that I can’t live with you? Do please stop making such a fool of yourself. Please get out of my way and let me go to bed.”

Tom Swan said: “I swear to God, I’d see you dead at my feet before I’d think of you in somebody else’s bed. Yes, by God in heaven I would! When I think of all we’ve … No, by God in heaven—you won’t! When I think of somebody else being … No, no, oh Joanna, dearest one … oh please, please, please, please!”

“Please, Tom, do go away.”

“But I love you.”

“What right have you to persecute me just because you love me? If I loved you and you didn’t love me, would I persecute you?”

“My God, how I hate you! God, what a rotten woman you are! I never thought it possible for a woman to be so beastly,” said Tom Swan.

“How typical,” said Joanna, “how beautifully typical of a man! ‘I hate you, I loathe you, I detest you, I want to kill you, you’re mean, you’re cold, you’re beastly, you’re rotten … Oh please, please, please, please, come back to me!’ Now for the last time, go away. Nothing you say or do will ever make any difference. You know me well enough to know that when I say a thing I mean it and dynamite wouldn’t move me. And your crying and whimpering only makes me all the more determined never, never, never to have anything more to do with you. Is that clear enough for you?”

“Jo, I’d rather kill you than think of you with somebody else. And I wouldn’t care if they hanged me. I wouldn’t give a damn. They’d save me the trouble of hanging myself. I swear I’ll kill you if you don’t come back to me.”

“Why,” cried Joanna, “how dare you? How dare you insult me by thinking that your little threats could possibly intimidate me into doing something I didn’t want to do? The vanity of it! The conceit of it! The presumption! To threaten me!”

She threw back her head and laughed. The laugh ended in a strangled hiccup as the knife went in up to the hilt under her ribs.

Pym arrived breathless half a minute later and saw Joanna lying on her back in the half-shadow beyond the light of the street lamp outside her door.

A policeman was there already, blowing a whistle, and a crowd was gathering.

“Wheee! Listen to the flutes!” said a small, monkey-faced man, dancing with delight. “The flutes—listen to ’em!”

Police-whistles were blowing a hundred yards away, in the Vauxhall-bridge Road. Tom Swan, running madly into the dark, had been knocked down by a one-ton truck loaded with potato-crisps in square tins. The driver of the truck was trembling in the doorway of a bookshop. The road was littered with tins.

“Ukh-ukh!” said Tom Swan, coughing himself to death.

*

In the small hours of the morning Pym went to the Westminster Hospital and said: “The lady who was killed in William and Mary Square this evening … I want to give her these——” He held up an enormous bunch of ill-assorted dying flowers which he had bought from a pleasantly surprised costermonger.

The man on duty smiled at him in a fatherly way and said: “The young lady wasn’t killed. So she’ll enjoy your flowers all the more, you see.”

“Did I hear you say not killed?” cried Pym.

“You mustn’t shout, sir. No, she wasn’t killed. She’s alive.”

“Is she badly hurt?”

“I couldn’t say.”

Later Pym learned that Joanna Bowman was in a critical condition but was as comfortable as she could be in the circumstances. He went home, exhausted. All the lights in the flat were on, and the gas fire was roaring, white hot, in the sitting-room. Win was asleep on his bed; she was wearing one of his new shirts. He took hold of her by a wrist and an ankle and dragged her to the floor where she sat up and said: “Johnny darling, you frightened me!”

“Dress and get out.”

“But Johnny, get out where?”

“Dress here in two minutes or dress in the passage. Two minutes.”

“But where am I to go?”

“Just go. Damn you,” said Pym, shaking a fist under her nose, “if it hadn’t been for you….”

His anger gagged him. Win looked shrewdly at his face, and said: “Yes, Johnny.” She left hurriedly, and was in the street when the first birds, delivered from the perils of the night, were singing at the dawn.

CHAPTER TWENTY

PYM did not go to bed. He paced the floor, savagely cursing Win and hating himself for ever having pitied her. He spat with disgust and opened the window. The room seemed to stink of her, as if she had lived there for years. Wherever he turned he found evidence of Win. Win’s fine blonde hair was in the comb. Win’s coarse mouse-coloured hair was in the safety razor. Win’s bright lipstick was on the pillow. She had laddered one of her stockings and thrown the pair away in a corner of the bathroom. The white scum of Win’s ablutions was in the hand-basin; and there were further traces of Win in the toilet—she was one of those women who can never in any circumstances make anything work. She had squeezed his toothpaste tube in the middle and he had a morbid suspicion that she had used his toothbrush. He threw it out of the window. Had she been playing with his typewriter again? He looked toward the table and felt all the blood in his body rush to his heart, leaving his skin cold and loose. The typewriter was not there. “I’ll murder the bitch!” he shouted; and then he remembered that he had put it on the pavement when he knelt down beside Joanna Bowman, and had left it there. All thought of it had been shocked out of his mind.

“What have I done to deserve this?” he said, to the ceiling.

The ceiling was silent. He answered himself: What have you done to deserve this? Everything. You born fool! You’re like a whorish idiot of a girl: she goes home with the local Casanova and says: “You mustn’t do anything, mind.” Then she takes all her clothes off because he says he only wants to have a look at her for artistic reasons. “But you mustn’t do anything wicked, mind.” Then they lie down together, because he wants company, as he says. “All right, but mind, you mustn’t take liberties.” And then when she finds herself three months pregnant she howls: “What have I done to deserve it?” … Everything, everything, you godforsaken bloody idiot! Everything to deserve all this and a thousand times more! So take it, you son of a dog, take it and like it!

And Pym kicked himself—literally, he kicked himself in the left leg.

After that he drank tea and read the morning paper, still walking about the sitting-room. There was talk of atrocities in Middle Europe, and of the possibility of war. Pym thought then that a war was just what he wanted. If there was a war he might have a little peace. He yearned for the sublime irresponsibility of the private soldier who has nothing to do but his duty and nothing to lose but his life. He wanted to be in a barrack-room, where a man can be left alone for a little while to wrap his sore mind in the warm blanket of a weary body and forget the world.

“Let there be a war. Who cares?” he muttered, turning the page. Then he saw a photograph of Sissy Voltaire under the headline:

SISSY VOLTAIRE DISCOVERS UNKNOWN GENIUS TRAGEDY OF MARY GREENSLEEVE

Clergyman’s Widow Dying of Starvation Writes Play

The story, which was written by a woman, was full of pathos. In a common lodging house in one of the poorer quarters of London, a little old lady dressed in grey, clean but threadbare, fastidiously neat in spite of her poverty, had burned herself to death trying to warm her poor old cramped hands at a fire made of her love letters (carefully cherished for many years) soaked in paraffin. They had warmed her poor old heart, and now they were to warm her poor old hands. Yet these cherished love letters brought about her destruction in the end, because she set fire to her neatly-darned clean-but-well-worn clothes and was so grievously injured that (with a tender smile on her clean but worn old face) she died, giving certain papers to a certain young man who happened to be near her at the time, and begging him with her dying breath to give them to Sissy Voltaire, the famous actress. This poor well-worn but clean and tidy packet of papers proved to be a script of a play, the merit of which Miss Sissy Voltaire instantly recognised. And now Sissy Voltaire and the promising young comedian Rocky Gagan were going to put the play on at the Pegasus Theatre. Miss Voltaire had said that it was a work of pure genius, calculated to pluck the heartstrings. It contained some of the most humorous and the most tragic passages that had ever been written for the stage. It was a comedy, yet how sad, how frightfully sad it was! …

Pym pushed the paper away. There was something like a mist in his head. Somewhere in all this there was secreted, like a gall-bladder, a dark green seed of ineffable bitterness which—if he could get his fingers on it—he would tear open; and then, by God, he would turn the over-sweetened stomach of the world!

*

They told him, at the hospital, that Joanna Bowman had had a disturbed night but was as comfortable as could be expected. He said: “I should like Miss Bowman to have a room of her own. I’ll pay for it. If you like, I can pay in advance, now. I believe that if a patient has a private room one may visit her at any time within reason? Is that so? … Would it hurt her to be moved?”

“It can be done.”

“But she isn’t going to die?”

“Now you really must be patient. Everything that can be done is being done. You can’t do any good at all by worrying.”

“I want everything done that’s humanly possible,” said Pym. “Absolutely everything. Never mind what it costs. I’m responsible. I’d like her to have a private room. I want her to have everything possible. My idea is that she might get better rather quicker if she had a little room of her own, if that could be arranged. Can I see her, now?”

“Yes, you can see her if you like, but you mustn’t excite her.”

Joanna Bowman was lying still, looking at the ceiling. Pym approached on tiptoe, holding his breath, and put on the table by her bed six hothouse peaches packed in sawdust, and a little pineapple. The sister of the ward took the bunch of roses he had brought and smiled at him. Joanna looked at him without moving her head, and whispered: “Hullo.”

“Hullo, Joanna.”

“How are you?” she asked. “You look absolutely awful.”

“The point is, how are you?”

“Not too bad. That fool stuck his toy Scout-knife into me.”

“I know. I got there just a bit too late.”

“Couldn’t even do this properly. Poor man!”

“They said you weren’t to talk too much or excite yourself.”

“This is nothing. I’ll be up again in a few days. Don’t worry about me.”

“Doesn’t it hurt like hell?”

“Only when I laugh.”

The sister came in with the flowers in a tall graduated glass. “There now,” she said, putting them where Joanna could see them, “look at the lovely roses the gentleman brought you.” She was a short, strong, curiously curved, healthily ugly woman whose round flat face with its long, spiky nose reminded Pym of a sundial—a sundial that looks toward heaven and turns its own shadow to a useful purpose. Time, he thought, had no more power to spoil that face than the shadow of the gnomon, in passing, can scratch the bronze. He broke off one of the roses and put it in her cap.

“Now you look like a Spanish dancing girl,” he said.

“You go away,” said the sister. “That’s quite enough for to-day. Go on, off you go. Out you go.”

“I’ll see you again soon, Joanna,” said Pym.

“If you like. Oh, Pym.”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for the roses.”

When he was gone the sister said: “What a nice gentleman. You’re a lucky girl.”

“He’s not so bad, Carmen.”

“Carmen?” said the sister. Then she remembered the rose in her cap, and took it away with an embarrassed smile. That evening she pressed it between the leaves of a large, profusely illustrated presentation copy of the poems of Keats which had been given to her by a dying student. She had never found time to read it. The leather spine of this volume was cracking with the pressure of dried-up flowers and grateful letters for which it was a repository. She liked Pym for his devoted attention to Joanna Bowman, and she liked Joanna for her stoic acceptance of pain. They refreshed her. She knew that she had been brought into the world to be patient with the sick and the suffering, but she loved people for whom she did not have to feel sorry. She asked Mr. Stone, the surgeon, when Joanna Bowman might be moved, and he said: “Oh, I don’t know. The girl’s as strong as a bullock. She got a nasty dig in the ribs, but she’ll pull through all right, sister. Shift her.”

Pym put down ten guineas as evidence of solvency and good faith, and they carried Joanna Bowman to her private room.

But Pym was in trouble again.

*

His typewriter had disappeared. Pym had hoped (for he had faith in human honesty) that the man or woman who had found it would say: “It is a very nice typewriter, and I am strongly tempted to walk off with it and keep it. But who knows? It may belong to some poor author who hopes to get his living out of it. I will therefore take it to the nearest police station.” This is what Pym would have said to himself if he had found a portable typewriter. He would have resisted even the little temptation to borrow it for a day or two for fear that the owner, crazed by his loss, might do something desperate.

He was quite sure, therefore, that he would find his typewriter waiting for him at the police station. But the sergeant shook his head and said: “Nope, sorry, no typewriters. Remember the number?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you let me have the number and we’ll send out a note about it. I daresay somebody or other just helped himself to it and went and flogged it at a typewriter-shop or a pawnshop…. Number?”

The sergeant took up a pencil, but Pym said: “Oh, no! Thanks all the same. No more of that for me. Let’s give it up as a bad job; write it off.”

“Please yourself. It’s your typewriter.”

Then Pym went to a shop in St. Martin’s Lane and paid twelve guineas for a brand new typewriter of the latest pattern. It had everything—large clear type, tabular key, margin release, the four French accents, several mathematical signs and an asterisk; and it was fitted with a silencer, so that instead of chattering it whispered. People might be sleeping in the same room with you while you, the insomniac genius, beat out a masterpiece; and this astounding machine would let them sleep. He loved it as soon as he saw it. “That one,” he said; but the startled salesman could not stop his sales talk, and pointed out the strength and the beauty of the typewriter—the type-bars made of a special alloy compared with which steel was mere plasticine—the platen roller that came right off at the pressure of a button—the touch adjuster, by means of which the keys were adjusted to any hand. Did you hit your machine great swinging blows like Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom? Touch the touch adjuster. Did you finger your keys like a six-year-old girl secretly exploring the soft, pulsating part of her new-born brother’s skull? Touch the touch adjuster. In either case—smack!—down went the word, cleancut as God’s commandments chiselled into the stone tablets that Moses made and broke….

“—And look,” said the salesman, “if you want to get to the underneath part, all you need to do is just press this little thing here, push sideways, lift, and there you are. No screws, everything simplified. See? Push—lift. Let it down, and it clips right back into position. Immovable. Try it and see.”

“All right, I see. I’ll have that one.”

“We can put your initials on the cover—that’s a waterproof cover—with no extra charge, sir.”

Pym thought that it would be a very good thing to own a beautiful typewriter like this, with J. P. in gold on the cover. But he remembered his cigarette-case. He was rich, and in spite of all the devils in hell and Fleet Street he was going to be richer still. Yet he said: “No. Leave it as it ‘is.”

“Brushes? Oil? Special plastic cleaner? Paper? Carbon? Files?”

“Nothing more,” said Pym. He wanted to take his machine home and play with it.

At home he took off the cover and typed the sentence about the fox that jumped over the lazy dog. What the salesman had said was true: the typewriter made no noise. At first, Pym was amused and delighted by this. Then it irritated him. This prostitute-by-vocation of a typewriter took in a great, crashing, bold sentence and degraded it to something sly and confidential. All things to all men, with her touch adjuster, she looked out of the corners of her eyes and talked half-audibly out of the corners of her mouth.

He was trying to love and understand this quiet, enigmatic typewriter when, at ten o’clock on Monday morning, a gentleman came to see him—a plump, pale man with bold yet cowardly blue eyes, whose manner, compounded of impudence and vigilance, made Pym think of a pederast behind the veil of the steam in a Turkish bath. Instinctively, Pym hated him. He seemed to be gloating over a furtive triumph, like a waiter who has just spat in your soup. Pym read, on his card, that his name was Cicero Greensleeve and that he was a solicitor.

“Greensleeve!” said Pym. “You wouldn’t be, by any chance, any relation to Mrs. Mary Daphne Greensleeve?”

“Her son, Mr. Pym. Pardon the intrusion. Miss Voltaire advised me to get in touch with you. I didn’t go through the formality of writing because you gentlemen of letters—you won’t take offence, I’m sure, if I say so—are well-known for your preoccupation with other things, more important things than dry letters from us lawyers. And why should you take the trouble to answer them? No one pays you for answering a lawyer’s letter; and your writing is worth good money—so much a word, I believe. It was scarcely worth troubling you about, in any case, because it’s such a simple little matter. In a case like this five minutes friendly conversation does away with the need for five days of delay. So I took the liberty of calling on you at this unearthly hour because I thought I’d find you at home. You lucky men are not slaves to routine like us lawyers.”

“Well, what is it?” asked Pym; but he knew already that Cicero Greensleeve’s business, whatever it was, was awkward business, bad business.

The solicitor settled himself on the sofa, avoiding a broken spring with a neat twitch of his rounded hips, and took three newspapers out of a respectable black brief-case. “As a pressman, you will no doubt have read——”

“I’m not a pressman.”

“But you write for the press.”

“Well?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pym. I took it for granted that since you are a writer for the newspapers, and since this has been made public, you—as one of the interested parties—must have read one or more of these little items, about Mrs. Greensleeve, my poor mother.”

“I’ve read the piece in the Express, yes,” said Pym. “Not the others.”

“Not even the article in the Sunday Special, Mr. Pym? Oh, come, come now. We’re men of the world, aren’t we? Surely, now, you’re not going to tell me that you don’t read the newspaper for which you write?”

“I buy it every Sunday, yes. I usually look through it, of course. But as it happens I’ve been busy with other things in the last few days, and I didn’t even open a newspaper yesterday,” said Pym.

Cicero Greensleeve looked at him, smiling, and, handing over a copy of the Sunday Special carefully folded back, pointed to a blue-pencilled cross on the Entertainments Page, and said: “I take it, then, that you have not read this?”

Pym said: “You may take it that I haven’t and if you’ll excuse me I’ll read it now.” And he read of a respectable woman, the wife of a clergyman, who had given everything for love. She had borne children to her husband, had disliked them because they resembled their father, whom she hated, and at last fell in love with an actor. In the twilight of her unhappy life (yet was it after all so unhappy?) sick and alone, she put her life story into a play, and, driven raving mad by her sufferings, drenched herself in paraffin and burnt herself to death.

“But this is a lot of damned nonsense,” Pym said. “It was an accident.”

“That is very likely, Mr. Pym. I daresay it was an accident. I am sure that it was an accident. But who is to believe that it was an accident since responsible newspapers indicate that my poor mother killed herself with fire, like Brutus’s wife, in a fit of madness? And you must consider the living in their relation to the dead, Mr. Pym. It is clearly indicated that my mother was insane, in addition to being a most immoral woman. I am a professional man, Mr. Pym. I have my professional reputation—upon which my livelihood, and indeed my very life, depends—to consider. I am a family man. I am myself a father. I have marriageable daughters, Mr. Pym. You cannot be unaware of the fact that you have stigmatised them as the granddaughters of a mad woman. This is a serious business, Mr. Pym. This is libel. What do you propose to do about it?”

“I don’t know what the devil I should do about it,” said Pym. “I don’t see that it has anything to do with me. I didn’t write the play. I certainly had no hand in putting out the little bits in the papers here. My conscience is clear. I suggest that if you want to make some sort of issue about it, you take it up with the papers that published the pieces you’re making such a fuss about.”

“I can do that, certainly. But these things are better settled in a friendly way, Mr. Pym. As a lawyer, ha-ha! one of those so-called pettifogging lawyers of whom your colleague Charles Dickens wrote so bitterly, I always advise my clients to have as little as possible to do with lawyers and litigation. I am not litigiously-minded myself, strange as it may seem, although the Law is my profession and I am in the courts day after day. It is true that I have reasonable grounds for injunction. I can perfectly easily stop my unhappy mother’s foolish play before there is so much as a rehearsal. I can have it taken off,” said Cicero Greensleeve, snapping his fingers, “like that!”

“All right then, do that,” said Pym. “Take it off. I don’t care.”

“On the other hand, she was my mother and I am her son,” said Greensleeve. “Put yourself in my position. Consider the feelings of a son. My mother was an unworthy woman ——”

“—She was nothing of the sort. She was worth … I don’t know what the rest of your family was like, but I’ll go so far as to say that she was worth you and all of them put together.”

“That may be, or it may not be. It is not for me to say. But I have reverence for the memory of my father, Mr. Pym, and my first duty is to my family. I have no great desire, as you may imagine, to involve them in a sordid case of this kind, even if in doing so I might enrich myself.”

“Why are you telling me all this? What has it to do with me?’’

“I am telling you this, because it is in my nature to have an open heart, Mr. Pym. But you ask me what this has to do with you. Surely, Mr. Pym, you must know what it has to do with you? My poor mother wrote a play. You have got hold of that play.”

“I got hold of nothing. Your mother gave me that play.”

“May I ask when?”

“Why, yes: when she was dying in the Lazarus Infirmary. She left a box of papers with a Mrs. Lincoln at 8, Damascus Terrace and gave me a written authorisation to collect that box.”

“May I see the written authorisation?”

“I think I left it with the landlady.”

“I see. To collect; authority to collect her papers in her own handwriting, no doubt.

“No. She was too ill to write. I wrote it from her dictation and she signed it.”

“I have not the slighest doubt, Mr. Pym, that my unhappy mother intended her private papers to be handed over to her next-of-kin.”

“What reason have you to believe that your mother cared two hoots about her next-of-kin, Mr. Greensleeve?” asked Pym. “She was glad enough to get away from her next-of-kin, and stay away for a little life-time—and by God, I can’t blame her.”

Cicero Greensleeve smiled comfortably and shook an admonitory finger as he said: “Now, now, now, Mr. Pym; I have yet to see the situation that was improved by impolite personalities and blasphemy. No, Mr. Pym, I’m afraid—not that I’m doubting your word for one moment, mind—I’m afraid your case wouldn’t hold together for ten seconds in a Court of Law. Even if you had the document you speak of, it wouldn’t be enough. And even if you had known enough of the law to put my poor mother’s … dying request, or bequest as we might call it, ha-ha!—even if you had worded it in proper form, and had got the signatures of a couple of witnesses, it still wouldn’t do, you know, because that form of will, in this case, could be successfully contested by my Articled Clerk. How long had you known my poor mother?”

“About ten minutes,” said Pym.

“Ten minutes. How did you meet? … I’m not trying to cross-examine you; I’m simply trying to make your legal position clear to you and to me.”

“I met your mother when she accidentally set fire to her clothes. She was burning, and although I was not briefed in the case, and in spite of the fact that she was neither my client nor my next-of-kin, I tried to put the fire out. Not being a bloody pettifogging lawyer I didn’t stop to weigh the pros and the cons of the thing. I shouldn’t be surprised that even if you set yourself alight I’d instinctively chuck a bucket of water over you. However, I daresay you’ll get your share of fire shortly after the Day of Judgment. I tried to help your mother—your poor mother, as you call her. She was living next door to me. She was terribly poor. She was starving——”

“—Oh, poor mother, poor mother! Starving among strangers, when she knew that she only had to come to me——”

“—Yes, I know. When she only had to come to you. Who wouldn’t rather starve to death or burn?” said Pym.

“Mr. Pym, I cannot truthfully say that I like your manner.”

“Mr. Bloody Cicero Greensleeve, I can truthfully say that I don’t like yours. Talk to me straightforwardly if you can, just for a minute. Make the effort, just for a minute. What are you driving at? In my way I’m a busy man. Say what you have to say, quick. I’m a patient kind of mug, but not with people I don’t like. Let us get this straight. First of all you come along threatening to take action for libel, or something, against two or three newsappers that I have nothing to do with. Then you threaten to stop a play I never wrote. And having, as you no doubt thought, created the proper atmosphere of legal terror and mystery, you come around to the ownership of your mother’s play. What’s your game?”

“My game, as you choose to call it, should be obvious. Once identity is established, this play of my mother’s, together with the attendant publicity, is very likely to be injurious to me, professionally, and to my children. My mother, and my daughters’ grandmother, is stigmatised as an insane, suicidal prostitute—and a bohemian! I have therefore a perfectly reasonable and natural desire to take charge of this play, as is my legal right, with a view (if need be) to suppressing it. That, in a nutshell, is what you call my ‘game’. And speaking of games, Mr. Pym, may I ask what your game is?”

“Look here, Mr. Cicero,” said Pym, “just one word of warning. If you grin and wink and leer at me, old as you are and fat as you are I might be tempted to wipe that expression off your face with the back of my hand. And when you start talking about my game, I feel very much inclined to pick you up by the collar and kick your fat little bottom downstairs. You’d better be civil. I haven’t got any game. Your mother said she didn’t want to be buried in a pauper’s grave, and I promised her that she shouldn’t be. She wanted to make some return, and gave me her papers. I was fully convinced that your mother’s play was completely valueless. It was only by chance that Rocky Gagan got hold of it. Meanwhile I kept my promise to your mother and saw that she wasn’t buried in a pauper’s grave. Nobody was more surprised than I when Gagan and his lady friend took an interest in that play. If you can make a ‘game’ out of that, go ahead.”

“Where did you say my poor mother was buried?”

“I didn’t say, and I won’t say.”

“Oh dear me, poor mother! I can easily find out. A wreath, or a cross, a few flowers … Oh dear, oh dear! Yet I understand Mr. Pym, that, representing this play as your own property, you received certain monies for it, and signed an agreement whereby you were to receive further payments. Is that so?”

“The play was my property because Mrs. Greensleeve—excuse me if I find it impossible to refer to her as your mother—gave it to me. I got fifty pounds for the option and a hundred pounds for the advance on royalties which amount to five per cent.”

“It won’t do at all, you know, Mr. Pym. It just won’t do, you know. You have no right to that money at all, Mr. Pym. You have no right to that play. As my poor mother’s eldest son, it belongs to me, and you haven’t a leg to stand on. I’m afraid you’ll have to refund me that hundred and fifty pounds.”

“Oh you are, are you?”

Cicero Greensleeve nodded and said: “Naturally you will be reimbursed for any expense you may have incurred in connection with my poor mother’s funeral——”

“What? Do you think I’d let a creature like you pay for that? The poor little lady would turn in her poor little grave.”

“As you wish, Mr. Pym. I cannot, of course, compel you to accept money you prefer not to accept. If, however, you let me have the undertaker’s statement, I will deduct the amount of his bill from the little statement which, in justice to myself, I shall be compelled to send you to-morrow.”

Pym struggled against a desire to kill him. The sleek, sly, audacious face of the solicitor appeared to blush, but the redness of it was in Pym’s eyes. Then he became calm and, after a few seconds of misty cogitation, said: “I see. I may consult my solicitor, I suppose?”

“Naturally, Mr. Pym, of course you can. But I can tell you in advance that your case is as leaky as a sieve.”

“I begin to think so too,” said Pym. “Is your brother also a solicitor?”

“Decimus? No, he is not a solicitor, Mr. Pym. He is in business on his own—an estate agent, I believe. I hear he is doing quite well. I have not seen him for several years, the more’s the pity. Brotherly love, ha-ha! Brotherly love.”

“Haven’t I seen his name on the boards—you know, on those boards outside houses for sale and to let?” asked Pym.

“Very likely. Walbank, Greensleeve and Champion … very likely, very likely indeed,” said Cicero Greensleeve, in the best of tempers. “Well, Mr. Pym, there is our little matter clarified, without ill-feeling.”

“You’ll be lucky if you get that hundred and fifty pounds,” said Pym. “I’ve spent a good deal of it, you know.”

“We’ll see, we’ll see, Mr. Pym. The important thing is, I always think, to have the position clear—to clarify, clarify, Mr. Pym. Admit, now—confess, Mr. Pym—isn’t it better this way? Right will be done and your conscience will be clear, and there can be no hard feeling on either side.”

*

Pym was too angry to think of his lost riches and his poverty. He had an idea, a hotly vindictive idea. Before it cooled he made a telephone call and went to see Mr. Decimus Greensleeve, of Walbank, Greensleeve and Champion. Decimus was more colloquial, more familiar than his elder brother. Pym found him similarly detestable, but kept his voice under control and, clenching his jaws for fear that his face might betray him, said:

“I feel I ought to tell you this, Mr. Greensleeve, in the interests of justice.” He smoothed the newspaper clipping on the desk. “There’s no doubt at all that Mr. Cicero Greensleeve is exploiting this for his own profit. I think you’ll find that in your poor mother’s play there are certain injurious passages. As you see, the publicity that is being put out now is not calculated to do you or your children, if you have any, the least bit of good.”

“Have any? Three boys and two girls. Injurious? Ruinous! Trust Cis … Cicero, that confounded lawyer—trust him to sell his mother, and his brother, and his nieces! But I’ll nail him to the wall, the weasel—I’ll nail him to the barn door all right! He can’t do it. I know the law. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that your own brother would share and share alike. But not Cicero, oh no, not Cicero! Plain case of libel! I’ll apply for an injunction at once. I’ll put a stop to his little game.”

“If I were you,” said Pym, “I’d be patient. Let it go a little further. Let them get in so deep that they can’t get out. Then, of course, you put yourself in a stronger position. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, you do, you do. But what makes you tell me all this?”

“I have private reasons.”

“I’m much obliged to you. Is there anything I could do for you in return? I could put you on to a nice furnished flat. Or an unfurnished one. And, between you and me, there’s a housing estate going up at Gapton——”

“No thanks, Mr. Greensleeve, I just thought I’d warn you.”

“I’m much obliged to you, Mr. Pym, and if ever you want me to put you on to a good thing in the way of a house or a flat, or business premises, just give me a call and I’ll deal with it personally.”

Then Decimus Greensleeve, having seen Pym out of his office, snarled a smile and, talking between his teeth, called his solicitor, who assured him that he had a watertight case.

*

Pym also consulted a solicitor, and asked: “How do I stand in this business?” He was talking to Shirley Brush, a sharp, bright old man with pendulous grey moustaches that seemed to snap like scissors when he talked.

Mr. Brush said: “Morally, you’re in the right, no doubt. Legally, you haven’t a leg to stand on, as your friend Greensleeve says.”

“No friend of mine, Mr. Brush.”

“No friend of mine either. A manner of speaking. Take my advice, do nothing at all about it. At least, don’t go to law about it. If you don’t think I’m right, I can get you an opinion; but in my opinion that would be a sheer waste of money. You haven’t a hope, not a hope. Drop it. It’s a pity, but what can you do? Greensleeve has got you by the short hairs. Never mind. You’re a young man. You lived before this, without that play. You’ll live again. Pay no attention to it. Fiddle with the rights and wrongs of it, and you’ll only make the lawyers rich.”

When Pym told him of the brothers Greensleeve old Shirley Brush rubbed his hands, chuckled, and said: “Now that ought to be amusing. They’re sure to jump at each other’s throats, if I know Cicero. By the way, about that hundred and fifty pounds. I understand that you did certain work on this play of Mrs. Greensleeve’s?”

“I rewrote a few lines of dialogue.”

“You rewrote it. At the very least, you rewrote the dialogue. Send in, at once, a bill for three hundred pounds.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Pym, “I can’t do a thing like that. I ask you—send in a bill for three hundred pounds?”

“I should if I were you. If I know Cicero Greensleeve he’ll go after you pretty hard for that hundred and fifty pounds. Incidentally, how much have you left of that hundred and fifty? A hundred pounds? Fifty pounds?”

“Round about thirty pounds, I think.”

“Thirty pounds! What do they do with their money? Well, be advised by me, Mr. Pym: send in a bill for three hundred pounds. It isn’t unreasonable. You’ve helped to make a marketable property, and you’re entitled to a fee. We can’t very well claim a cut of the royalty, much as I’d like to, but three hundred pounds is a reasonable fee. I think I may say (in fact I’d wager a small sum) that Cicero will settle for the hundred and fifty pounds you’ve already had. Yet I really think that it would be a nice thing if we could get three hundred out of him. Let’s send in a bill for three hundred pounds and chance it. What have we got to lose?”

“Look here, Mr. Brush, I came to you because Mr. Steeple spoke highly of you—not that my business is worth having—just for a little bit of advice. I’m not going to get involved in a niggling little law-suit for a few hundred——”

“—You’re not going to be involved in anything.”

“Dear God, Mr. Brush, how I hate the Law!”

“You hate it, do you? Do you now? How strange. I love it. It’s beautiful, Mr. Pym. Beautiful! It keeps your head clear. Study it: it’s rock-crystal through and through—ice-cold, full of light, hard, clean, perfect! Study it. Make your children study it. It’ll cool them off and make them solid. Oh, I assure you, as an artist you ought to love the Law.”

“The idea is that you send this fellow a bill on my behalf, is it?”

“That’s the idea.”

“No. I don’t want to do it. I don’t play that kind of game. Let him have his few pounds back. To hell with him. I’ll annoy him if I can, but take nothing. Back goes his thirty pounds.”

“Then he’ll sue you for the rest.”

“Sue a stone for blood,” said Pym.

“Mr. Pym, you’re a fool.”

“How much do I owe you, Mr. Brush?”

“How much do you owe me? I tell you what: I’ll settle for a lunch—a three-and-sixpenny lunch and a five-and-sixpenny bottle of wine at the Café Royal. That saves you money, because you’ll drink at least half the wine. Is that fair?”

Pym said, smiling: “I see you’re not a businessman, Mr. Brush.”

“Aren’t I? I don’t know. If I took half a guinea off you I’d spend it on a three-and-sixpenny lunch and a five-and-sixpenny bottle of wine and eighteenpence for the waiter. As it is, I make a good bargain. I have the lunch plus the pleasure of your company. I like writers.”

“I am beginning to like lawyers, Mr. Brush.”

“You know, between ourselves, I keep a diary. It’s my hobby. I put everything down in a certain code of my own, like Samuel Pepys. It is rather early to think of it now, but when I am old—when I retire—I mean to write a volume of reminiscences like that of Dr. Axel Munthe—the Scandinavin who likes birds. But my birds are pretty queer birds, Mr. Pym. Crows, buzzards, kites. Oh, I could tell you some stories! Well, does that arrangement suit you? I’ll settle for a lunch.”

“Come along and have it then,” said Pym.

“Oh no, excuse me. Work first, pay afterwards. To-day you lunch with me, Mr. Pym.”

“Mr. Brush, you are the nicest lawyer I have ever met.”

“Oh, there are lots of nice lawyers. The better they are as lawyers the nicer they are likely to be as people; because, don’t you see, it takes a decent man to be a decent lawyer, or doctor, or accountant, or whatever he may be. I understand the popular prejudice. But people just don’t understand, you know. They don’t understand that a man of law who loves his job is a kind of artist in his way.”

“I don’t deny it, Mr. Brush, but I don’t necessarily like a man because he is an artist. I mightn’t like his form of art.”

“Quite right too. There are bad great artists and good great artists. There is the Devil’s Advocate who likes fair play and knows the difference between right and wrong; and the Devil’s Advocate who believes that the winner must be right. Come and have lunch.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THEY had crossed Leicester Square, and were waiting for the traffic to pass at the corner of Wardour Street. A young woman looked at them with perfunctory professional interest. She was a slender blonde with langorous eyes and a heavy, sensual mouth, dressed with conspicuous austerity in funereal black. The hem of her skirt swung two inches above her knees, and she was wearing black silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, an imitation silver fox, a little black veil, and black suède gloves over which she had pushed two enormous silver rings. She was accompanied by a tall, dark, tragic-looking man with large, moist, bloodshot eyes, an uncovered head, and hair like the roots of an old tree.

“Look at those two,” said Shirley Brush, pinching Pym’s arm.

Pym looked, and started. The woman looked at him, recognised him, tossed her head, and looked away again.

Then the road was clear. The blonde woman and the dark man made their way to the other side. Pym said: “My God, that was Annie!”

“She looks to me like a very promising young tart.”

“Yes, it is Annie,” said Pym. “Dear God, what the devil have I done now?”

When Shirley Brush heard the story of Annie’s seduction, as Pym called it, he laughed heartily and said: “I see you’ve been reading your Victor Hugo. Now you can take it from me, my lad; no woman gets to be like that unless she positively wants to be like that. I’ve read my Les Miserables and I’ve read my Crime and Punishment, but I’d been in and out of the police courts before you wiped your mother’s milk off your lip, and you can take it from me….”

“It’s very likely that you’re right,” said Pym. “Only I can’t help feeling, somehow, responsible.”

“Oh, feel responsible by all means,” said Shirley Brush, “but be selective; know the rights and wrongs of it. Did you corrupt the girl? If anything she corrupted you. Did you seduce the girl? She seduced you. Does every woman who loses her innocence get herself up like that and rush out on to the streets?”

“You speak like Proudfoot.”

“Proudfoot? You don’t mean the Proudfoot who defended Shorty French, by an chance?”

“That’s right.”

“D’you know him?”

“Yes. He’s done me more than one good turn.”

“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. I fear the Greeks when they bring gifts. I do not trust Proudfoot, especially when he does someone a good turn. Take my advice: have as little to do with him as possible. He isn’t any good.”

“But I hate to think of that girl….”

“—Stop thinking of girls. Here we are. They give you a good lunch here for three-and-six, and a decent bottle of wine. You can eat cheaper and better in Soho, but there’s one thing about this place—you’re sure to see artists and writers. I like artists and writers. Look, do you see that man over there? Augustus John. Good Lord, what a noble head! And in the evening you are quite likely to see Epstein. This is what one comes here for. These are the things that really matter. The arts—the arts! Oh, if only I were a young man again!”

Pym was depressed. He was thinking of Busto’s servant girl, Annie.

*

Aspirates came hard to Annie, so she threw them all away and, thinking of Greta Garbo, talked in a husky monotone. Foreigners, on the screen, have no aitches: therefore she had no use for the letter H, and was privately practising the substitution of Z for Th, so that she might say Zat for That and Zis instead of This. She was talking about Pym:

“Did I ever tell you about when my father played at cards with that feller? That feller made my father drunk on champagne and then they played cards. They played cards all night and this feller kept filling up my father’s glass with champagne, so my father got so drunk ’e didn’t know what ’e was doing. My mother kept on begging ’im to stop it, and ’e wouldn’t stop—’e kept on drinking champagne and playing this game of cards, and this other feller, so ’e marked those cards with a pin, and so that’s ’ow my father lost all ’is money. I was only a young girl then, and I was asleep, see? I ’ad a lovely bed with eagles on it; and so my mother come in about six o’clock in the morning crying as if ’er ’eart would break, and so I woke up and I said: ‘Little mother, why are you crying as if your ’eart would break?’ And so then she told me about ’ow my father ’ad gone and lost all ’is money and ’er diamond bracelets and rings and a diamond tirara to this feller. ‘Katusha, we’ll ’ave to beg our bread on the streets,’ she said. So I says: ‘Stop crying as if your ’eart would break, little mother.’ And so I put on a pair of little blue silk slippers with pink pom-poms (seems silly, don’t it? I mean to say, imagine me in blue slippers with little pink pom-poms) and I went downstairs in my little silk nightdress, and there was this feller with a great big ’eap of gold and notes in front of ’im and there was my father banging ’imself on the ’ead with ’is clenched fist and shouting: ‘You villain, you villain, you’ve ruined me! Everything I ’ad is gone.’ So then this feller says: ‘I bet you I’ll cut you a ’igher card than what you cut for all this ’ere money against the roof over your ’ead’. So my poor father, ’e pulled out a whole lot of ’air out of ’is ’ead and ’e said: ‘You villain, you ’ave cast a spell over me. Curse you, go on then, cut your bleeding cards.’ Well, this other feller, ’e’d marked those cards with a pin, see? So ’e couldn’t lose, see? So ’e smiles in a smarmy way and says: ‘After you, colonel.’ My father says: ‘No, after you.’ Well then, this feller says: ‘All right, let’s toss for it.’ So then they toss, but this other feller, ’e’s got one of those double-’eaded pennies, and so ’e wins the toss; but anyways ’e’d marked all those cards with a pin—see? Well, ’e wins the toss, and ’e says to my father: ‘Don’t be silly, go on, you cut first,’ and my father trusts this feller and cuts first—and little did ’e know that this feller ’ad marked the cards with a pin. Well, my father picked up the King of Clubs, see? And then this other feller makes out ’e’s all worried, see? And my father says: ‘I will bet you anything you like that you won’t beat this one in a ’urry!’ Well, so this other feller says: ‘As between gentlemen, let it be a fight to a finish. But what will you bet I don’t beat your King of Clubs?’ Well, so my old man, my father, looks up and down and left and right, and backward and forward, and ’e sees me shivering in my little lace nightdress by the sideboard, and so my father says: ‘I bet you my daughter,’ and ’e cuts a Ace of Diamonds—’e’d marked the cards with a pin. Well, so then my father ’e’d lost everything. I clung to ’im and said: ‘Oh daddy, daddy, please don’t cry!’ But ’e went upstairs and got a gun and shot ’imself through the ’eart. I always kept the bullet. I forgot where I put it, but I got it. And my mother went out of ’er mind. So then this other feller picked me up and took me to a couch and ravaged me like a wild beast. So can you wonder I don’t speak to ’im? I mean to say, can you wonder? That night! Shall I ever forget the ’orror of that night? The things ’e done you wouldn’t believe, and it’s left a scar in my soul”

The tall, dark, melancholy stranger said: “You will have the goodness, dear lady, to excuse me, please? I have of English only a few phrases. Will you be so kind as to repeat again and have the goodness to speak a little more slowly?” He looked at her with agony in his bloodshot eyes and took a little red dictionary out of a waistcoat pocket. “Now, please?”

“You know what? I thought you was a foreigner the minute I ’eard you talk. It’s funny ’ow you can tell. Are you a Russian?”

“Please?”

“You … Russian?”

“Ah! No, dear lady, I am French. I am French and you are English.”

“I like your ring,” said Russian Katty.

“My ring?”

She pointed to an enormous signet ring on the fourth finger of his right hand and said: “Nice!”

“It is my arms.”

“Your coat of arms?”

“My arms. The arms of my family.”

“You got a family? ’Ow many children? I was a only child and my father——”

“Please. Not children. Not coat. Arms. You see?” he said, showing her the spinel seal, engraved with pigs’ heads, mailed fists, falcons and oak trees, and picking out the blunt lettering of the motto with a long fingernail. “Attempto. That is me.”

“Attempto,” said Russian Katty, “that’s a nice name. It sounds sort of Spanish.”

“Pardon me, please, my name is Armand de la Tour de Percé.”

“’Ow d’you spell it?”

“Please? Will you have the goodness, if you please, to speak a little more slowly? I have only a few phrases.”

“Me—Katusha,” she said, touching her chest with a forefinger. “You——…?”

“Ah!” The gentleman found a little leather case and took out a card. He was the Vicomte de la Tour de Percé.

“Are you a Viscount?” asked Russian Katty.

He nodded and said: “You will drink a glass of champagne with me?”

She nodded and said: “Where?” She did not want to say too much. Here was another dream.

“I live at the Hotel Sargon. I have a suite. Dare I hope that you will do me the honour?”

She nodded. They rode to the Hotel Sargon, Berkeley Street, in a taxi, and a waiter brought a golden bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. She closed her eyes. To dream was to live; to awaken was to die. She knew that in a few minutes, or a few hours, she would open her eyes in Wardour Street, and American Henry, looking at her as if he wished that his eyes were hooks with which he might tear her asunder and uncover hidden banknotes, would say: “Come on, kid. For you own good—gimme! … Don’t give me none of your fairy tales. As a matter of fact I happen to know you got hold of a foreign steamer outside the Café de l’Europe in Leicester Square; so don’t try to hold out on me. We got to hustle, honey, we got to hustle. We got business propositions elsewhere … so let me hold it for you….”

But after a little while she opened her eyes and the Vicomte was still there, gloomy, but full of adoration. Now as it happened the Vicomte de la Tour de Percé was one of the last of the mad French romantics who, at the age of forty-three, had inherited thirty-two million francs from his mother’s brother, a magnate in aluminium. Like Russian Katty, the Vicomte was a dreamer of dreams and a reader of the literature of escape. He read the histories of the demi-monde as Don Quixote read chivalry. He was a Knight of the Maudlin Countenance. His father had ruined himself in the company of one of the contemporaries of Hortense Schneider, some capricious tearer of priceless tapestry and smasher of rare Venetian glass who had achieved a certain notoriety at the end of the last century by lifting her skirts and challenging Cora Pearl to produce better buttocks than hers one tumultuous evening in the Café Anglais in Paris. Armand wanted to do likewise. He saw Russian Katty as another Cora Pearl—a wanton blonde London guttersnipe; a fashionable bone of contention; a gigantic, unfathomable body-orifice that sucked down fortunes and yawned, insatiable.

He said: “You are adorable. I implore you to come with me.”

“Where to?”

“Wherever you will. Say, and we will go. Budapest?”

She was always willing to enter into the spirit of make-believe. “Make it Monte Carlo,” she said.

“Monte Carlo? Good. Let us go now.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could?”

“Could? You must! Now, we will go now.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes, I am serious.”

“What am I going to do about clothes, though? I mean … I mean to say … you see I got a ’usband and ’e’s insanely jealous. So say ’e sees me packing up, so ’e’ll murder me.”

“I adore your accent. You want clothes? Please have clothes,” said the Vicomte, picking up his trousers and taking out a wallet. “Buy, buy everything.”

“Blimey!” said Russian Katty, opening the wallet. It was full of white banknotes.

“Look at me. Now will you kiss me? I love you.”

She remembered something she had read and spurned the wallet with a bare foot. But she kept her heel on it. He also remembered certain well-thumbed tales of red plush and gaslight in the 1880’s, and was happy. He said: “We will love each other very much, Katusha. I shall call you Tusha.”

She knew, then, that what was written in the twopenny books was true. Noblemen really did come out of nowhere; rich viscounts really did fall in love with servant girls, and throw themselves at their feet with expressions of adoration, and take them for romantic honeymoons to Monte Carlo. She had known it all along. It was clearly printed in the books she read. All one needed was Faith in the Word. She grinned like a happy terrier.

The Vicomte de la Tour de Percé sighed, and said in French: “Oh, Sphinx! Oh, smiling enigma!” and looked into her blank blue eyes with the intent gaze of an amateur clairvoyant trying to read the future in a bright, silly crystal ball. She was adorable. He said so, and added: “And I adore your accent, your voice, harsh yet gentle, soft yet piquant like … like … like a mayonnaise.” This poor devil’s images were mostly gastronomical: for example, he thought of her hair as resembling spun sugar, and saw no harm in this, since in the Song of Songs a belly is likened to a heap of ripe wheat.

“One of these days you’ve got to teach me to talk foreign,” said Russian Katty.

So Harry Fabian waited for her that day, and she did not come. At nightfall he went out, raging, enquiring for her in the holes and corners of the West End. She had disappeared. A peculiar, fluttering girl nick-named Millie the Moth said that she had gone off with a crazy-looking foreigner who had made her acquaintance near the Café de l’Europe in Leicester Square. Fabian waited, biting his nails.

After several days he abandoned hope. “Jesus, when I come to think of all I’ve done for that dame,” he said, “my bloody blood bloody well boils. I go hot and cold, Christ Almighty, I go hot and I go cold. But there you are, that’s me. The good-natured slob. Well, I tell you, Mim, the time has just about come when I’m going to be god-damned hard and mercenary like all the rest.”

“Oh, shut up,” said the girl called Mimosa, to whom he was telling his troubles, “shut up, you and your doing things for people.”

She was a tall, strong, big-boned woman with dyed red hair. Looking at her with calculation, he said: “Mim, one of the things I like about you is, you sort of understand me.”

Mimosa, a cynical woman, laughed heartily and said: “You’re a liar. I understand you all right, but you don’t like me for it. I know you. You’re a ponce like all the other ponces, and you want to ponce on me. Well, just you try it, that’s all.”

There had been a time when Fabian feared nothing. Now a word could quell him. But he said: “Oh, the hell with it! What’s the hellish use of argument, I mean to say—what the hell?” And he went back to 802, Wardour Street, ashamed, saying to himself: Oh Jesus! What the hell has come over me?

As he walked he looked quickly left and right; and wondered whether his capital was enough to take him to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or Canada. There was no doubt that human nature was human nature, north, south, east and west; but he wanted to have enough in his pocket to make a front. The thought of the hundred and twenty pounds in his wallet cheered him. God damn it, he thought, Jesus damn it, I got where I am from nowhere. Hell’s bells, a guy like me——

He put his hand to the inside breast pocket of his coat to reassure himself.

The pocket was empty. Then he remembered that a man known as Dipsy had engaged him in conversation on the corner of Bateman Street and had told him a funny story, pushing and slapping him and writhing in an ecstasy of delight. Dipsy said:

“Look. So there’s two old men, see? Couple of Jews. Get it? One says to another: ‘So listen already vat you look like is already not vat you are, already. So listen: I’m going along der Mile End Road, so I’m smoking already a cherry-wood pipe so comes der up a man and says to me—Stanley Baldvin. See? Mistaken identity!’ So …” Dipsy banged him in the chest, slapped his bottom and clung to him, chuckling—— “So this other old geezer says to this geezer: ‘Ha! You call dis mistaken identity? Look so yesterday, so I go to der Rivoli Picture-Palace mebbe it could be eleven o’clock in der morning. So I take an eightpenny seat, and so I go to sleep. Comes eleven o’clock at night and so der attendant comes already vid his torch shining already in my face and he says—Jesus, are you still here? By me dat is mistaken identity.”

It must have been at this moment when, screaming with laughter and slapping him, Dipsy got Fabian’s wallet.

Fabian wanted to kill Dipsy, but he had no strength left, no energy. He went back to Wardour Street and fell on his back upon the odoriferous, stained divan, crying to heaven: “What mug said there was a God? I could murder the god-damned mug that said there was a god-damned God!”

He had three pounds five shillings in his right trousers-pocket.

*

It was not hate so much as a desire to compel his attention. Win wanted to believe in Fabian as an agnostic wants to believe in God. She desired only evidence of his personal attention.

Having cashed Pym’s cheque she took a room at the Golden Rose Hotel in Percy Street and sat in the bars and cafés of Charlotte Street looking for old friends. She was hungry for company, especially male company, after her weeks of incarceration; for she was amorous as a small, sighing blonde can be amorous—in a moist, sloppily avid, undetachable way. It is easy enough for any woman to find some man who is not unwilling to go to bed with her. But if a woman happens to need a man—lover, policeman, taxi-driver—she may whistle for him and hear nothing but her own voice. Win was lonely and wretched, irritable, fidgety on the edges of chairs. If you happened to be sitting at table with her, her plump knee was where your knee was. She had cigarettes now, but never matches, and when you gave her a light you had to drag your hand out of the grip of her fingers. She developed a tendency to whisper confidentially, so that her lips touched your ear, if you were a man; and it was reasonable to assume that in conversation she would manage to find something that needed emphasis in the region of your knees.

She still had seventeen pounds of the money Pym had given her when, one morning in The Fitzroy, a young man named Eddy said, with a giggling laugh: “Oh look, darling—I say, you wouldn’t—ha-ha—by any chance be known by the name of Winifred, would you?”

“As a matter of fact, my name is Winifred, as it happens, Eddy.”

“No, darling, but seriously—you’re not going to tell me your middle name is Victoria? On no, come along now, that would be just a little bit too grim.”

“What would you say if I told you that my middle name was Victoria, as a matter of fact?”

“W.Y.B.M.A.D.I.I.T.Y.?”

“What does that mean?”

“Will you buy me a drink if I tell you?”

“All right.”

“Well, that’s what it means, ha-ha-ha! W.Y.B.M.A.D.I.I.T.Y.: Will You Buy Me A Drink If I Tell You? You owe me a drink. Well, if you’re Winifred Victoria Joyce, do you happen to be related to some grim old gentleman called Rudyard Mellish?”

“Why, that’s my swine of a stepfather.”

“What will you give me for G.N.? … No, all joking apart, darling, Good News. Are you really Winifred Victoria Joyce, related to the late Rudyard Mellish—quel nom?”

“Late?”

“No, I mustn’t be a tease. Look, here it is in the Daily Telegraph,” said Eddy, showing her a folded newspaper, “Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah … If Miss Winifred Victoria Joyce will communicate with Messrs. Cupp and Scabbard, 92, High Holborn, she will hear something to her advantage. Really, you know, I ought to get commission.”

“I can’t believe it!” said Win, and tears began to creep down her cheeks. “Still, that’s my name and there couldn’t be two Rudyard Mellishes. Oh, poor darling! Oh, who would have thought it! Oh Eddy!”

“There, there, darling, don’t cry. Wasn’t he awfully well-to-do?”

“I don’t know, I suppose so. He must have been. Yes, of course he was.”

“I was under the impression that he was a sort of grim old miser, a perfect scroogie-woogie. You know—‘Merry Christmas? Bah! Humbug!’ And it does say ‘something to your advantage’, so don’t cry.”

“Oh, I know it’s silly of me, Eddy darling, but I can’t help my feelings. Oh, I know he was an absolute swine to me and more or less kicked me out of the house like a dog, and when I came out of prison, as a matter of fact, when I was ill and starving and horribly cut-up about my poor little baby, he practically laughed in my face … but I can’t help my feelings. As a matter of fact he was an absolute rotter and a frightful old hypocrite, as a matter of fact, him and his absolute bitch of a housekeeper. Housekeeper! No, I don’t believe he’s dead. As a matter of fact, that sort of person lives forever, like tortoises,” said Win, wiping her eyes. “Eddy, won’t you come with me? I’m so frightened.”

“Cupp and Scabbard! It is rather a grim name, don’t you think?”

But Mr. Scabbard was a dry, kindly little old man; a slow-moving, deliberate-speaking, respectable family lawyer of the old school. His mouth opened and closed weightily like the iron door of his old-fashioned safe. He said. “You must bear your bereavement with fortitude, Miss Joyce, with fortitude. Your stepfather was a good man, a very good man. It is sad that men like him must leave this world, but that is the way of all flesh, Miss Joyce. Mr. Mellish made this will”—Mr. Scabbard pointed to the document in question, which was hand-written—“shortly after he married your mother.”

Win said: “Poor mummy! Oh, poor darling! And now I’ve got nobody at all!”

“May I offer you my handkerchief, Miss Joyce … Not at all, not at all. A glass of water? Or a cup of tea? No? Well, compose yourself, and let us proceed. Mr. Mellish made his will, very providently, shortly after he married twenty years ago. Apart from the sum of two thousand pounds to the Architects’ Benevolent Society, his ivory chess set and one thousand pounds to his dear friend and opponent Vice-Admiral Rodney Pope, and two thousand pounds and his personal Sévres porcelain breakfast-set to his faithful and loyal housekeeper Mrs. Frances Moore, your stepfather left everything to his wife, to revert after her decease to his stepdaughter Winifred Victoria Joyce. I can congratulate you, therefore, Miss Joyce, on the inheritance of a very considerable property indeed—a great sum, a great responsibility, for so young a lady.”

“Is it much?” asked Win.

“His net personalty is estimated at about forty-seven thousand five hundred pounds.”

“Did you say forty-seven thousand?”

“Forty-seven thousand five hundred and sixty-seven pounds ten shillings, to be precise. Your stepfather was a very prudent man, who made a point of knowing what he had and what he did not have. I wish there were more like him.”

“But you don’t mean to say that he’s left me all that money?” said Win.

“Here is the will,” said Mr. Scabbard, “you must, of course, read it for yourself. There are also certain properties, viz., Biglands, his house; his library, furniture, carpets, etc.; an extremely valuable collection of china; eighty-two acres of land … but there is a condition there.”

“What condition?” asked Win, taking an anxious face out of Mr. Scabbard’s handkerchief.

Mr. Scabbard soothed her by saying: “Nothing serious, nothing but a very proper condition. The land is yours on condition that you do not cut down the old oak trees on the northern boundary. I take it that you are not interested in cutting down old oak trees, so that need not bother you, Miss Joyce…. There are also five cottages that bring in about a hundred a year in rent. You are a fortunate young lady, Miss Joyce, a wealthy young lady. I congratulate you on your good fortune, and hope that you will use your money as wisely and as well as Mr. Mellish did.”

“Oh, I will, I will!” said Win.

“I can, of course, if you wish, advance any sum within reason for your immediate needs,” said Mr. Scabbard.

“Oh, Mr. Scabbard, I wish you would. I’d be ever so grateful. As a matter of fact I haven’t a bean. You see, I need clothes, and things, and as a matter of fact I haven’t got a thing in the world except what I’m standing up in.”

“Oh dear, oh dear; that will never do. Poor young lady. Well, shall we say a hundred pounds to be going on with? And of course if you wish for credit for any purchases you may want to make, you can have the account sent to us.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Scabbard. I can’t tell you what it means to me. Though as a matter of fact,” said Win, weeping again, “I’d rather have daddy than all the money in the world….”

Eddy, suffocated with wonder, had not said a word. From time to time he had made little inarticulate noises. But when they were in the street he exclaimed: “Forty-seven thousand pounds! My God! You’re an heiress, darling!”

“Well, he couldn’t take it with him, and I suppose his conscience was troubling him,” said Win. “And did you get that bit about the oak trees? He knew perfectly well how I hate to have trees right under my nose. As for his Mrs. Moore….”

Eddy coughed and said: “I say, Win darling, I don’t suppose you could manage to lend me a few pounds?”

Win said: “As a matter of fact, Eddy darling, I can’t just at the moment. I’ve got things to buy, and as a matter of fact I’m terribly in debt. I’ve got all sorts of debts to pay—I’ve been starving like a dog, and borrowing right and left, and I’ve got debts to pay. But as soon as things get settled—there might be a mistake, or some catch in this somewhere—I’ll give you some money with pleasure.”

“That old man said you could run up bills, you know.”

“I know, but as a matter of fact I hate running up bills. I want to get away from all that sort of thing … borrowing, running up bills. As a matter of fact, Eddy, it’s against my nature. But I tell you what, I can let you have a pound if you like.”

Even Eddy had his pride. He said: “Keep your pound.”

“Oh no, Eddy darling, have a pound! After all, you did, as a matter of fact, help me out by coming with me.”

“Keep your forty-seven thousand pounds,” said Eddy, walking away. Win called a taxi and went to Bond Street: she had shopping to do. While the taxi driver growled at the world and the cab shuddered at the traffic lights, she dreamed dreams of vengeance. Pym had thrown her out into the street; Loulou had humiliated her; there was scarcely a man or a woman among all her friends who had not refused to do something for her. But God had delivered her enemies into her hand. Fabian had slapped her face and kicked her out. He, too, should pay.

So it happened that Fabian, who had been lying on his divan, smoking cigarettes and cursing his luck, heard a peremptory knocking at his door. He had been thinking of the Australian. Something that felt like chilled-steel pincers seemed to close inside him. He felt a dampness on his face. His first impulse was to lie still and keep quiet. But he was ashamed: he had been a brave man, once—in his way. He got up and went to the door. His hand was so wet that he had to wipe it on the seat of his trousers before he could turn the door-knob and open the door; and then he saw, not the Australian nor the Australian’s brother, but a beautifully-cosmeticised young woman with exquisitely dressed bright blonde hair, wearing an expensive caracul coat.

“What——” he began.

“Hel-lo, Henry, as a matter of fact I jus came to say good-bye,” said Win.

Fabian looked at her closely, shutting one eye. He had whiled away considerable time looking in shop windows and was not unaware of what things cost. He had been about to say: “What the hell do you want?” But he said: “Why, Win, honey! Jesus, I been looking for you all over. I didn’t know where to find you. I wanted to sort of apologise in case you thought I was a little bit offhanded with you last time you dropped in. Hell, I felt bad after you’d gone. I said to myself: ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘what sort of manners will she think I got?’ Come right in and sit down, honeybunch. Hell, well, you know how it is—a guy gets worried and sort of on edge. I was waiting for a transatlantic call from Walt Disney, and it was late. And … Hell, I guess you understand … But, Jesus, kid, you look like a million dollars. What’ve you been doing? Robbing a bank? Look at that coat! Let me look at you!” said Fabian, holding her by the shoulders at arms’ length and looking at her with the dazed air of a man who has seen pure beauty and is blinded. “Gee, but you’re swell!”

“As a matter of fact,” said Win, “since we have in a way been friendly, I came to say good-bye to you.”

“Siddown,” said Fabian. “Whaddya mean, good-bye? I don’t get that good-bye. I don’t like the sound of good-bye. I Don’t Like The Sound of Good-bye. I wrote a song about that once. Where d’ya think you’re going?”

“Oh, I thought it might interest you to know: my stepfather’s dead and, as a matter of fact, he’s left me all his money.”

“Good for you, kiddo, good for you! I couldn’t be more pleased, so help me God, if he’d left it to me. How much?”

“Oh, about fifty thousand pounds.”

“Did you say pounds? Did I hear you say fifty thousand pounds? Is there that much money left in the world?”

“I suppose there must be. I’m going to the south of France. As a matter of fact I thought you’d like to know, so that you could set your mind at rest and know that I’m not going to be a nuisance to you any more.”

American Henry Fabian sweated again. His face was wet but his mouth was dry, and he had to drink some water before he could say: “Jesus, I wish you all you wish yourself, Win honey. But hell, I wish you wasn’t going away. To hell with your lousy god-damn money. To hell with it! What I want is you. Okay. Well, hell, I guess you got a right to walk out on me. I guess I’m no good. I never brought you any god-damn luck, honey, I guess. I’m glad you got a break. On my mother’s grave, I couldn’t be more delighted if it happened to me. But I want you to know I’m sorry about the way I treated you the other day. Don’t think unkind thoughts about me. I was just all wound up. And I want you to know, wherever you are, that I’m with you in the spirit, kid: in the spirit I’m with you; because if you want to know—there’s no harm in saying it now—you’re just about the only woman I ever had any sort of deep feeling for. Jesus, I’ve known one or two dames! But you … Oh well, skip it, skip it. Good-bye, kid, and good luck.”

He held out an open hand, which Win prepared to take, languidly, with a drooping wrist. “It was so nice having known you,” she said.

“I can’t ever forget you,” said Fabian, “only say you forgive me.”

“Silly! But of course!” said Win. Then his little wiry hand snapped at her wrist like a mousetrap and, jerking her towards the divan, he said: “Something to remember you by. Jesus, kid, just this once, for the last time before we part.”

A few minutes later Win said: “Oh, Harry, you know you really were awfully wicked to me, as a matter of fact.”

“What d’ya think I was apologising for, honey? I didn’t sleep for three nights after I was sort of rough with you. You know what? You’ll laugh at me if I tell you.”

“Tell me what, Harry.”

“You’ll laugh at me.”

“I won’t, word of honour.”

“Scouts’ honour?”

“Um …”

“I wouldn’t ’ve said this, but I got so god-damn miserable that d’you know what I did? I swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin tablets, so as to kill myself. But they didn’t work, and here I am, honey, loving you more than ever, and there you are going away forever. Jesus, Jesus Christ, I wish to hell I was dead and buried! Listen, honey, d’you remember a song called ‘What Good Am I Without You’? I more or less wrote it. It says what good are days without sunshine, what good are skies without blue, but all alone on just nothing what good am I without you? Jesus, honey, I wish to hell you didn’t have to go!”

“As a matter of fact, Harry, I think I’m going to sort of miss you. I do like you when you’re nice, as a matter of fact.”

“You’ll miss me! Jesus, that’s funny! She’ll miss me. I won’t miss her—oh no! You know what, honey, now we’ve got together again I don’t want to let you go. What the hell! Why the hell shouldn’t you and me go together? Just you and me. Christ, but I could show you a good time!”

“Do you really want to?”

“Do I really want to?”

“All right.”

“Now I’ve found you again,” said Harry Fabian, “I’ll be god-damned if I let you go. I’ve got some money too. You and me, we’ll go and have dinner together to-night, and you stay right here with me. Okay?”

“Yes.”

They talked seriously of economics. After dinner, in the taxi that was taking them back to Wardour Street, he said:

“And one thing more, kid. For the love of Jesus don’t trust these god-damn old-fashioned chiselling lawyers. You can take it from me for a fact—I know ’em, and they’re no god-damn good. They put on an act. I know, and you can take it from me they put on an act. They try to look like Queen Victoria; they make themselves to look dead respectable so as to get your confidence. ‘Oh, pray, dear lady, allow me to do your business for you’ … and before you know where you are, bonk! They’ve got you in their power, and all you’ve got is down the drain, swish, like that! Bang it goes. Cupp? Scabbard? Did you ever hear of them before? I thought not, and no more did I. Cupp and Scabbard! Now look, if you want a proper lawyer, go to Luck and Marmora. You mark my words, I wouldn’t mind betting every god-damn cent I got in my pocket that this guy Scabbard is going to start trying funny business. Investments. You’ll see. Now Jackie Luck could pull you out of a hole full of mud and you’d still be clean. Cupp and Scabbard! Jesus, honey, you got no business sense. Did it occur to you to ask who he was, this Scabbard? Did you look at his papers, this goddamn Scabbard? Honest to God, loveliness, you’re the sweetest kid in the world but you ain’t fit to look after yourself—you’re too gentle and trusting. Listen, kid, you know how crazy I am about you. I guess that was why I got tough with you that time—because I was so crazy about you. Me, I don’t want nothing. That business deal I was telling you about, so it came off, and I’ve got dough. Why don’t you let me look after you for a bit till you find your own feet? Oh, I’m not on the chisel, remember! I got dough of my own. Look——” said Fabian, thrusting a hand into his hip pocket. “—Well, never mind. But listen, kid, I’ve handled big money in my time, and I’m a business man. Why don’t you let me sort of advise you?”

When she was with Fabian, all the strength went out of Win. He had betrayed her, and dealt with her as dirt. Therefore she loved him. She said: “I’ll do whatever you say, Harry darling.”

“You won’t regret it, honey, I swear on the grave of my mother. Okay,” said Fabian, briskly, “you’ll do whatever I say. I say you and me go home first of all.”

She giggled and pressed her nose into his ear.

“But look, loveliness—let’s you and me make kind of a sort of honeymoon of all this. Don’t let’s go to that dump of mine. Let’s just you and me be alone together in a decent spot. Let’s go to a real hotel. I sort of want to see you where you belong, if you get what I mean…. Oh look: it’s too late for me to cash a cheque, and anyway I’m kind of impatient to be all alone with you, if you get what I mean. Have you got any dough on you, by any chance?”

She opened her bag and gave him a handful of pound notes, and they passed the night in a second-rate but heavily carpeted hotel near Piccadilly.

*

She worshipped him. Fabian, to Win, was everything that a man should be—quick, clever, adroit, elegant, ruthless. He took her to meet the solicitor, Jackie Luck, who was also known as Lucky Jack. He, too, was a fascinating man. Unlike Scabbard, he was young and gay, and he had a Ronald Coleman moustache. Luck wore a black coat and striped trousers, but, unlike Scabbard, he wore his coat tight and his trousers loose. He cracked jokes and took Win and Fabian to lunch, and they drank champagne and old brandy. When they talked to Luck about Mr. Scabbard he was non-committal. In an enthusiastic voice he said: “Ah yes, there you’ve got a good solid, old-fashioned firm. I daresay your stepfather must have had a high opinion of them Miss Joyce. Of course we all have a high opinion of Cupp and Scabbard. Speaking for myself, by the way, and I don’t know what makes me think of it, I have a passion for old boats. Just for my own amusement I like to play around in smooth water (you must come to my place at Maidenhead some time), to play around in smooth water with little sailing boats; good old slow sailing boats. I wish you’d come and spend a week-end one of these days. Any time about three weeks from now. I have to go to New York on business for a few days. But of course, if I want to go a long way fast, much as I love the old sail I won’t rely on it for that! Oh no. For quiet backwaters, yes. But in a rough sea … What was I saying? Oh, yes; Cupp and Scabbard. They’re a good firm, an old firm, well-established and still floating. But … However. Coffee?”

Thus, Jackie Luck took charge of Win’s money, and she went with Fabian to Monte Carlo. There, in the lobby of the Hotel Tataresco, Fabian saw a slender blonde whose face, he thought, was not unfamiliar. She was dressed in white, and wore emeralds, and she looked at him in passing as a motorist glances at a milestone. She was accompanied by a languid middle-aged man in a blue blazer with gold buttons.

Fabian asked the porter: “Who is that lady?”

The porter said: “That is la Vicomtesse de la Tour de Percé, monsieur. The gentleman is Monsieur le Vicomte.”

Fabian gave him a fifty-franc note and went away, angry. “Vicomtesse!” he said, gnashing his teeth, “Vicomtesse! After all I done for that girl!”

That night he and Win went to the casino and lost a large sum of money. Win was worried, but he said: “The hell with it, loveliness! Lucky has just bought us some Iceland Rayon. We’re in on the ground floor. They got a sort of moss, better than silk. And then there’s a guy, a scientist, so he’s discovered a way of getting the gold out of sea water. Now let me tell you….”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SO dreamy Annie the servant girl, and the Vicomte de la Tour de Percé, and the spiv Fabian, and the slut Win achieved their heart’s desire. But Pym was still in trouble.

“What the hell am I to do?” he asked Shirley Brush, with a helpless gesture, “what am I to do?”

“I told you what to do, and you didn’t do it,” said Shirley Brush. “I warned you, and you paid no attention. You wanted to be heroic. It’s an expensive business, being heroic. It’s beyond your means. All right; take the consequences. If I told you once I told you fifty times exactly what would happen if you acknowledged indebtedness to Cicero Greensleeve. I warned you, I pleaded with you; but no. You said: ‘I don’t play that kind of game. Let him have his few pounds back.’ I asked you how you were going to let him have his few pounds back, but you wouldn’t listen. You thought he’d be satisfied with the thirty pounds you had left. You don’t know much about men. I warned you that to attack was the best way to defend yourself in this case. I told you so. I say it without shame: I told you so. And this,” said Shirley Brush, angrily shaking a typewritten letter, “this is the result. Well, now what advice can I give you that you’re too heroic to take?”

“Do you mind if I look at that letter again?”

Brush threw the letter across the table and said: “Learn it by heart. Have it framed, for all I care.”

Pym shouted: “The man is a pig! What he says here is, good God, that he is in receipt of my letter enclosing thirty pounds on account of a hundred and fifty pounds I owe him. ‘In receipt’—Christ, how I hate lawyers! I don’t mean you: I mean the way they talk. And this intolerable squirt goes on to say that he considers himself as being in no way indebted to me for my unwarrantable interference in the matter of his deceased mother’s burial. You get that ‘deceased’—legal caution! Otherwise people might think that he was a party to having her buried alive. Unwarrantable interference! What a swine! What would happen if I went along to his office and——”

“—And gave him a punch on the nose? Well, he could get you for assault. I daresay you’d get away with a fine of forty shillings.”

“I haven’t got forty shillings!”

“Then keep away from Cicero’s office and if you meet him stick your hands in your pockets.”

“But I can’t pay him.”

“Then don’t. He’ll sue you. When you get into court, offer half-a-crown a month.”

“I haven’t got half-a-crown a month!”

“Oh, he’ll do his best to make you find it. You’re in a queer position, don’t you see. You might, of course, claim an agent’s fee for handling that play. We might try that.”

“Would that be of any use, do you think?”

“You never can tell. It might. In any case it would give us time.”

“Time for what? Time to do what?”

“Time to think and time to breathe.”

Pym cried: “I don’t want any time to think! I don’t want any time to breathe! I don’t want anything to do with these bastards! I will not put myself in the position of a tout—I’ll be damned before I play bloody lawyers’ tricks … I beg your pardon.”

“That’s all right. But what will you do then?”

“I don’t know. I’ll pay him his dirty money.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I only need time to pay.”

“Then let us drag the thing out and dispute it point by point; play for time—time to think, time to breathe, time to pay, whatever you like to call it … time, breathing space.”

“And get in deeper and deeper,” said Pym. “I’m going to owe you a bill too, remember.”

“I won’t press you for that.”

Pym said: “I seem to be under some kind of curse. Whatever I do and wherever I turn I seem to find myself under obligations to people. I’m always in debt for money, or indebted for favours. I’m sick and tired of it. I hate it. I won’t have any more of it. I’ll fight this my way. I’ll give that pig his money, and if I can’t I’ll go to jail. I’d rather be in a stone jail with four walls than be as I am. And how am I? In a maze—a thousand prisons. All right, I’ll go to prison.” Pym remembered that night in Bow Street. “I’ll be locked up behind a door with a little shutter in it … in a nice little quiet cell. All right, I’ll go to prison—and I can tell you that that would be an escape as far as I’m concerned!”

(As Pym said this he thought that Breaking Into Prison would be an excellent title for a book.)

“Better think it over,” said Shirley Brush.

‘There isn’t anything to think over. If I can pay, I’ll pay. If I can’t, I won’t,” said Pym. “Even Greenslceve can’t get blood out of a stone.”

“No, because there isn’t any blood in a stone. But he can get sparks out of a stone. He can knock the fire out of a stone. He can get a groan out of a stone. He can make your life a misery. Why not be sensible and fight fire with fire—set a thief to catch a thief, and let me handle Greensleeve for you? No need to worry about fees; I can wait; I always do. One of these days you’ll pay me with interest.”

“No thanks, God bless you. I think I’d rather get out of this silly mess on my own.”

“You’ll pay, or you’ll fight, if you start any silly business on your own.”

“I’ll pay and I’ll fight!”

“Young man, young man,” said Shirley Brush with sadness and affection, “I see that you must dree your weird alone. Plough your lonely furrow, then. But … between friends … from an uncle, as it might be … let me lend you a few pounds.”

Pym could not speak, so he shook his head and shook the solicitor’s hand. Something had him by the throat. People were such pigs. People were such angels. He gulped, and grinned, and waved a hand and went out.

God set me free! he said, pinching away a couple of starting tears. Make me straight and strong, O Lord! Cut me loose from Pym! I am an ox with as many masters as there are men and women in the world—a castrated slave with sawn-off horns, and nothing but blind and hopeless yearnings that remind me of what I am not … Then he thought of Proudfoot, and of all the wise things that Proudfoot had said so solemnly with his hand on his book—and his book of newspaper cuttings; and falling into a sullen anger against himself Pym cursed himself for a fool. Reason, coming out of the hole in which it slept with one eye open, pounced like a spider and said:

Come, come, come now! What’s the use of being angry? What does your puerile rage contribute to the wretched condition you have imposed upon yourself? Yes, imposed upon yourself. You want to be a Creator. You want to make great works. You are held back by grinding poverty. Yet every opportunity that comes your way you cast aside. You are half-way through a novel, probably a successful novel—certainly a novel that will open certain doors. Thirty pounds, carefully laid out, would see you through to the end. But what do you do? Not only do you throw away your thirty pounds but you involve yourself in a hundred and twenty pounds of debt into the bargain. You are no Creator, you poor fool, because you are soft, and the Creator must be hard. In the case of a man of genius the end justifies the means. Your stupid, your pigheaded fussiness over tiny points of honour is nothing but vanity, mean and selfish vanity. You believe that you have it in you to enlighten and entrance the world for five hundred years. You believe that you can make goodness interesting and beauty popular, and you aspire to the dignity of a Standard-Bearer on the left-hand of militant Truth. Yet you drop everything for a whim; a fancy, a Boy Scout’s conceit. You are unworthy.

Pym said to Reason: I see the point in what you say. I don’t know exactly how to answer you, but although you are right, I’m convinced that you’re wrong. I obey my instincts, and I am as God made me.

Reason said: God did not make you to obey your instinct, Brother Pym, but to follow the Instinct beyond your instincts. Go on then, follow your instinct. Go to Cicero Greensleeve’s office and strangle him—go to the cemetery and dig up the rotting corpse of old Mrs. Greensleeve and throw it into the arms of Decimus Greensleeve saying: “Pardon me, I have unwarrantably interfered with your mother’s funeral arrangements; allow me to hand her her back to you”—Go to the hospital and jump into bed with Joanna Bowman … Go on, follow your instincts because you are as God made you! Go ahead, follow your instincts into the gutter, down the drain, along the sewer, and out to the open sea, and take yourself and all that God gave you away into the dark with the rats and the dung and the abortions wrapped in newspaper. Vain man! You have been given the power to make things. But no; you want to be a hero. As if I did not know that you have got it all out of books, cheap romances! … Well, all right. You have had your little blind man’s holiday. Now wake up and listen to me. You can go to Proudfoot at this very moment and get two hundred and fifty pounds for writing that woman Weissensee’s silly book. And with two hundred and fifty pounds you can go away and write two masterpieces.

Pym said: I don’t want to write her filthy little book.

Reason said: Then don’t write it. Take the advance, write your own book, and, since your conscience is so touchy, pay back what you took later on. You don’t like to do that sort of thing? Then go to hell, via the drain in the gutter, where all soft stuff goes. You cannot be great without Sacrifice. What are your three-for-a-penny scruples, that they should stand between you and your Destiny? Fool, in this life you must fall back in order to spring forward—you must fall down to conquer!

Pym found himself near Proudfoot’s office at the corner of Adam Street and John Street. Then he turned on his heel, away from Proudfoot and Reason, saying in the words of Busto: Go to hell. You go to hell your way. I go to hell my way. I will not sacrifice one crumb of myself to your beastly gods!

Then he spat with dramatic vehemence. A passer-by, stopping abruptly, lifted a polished shoe and said: “What’s the idea? Can’t you look where you’re spitting?”

Pym took out a handkerchief, wiped the shoe, and said: “I beg your pardon, I’m ever so sorry, but the fact of the matter is, I was thinking.”

“Well, accidents will happen, I suppose.”

“I really am awfully sorry.”

“That’s all right. What’s all the fuss over the road?”

“Is there a fuss? What fuss?” asked Pym vaguely.

“Ambulance.”

“Oh, I suppose there must have been an accident,” said Pym.

“They will happen, won’t they.”

“Well, sorry I spat on your boot.”

“I daresay it’ll do it good. Spit and polish, eh?”

As Pym walked away towards Westminster Hospital an ambulance rushed out of Adam Street.

“Fall off a bicycle and sprain your ankle and the whole damned world rushes to help you,” said Pym not without a certain bitterness, listening to the fading clangour of the bell.

But the man in the ambulance had fallen off something higher and more precarious than a bicycle. He had gone raving mad.

*

Proudfoot’s associates had been watching him closely, with growing uneasiness, for the past three weeks. All the sweetness melted away from him, like sugar from the surface of a pill. His manner had become stern, peremptory, lofty. It was necessary to ask him several times for the most trivial advice. Questions which, a month before, he would have answered between two sips of whisky now appeared to require deep thought and solitude. He bad ordered an immense throne-like fifteenth-century chair upholstered in crimson velvet and hung with golden tassels, and caused it to be placed by his desk. The cushioned seat of this grotesque chair was so high that short-legged Proudfoot’s fat knees were visible above the blotting pad. He would sit there for hours, in the attitude of Michelangelo’s Lorenzo de Medici—in that darkly brooding attitude expressive of the uttermost depth of thought. If he wanted to be heard whilst Proudfoot was thinking, Sherwood had to shout; shout loud, and then repeat his question three or four times. Then Proudfoot would appear to come slowly out of a trance. His eyes opened slowly. (They were always bloodshot, now; he had been drinking three bottles of whisky a day, to Sherwood’s certain knowledge.) These slow, red, glazed eyes looked down with terrifying arrogance as Proudfoot said: “State your case.” Then Sherwood would ask him to elucidate some perfectly simple problem, always in connection with the laws pertaining to indecent literature. Proudfoot would close his eyes again and fall back into his trance. He asked for samples of the most costly hand-made paper, and caused a thousand great sheets to be sewn into a gigantic folio, expensively bound in gold-embossed morocco and fitted with a strong clasp locked with a golden key. From time to time he was seen writing in this book with a remarkable pen: the nib was of gold, and the penholder was made of a peacock’s feather. He had to have flowers on his desk—large, ornate vases crammed with the brightest of flowers.

Sherwood uneasily said to him: “What the hell’s the matter with you, Mouthpiece? What’s got into you? To the best of my knowledge you didn’t use to carry on like this.” Proudfoot was thoughtfully drinking a tumblerful of neat whisky. “You don’t think it might be a good idea, after all, to give that stuff a miss, just once in a while? Seriously, for the good of your health. Nobody on earth could keep it up like that—it can’t be done. Nobody on earth can do it?”

Proudfoot spoke, as from a great distance. “I agree. Nobody on earth.”

Then Sherwood said: “What about this Weissensee woman’s book? What d’you think we’d better do about it? I don’t feel easy in my mind.”

With icy deliberation Proudfoot said: “I have promised her that she shall have her book.”

“But the Law!”

“I am the Law.”

Now Proudfoot had said things like that in the old days, when he had meant: I am the Man of Law around here; I know the Law, so be quiet and leave it all to me. He had always been right. Sherwood said: “Well, you know what faith I have in you.”

Proudfoot replied: “It has not escaped my notice, and you shall be rewarded for it, my friend.”

“Okay, let it be as you say, then.”

“It must be as I say.”

“Oh, by the way; is that a book you’re writing?”

After a long silence, Proudfoot said: “A book? It is The Book.”

“What are you going to call it?”

“It is My Word.”

“My word!” said Sherwood, facetiously. “What’s it going to be about?”

“Me.”

“My God, that could be good!”

“I see that you know Me. It will be good. Come here, Sherwood,” said Proudfoot. Then he touched one of Sherwood’s shoulders with a light, unsteady hand, and murmured: “You are my Good Angel.”

“Why, I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Proudfoot smiled and resumed the attitude of Michelangelo’s Lorenzo and Sherwood went out. He worshipped Proudfoot … yet he was uneasy. He was in the habit of observing things, and he had seen on the desk beside Proudfoot’s locked book several swollen red volumes of press cuttings and an old Family Bible—also with a golden clasp. The incongruity disturbed Sherwood. Also, he did not like the peacock-feather pen and the gigantic inkpot of sky-blue glass, and he was genuinely worried about the ink. Proudfoot had procured from the printer, a gallon of gold ink.

Sherwood felt frustrated if there was nothing he could safely steal. He had tried more than once to steal a look at Proudfoot’s locked book. But Proudfoot carried it with him wherever he went. He had filled several pages, laid out in chapter and verse, beautifully written in that gold ink in his best legal longhand.

On the first page, like the heading of a deed, ran the line The First Book of Proudfoot.

1. It was My custom to sit in My red-and-gold chair with My back to the light.

2. Thus Proudfoot could see His subjects’ faces while His own was in the shadow.

3. Thus I knew them, body and soul, saith Proudfoot, but they knew not Me.

4. Still they believed in Me, knowing that I was there to watch over them and deliver them from evil even at the foot of the gallows.

5. When a client prayed to Him for help wringing his hands in His shadow, was He not reminded of that which He wrote in His psalm, “Hide me in the Shadow of Thy wings?”

6. And when at last I heard your entreaties, saith Proudfoot, looked ye not like Lazarus raised from the dead, or the Leper made clean?

7. Furthermore, saith Proudfoot, I accepted your Offerings because they were acceptable to Me. For the greater the offering, the greater the sacrifice. Therefore took I gold and silver and the burnt bodies of prime sheep and fat oxen, and tobacco.

8. Yet say, saith Proudfoot, and deny if you dare: turned Proudfoot His face away from the poor supplicator?

9. Verily, verily, I say unto you that there is more love in Proudfoot for the poor suitor with a thousand pounds of faith in his heart and the Widow’s Mite in his pocket than for the rich man with a thousand pounds in one-pound notes in his pocket and a mite of faith in Me in his heart!

10. Lo! I am come to deliver you out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death! Have faith in Me or perish.

He slept in his clothes, stank abominably, but insisted on wearing a large chrysanthemum in his buttonhole.

*

So that proved to be an uproarious morning in the office in Adam Street.

In the absence of Joanna Bowman, Sherwood had employed a younger, cheerful but less efficient secretary called Miss Home—a sprightly, untidy girl with a gargantuan appetite for fruit and sweets, of which she always kept a supply in a drawer. She was a secret sucker and a surreptitious nibbler of fruit drops and wine-gums, apples and pears, and so the office boy, Thomas, found her irresistibly attractive. Whenever she popped a lump of boiled sugar into her mouth, or gnawed hastily at a hard fruit, she felt his wistful eyes, and gave him something to eat on condition that he went away and stopped staring. To her he was a horrible little boy, although he had a dog-like manner of standing, hopefully watching every mouthful she ate.

To-day she gave him a green apple, in which he buried his teeth with murderous avidity. He bit again and chewed, and swallowed so that noises of deglutition were audible in the office of Mr. Proudfoot, who had acquired an extraordinary sensitiveness of ear. His door opened and he came out, red-eyed with whisky and wrath, and shouted: “What are you eating?”

Thomas said: “Please sir, an apple, sir.”

“An apple?”

“Yes sir, please sir. She gave me it.”

“And what if I did?” said Miss Home. “What’s the harm in an apple? They come out of my own garden.”

Closing his eyes Proudfoot said: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons …” He opened his eyes again and saw that Miss Home was wearing a dress patterned with flowers and leaves, and he added: “Ah-ha!”

Proudfoot then said to Miss Home: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be of thy husband and he shall rule over thee.”

“I give a week’s notice,” said Miss Home. “I didn’t come here to listen to filthy talk.”

To Thomas, Proudfoot said: “Because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life—thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee and thou shalt eat the herb of the field—in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return. Thus spake Proudfoot.”

“Yes, sir,” said Thomas.

Proudfoot walked slowly back into his office. Sherwood came in after him, followed by Miss Home, Thomas and Dr. Weissensee.

“I warn you, my friends, that you had better evacuate the Garden of Eden,” said Proudfoot.

He had become sensitive to cold, and kept a large fire burning in the Adam fireplace. They were horrified to see him pick up a blazing log, which he waved at them before handing it to Sherwood, saying:

“Cherubim, here is your flaming sword. Drive them away, drive them away!”

The log rolled, smouldering and stinking, on the floor.

“God Almighty!” exclaimed Sherwood, “Good God Almighty!”

“Exactly,” said Proudfoot, “Good God Almighty. You have said it.”

Sherwood whispered to Miss Home: “Quick. Nip out. Get the police. Ring the hospital. Hurry now.”

Proudfoot cried, in a strained, thin, exalted voice: “In Law ignorance is no excuse. You have already been told. It has been printed in the leading newspapers. No other gods before Me—is that quite clear? Repeat it … it is a Commandment … repeat it, I tell you!”

“No other gods before me,” said Sherwood, who could adapt himself to any circumstances. Thomas had armed himself with a poker.

“Do you promise, Angel, not to make any graven image, or the likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth?”

“I do.”

“Do you promise not to bear false witness against your neighbour?”

“I promise faithfully.”

“Do you promise not to steal? Do you promise not to kill? Do you promise not to covet your neighbour’s house, wife, ox, ass, or anything that is your neighbour’s? Do you promise not to commit adultery? Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“What is that? No? Then I shall smite you, smite you, smite you—smite you as I smote the Cities of the Plain—smite as I smote Sodom and Gomorrah when I sent My fires down from My Heaven. See!”

The office boy Thomas was rolling the burning log over the smouldering carpet towards the fireplace. Proudfoot stopped him with a ferocious gesture. The carpet sizzled and smoked.

Proudfoot shrieked: “Even as I destroyed the Cities of the Plain, so shall I destroy you, Sodomite, Gomorrhite, ravisher of angels!” And he plunged his hands into the glowing fire, scooped out coals, and hurled them about the room. Sherwood looked on with terror, ducking his head as the embers flew past and burst in showers of sparks against the wall behind him. The boy looked on with startled interest. Proudfoot continued: “Even as I destroyed the world, so will I destroy you, O ye of little faith!” He grasped Sherwood in a dreadful grip and forced him to sit in the brass coal scuttle, which was fashioned in the shape of a fireman’s helmet, and went on: “To your Ark, righteous man! Into your Ark, Noah! Perish all ye unrighteous! The heavens are opening!”

Then Proudfoot clambered on to his great chair, and urinated on the desk; and Miss Home came in with two policemen.

Anxiously apologetic, she said to one of the policemen: “I assure you that if I had known he was going to behave like this I’d never have come to work here.”

The policeman, watchful but half amused, said: “Well, Miss, I don’t suppose it’s what you might call exactly businesslike behaviour. Definitely not.” Then, coming closer to Proudfoot as he talked, he went on: “Now, come on, sir, come on now! That’s no way for a gentleman to behave. I ask you, is it now?”

Proudfoot shouted: “The waters are rising! The valley of the Euphrates is flooded. Full fathom five lies the Tower of Babel and the unrighteous float, prey to the eye-pecking gulls. Ah-ha! A dove! My wrath is appeased. The flood subsides.”

“That’s right, sir. Now you button yourself up like a gentleman and let’s talk it over.” The policeman who had been talking was close to Proudfoot, now, and the other policeman, a younger man, obedient to certain signs, had come up on the other side. But Proudfoot was calm now. He noticed Sherwood and said: “Give me a cigarette.”

Sherwood gave him a cigarette and Proudfoot said: “This is My Body. Hoc est corpus meum. Give me a drink.”

Sherwood filled a tumbler with whisky. Proudfoot drank two-thirds of it at a gulp, gave the rest to Sherwood, and said: “Drink. This is My Blood.”

Then they heard the bell of the ambulance. Holding up his cigarette, Proudfoot said: “Ah-ha! The Bells, the Bells, the tintinnabulation of the Bells, Bells, Bells! The moaning and the groaning of the Bells. Ring out, wild Bells to the wild sky, for the Son of God is born to-night. But first of all … Let there be light!”

Sherwood struck a match and Proudfoot, taking a light for his cigarette, said, with a satisfied smile: “And there was light! … I am a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. I will lead you … across the Red Sea. The waters will divide, and there shall be dry land …” He kicked at certain patches of moisture on the carpet.

Then someone said to him: “This way to the Promised Land. We’d better get moving now, you know.”

Proudfoot picked up a T-square by the thin end, and the older policeman put out a large red hand and wrenched it away.

“Thank you, My son,” said Proudfoot, raising two fingers in benediction, “you are a strong man, and you may carry My cross.” On the way out he turned to Miss Home and said, in a beautiful, resonant voice—the voice that once he had saved for perorations in closing speeches for the defence: “Woman, behold thy son!”

Then they hustled him out to the ambulance.

Sherwood sent Miss Home and Thomas away for the day, locked the outer door, went to his office, made a pillow of his right arm and wept into it, saying: “Oh Lord, what a terrible thing to happen to a man like that; oh, what a terrible thing to happen, especially to a man like that!”

Thomas went and told his mother, who smacked his head. Miss Home carried away a woollen cardigan, a bag of apples, and a special soft rubber eraser—her personal property—and never returned. But Proudfoot, having expressed a desire to overthrow the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square where (he said) traders profitably sold pigeons for sacrifice in the Temple, was calm and happy. He, too, had achieved his heart’s desire. He had become God.

*

Joanna Bowman said to Pym: “What’s this I hear? Am I to understand that you’ve been paying for this room for me?”

“You’re supposed to keep quiet,” said Pym. “You’re not supposed to start jumping and flapping about. The more you rest, the sooner you’ll be out. Keep calm, Jo, and let nature take its course.”

“I won’t keep quiet unless you give me a straight answer to a plain question: are you paying for this room I’m in?”

“Well, yes. I am paying for this room you’re in. What of it?”

She said: “You had no right to do it—no right, without consulting me. I didn’t know. I didn’t realise. You shouldn’t have done it. It isn’t fair. I’m going to tell them to move me back to the ward.”

“Why? Isn’t it more comfortable here?”

“That’s not the point. You had no right to do it. You have no right at all to impose this on me.”

“To impose what?”

“Gifts, obligations. I was perfectly happy to be in a ward, the same as everybody else. If I’d wanted to be in a private room I’d have said so myself. I’m not a pauper—I could have paid for it myself. And I will pay for it myself! Who are you to put me here, and put me there, without permission? Are you under the impression that, just because we’ve been in and out of bed together you have the right to move me about like … like a card in a pack that you paid ninepence for? I won’t let you.”

“You idiot,” said Pym, “why must you be more stupid than God made you? What do I care if you heal up in a ward or a private room? I had you brought down here for my own selfish pleasure. I wanted to be able to come and see you at any hour of the day, and that’s why I took the liberty of having you shifted. Who, in God’s name, are you, that you should come between me and my harmless pleasure?”

She said nothing for several minutes, but riffled the pages of a magazine. Pym had smoked half a cigarette before she said:

“I don’t like it.”

“What don’t you like? And why don’t you like it?”

“Your paying for me here. I don’t like that. But if you want to know, what I like even less is that somehow or other I don’t mind your paying for me. That’s what I like least of all. I don’t like it. I never let any man pay for me before. With you, I don’t seem to mind. I don’t like that. It means there’s something strange going on. Lots of people have tried to give me things, buy me things. I always made a point—if I accepted—of paying them back in one way or another. But what I don’t like about this is that with you I get soft and lax … I don’t mind taking things from you. Lots of men have given me flowers. I just stuck them in a jug or something, and liked them purely and simply as flowers. You bring me flowers, and I like the flowers for your sake. I smell them. I don’t feel I have to give back value for goods received, in your case. That’s what I don’t like. And again, I don’t like the way I have to keep on thinking about you. I’m getting involved with you, and that is a thing I swore I’d never do with any man … I think it’s probably all because of the Boy Scout knife that poor man stuck into me a little while ago.”

“As you say: poor man.”

“What happened to him, Pym?”

Pym said: “Why, he just ran away, and he ran into a truck.”

“Was he hurt?”

“He was killed,” said Pym.

There was a silence, after which Joanna said: “Poor boy! But what could I do?”

“Nothing, Jo. Nothing at all.’

“But did it hurt him?”

“No, not a bit.”

For the first time Pym saw Joanna Bowman weeping. “What was there that I could do?” she said.

“Nothing, my sweet. And as things are, it’s better this way.”

“I never wanted to hurt him. It wasn’t my fault, Pym … it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t my fault if I didn’t want to live with him, Pym. Why should I be forced to live with him if I couldn’t live with him? Just because he wanted to live with me … is it my fault that I didn’t want to live with him? I never wanted to hurt him or anybody, Pym! I only wanted to be left alone! I said to him a thousand times: ‘Why must I do what you want me to do simply because you think you love me?’ But no; it was useless, it was no use at all. And I won’t be a slave! I won’t be a victim! I hate myself for crying like this … but I won’t have it! What right have they to do this to me? What right?”

“Better be calm, Jo.”

“Oh God, how I hate the world!”

“I love you, you know.”

“I don’t see why,” she said, while Pym dried her eyes with his handkerchief.

“I don’t know. I have fallen in love with you—don’t be alarmed, I’m not going to burst into tears or fall on my knees—I happen to have fallen in love with you, and I want to be with you, that’s all.”

“I wonder what would happen then.”

“I don’t know. All kinds of things might happen if we were together. There are places to go; there are things to see. If you saw what you saw, and I saw what I saw, and we were together, what we saw together might be twice as good; if we happened to be together. There’s no end to what might happen, if you and I were together. Didn’t anybody ever tell you, when you were in school, that the world is twenty-five thousand miles round? And didn’t you learn that a sphere has an infinite number of circumferences? Good Lord, Jo, if you loved me and I loved you, and we were together, there would be no end to what might happen to you and me around and around the world. If you accept me, and I accept you, and we blend—make one new thing between the old two of us, good Lord, we might even have a child together!”

“I wonder what sort of monstrosity that would turn out to be,” said Joanna.

“Oh, I don’t know. The probability is that it would be either a son or a daughter. So long as it had a pair of arms and a pair of legs, and only one head, what would be the difference? Between the two of us we’d probably make a tolerably happy creature of it, even if it had warts and a hump like Quasimodo. Only I fancy that you’d have to love me first, and I don’t think you do.”

“One of the things that makes me so angry with myself is that I’m half inclined to believe that I do love you,” said Joanna Bowman. “I’m just about half inclined to believe that I do love you, as much as I could ever love anyone.”

Then a nurse came in, followed by a doctor in a white coat. They looked at Pym, who was kissing Joanna Bowman on the forehead. She said: “I believe they’ve come to dress my wound, or something. Will you come again soon?”

“To-morrow,” said Pym.

“I’m sorry I was so emotional, Pym.”

“I’m not, Jo.”

*

Pym was not unhappy now; he was not even angry. When he went to collect his typewriter, stationery, groceries and clothes from his flat in Battersea, he was aware of a certain lightness, a sense of relief. He had learned to hate that place, that loud-mouthed, lying bitch of a place. He hated the bed from head to foot and in every spring; hated the delicate-stomached hand-basin, the coy bathtub, and the hunger-striking water closet that had to be forcibly fed. He was shocked by the vile deceitfulness of the sitting-room table that had looked so good and behaved so badly. He wanted to go a long way away from that place. He despised the false pretences of its kitchen, with its greasy black slut of a gas stove and its snotty, bronchitic sink. He wanted to spit on the abominable rugs, and tear the sneaking curtains from their sly, slippery runners. It would have given him pleasure to take the treacherous chairs limb from limb, and draw and quarter the mean, treasonable sofa. No doubt the sly slippery landlord of that unsavoury furnished flat was ready to go to law and perjure himself to the seventh circle of hell for the sake of sixpence, Pym thought; otherwise he would have put his right fist straight through the perversely lying face that leered at him in the mirror, the leprous mirror, of the bathroom cabinet. It would have given him pleasure to go through the apartment with a blazing torch and leave it a heap of smoking ashes. He felt swindled, mocked and betrayed. Above all, he hated his typewriter. There was another sleek, slinking gold-digger. She seemed to have everything, and gave it all to you with voluptuous abandon … until you asked her just a little more than she found it comfortable to give. Then, self-seeking harlot that she was, she pretended to be indisposed. She was delicate, in spite of her hearty, robust, accommodating manner. She had periodic cramps in some mysterious part of her inside. She was capricious. She demanded constant attention. If she was not sufficiently petted, her letter E jammed; and if you used ever such a little force, her shift lock refused to do down. She seemed not to like her ribbon: she could not do anything with it. And all the time, she smiled and sighed, and gave you to understand that it was not her fault, that she was made that way, that she did so want to please you, but since she could not, well … you could go to hell.

Pym was sick with loathing for this beautiful new typewriter. He wanted to get a screwdriver and take her apart, key by key and gadget by gadget, and drop her piece by piece into the river.

But she squatted, imperturbable. You need me, she seemed to say, get rid of me if you dare. I don’t care. There are many more fools in the world.

Pym seized her savagely by the handle. He had twenty-six shillings and ninepence in his pocket, and needed a room to work and sleep in. He thought of the clean, scoured landladies of the neighbourhood, and was sick at heart. Then he thought of Busto, that wicked little man, and remembered—he could not recall where he had heard it—a proverb: It is better to deal with the devil you know than with the devil you don’t know. Busto was a swine in greed and a cat in watchfulness; a wolf in snatching and a squirrel in hoarding; a bug to creep, a louse to cling, a leech to suck; flea-like in evasiveness, snake-like in pitilessness, maggot-like in impartial hunger. Yet Pym, laughing at himself between his teeth, found himself homesick for the single-mindedness of Busto and for the naïve nakedness of the curious squalor of his house.

In this sort of muck, a man knew where he was. Black was black and white was white. You paid and stayed—or out you went. There was a queer kind of honesty in Busto’s place: no sidelong looks got you anywhere; no false promises carried you through; no smile masked a lie. Whatever you had, Busto got out of you—even a little truth, once in a while.

Pym went to Busto’s house and said: “Got a room?”

“Sure,” said Busto. “Lovely room. Ground afloor front room, sixteen a-bob a week.”

“Nothing cheaper?”

“No.”

“Sixteen shillings!”

“Yes.”

“Oh, all right. Okay.”

Busto opened his left hand, touched the palm of it with his right forefinger, and said: “Hah?”

Pym had sixteen shillings ready; a ten-shilling note and six silver shillings. Busto sneered a smile at him and said: “First of all you got a room for eleven a-bob upstairs. Hah? Okay. Now you got a sixteen a-bob room, ground floor. Hah? Okay, okay! You wait. To-morrow is better. Why not?”

“Indeed, why not?”

“A minute,” said Busto, and went downstairs. Soon he came back with a portable typewriter.

“Mine! Mine!” shouted Pym.

“Some fella so this fella finds it in-a street, so that fella bring it a-me because you got your name and address inside it. Okay? So I keep it for you.”

“I gave you a forwarding address,” said Pym, looking hungrily at his old typewriter.

“I forget it.”

“Busto, you’re a liar,” said Pym, happily, “an unmitigated liar. Who was it that brought the typewriter?”

“Oh, some fella.”

“Did you give him anything?”

“Hah?”

“Did he leave an address?”

“No.”

“I would give that man my shirt,” said Pym. Then he took the new typewriter back to where he had bought it and they gave him ten guineas for it, and he was happy. Pym had not wanted to pawn his new suits and his overcoat; and in a mysterious way he had developed a great fondness for his old typewriter. It was, to him, like a wife after thirty years of marriage: he would not die of grief for the loss of it, but he was not himself without it.

He typed:

23456789-¾qwertyuiop^3/8asdfghjkl;7/8zxcvbnm,.½”/@£&’()¼QWERTYUIOP^1/8ASDFGHJKL:5/8ZXCVBNM?.%

Then he wrote: The quick brown fox jumped right over the sly lazy dog. And: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. He made patterns with commas, obliques, ampersands, and dots. Soon the old typewriter took him to her bosom again, and they were one; and he let her peck away all that had come to the top of his consciousness.

He wrote:

Joanna, Joanna, I have been thinking of you constantly, my dear Joanna. Writing to you, although I am alone, I feel closer to you; I feel that I am in communication with you. I want to be near you because I love you. I love you because God made you well—beautiful in soul and body, strong and full of courage, clean and honest, keen and successfully shaped, finely tempered, polished, burnished, and finished … something like a knife with which you could defend your honour, kill a tyrant, cut down trees to build a house, fight a Last Battle, sharpen a pencil, build a ship in which brave men might sail to find new worlds, or clear a way through the jungle. When I think of you I think of a good blue blade made to take a razor-edge and a needle-point—and at the same time supple; a weapon for hewing things down, and an instrument for carving wonderful shapes out of what you have cut away. For all this, and for your beauty, and for other reasons which I cannot define, I love you and profoundly admire you….

23456789-¾qwertyuiop^3/8asdfghjkl;7/8zxcvbnm,.½”/@£&()¼QWERTYUIOP^1/8ASDFGHJKL:5/8ZXCVBNM?.%

… I love strength. I love nobility. I love that which is beautiful and good. Therefore, Joanna, I love you. Once I knew a man who used to stay up with me all night wondering which was best: the Good, the True or the Beautiful. We used to argue until the day broke. How young I must have been then! How can anything be beautiful unless it is good?

You are the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. You are all that I aspire to. Something in my mind tells me that you and I are going to make great things together. Something tells me that you love me, and I tell you that I love you very dearly….

23456789-¾qwertyuiop^3/8asdfghjkl;7/8zxcvbnm,.½”/@£&’()¼QWERTYUIOP^1/8ASDFGHJKL:5/8ZXCVBNM?.%

… I’ll see you to-morrow and well talk again together. Something tells me that we are destined to be together.

I love you. Once I had a young hawk with a broken wing. I offer you my heart, but—as then—carefully, with my finger-tips, as I offered him meat hoping to earn his love. Good night, dear heart. Good night.

Then Pym took the paper out of the typewriter and tore it to pieces.

*

Busto unbuttoned his coat, as he usually did before going to bed. He preferred to sleep at odd hours. Now his clock—a fly-blown dial smaller than the cap of a small pickle-jar supported by a massive bronze Hercules—said that it was half-past eight in the evening. Therefore it must have been about ten past nine. Pym, heavy with melancholy and jerked alternately the four points of the compass by yearnings to work, sleep, drink and eat, heard an imperious knocking at the street door.

Busto came up, groaning.

“Hah?” he said. “Oh. Is you. Well?”

A piercing voice, neither male nor female, said: “Is that you, Busto? Well, listen. My father wants to know if you’ve received a letter in a long narrow envelope, addressed to M’Gurk.”

Busto said: “Hah! Lookatim! All dressed up.”

“Did you or did you not receive a letter addressed to Mr. M’Gurk?”

“Hah!”

“In a long envelope.”

“Hah!”

“Did you?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Did you or didn’t you?”

“Long envelope,” said Busto, with scorn. “You never got no long envelope. Long envelope! Hah! Long envelope. You never even got a-short a-envelope.”

“Look here, you! I know the law. You can get five years hard labour——”

“Hah!”

“Did you or did you not——”

“No envelope.”

“No letter at all addressed to M’Gurk?”

“Go way.”

“You’re sure, now?”

“Lookatim—all dressed up,” said Busto. “Hah!”

Pym went into the passage and saw Boysie M’Gurk frantically gesticulating with a fist no larger than a knotted rope, while Busto waited like a buzzard, black and dusty, avid and patient.

“What’s up?” asked Pym.

Busto did not give himself the trouble of lifting a finger. He pointed to Boysie with his chin, and said: “Long a-envelope, they want.”

“We’ve got a contract lost in the post,” said Boysie. “Oh, it’s you. Still here?”

“You’re looking remarkably elegant, Boysie.”

“What? You never heard? The Miserable M’Gurks—you mean to tell me you never heard? ‘Man, Woman and Dog’—you never heard? There’s a contract in the post, gone astray. Oh, it’s okay, it’ll turn up, but——”

“Things are going well then, eh?” said Pym to Boysie, who piped:

“That new act of mine is going like a house on fire. I made them do it just like I said. I’m a dog with black spots and long ears right down to the ground. I steal the whole act. I get them rolling in the aisles. They pee themselves laughing.”

“So, you’re a dog with black spots, are you? Just like you said, is it?” said Pym, “I seem to have some vague idea that I had a certain little tiny something to do with it.”

“Well, it’s true that you kind of gave me the inspiration in the course of a discussion.”

“I’m humbly grateful for your magnanimity in acknowledging the fact.”

“Not at all, old man. Give honour where honour is due, I think. We’re top of the bill at the Hackney Pantheon. George Black’s interested. I wouldn’t mind betting we’ll be in the next show at the Palladium. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

“And how’s your father and your mother?”

“Oh Christ, pretty much the same. You know what they are,” said Boysie bitterly. “I was expecting a letter from Mr. Redbird—you know, the Holborn Hippodrome—and the old man forgot what address he gave. I didn’t want to bother Redbird—I mean to say, it makes you look such a bloody fool—so I just came to enquire. It all falls on me. You don’t know what it is to have idiots for parents.”

“That’s a nice way to talk about your mother and father!” said Pym.

“To hell with them. I’m roughing out a few ideas for an act of my own, the dog act; with a stooge and a lamp post.”

“The dog with black spots and long ears, eh?” said Pym.

“That’s right. It’d be a good idea, I thought, to pad the dog-suit out big, turn him into a cock-eyed sort of spotty mastiff, and get one of those midgets that are always loafing about Charing Cross Road to do the stooging. Whadda you think?”

“I do not think,” said Pym.

“I daresay I could put something your way if you like. I could probably use some of your stuff later on. Think it over.”

“I’m infinitely obliged to you.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Been scribbling anything lately?”

This was too much. “Scribbling!” said Pym, “scribbling! Sarcasm is wasted on you, you unnatural child.” And he picked Boysie up by his coat collar, bent him over one of his knees, and smacked his bottom, saying: “… Scribbling … scribbling …you little dog … with black spots! Scribbling! … You pachyderm … you abortion … you precocious … imp! Ttris’ll … teach you … to respect your elders … and betters. Now run away and play dogs.”

Boysie ran away. Busto, who had been looking on with sour approval, said: “You wanna glass a-wine?”

Pym said: “That’s kind of you, Busto, that really is!” He had given some thought to the nature of Busto, and knew that shillings were his stars and pennies the red corpuscles of the blood of his heart; and wine cost money—even the Lunatic’s Broth that Busto drank. “No, you really are very kind. But you must come out and have a drink with me.”

“Okay. Some other time maybe,” said Busto. “Good night.” And he went downstairs to make ready for the perils and the dangers of the coming night. Looking at the Mona Lisa, he prayed:

“Vergine Santa, tu sai tutto, io le faccie le so leggere sai? E so benissimo che tu sai tutto! Va bene? Sissignora, prendo la tua parola, e t’affido tutti i beni miei. Se mi fossi incontrato con una donna come te, ti avrei gia fatto mia moglie … Figli, o non figli … e perche no?”

It meant: Holy Mother of God. You know everything. Lady, I can read faces, and I know that you know everything … Okay? Lady, I’d take your word for anything. I’d trust you with all I got. And if I ever came across a girl like you I’d’ve married her myself, kid or no kid … Why not?

An all-knowing God, knowing his Busto, must have found such a prayer acceptable.

*

It was nearly ten o’clock when Pym reached the Duchess of Douro. The saloon bar was empty. The barmaid was reading a little paper-backed novel. The landlord was reading the evening paper. “Can I have a piece of bread-and-cheese and a pint of beer and some pickles?”

“Haven’t seen you for quite a time,” said the barmaid.

Pym, who had slipped off the high wire of tight-strung exhilaration after he had torn up the letter, was falling, now, into a deep and dangerous darkness. What the hell is the use of anything, when there are such people in the world? he said to himself. “I beg pardon? Did you say something?” he said to the barmaid.

“I said it was a long time since we’d seen you.”

“Well, you don’t seem to have died of a broken heart in the meantime. The place doesn’t seem to have shut down. You’ve survived. And if you never saw me again as long as you lived I wouldn’t mind betting that you’d live to your dying day. I hope you haven’t been lying awake at night thinking about me. You don’t look as if you’ve been losing your appetite on my account.”

“What’s the matter with you? Got the rats?” asked the barmaid.

“I beg pardon. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“That’s what it is,” said the barmaid, giving him his beer, bread-and-cheese and pickles, “that’s what it is. You’ve got the rats. Rats, rats, long-tailed rats with eyes like pale green gooseberries. That’s what it is.”

“That’s what it is. Rats. Millions of rats. And I don’t mean the nice rats—the brave, clever, honourable rats with long teeth and long tails.”

“Well, cheer up, dear—we’ll soon be dead.”

“The sooner the better,” said Pym.

“What’s the matter, duck? In love?”

“The answer to that is Yes and also No,” said Pym.

The barmaid was a motherly woman. She gave Pym a newspaper and said: “You eat your nice bread-and-cheese and drink your nice beer all up, and look at the cartoon. That’ll make you laugh.”

Pym began to read the newspaper. War was on the way; blitz-war of unimaginable frightfulness. The Old Man was whetting the scythe. Things were happening in Southern and Central Europe—things to turn the stomach. A woman had been sent to prison for six months for burning her two-year-old son with a red-hot poker because he wet the bed. A man in one of the Home Counties had been fined for beating a dog to death. An American heiress who had inherited forty million dollars had bought herself a Russian Prince: he had insisted on a marriage settlement of half a million dollars a year. Four negroes had been strung up, drenched with petrol, and burned in Georgia. The police were looking for the person (unknown) who had raped and strangled, or strangled and raped, an eight-year-old schoolgirl. Four people had perished in a fire.

Pym said: “Good God Almighty! Created in God’s image! The highest form of life! The last word in civilisation! You can keep it.”

“D’you think there really will be a war?” asked the barmaid.

“Yes,” said Pym.

“D’you think there’s anything in what they say about bombs wiping us out of existence—poof!—just like that?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. I hope so.”

“D’you think the balloon’s going to go up pretty soon?”

“Yup.”

“I must say I don’t like the look of it. Do you?”

“Nup.”

“Oh well, cheer up—we’ll soon be dead.”

Pym turned two more pages, and came to the little oblongs, the fillers-of-space, in the badlands of the newspaper on the frontier of the Sports Pages. Pym started and cried: “Hey!”—and pointed to an inconspicuous paragraph stuck between two grey curtains of sensational bad news that hung from jet-black rods of sombre headlines. It told how Russian scientists had discovered living organisms in the depths beneath the old Polar ice. “Hey! Look at this!”

“What is it now?” asked the barmaid, with an anxious hand at her throat.

“Didn’t you see this? Good God Almighty, doesn’t anybody ever read anything? Just look and see! See for yourself! Look!” he shouted, jabbing at the paragraph with a violent finger. The landlord came over to look, and the barmaid leant forward, twisting her head to read.

“D’you mean that?”

“Certainly I mean that!”

The landlord looked at the barmaid. The barmaid raised her eyebrows, looking at the landlord. Pym said: “Now this is what I call news! Drinks for everybody—drinks all round! Don’t you get it? Some scientists go to the coldest, deadest, the most desolate place in the world. They go into the cold. They go into the cold in which nothing can live—do you get that? And then they drill down in that primeval cold, into that ancient, primal ice, and what do they find? Life! Living things! Almighty God, why do they tuck that away back here? Why isn’t this a front-page headline? Life!”

Then he slapped the barmaid on the shoulder with such force that she fell forward and knocked over his glass, which emptied itself over his knees. But he laughed and said: “Isn’t that a wonderful thing? In that bitter cold? Under all that ice, after all these years? Life, by God!”

Rubbing her shoulder, the barmaid said: “It’s all right. He didn’t mean no harm.”

“You’ve had enough. You go home now,” said the landlord.

So Pym went back to Busto’s and worked until dawn, thinking of the marvellous life that survives the frightful cold under the ice in the dead places of the world. Then, after a short sleep, he put on his best suit and went out to talk to Joanna Bowman, and as he walked he whistled a defiant tune.

*

LONDON AND PERCÉ, QUEBEC, AUGUST, 1947

Copyright

This ebook edition first published in 2013

by Faber and Faber Ltd

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All rights reserved

© The Estate of Gerald Kersh, 1948

The right of Gerald Kersh to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–0–571–30457–8