This site is full of FREE ebooks - Project Gutenberg Australia

Title:      Here's Luck
Author:     Lennie Lower
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0100081.txt
Language:   English
Date first posted:          September 2001
Date most recently updated: July 2006


Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au


Title:      Here's Luck
Author:     Lennie Lower




CHAPTER I



It is absolutely ridiculous to call a man of forty-eight old. A
restricted vocabulary might account for such a remark, and then of
course there are people whose observations are superficial and even
frivolous.

Temple, however, is a man who is never frivolous and I was astounded
when he said it.

"Gudgeon," he said, "you're getting old."

"I'm not old!" I protested.

"You look old!" he insisted.

That was a lie. I pride myself on my looks. I have not a grey hair in
my head, and numerous acquaintances have favourably remarked on my
appearance. I am perhaps, a little under medium height, but then mere
height is nothing. Notice the relative importance of Napoleon and the
giraffe. I have been called fat by envious persons less kindly treated
by nature and there was one who at the height of his jealousy called me
"Barrel."

I am not a vain man, but in my own defence I quote a remark made by the
girl in Flannery's saloon bar to a f riend.

"I like," she said, "his ruddy, clean-shaven, ingenuous face; and he
has such a splendidly mature figure and manly bearing."

That, I think, should be sufficient. If, however, I say IF there is the
slightest excuse for a remark such as Temple made there is only one
excuse for it. It is not age. It's worry.

It's Stanley--and if there is anything within the ken of man more
calculated to bring a man's grey hairs in sorrow to the grave, it,
whatever it is, is not human.

Stanley is about eighteen or nineteen, I am not sure which, but looks
much older than his years. He is taller and thinner than I but
otherwise resembles me as closely as can be expected these days. His
face can look positively cherubic on occasion, but this makes no
difference to the fact that he can be a fiend from the blackest pit
when he likes. I've had a lot of trouble with him. A few weeks ago he
was at that stage where he had given up the idea of being a pirate,
engine-driver, or chief rescuer in the fire brigade, and wanted to be a
poet. He has altered greatly since, but I would much rather rear a
platypus than a boy. Problems innumerable beset the conscientious
father, but the greatest problem of all is to know in what trade or
profession the boy will be best fitted to support his old father at a
later date.

The medical profession, of course, suggests itself immediately. I have
no yearning to have Stanley descend to the familiarity of listening-in
to the heart-throbs of the vulgar, and punching people in the ribs and
asking if it hurts. Neither do I wish to stand on one leg with my mouth
open and say ninety-nine, as I would undoubtedly be compelled to do if
he were training for the medical profession. His mother would see to
that. Furthermore, judging by the number of divorce cases that doctors
become entangled in it would seem that the only way some of them can
keep their names untarnished is by the application of a little
metal-polish to their brass plate. And whatever else Stanley is, I want
him to be untarnished. That is to say, he'd be fool enough to get
caught.

I could make a lawyer of him. He really has a talent in that direction.
He comes home in the small hours of the morning with an iron-clad alibi
and even the wife can find no chink in his armour of excuses. He is a
fountain of fluid eloquence. I'm a bit that way myself: it runs in our
family. Still, admitting that lawyers are quite all right in their
place, the trouble is to find the place.

There is the Church. Somehow I don't think he is fitted for it. He
hasn't heard the call, so to speak. It seems to be a weakness of his,
this deafness to calls. Every morning I have to go to his room and pull
the bed-clothes off him before he shows any signs of life. This despite
the fact that his mother has shouted herself black in the face at the
foot of the stairs and his aunt has battered the paint off his door. He
did show some interest in the subject of the revision of the
prayer-book. His suggestion was to insert cross-word puzzles on
alternate pages with blank leaves interspersed here and there for
sketches and notes to be passed along to fellow sufferers during the
sermon. He can be wooden-headed, dull and entirely lacking in
imagination when the mood seizes him, and taking into consideration
these assets, I had hopes of a brilliant career for him in the army,
but unfortunately he is flatfooted, so his other qualifications go for
nothing.

I could, I suppose, put a stiff collar on him, give him a pair of gold
cuff-links, a cigarette-holder, and a couple of fountain-pens and
incarcerate him in a warehouse; to emerge at the expiration of his
sentence as a business man: a successful business man: a man who has
won the right to put his thumb in the armhole of his vest and look over
the top of his glasses and grunt. Or I could start him off in the
Public Service. There he could remain for about forty years in a more
or less comatose condition and later be dismissed from his position of
Temporary Casual Supernumerary Class II clerk with a pension. The
pension would not be sufficient to keep me and I could not bear the
thought of filling in forms, LX2, A3, Folio 9716Q in quadruplicate,
digging up birth certificates, writing out references for him and
getting his finger-prints taken in order to get him on the waiting-list.

I have read of fathers cutting their sons off with a shilling arid
casting them into the world with a clout in one ear and a lot of
invaluable advice in the other. And the sons have become celebrated
Lord Mayors, bushrangers, politicians and big business men. Worked
themselves up from newsboys to a position where they can sign cheques
for thousands without having to flee the country immediately. I have
thought over this arrangement of cutting him off with a shilling--but I
cannot spare the shilling. Anyhow, he'd be bound to make a mess of
things. And then there's this poet business. He's in love. He generally
is, more or less.

I thought there was something wrong when he started cleaning his teeth
every hour and oiling his hair and walking stiff legged about the house
to preserve the crease in his trousers. I had the wife give him the
onion test and when he said he didn't care for onions while his eyes
glistened and his mouth watered--I knew.

"Who's this knobby-kneed, enamel-faced giggler you're going out with?"
I asked him kindly.

It's always best to be tactful when a boy is like this. They're very
sensitive in the moony stage.

We had a bit of a session--a "go in" as they call it. I tried to reason
with him. I explained to him about women. I showed him a portrait of
his mother as she was when I married her and left the rest to his
imagination.

I explained to him, that if ever he found himself getting serious with
a woman, if he bashed his head against a nearby wall for about ten
minutes instead, he'd feel better for it in the long run. I told him
that if he bought himself a hair-shirt and a loud-speaker he would be
just as comfortable as if he was married.

It was useless.

"I love her, father," he said.

Just like that.

"I wish I were a poet, father, that I might describe her to you," he
murmured lying back on the bed in a kind of rapturous swoon.

That's how the poet idea started.

"Her teeth are like pearls."

"I understand," I said, "mouth like an oyster."

"Her hair----"

"Clipped and stuck to her cheek-bones with saliva."

He ignored me.

"I have basked in the sunshine of her smile----"

"That how you got sunburnt on the back?" I asked.

"Gazing into her eyes--eyes like two deep wells----"

"Well! Well!" I said. Rather smart, I thought, but he looked up at me,
and, well sort of looked up at me and looked down on me, if you
understand what I mean.

"Knees like a retired Highland piper, I suppose," I said, just to
regain my composure.

"Her lips!" he muttered, gazing rapturously at the door-knob.

"Ah! her hips. Explain about her hips, my son."

"I said lips, father, not hips," he said disdainfully.

I was a bit disappointed. Still I suppose, I couldn't expect--anyhow
he's young yet, and I always was his pal and confidant, more or less.
Lord knows, life is dull enough. Anyhow he insisted that it was "lips"
he said, so I let it go at that.

It was then that he brought out the poem.

He got up from the bed as though in a trance, there was a glazed look
about his eyes, he even forgot about the crease in his trousers as he
bent to get the poem from underneath the linoleum.

"If I show you this, father, will you swear by all you hold sacred to
keep it secret?" he asked.

His voice has not yet decided whether it is a tenor or a baritone, and
he had to change over half-way through. It sounded very emotional. I
was rather surprised at the form of the swear. When he had wanted to be
a pirate he used to ask me to swear by the blood of my ancestors.
Later, after he had been reading some book or other, it had to be done
by the beard of the profit. What the devil the beard of the profit is,
I don't know. I haven't seen so much as a whisker of a profit in the
last few months. Money is close in the city and I haven't noticed its
proximity in the suburbs. However, after thinking for about three
seconds on all I held sacred, I swore.

Then he showed me the poem. I read it out aloud.


When I gaze into her eyes,
I see blue skies, 
And mists arise,
Her lips, blood-red
From Psyche bled,
Set up a singing in my head.
Her little nose----


"I haven't finished it," he said, twisting one foot round the other.

I pondered for a while.

"Her little nose she loudly blows," I suggested.

"She doesn't!" he cried.

"Untidy little brat. Surely----"

"Father! You must not speak like that of my future wife!" he cried;
something after the old pirate manner.

This knocked me. I didn't expect it. Even a man who has been married
twenty years can still be surprised at things occasionally. I was
astonished. He had certainly rung the bell. Mentally I gave him the
choice of a kewpie doll or an aluminium saucepan.

"Wife!" I gasped.

"My wife. My mate," he whispered reverently.

"Hey!" I said. "Hold off! Finish. D'you hear me? That's enough. Wife!
Pah!"

His mouth fell open a little.

"To think that I should have reared a son," I cried; "dandled him on my
knees, listened to his childish burblings, bought him toffee with
stripes on, let him ruin my razor shaving a lot of lather off his face;
been friend, Roman, countryman to him, and then--and then--he tells me to
my face, without a blush or the batting of a solitary eyelash, that he
will sell his birthright for a mess of facecream!"

I sank down on the bed, overcome.

"To leave his poor old father to push a peanut cart with a whistle on
it in his old age, while he keeps a woman supplied with shoes, hats,
grievances and pet dogs!"

I buried my face in my hands.

"Father!" said Stanley hoarsely. "Father--Ar! I say--father!"

I remained prostrate. This was the first real opportunity I'd had of
trying out his mother's tactics, and I wasn't going to throw it away.

"Father!" he cried theatrically, "I will go away and try to forget! I
will give her up and go away. Away--away!" and he tottered out of the
room and stumbled down the stairs.

I sat up. The next thing to do to carry the experiment to a conclusion
was to lie on the bed motionless and claim weakly that I had a
splitting headache and that I forgave everyone, poor downtrodden
creature that I was. However there was no one to look at me so I lit my
pipe instead. I could hear Stanley downstairs talking to his
mother--making trouble. How much, I never guessed but knowing what a
young hound he was I began to feel perturbed. Stanley is a hound.

I could hear his aunt's voice too. His aunt is rny wife's sister I'll
admit, and no doubt she would make some paralysed deaf mute a good
wife--but I'll say no more. After all, blood is thicker than water. But
then so is soup, and even water is of some use when you can't get
anything else--but still, I will say no more.

Never let it be said that I ever said anything derogatory of that
parrot-brained Gorgon.




CHAPTER II



I smoked for a while and then went downstairs after salvaging one of my
ties which Stanley had borrowed and thrown under the bed with the rest
of his discarded clothing. One thing about Stanley, he is a methodical
boy and pitches his clothes on the floor in symmetrical heaps where
they can be easily turned over with the foot when anything is required.
The two women were waiting for me at the foot of the stairs when I came
down. I felt like going back. Stanley's aunt folded her arms, shot a
glance at the wife, pursed her lips, and shrugged her shoulders.
Without speaking she managed to say that this was the plague they had
been speaking about. I knew immediately that Stanley had seized his
opportunity. He's like that. And his mother will back him up in any
fool thing so long as I'm made to look ridiculous.

"What have you been doing to Stanley?" snapped the wife.

"Stanley who?" I asked.

Silly, I know, but I wasn't prepared.

"What's wrong with him?" I added.

"He is going away," wailed Agatha, "he is leaving his home!"

Aunt Gertrude spoke up. She has a voice like a knife that has been left
stuck in a lemon too long.

"He is going to South Africa to hunt elephants," she said slowly in a
hanged-by-the-neck-till-you-are-dead tone.

Elephants mind you! But I had got used to this sort of thing.

"Well, well!" I said, "I suppose he'll need to take his lunch; or
perhaps he can get lunch over there. I think they do have that sort of
thing. Mealies and kopjes and veldts and things. Of course, he'll find
it a little different but----"

"John!" said my wife.

If there's anything I hate, it's "John."

"The poor boy is going to South Africa to try to forget. His hopes are
blasted----"

"Agatha!" I said.

She blushed slightly.

"To think that the wife of my bosom----"

"Bosom your grandmother!"

There are times when the veneer of refinement peels off Agatha.

She led the way into the drawing-room. Stanley was there, standing with
arms folded and a look of hopeless determination on his face--or
determined hopelessness. Properly blasted. He was gazing out the window
as if he already saw the elephants advancing with writhing tentacles.

Agatha sank into a chair, suddenly overcome.

"He is going to South Africa--to hunt elephants!" she whispered
brokenly. "Elephants! He is going to hunt them in South Africa!" she
moaned. "Elephants--Africa--South!"

"Hunt--going--to," I added, to help her out of the mess.

Aunt Gertrude sniffed.

Her sniffs remind me somehow, of the dried husk-like skin of a snake,
after it has been shed.

"Ah, Stanley!" moaned the wife, warming up to the work. "Don't go to
South Africa!"

It made me mad to see her pretending to take him seriously.

"I will. I am. I shall--must!" said Stanley.

I could see that with all the encouragement he was getting he had
become rather taken with the idea.

"But, Stanley--it's so far away! Couldn't you go to the zoo?"

"Zoo!" hooted Stanley. "Zoo! What zoo!"

It sounded like the war-cry of the Randwick Rovers.

His eye-balls seemed to pop out.

"I don't want those lop-eared, peanut elephants! I want elephants that
are wild! That crouch ready to spring and tear one limb from limb with
their claws! Elephants!" he concluded with a shout of triumph.

"But, Stan; elephants don't have claws," said Agatha.

"They'll wish they had before I'm finished with them," said Stanley
fiercely.

"Ah, let him go and hunt elephants if he wants to--the poor boy," put in
Gertrude. "If he's brought home mangled beyond recognition perhaps he
(me) will see what a heartless brute he is!"

Agatha seemed to think this over for a while and then with an air of
comparative cheerfulness straightened her dress and remarked: "Oh,
well; I suppose if he wants to go, he wants to go."

This seemed to me profound, but sound. There was absolutely no argument
against it.

"Elephants!" muttered Stanley, gazing at me and licking his lips.

"Bah!" I exclaimed, turning to him, "what have elephants ever done to
you that you should pick on them like this! Poor little elephants that
never said a harsh word--who woke you up to this damned elephant rot,
anyhow?"

"Well, Stanley, if you've made up your mind that's all there is about
it," cut in Gertrude.

"Yes. Yes," sobbed Agatha.

I closed my mouth. It only needed me to object to all this rot; to put
my foot down firmly and forbid it, and the pair of them would have
bundled him off to South Africa immediately. I know women. That is, I
know that much about them. Of course this elephant talk was all damned
rot. Stanley's idea of amusement at my expense. Any unpleasantness
where I was the goat could always command Agatha's and Gertrude's
hearty support. I treated the matter as a joke--fool that I was.

Agatha went out of the room, presumably to cut a few sandwiches for
Stanley to take to South Africa.

Gertrude walked over to Stanley and put her hand on his shoulder,
"Stanley," she said, "be very careful in South Africa. Don't go rushing
in among the elephants and hurting yourself."

"That's the way. One at a time," I said heartily. "I bet they laugh
their trunks off when they spot him."

I got the snake-skin sniff again.

"And always wear your goloshes," she went on, "I'm sure those jungles
are not properly drained--and flannel next to your skin, and be careful
crossing the roads at intersections, and don't speak to any strange
men."

"And wash behind your ears and see if you can bring home an ant-eater,"
I said.

I pronounced it "aunt-eater" and, thinking that was good enough to exit
on, I exited, with the honours of the last word thick upon me.

The next few hours I spent roaming about the house waiting for dinner.
Stanley had gone out. I strolled into the kitchen two or three times.
They were both sitting there; Agatha sobbing loudly behind her
handkerchief each time I entered, and Gertrude eyeing me as she would a
sick python, and saying, "Poor dear," to Agatha and patting her on the
hand. It was impressed upon me that I was as welcome as a leprous
gorilla at a wake, but it was some time before it dawned on me that
there wasn't going to be any dinner!

This was over the odds! Even if all this tomfoolery was true, and
Stanley was going to South Africa; and supposing everybody was all torn
to shreds with sorrow, and that--a man's dinner is his dinner. A man
must eat though the earth collapse and the heavens roll together as a
scroll. There is a limit to everything. It struck me that it would be a
pretty good idea to go to South Africa and take Stanley. A man could at
least fry a slab of elephant to keep him going between meals. I was
beginning to get a bit nasty tempered, when the front door opened and
Stanley came in. He looked a bit down in the mouth.

"Look here, Stan," I said, going up to him. "Are there enough of these
blasted elephants to go round? Couldn't we share them between us? We'd
get on all right together, you and I. I could hold the elephants while
you shot them."

"Or," I added, as he didn't seem to be too enthusiastic, "we could take
a tusk each and tear them apart. I'm sure we could make a do of it.
What about it, Stan?"

"I'm not going, dad," he said mournfully.

"Not going!"

Despite the fact that I knew he hadn't the faintest hope of going, I
was surprised and a little disappointed. I had been thinking the matter
over and the more I thought about it the better it looked. The thought
of getting away from Agatha and snake-skin and living in the decent
society of wild elephants had taken hold of me. Then of course, one
wouldn't be with the elephants all the time. Most likely they'd have a
bar in South Africa. Very likely a billiard-table too. A rough-hewn,
stone affair, but still a billiard-table. Perhaps one could even teach
the natives poker! And here were all my new risen hopes dashed to the
ground and trodden on.

"Is that you, Stanley?" came a shrill voice from the kitchen.

"Come upstairs, dad," whispered Stanley.

We cat-footed up to his room.

"Dad," he said, as soon as he had shut the door, "I've just been around
to say good-bye to Estelle."

"Who the hell's Estelle?" I asked. The phrase struck me at the time as
a good title for a Fox-Buttom or something.

"Estelle? She's that knobby-kneed, enamel-faced giggling man-eater we
were talking about a while ago."

"Oh!" I said, "the one with the sky-eyes and the bleeding lips?"

"Where is that damned thing!" he snapped savagely.

I handed him the poem from the dressing-table and he tore it about in a
way that must have strained him from the waist up, and threw the pieces
up in the air as if he was having a Venetian carnival all to himself. I
waited. He burst out at last.

"You know that tripe-faced mug Oscar Winthrop?"

I nodded.

He paused and seemed to gather himself together; his eyes narrowed and
he leered at me. Then slowly he hissed, "He's got a motor-bike and
side-car!"

"Good God!" I gasped.

To say that I was stunned by this disclosure would be to put it feebly:
moreover, it would be a lie.

"Got it day before yesterday," he explained, "and she's been riding out
in it ever since. The mug!"

"Who?"

"Oscar," he said, sitting down on the edge of his bed.

"And little Oyster-mouth--what about her?"

"Now that I look back," he growled, "I can see that I was her
ice-crearn fetcher, her target, her door-mat, her picture-show ticket.
Mug!"

"Who?"

"Me."

"And elephants are off?" I said regretfully.

He snorted as he wiped the dust off his boots with the quilt.

"Think I'm mad!"

We looked at each other for a while.

"There's no dinner," I said.

"No dinner!" he cried, staring at me.

"Perhaps you could go down to your mother or your aunt and----"

He stood up and put his hand affectionately on my shoulder.

"Don't be silly, dad."

"Well," I said, "there's a place down in King Street where I usually go
when your mother is like this. One can get steak and eggs----"

"Come on," he said, "and we'll go to the fight after."

He looked back as he made for the door.

"Of course, I'm broke, you know."

"That's all right," I said, "I've got a pound or two your mother
doesn't know about."

While I brushed my hair I thought of Stanley. He's got sense, although
it's pretty well camouflaged. He gets more like me every day. It was
just possible that I might get him a job at Flannery's Crown and
Anchor, as a useful. I know Flannery. Stan would be useful all right.
It would be pretty hard lines if he wasn't useful to his poor old
father in a job like that. At least, that was what I thought.

Still thinking, I got my hat and we sneaked out and headed for steak
and eggs and freedom. I said steak and eggs, and freedom. Freedom we
understand. It means letting one's beard grow and going without a
collar. Freedom is what we wave flags for. But steak and eggs!




CHAPTER III



Where in this world will you find anything more sustaining, more
inspiring, more satisfying, more invigorating, rnore absolutely
culminating and fulfilling than steak and eggs? Nowhere.

As I said to Stanley at the Greek restaurant, after we had given our
order: "Stanley, when the poor sailor returns from foreign lands, from
long, lonely cruises, from sleepless nights and toil-filled days; when
at last he sets foot in his home port--what does he do?"

"Gets drunk," said Stanley.

The boy was right.

"What does he do next?" I asked.

"Father, I'm surprised at you talking about that. You know very well
what----"

"No," I cut in firmly, "I don't mean that; I mean, well, damn it all he
orders steak and eggs, doesn't he?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, why didn't you say so at first? Trying to confuse your poor old
father!"

"What," I continued, "does the explorer do when he returns to
civilization after long months in the jungle--what does he crave?"

"Steak and eggs."

"Right. When the starving wanderer, lost in the desert, first starts to
lose his reason; what does he see?"

"Steak and eggs."

"What does the acquitted co-respondent rush for as soon as he leaves
the divorce court?"

"Steak and eggs."

I was satisfied. I leaned back in my chair and gazed around me. Two
young women of the gimme type were gazing with bright, lizard eyes at
our table.

"Who are those girls over there, Stan?" I asked.

"Steak and eggs," replied Stan in a flat, toneless voice.

I looked at him. He was staring straight in front of him with the rapt
look of a crystal-gazer.

"Thinking of little Oyster-mouth?" I asked gently.

"Blah! Women!" he said in a tone of utter disgust. Almost I expected to
see him spit on the cruet, as I believe they do on the Continent. The
steak and eggs arrived and I gazed at my plate. A succulent slab of
steak sprawled across it. Two blonde eggs gazed back at me in a warm,
friendly, frizzled manner. I forked one.

"I was thinking how much it would cost to buy a motorbike and
side-car!" said Stanley, stroking his steak with his knife. "One big
enough, that is to say, strong enough, to smash another motor-bike and
side-car if they happened to bump into one another."

"Attend to your fodder," I said severely.

He champed at his steak for a few minutes, then waving the cruet about
in front of me to attract my attention he whispered, "Eh, dad! Who are
those two girls over there? They keep looking over here."

I raised my face from my plate.

"They, it would seem, are known to their intimates as Steak and Eggs.
The one with the red hair I should say is Steak, and the one with the
legs, is Eggs."

This seemed to puzzle him for a while, but he came at me again.

"But who are they, dad?"

"They are Gimmes," I said, "their names I do not know."

"Gimmes?"

"Gimmes. Yes, Gimmes. Gimme this and gimme that. Human leeches. They'd
extract a fur coat from a marble statue of Harry Lauder. Don't smile or
we're lost."

It was too late. He had smiled.

"I think I'll go over to that table, dad," he said. "Would it look
funny if I took my steak and eggs with me?"

"Siddown," I growled.

"But, father----"

"Don't call me father. D'you hear? Call me Jack."

"Orright."

I looked across to the other table. They smiled.

I slightly raised one eyebrow, an accomplishment of which I have always
been proud and which is, I believe, practised a great deal in
diplomatic circles. I then looked back at my plate and ate on. I could
see that Stanley was straining at the leash. He looked at me with
bright eyes like a water spaniel waiting for his master to throw the
stick into the pond. I should not have been at all surprised if he had
jumped up on me and barked.

"Go on," he urged, in a hoarse whisper, "go on, Jack." One thing about
Stanley, he's swift on the intake, even if he is a bit premature on the
exhaust stroke. You don't have to tell him anything twice--except when
it involves physical effort on his part. I finished my meal, drank a
little Worcestershire sauce and called the waiter.

"Mm--mm, mm--m--mm--mm ah mm?" I asked.

He nodded. "Two shillings a cup," he said.

It was after hours.

"We'll be over at the other table," I said.

"The ladies also mm--mm?"

I nodded and he shuffled off.

"Come on, Stanley," I said, pushing my chair back. "Come with Jacky."

He beat me to the other table by a head.

"Haven't I seen you before?" he burbled.

Of course, he is only young.

I bowed slightly, and with the courtly air for which I am renowned
among my friends, said, "Pardon our intrusion, but would you ladies
care for a snifter?"

"A he-man," said Steak.

"Balm of Gilead!" said Eggs, gulping. "Bring the mat in with you and
shut the door."

I indicated Stanley.

"This is a young friend of mine, Stan. My name is Jack."

"Smith?" inquired Steak.

"Of course. Sit down, Stan."

"I want to sit next to Eggs," said Stan in a whisper that could be
heard for leagues.

We exchanged places and remarks about the weather.

"When," asked Steak, "is le garcon coming avec les snifters?"

No one can spring that stuff on me and get off with it.

The waiter rolled up with a trayful.

"Mon homme," I said, turning to him in a confidential manner, "honi
soit qui mal y pense?"

"No, sir," he replied, shaking his head, "not a drop of it left in the
place."

"Mais done," I said resignedly.

It's a pleasure to meet an intelligent waiter.

Steak was squashed, anyhow, and Stanley regarded me with additional
respect.

I dawdled over my cup. At two shillings a time, it pays to dawdle.

Eggs had got one in below the belt on poor Stanley, by asking him if he
had ever been a bull-fighter. He reminded her so much of a bull-fighter
she used to know. Same fierce, handsome face, same dark mysterious
eyes. Stanley was roped in and eating out of her hand. I remarked that
I had done a bit of bulling, myself, at odd times, and she replied that
she could quite believe it. I was rather taken with Steak. She was the
sort of woman that grows on you. Her name was Daisy.

She had red hair and blue eyes, and a wide mouth. Not a hard mouth, but
a mouth that knew its way about. Her figure was rather good, with the
legs a little on the thin side. She had a lot of tiny wrinkles near her
eyes. On the whole, pleasing.

Eggs was a beautiful chemist's blonde. Scientifically made up, low
slung in the body, with the merest suggestion of an eyebrow on either
side of an otherwise vacant forehead. Big eyes she had, and an
excellent leg. Excellent. We got on well, the four of us.

"Jack," said Stanley at last, "I have just asked Maureen to come to the
fight." Maureen was Eggs.

Seeing that LE GARCON had by this time recupped the party three times
at my expense and I was now twenty-four shillings out, I sat down on
the fight suggestion. I explained that I quite understood that the
ladies would not care to be present at the brutal buffeting of poor
boxers, who perhaps had fathers and managers and trainers and various
other people to keep out of their meagre earnings, and had to bash each
other and lie down for ten seconds, to get a living. Steak supported
me. She went further. She said she would much prefer a theatre, with a
quiet little supper afterwards and perhaps a little car ride out to the
beach after that. It was then that I suddenly discovered that I had
forgotten to lock the safe in my office. I paid the bill, apologized,
and hurried out, shouting to Stanley that I supposed I would meet him
some other time and to drop in any time he was passing.

I waited on the corner, two blocks away, and presently he came along,
mumbling to himself.

"That was a dirty trick, Jack," he said when he came up to me. "Fancy
leaving those two poor girls----"

"Never mind about the 'Jack.'" I snapped. "Remember I'm your father."

He was quiet after that till we got down to the Stadium, half an hour
later, and the fight all over. We walked home from there and I lectured
him all the way. It was just like playing the bagpipes--sheer waste of
time. In the middle of a really fine bit--I was working up to something
about the Divinity that shapes our ends and a bird in the bush
gathering no moss in time--he said: "Father; do you think I look like a
bull-fighter?"

It's hard.

Then he wanted to know how he could become a bullfighter. Whether there
were any correspondence colleges that taught bull-fighting. Humouring
him, I explained how the bull-fighters started as calf-chasers and he
commenced talking about Maureen and I had to explain that I meant the
leather-covered ones; and then went further and told him how they
worked up from calf-chasing to cow-punching, and from cow-punching to
bull-fighting; and by that time we were nearly home.

The lights were all out when we got to the house, and I guessed that
the wife was in bed, fostering a headache, and Gertrude was at the
police-station getting out a warrant for my arrest for abducting and
murdering Stanley.

I got the door open beautifully but Stanley, the fool, shut it so that
it clicked.

"Who's that?"

It was Argus. Agatha. The wife.

"It's only me and Jack," said the fool Stanley.

I lifted him in the back of the neck and tramped over his body into the
bedroom. Four or five hours after I got into bed I got used to the
drone of Agatha's voice, and fell asleep. It doesn't sound much, just
to say, "I fell asleep," but married men will understand.

What a wonderful thing is sleep! Knits up the ravelled sock of care,
restores the tissues; the greatest post-jag pick-me-up ever shaken
together. You never feel a dirty taste in your mouth, or a headache,
when you're asleep: it's only when you wake up. It is, no doubt,
Nature's greatest gift to man, only, as in most cases, Nature hasn't
gone far enough. If one could only fall asleep when one liked! To be
able, when "Where have you been till this hour of the night?" and "What
do you mean by coming home in that condition?" are fired at you, to
drop off to sleep immediately!

Ah! priceless boon--withheld.

Still, sleep is a wonderful thing.

As I have remarked to my friend Temple: If it were not for sleep, how
the hell could we keep awake?




CHAPTER IV



Stanley has made a complete mess of things. Better that I had reared a
guinea pig. I knew he was like that. I knew it right from the first.
When I first saw him, bald, florid and toothless in his nurse's arms
and heard them mouthing that vile, age-old slander, "Isn't he like his
father?" I shuddered. When he was crawling about the floor and I was
falling over him in all directions, I said, "That child is a menace."

Later, when he came home from school and said the teacher caned him
because he deserved it, I remarked to his mother, "There's something
wrong with that boy. He's unnatural."

I was right.

I'll admit there have been one or two occasions when my judgment was
wrong. One was when Mustard Plaster won the Carrington Stakes, in 1902,
and I had my metaphorical shirt on Onkus, a retired cart-horse that
couldn't beat a carpet. The other was when I got married. There may
have been other slips but these two stick in my mind. Usually I am
occasionally invariably infallible.

To get back to Stanley.

He came downstairs the morning after our little excursion, looking as
if he had put in a heavy night in the bull-ring. He was a bit annoyed
too. Said he had a stiff neck and that I needn't have tramped on him in
the hall.

"Let bygones be bygones," I said, "What is a biff in the neck between
father and son? You need a shave."

This last remark was a pure brain-wave. Since he was sixteen he has
been searching his face for a hair to shave. A few months ago he
discovered one, and after gazing at it as though a new planet had swum
into his ken, he hurled himself, shrieking, on my shaving gear. He has
been in a more or less continual lather ever since.

"Yes," he said, tenderly rubbing the down on his cheek, "I am a bit
bristly. Suppose I'll have to shave every day soon. Pity a man has to
shave." He looked unutterably bored at the prospect. "Ah, well. I'll
have to grow a moustache, I suppose."

A sudden thought struck him.

"Do bull-fighters--I say, dad! Do you think Maureen----"

"Shut up, you fool!"

I caught him by the arm. "You were at the fight last night," I said
meaningly.

"No, father. I went to the Stadium with you last night."

"True. True. So you did. Keep it at that. No need to tell a lie."

Agatha appeared at this juncture and the usual breakfast-time
procedure was gone through. She indicated by an air of resigned
martyrdom that breakfast had been ready for weeks and she would not be
able to keep it from going blue-mouldy much longer; so we slowly
dragged ourselves to the breakfast-table. Stanley fell into his chair
and said he didn't want anything. I just said, "Chops again?" and
sighed heavily. Gertrude butted in, of course.

"You're too well fed; that's the trouble with some people." ("Some
people" is me.) "There's many a poor, starving Russian would be glad of
half a chop, even the bone of a chop."

"Agatha," I said, "Wrap up a few chops for Gertrude to take to Russia."

There was no answer.

I mumbled my way through a plate of porridge, got up, rinsed my mouth
out and sat down again. Gertrude brought up a sniff that shook her to
the fetlocks.

"Stanley," said Agatha, breaking the seal of her tomb, "You must eat
something. Are you ill? You look very pale."

"I feel just a trifle wonky, as it were, mother. I think it must be the
result of going without dinner last night."

I chuckled. First score to our side. Agatha closed her lips firmly and
gave me the sort of look that snakes mesmerize birds with. The chops
came on.

"What greyhound was done to death to make this butcher's holiday?" I
asked, pointing to the chop.

No answer. It was rather disheartening. I had tried my best to make
conversation and be friendly, merely to be answered with looks which,
had they been articulate, would have shouted the house down. Is it any
wonder marriage is a failure?

Echo answers, "No. It damn well isn't."

Stanley was nibbling at a crust like some ascetic hermit bent on
mortifying himself. He was gazing at the saltcellar, in one of his
trances. Gertrude patted Agatha and said, "Poor dear," and added as if
entirely ignorant of my presence, "you have a lot to put up with."

"My load is heavy," chanted Agatha in a clerical voice.

Stanley came out of his trance.

"Dad," he said, grabbing the only decent chop off my plate and falling
on it like a famished wolf, "What was that one Daisy told us last night
about the old man who bought the jazz-garters? Something about
elastic--elastic something----"

"Who!" shrieked Gertrude. Agatha had a mouthful of bread, but her ears
waggled. I looked at Stanley. Figuratively, he had sunk. Only one
despairing hand showed for a moment before he was engulfed in the
enormity of his folly.

Agatha had swallowed her bread.

"Who, may I ask, is--er--Daisy?"

Her voice was a chill breath from the Antarctic. The chop bones
trembled on my plate like live things and Stanley, the coward, said
that he felt sick, tottered from the room, dashed upstairs, and, as he
told me later, crawled underneath the bed.

"Daisy?" I said nonchalantly. "Oh, he's a real decent chap. Got a wife
and four kiddies. Works down a mine. Stan and I met him at the Stadium
last night. His name is Day, really, but all the boys call him 'Daisy.'
Funny how a nickname sticks to a fellow. I remember when we went to
school, we were both in the same class. One day----"

I stopped abruptly. They were both listening like lawyers. "My God,
those chops were rotten!" I said. "Surely, with me bringing home money
week after week, week after week, never complaining, going about with
holes in my socks and my trousers held up with nails, surely it's
little enough to expect a meal from you! But, no! It's chops, chops,
chops, chops, and nag, nag, nag. Chops, nag, chops, nag----" I was
backing out the door, keeping time with my feet and had grabbed my hat
and escaped before they knew what I was doing. I hastened up the street
wondering to myself why I hadn't tramped Stanley to death the previous
night when I had the opportunity. It was a good getaway I thought.
They'd have had me if I'd kept on. That's, the trouble with me. When I
get started on a lie I must carry it on. Artistic pride, I suppose. The
creative instinct. I keep on adding little adornments here and
refinements there until I stand on a motley but magnificent mound of
pure fiction; from which, nine times out of ten, my wife will pick the
keystone, so to speak, and bring me swooping to earth with a smothered
but undeniable thud. I was thinking how dexterously I had diverted the
conversation and was just wheeling into the Crown and Anchor, when I
remembered that Stanley was at their mercy. They had only to lay a
conversational tentacle on Stanley and information would ooze from him
without him being aware of it. Gertrude, especially. She could ask you
what you thought of the weather, and gather from your answer your name
and address, favourite poet, next of kin, and form shrewd suspicions
that you were keeping two homes going. I drifted, stricken, into
Flannery's.

"Well, Mister Gudgeon; how are y' this mornin'?"

"A double whisky, Flannery; closely followed by another double whisky.
No. Give me a mug of whisky and have one yourself."

"Flyin' bulldogs! Wasser matter with y'?"

I proceeded to tell him, and when I had finished we gazed for the third
time on empty mugs.

"Jack," he said, and the tears stood in his eyes, "If so be it you have
to murder the three of 'em you can always hide in the cellar of your
old pal, Bill Flannery."

I pressed his hand. Here was sympathy! Here was fellowship and a friend
in time of need.

"Bill," I said, "I'm going back to the house. Leave the cellar door
ajar." I had another drink and then with a final handclasp, turned away
and left him sobbing on the counter. I was so overcome with emotion, so
steeped in sorrow, that my poor grief-stricken brain could scarce
control my legs, and I wandered from one side of the road to the other,
singing mournfully.

It was pitch dark when I woke up lying on my back inside the gate.
Overcome with misery and mental anguish, I must have collapsed at last
beneath the strain. Somebody had been kicking my hat about the road and
I noticed that the gate hung by only one hinge. I felt tired and sick
and worried. I got to my feet and walked wearily toward the door and
leaned against it. Stanley opened it and I fell flat on my face in the
hallway. He was startled but soon regained his normal nimbleness of
mind. Swinging his foot he kicked me deftly in the back of the neck.

"What," he said oracularly, "is a biff in the neck between father and
son?"

He then tramped on me, shut the door, tramped on me again and so out to
the kitchen. I sat up.

"Stanley," I called.

Silence.

"Stanley, bring me the axe."

No answer.

"Stanley boy, bring father the axe, there's a good boy." I listened in
vain.

"Ickle Stanley bing daddy axey-paxey?"

No good. No good at all. Useless to try to murder him without an axe. I
took off a boot and composed myself to slumber.




CHAPTER V



It was still dark when I awoke the second time, feeling cramped and
cold, but much better than before. Sorrow like everything else, passes
away and is forgotten, but it's the first time a great grief has left
me so furry in the mouth. It felt late. As I groped around on the
chilly floor, still only half awake, a distant clock chimed the usual
preliminaries and then struck two. Almost immediately a voice welled up
from somewhere in the remote darkness. It seemed to come from the
wash-house. "It's two o'clock in the mo--o--orning. La da de da de
do----" Crash!

It was Stanley.

"Stanley," I called.

He was too far away to hear and the crashing that was going on was
terrific.

"Stanley!" I yelled.

Somewhere a door opened and a voice filtered through the darkness. "You
can't have the axe. I'm using it."

The door slammed again and the crashing went on once more. I got up and
walked down the hall, feeling my way. Stanley was in the laundry all
right. I groped my way through the kitchen and out to where a candle
flickered. Stanley, with his shirt off, was chopping up the kitchen
cupboard. He was just getting in the last swipe as I entered.

"Stanley," I said, sorrowfully waving my hand at the debris on the
floor, "What is this?"

He hung his head.

"I did it, father, with my little hatchet," he murmured.

"Did you do this with the hope of becoming president of America at some
future date?" I asked, when I had got a grip on myself again.
"Well--no," he said, "I hadn't thought of it. Is there a vacancy? I'd
take it on, you know. I might get a motor-bike and side-car out of it."
I lowered myself to the floor and sat down. "Stanley," I said, "I'm a
sick man. Sorrow and domestic worries have left their mark on me. Don't
toy with me. Why did you chop the cupboard up?"

"Going to make a cup of tea," he replied, idly chipping a piece out of
the wash-tubs.

"What!"

"You see, before they left they turned the gas off at the main, and I
blew the main fuse off the switch-board when I put the electric iron in
the saucepan to boil some water----"

"Before who left?"

"Ma and Aunt Gertrude. I don't know where the gas tap is"

I reached out and took the axe from him. "Listen, Stanley," I said, as
he backed away, "explain from the start, speaking slowly and
distinctly. What happened?"

He picked up a piece of the cupboard; a thick piece, with a nail in one
end, eyed it thoughtfully, and then leaned back on the wash-tubs.

"After you went out," he said slowly, "they came upstairs to me and
started questioning me."

"And you told them everything, you human cicada!"

"Well," he replied hotly, "isn't it better to tell everything straight
away and get the credit for being honest, than to have it dragged out
of you and be regarded as a mug?"

There are times when I am proud of Stanley.

"Go on," I said, waving the axe.

"Well, Aunt Gertrude said that it was the last straw. She told Ma that
no woman would put up with it. She said you were a selfish, loafing,
drunken----"

"Never mind about that."

"But she said you were a dipsomaniac and that when you were drunk you
weren't responsible for your actions. She said you were not safe to
live with and----"

"That's enough."

"Well, anyhow, they packed up and went before lunch. Aunt Gertrude said
it would teach you to behave like a human being if Ma left you to look
after yourself for a while. I think they've gone to Granny's place at
Chatswood."

"When will they be back?" I asked, getting to my feet.

Stanley grasped his piece of wood in both hands.

"Dunno," he replied gruffly.

The blood throbbed in my temples; a roaring sounded in my ears and I
felt as if I would burst. I gazed, axe in hand, at Stanley, till I
could contain myself no longer.

"Horray!" I shouted. "Stanley! Bone of my bone!"

With a supreme effort I controlled myself.

"Bring out your mother's dressing-table, we'll need more wood than
this," I said, removing my coat.

"I knew you'd be broken up when I told you," said Stanley, moving off.
"Cheer up, dad."

"Bring something to boil the water in," I called after him, "and root
around for something to eat."

A thought struck me. "Stanley," I called, as he groped his way through
the kitchen. "Why didn't they take you with them?"

"They wanted to," came the answer, "but I said I'd better stay and take
care of you, and Aunt Gertrude said it would be a good idea to have
someone to keep an eye on you, and I was to write regularly about
everything you did."

"I can see you writing far into the night," I replied. "Hurry up with
the dressing-table."

I heard him barging his way to the bedroom, and sat down.

Here was I, a lone man, left to look after the house and Stanley, my
wife selfishly gone off to her mother's, leaving me to manage as best I
could, with only memories for companionship. Deserted. Bereft.
Alone ... Horray!

I rose as Stanley backed into the laundry dragging the dressingtable.

"Don't chop the mirror," he puffed. "It's seven years' bad luck.
Besides, it won't burn."

"I don't see the use of keeping it," I replied, seizing the axe. "We
have no use for the thing now. I look on a mirror as worse than
useless."

"That's how I'd look on it if I were in your place," said Stanley.

I let it pass.

"Well, if you don't want it smashed," I said, rolling up my sleeves,
"take it away and put it somewhere. Put it in the gas-stove where it
will be out of the way. We must keep things tidy. Everything in its
place. System, Stanley! That's what a house needs and a woman never
has. I'll introduce some system into this place. You won't know it in a
week or two."

"No doubt about that," he agreed, ducking as I turned the first sod on
the dressing-table.

When he was younger, Stanley was a Boy Scout. He was so enthusiastic
about the training, especially the "one good deed a day" part of it,
that the neighbours got up a petition and he had to resign. Before he
left, however, he had accumulated such a rash of badges for
path-finding, water-boiling, toast-turning, etc., that his uniform
resembled an Oriental rug made by an epileptic Arab who I had learnt to
Charleston. Accordingly I allowed him to make the fire, boil the water,
make the tea and fix things up generally, while I watched him. We sat
down at last, beside the fire, with all the windows open to let out the
smoke. There, reclining on our elbows on either side of the fire, we
drank our tea and ate our burnt bacon and toast like North-west Mounted
Police. The axe gleamed dully in the glow, and as the candle guttered
out, the noise of crickets chirping came floating in on the night air.
The smoke curled lazily off into the darkness and a shower of sparks
shot up as I threw some wood on the glowing embers. A long drawn-out
wail came startlingly from out of the blackness of the night.

"Wolves!" gasped Stanley.

"Cats," I said. "That reminds me. I wonder if your mother and Gertrude
really did go to Chatswood?"

"What does it matter," yawned Stanley. "I'll go and get a couple of
blankets."

Taking a piece of flaring wood to light his way, he stumbled off, and
presently was back with the blankets, and as a concession to
civilization, two pillows. I removed my vest, and rolling up in the
blanket, got out my pipe and filled it. Stanley gazed across the fire
at me; wistfully I thought.

"Worried, Stanley?" I asked as I lit up.

"Aw--n--no," he said hesitatingly, "just sort of unsettled."

I lay back on my pillow and puffed contentedly.

"Don't you think pipe smoking is bad for you, dad?" he asked after a
while.

"Not a bit of it. You don't want to take any notice of that fool,
Gertrude. Smoking is good for me. Those women don't realize that it's
better for me to burn holes in the carpet and be contented than to take
to knitting and go mad."

"Er, have you got plenty of tobacco?" he asked after a long pause.

I looked up. He was fumbling with a huge meerschaum, which, judging
from its blackness, must have come from one of the old Egyptian tombs.
He mumbled as I stared at it.

"Your mother and your aunt forbid it," I said harshly.

He mumbled again. I threw my pouch across to him: he made a queer,
glugging noise in his throat, and fell on it. Dense clouds of smoke
fouled the air before he spoke again.

"You're all right, Jack," he said, and spat into the fire.

I settled my pillow and fell to musing.

How on earth is it that women, cannot make us men comfortable? Take
Agatha for instance For years I had been complaining about her cooking.
Not that she couldn't cook, but she didn't seem to know what to cook.
I'll admit she tried, after a fashion, but it is impossible to please a
man once he gets particular about his meals. Why the devil hadn't she
thought of lighting a fire in the laundry and giving me burnt bacon and
toast? No imagination. Women are slaves to domestic routine and
precedent. They are all alike, so far as I can see. Complaining when a
man comes home a bit merry: like the time, for instance, when I pulled
the front fence down and reared it against the wall so that I could get
on to the balcony. What else was there to do? I couldn't find the
keyhole. Then there is the perpetual asking for money, and worrying
about the rent. Doesn't matter if a man goes short! Oh, no! I knocked
my pipe out on the floor and absent-mindedly reached for the switch to
turn the fire out before I went to sleep. I was beginning to doze, when
a belated thought tiptoed into my mind.

"Stanley," I said softly.

"Yairz."

"We might see Steak and Eggs again, and in that case----"

"Azzal right," he replied sleepily. "I had Eggs's telephone number so I
rang her up this afternoon and they'll be here t'morrow night. Goo'
night."

"Elephant's fins!" I gasped.

"Elefunz," mumbled Stanley dreamily.

He was asleep. The floor was concrete; not the best of beds; but the
fact that I slept as soundly as a liftdriver speaks well for the
clarity of my conscience and the adaptability of my hip-bones.




CHAPTER VI



It was somewhere about midday when I awoke, creaking in every joint.
The sunlight streamed through the laundry window and a cat that had
been eyeing me speculatively from the sill, leapt out of sight as I sat
up. Outside in the street a dealer pleaded plaintively for empty
bottles, rags, bags and old iron. Stanley was audibly asleep. I tossed
a billet of wood gently on to his face, and he sat up clawing the air
and gazing around wildly.

"Go and get my bath ready," I ordered.

"Go and get it yourself," he replied sulkily and fell back into his
blanket.

"Stanley," I said, "is this obedience? Is this friendly co-operation?
Is this looking after me? Did they teach you nothing when you were a
Boy Scout?"

"Didn't have anything about baths in the Scouts," he mumbled.

I reached for another slab of wood.

"Aw, don't be silly, dad," he protested, raising his head from the
pillow. "You're all right. You don't want a bath--you're clean."

"Stanley," I said, reasoning with him, "wouldn't it be easier and nicer
for you to get my bath ready than to have to explain to Eggs how you
got your face busted open through a piece of wood accidentally falling
on it?"

He sat up, making savage, noiseless motions with his mouth.

"That's a good boy," I murmured, lying back on the floor, "and when
you've done that, get the breakfast ready--and if what you are saying is
what I think you're saying--don't say it."

He staggered to his feet and lurched out the door. In some respects
Stanley is like his mother, bad tempered when getting up or when asked
to do any little thing. I had not dozed off exactly, but was in that
blissful state when one is neither awake nor asleep, when I heard a
bumping noise coming from upstairs in the vicinity of the bathroom and
a wild, panicky yell from Stanley.

"Father! Father!"

I leapt to my feet, trod on an upturned nail that protruded from a
fragment of the dressing-table, and rushed for the stairs.

"Father! Father!" came a despairing wail.

"Coming, boy!"

Taking too many steps at a time, I fell, crashed against the banister
and rebounded on to my shin on the stairs. Clenching my teeth, I limped
rapidly to the landing.

"Father!--Oh, there you are."

"Quick, boy! What is it?"

He surveyed me curiously as I stood panting on one leg, holding my
shin.

"Your bath is now ready," he said coldly.

Mouth open I stared at him as he brushed past me and calmly descended
the stairs. As though stunned, I watched him till the top of his head
disappeared from view and then hobbled dazedly into the bath-room and
sat on the edge of the bath. There are occasions when the English
language, noble though it is, is inadequate to express one's feelings.
Often I have yearned for the ability to speak Sanskrit, but strange
though it may seem, I have never since uttered a word to Stanley about
this so-called joke of his. It was beyond even physical expression, and
I remained for months with this inhibition gnawing at my bosom until I
saw a specimen of post-impressionist art entitled, "Picture of Workman
Falling off Scaffolding." Gazing at it, I felt a load drop off my mind.
I had been expressed.

Perhaps a psychologist could have relieved me at the time. I believe
that once they get you hypnotized they relieve you of everything you've
got, but as it was, even the warm bath failed to soothe my stricken
faculties and, having bathed, I doddered downstairs like an old man.
And yet fools who never had a son burble of the blessings of
fatherhood!

Stanley was blithely humming the collection of sounds usually
associated with the fox-trotting bouts. He stopped as I came in.

"What's for breakfast?" I asked dully.

Reassured, he made a more or less tuneful assertion that he wanted to
go back to Dixie to see his mammie in the cotton-fields and then added
that we had burnt bacon and toast to look forward to.

"Am I then condemned to finish my allotted span on a diet of burnt
bacon and toast? Isn't there any other damn thing beside that?" I
inquired.

"The trouble with some people," said Stanley, stamping on a piece of
blazing charcoal that had once been bread, "is that they're too well
fed. There's an onion behind the gas-stove if you're feeling
fastidious."

I turned wearily to the wash-tubs where I had left my coat and hat the
previous night. They were gone. I turned and raised my eyebrow at
Stanley: "My coat and hat?"

"Oh, yes. They got burnt last night," he explained, "the fire was going
out and I couldn't reach the wood, without getting up, and I just
accidentally knocked your coat down--and it sort of fell on the fire
and--er--caught alight."

"And the hat?"

"Well, a hat is not much good without a coat, is it?"

Supporting myself with one hand on the wall, I made my way out of the
room in silence. Even if I'd had a gun I could not have shot him. Hard
to understand, I know; but living with Stanley has made me like that.
When he strikes, he strikes me powerless.

"Where are you going?" he called out.

"To Flannery's," I gulped in a choked sort of voice, and closed the
door behind me. Beer is a food as well as a drink, so I went to
Flannery's for breakfast. The girl, Sadie, was behind the bar.

"Morning, Mr Gudgeon, beautiful morning this morning, nearly lunch-time
too and I'm getting hungry. Hear you've been having some trouble, what
is it whisky?"

I nodded weakly. Sadie is a nice girl, but there are occasions when a
man's sick, when a little silent sympathy, a little loving kindness, a
little understanding pat on the cheek, goes farther than mere
cheerfulness. I gulped my drink and drew a deep breath. Spirit called
to spirit.

"Sadie;" I said. "Flex the fingers, massage the little biceps and stand
by the beer pump. If that bracelet is going to get in the way, take it
off. I want action."

A foaming pint-pot thumped wetly on the bar as I spoke and I clasped it
by its big friendly handle, raised it, and the stuff swooped down my
throat bearing a message of hope to my dejected internals. I replaced
the pot, empty, on the bar and sighed one of those deep, satisfactory
sighs that seem to start from one's boots, gather all the little cares
and troubles on the way, and from the mouth dissipate them in the air.

Back came my replenished pot.

"You look worried, Mr Gudgeon," said Sadie kindly. "You're so pale."

"If paleness is a sign of worry, Sadie, I ought to be transparent. I'm
sick."

She clucked sympathetically.

"Poor boy. Why doesn't your wife look after you? S'shame!"

I put my empty pot down.

"Mr Flannery is sick, too," she said, whisking it away.

"Worry?" I said.

"No. Whisky," she replied, slapping her offering down before me. "Mugs
of it!. Drinking with some old fool as silly as himself."

I shook my head in a manner which I hope conveyed disgust.

"Madness," I said.

"You described it. Another? I'll have to be off to lunch presently but
I'll miss your company," she said, trailing off softly.

I am not dense.

"I'd like to be able to take you somewhere for lunch," I said in a tone
of yearning, "but I'm not dressed for it and by the time I got home and
changed, your lunch hour would be nearly over."

"What a pity," she sighed, straightening her shingle.

Strange, the lure I have for women. Sex appeal, I suppose.

"Oh, by the way!" I cried. "I'd almost forgotten it. We're expecting
company to-night. Want some liquor. Say, four of lager, one small gin"

"Is this in addition to Stanley's order?" she cut in.

"Stanley's order?"

"M'm. He was up here late yesterday afternoon." She was turning the
pages of a book as she spoke.

"Here it is. Two dozen lager, six best gin--large, two claret, two
sherry, two----"

"That'll do!" I cried, clutching at the counter. "I don't want to hear
any more."

"It's going to be some party," she said, closing the book and gazing
brightly at me. "Only a few people too. Just nice."

"Would you like to come?" I asked, mastering my emotions.

"Too right I'm coming!" she responded with a happy gurgle. "Stanley
said he'd be real disappointed if I didn't come and bring a few
friends." She leaned over the counter and tapped me caressingly on the
nose with one finger. "P'raps I'll get better acquainted with my little
fat sheik," she whispered. She whisked away, pausing at the cash
register, and turning, waved one lily-white hand. "Toodle-oodle!" she
cried, and was gone. I closed my eyes and groaned. How much--Oh, how
much was two dozen lager, six best gin large, and two of everything
else, like Noah's ark! I clutched my hat and, turned toward the door.
"Goin', Mr Gudgeon?" called the barman. "Yes," I muttered.
"Going--going."

"Ar, well. See y' t'night at the party," he yelled, as I hobbled out on
to the pavement.

Like a weeping mother going to the electric chair, I set my face toward
home and Stanley.

Stanley... If I'd known what that party was going to start I'd have
gone the other way.




CHAPTER VII



I had a meal; a meal which Stanley described as an artist's breakfast,
being a combination of breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea. It lacked
nothing in quantity, but it left me with the impression that if the
tinopener ever got mislaid while Stanley ruled the kitchen, we would
starve to death. It seemed a long time since I'd had chops.

I wandered listlessly about the house while Stanley cleared the table
and carried the crockery up to the bath and turned the shower on it. I
really should have been at work, but what with one thing and another, I
couldn't face the idea of going back to the office. The Gudgeons are
temperamental, and I, perhaps the most temperamental of them all,
coming as I do from a long line of Gudgeons--the end of the line so to
speak, am over-civilized. When I say that I am the end of the line, I
do not disregard Stanley. Stanley, so far as the family is concerned,
is a blank file.

Being over-civilized and highly strung, there are times when the mere
thought of work turns me sick. Had I not met Agatha I might still be
making a comfortable and easy living at the billiard-room. But the
propagation of the species is the sole aim of Nature and I was torn
from the pool-table, and my cue was put back in the rack by the
inexorable hand of Fate that Stanley might infest the world. Truly,
there are some things that are beyond the understanding of mortal man.
Things of which it is no earthly use to think. Still, there are times
when thought, long held back by the physical activities of our daily
lives, bursts all restraint and floods our minds like the restricted
water bursting through a crack in a clogged sewer-pipe. I wandered
aimlessly as a telegraph messenger from room to room and finally flung
myself on the bed and surrendered myself to meditation and indigestion.

Lying there I seemed to see the difficulties of life line up, number
off, and form fours. I have read in books that the events of a drowning
man's whole life flash through his mind before he finally utters the
word "Mother" and sinks.

I have not shared with the authors of these books the pleasure of being
drowned, and so can offer no corroborative evidence, but I underwent a
dreadful enough experience on the bed. Doubt descended on me and the
confidence I have always felt in my ability to carry on the affairs of
daily life, drained from me. There were so many things to prey upon my
mind. Agatha was gone. Gertrude was gone. My home was broken up. My
bootlace was broken and I had not a clean collar to call my own. The
tradesmen had to be paid, and the landlord and Flannery.

Where was the money to come from? Agatha, with that careless disregard
of responsibility common to all women, had calmly left me without
making any provision whatever for my future. It would never occur to
her that I needed money. That she would think gratefully of the pounds
and pounds I had given her to fritter away on groceries; and that she
would endeavour to repay me was a thought to be dismissed with a bitter
laugh.

Apart from these problems of domestic economy, there was Stanley. That
he was still out of jail was due solely to my unremitting efforts to
keep him on the straight and narrow path, and in this endeavour I was
unassisted and even opposed by Agatha and Gertrude. It was left to me
to orient his moral compass and embark him on an occupation that would
carry him safely through the stormy seas of life, with myself as
adviser and supercargo. His sole ambition seemed to be to own a
motor-cycle and sidecar, his wavering inclinations were at present in
the direction of bull-fighting, his only study was racing-form, his
chief occupation seemed to consist in falling in and out of love with
cat-like frequency. He had a positive flair for getting into trouble
and everything he touched was automatically wrecked.

Could I have made him an alderman of the City Council he might have had
some scope for the exercise of his peculiar genius. Given work where he
would be in the position to assist in the resumption and demolition of
whole blocks of buildings, in the tearing up of roads and putting them
back, in the reviling of his colleagues, and the playing of practical
jokes on the rate-payers--then he might have been happy. Contractors
would have showered wealth on him from motives purely tender and his
name would have appeared in the papers in company with society leaders,
wife-beaters, archbishops, eminent murderers, modest hospital-cot
endowers, and racehorse owners. But it was not to be, and failing the
aldermanic life, I could only hope for the next best thing and make him
a useful at Flannery's.

My melancholy train of thought was shunted into a side-station as
Stanley burst into the room and commenced to roll up the rugs on the
floor. The sight of him annoyed me.

"Stanley!" I snapped. "How often have I told you to knock before
entering a room? The private detective manner does not become you. Next
time you omit the necessary ceremony I'll lift you such a swipe in the
teeth that your unborn grandchildren will stagger with the shock.
Remember--knock or be knocked. Get out! Come here! What are you doing
with those mats?"

He paused in the doorway and stood with his eyes cast down like a
cab-horse in the rain.

"Well! Speak up! What are you standing there like a damn fool for?"

"I am abashed and confused, father!" he said softy.

"Bashed and contused!" I shouted wildly, rolling off the bed. He leapt
outside the door and, closing it, bellowed through the keyhole.

"I want the mats because I'm getting the place ready for the party."
The key clicked in the lock as I reached the door. "You don't mind me
locking you in?" he cried pleadingly.

Locked me in! His father! I looked around wildly for a moment, then
wrenching the end off the bed, battered the door down. I do not wish to
give the impression that I had lost my temper. Far from it. It was with
the utmost calmness that I walked over the splintered door, carelessly
swinging the end of the bed in both hands. My bedroom is on the ground
floor. I proceeded rapidly along the hallway and tripped over a mat
that Stanley had dropped. Smiling, I rose to my feet and called
affectionately to Stanley. He did not answer, but I could hear him
scurrying about, upstairs. The boy seemed to be avoiding me. I hurried
up the stairs, and arriving breathless at the top searched each room.
Stanley was nowhere to be seen. There was only one place. The roof.

Throwing down the bed-end I hurried downstairs and secured the meat
chopper and then returned to the upper floor. By standing on the outer
window-ledge of Stanley's room it was easy to reach the guttering of
the roof and so haul myself up with the chopper gripped in my teeth.
Kneeling on the sloping roof, I espied Stanley clinging to the chimney
and staring at me in a most unfriendly manner with his mouth wide open.

"Vanvly," I called, "vor varver wavs you."

The chopper made it difficult for me to speak, but I kept it in my
mouth and started the ascent of the roof. Stanley, after a savage
attempt to tear a brick loose from the chimney, slid down the farther
side. Reaching the ridge, I slid down after him. He was balancing on
the balcony roof gazing desperately about him. Our house is separated
from the next in the terrace by a narrow passage-way, four feet wide,
and the roofs of both balconies are just that distance apart. I
anticipated Stanley's intention and was almost on him with the chopper
when he leapt. In his haste, he missed his footing, caught the
guttering of the next-door roof, yelped as the guttering came away, and
gasped quietly as the end of it held and he remained suspended in the
air, swinging gently from about eight feet of galvanized iron. I had
him. I had only to step across the intervening four feet and chop him
loose to spend the remainder of my life in peace and quietude. Taking
the chopper in my right hand, I placed one foot in our balcony gutter
and stepped easily across. It was then that my rear foot became stuck.
Straddled between the two houses, I vainly strove to dislodge it.
Struggling my other foot became wedged in the guttering opposite, and I
was done.

Had I been younger I might have extricated myself fairly easily. Not
that I lack either strength or ability; young flapnoodles can show me
no points when it comes to strength and vigour, but a man of fortyeight
accumulates a certain amount of dignity which breeds a distaste for
violent physical effort. A rapidly increasing and very interested crowd
was gathering in the street while my fiend son hung limply in the air
and laughed himself black in the face. I missed him with the chopper,
and it whirled past him and clattered into the passage-way below. Nice
position for a grown man of forty-eight to be in! Had it not been for
Stanley's ridiculous desire to avoid me I should never have been
exposed on the roof-tops as an object of ridicule. It was always
Stanley. Who, but Stanley, would have thought of cooking meals in the
laundry at two o'clock in the morning?

My position was intolerable. I waved my arms to the mob in the street.

"Send for the fire brigade!" I shouted.

They cheered.

"Send for the ---- fire brigade!"

They cheered again.

I gazed sadly at Stanley. He was clinging with one hand and pointing
excitedly at the crowd with the other.

I turned and gazed down at that sea of chattering nincompoops as a
voice floated up to me. "Ooo--hoo! Ja--ack!"

Two white handkerchiefs fluttered below.

"Cooee!" screamed Stanley. "It's Eggs! And Steak! Cooee!"

"Send--for--the--fire--brigade!" I bellowed. "You must be pretty friendly
with the fire brigade, dad," said Stanley, shifting his grip.

"Oo--hoo! Ja--ack! Has the party started?"

"Send for----"

"For the love of Mike, father! We haven't enough lager for the fire
brigade. I've invited all the people we want."

As the last word left his mouth the guttering gave a rasping screech
and ripped away another eight feet, leaving him with an easy drop to
the ground. Whether it was the sudden shock or the hand of fate that
threw me back at the same time on to my own roof, I do not know, but as
I lay back, perspiring, against the slope, a hoarse murmur of anger
went up from the crowd and I looked to see numbers of them walking away
with the attitude of people who wanted their money back. I had
disappointed them. It was clear to me that they regarded me as a fraud;
a person who gathered a good crowd and then didn't fall down and break
his neck. They were dispersing sullenly, mumbling to one another, and
at last all were gone except a few optimists and local residents who
watched me, hoping against hope, until I disappeared from view.
Climbing through the window into Stanley's room I surprised him
furiously brushing his hair.

"Why don't you knock?" he demanded slowly?

"Sorry, son, I didn't think you'd be here."

"Thasall right, dad," he said, laying down the brush and turning to me.
"Come and help me welcome the guests."

Stanley is given to sudden fiendish fits of bad temper, a deplorable
trait which he inherits from his mother, but relenting Providence has
made him somewhat like me, in that he bears no malice after his fit has
passed off. That is to say, not much. We descended the stairs together
and proceeding arm in arm along the hall, opened the door and admitted
Steak and Eggs.

"Come in, my dee--ars," crooned Stanley.

"You men are the limit!" said Eggs, wagging a roguish finger at
Stanley.

"You silly boy!" exclaimed Steak, patting me on the cheek. "You might
have been killed! Whatever were you doing up there?"

"Stanley got into difficulties and I went to his rescue," I explained
with simple modesty.

"Oh, you big, brave man!" gurgled Eggs. "But what was my toreador doing
up there?" she asked, snuggling her hand into Stanley's and looking up
into his eyes.

Stanley paused and then spoke in a low voice.

"A poor little motherless kitten, blind and homeless, had collapsed on
the roof and was mewing so plaintively that it wrenched my heart. I
listened until I could bear it no longer. Then I hurled myself,
careless of consequences, on to the roof."

"I'll say that was something like a hurl," said Steak admiringly.

"Later, the guttering gave way as you saw----"

I interrupted, thinking Stanley had been in long enough.

"I rushed to his assistance----"

"But what about the poor little blind kitten?" gushed Eggs.

"I--I gave it a drink of water," said Stanley, "which seemed to revive
it, and it gazed gratefully at me for a moment and then spread its
little wings and flew away."

"The kitten!"

"Ah, yes. I was thinking of the canary I rescued yesterday. It just
licked my hand and toddled off."

"You dear thing!" cooed Eggs, squeezing his hand.

I thought Stanley had gone far enough.

"Well, come on, girls," I exclaimed jovially. "Make yourself at home.
Take your hats off, or your coats, or whatever it is you want to take
off. Don't mind us; we're all friends together."

I herded them into the drawing-room.

"Stanley's been getting things ready. I suppose everything's fixed,
Stan?"

"Well--no. Not quite," he replied. "I didn't expect anyone yet. You
girls are a bit early," he added, smiling at them.

"We've been to enough parties," said Steak, "to know that the
firstcomers know where the beer's hidden."

"Where is it?" asked Eggs.

"It's in the stove, most of it, Maureen," confessed Stanley. "Care for
a gargle."

"We wouldn't take much holding down if you wanted to force it on us,"
drawled Steak. "Trot it out."

I had seated myself and was admiring the shape of Daisy's ear, when
what seemed like a herd of buffaloes struck the front door and a
raucous howl came from the front of the house. For a moment I thought
it might be the fire brigade. Stanley rushed into the room with a
bottle in each hand and a delighted smile on his face.

"What's that?" I gasped.

"It's the Boys!" cried Stanley, and rushed to let them in.




CHAPTER VIII



By eight o'clock, our quiet little party had, thanks to my son's
efforts, swelled to the proportions of the crowd that gathers around
the spot where the body was found.

There were the Boys: a crowd of immature dance-hall thugs who ran
mainly to legs and reactionary suits. There, was Sadie and a boy
friend, and a girl friend and her boy friend, and the barman and the
chief chucker-out at Flannery's. The milkman was there with an alleged
female of the ultra-modern type, who could not be definitely placed as
a boy or a girl and was best classified as a Boil. People I did not
know kept coming in, in bunches. I tried to count them but they moved
about too much. I don't suppose there were more people on the
MAYFLOWER.

Everyone, it seemed, had brought their music-books for what reason I do
not know, seeing that they had only ukeleles to play. The giggling and
guffawing made the house sound like a large aviary being ravaged by
bloodhounds. And the singing!

There was one girl who had been accused of being able, to sing in the
early stages of the orgy. Arraigned before a jury of panting ukelele
players, she blushingly admitted that some people said she had a good
voice but she was not so wonderful, really. After the usual assumption
of bashfulness, and the orthodox statements as to not having brought
her music, and having a bad cold she consented to sing. The Boys, who
had urged her to sing, then left in a body headed for Flannery's side
door, with three suit-cases.

The girl sang "The Last Rose of Summer."

By some extraordinary fluke of an outraged glottis, she caught a high
note on a neap tide, and held it. Like a draught-horse stalled with a
heavy load on a hill, she held it. I shut my eyes and thought of
knocking-off time at the steel-works and foggy nights on the harbour.
Growing mottled in the face as Nature asserted herself, she was at last
compelled to relinquish the note with a gasp and, amid a storm of
applause, she finished off in a hoarse baritone.

"By cripes!" cried the milkman, slapping me on the back, "you wouldn't
hear better than that at the Gaiety!"

Which was quite true. I've been to the Gaiety.

That priceless boon, "the life of the party," was a particularly
virulent specimen. The Boil told me in a confidential whisper that he
was such a character. The things he said! And the
too-perfectly-funny-for-words things he did!

"Gee! I remember once," she said, ashing her cigarette on my
coat-sleeve, "he blew up a balloon and sat on it. You should have seen
the look on his face. Laugh! I thought I'd die!"

For once, I felt old.

I looked around for Stanley and failed to find him; neither could I see
Maureen. I rose to my feet as the noble strains of "Pipe Ma Baby's
Goo-goos" rose in the quivering air, and after a search secured a
bottle of gin, two glasses and some ginger-beer, and lifting the
eyebrow to Steak, headed for the front door.

"My gawd!" she said, following me out and seating herself on the
gas-box beside me. "Does this happen every night?"

"Don't talk to me, Daisy, not for a while, anyhow."

"I understand, honey," she said.

"Take ginger-beer with it?" I asked.

"I hate ginger-beer."

I threw the ginger-beer away.

"I regard gin purely as a medicine," I said, filling the glasses.

"Absolutely," she replied, tersely.

We sipped quietly.

"You know--I like you, Jack. You're restful," she sighed, and leaned her
head against my shoulder.

I felt rested, too. Some women affect men like that. They have the
mother instinct without being mawkish; I felt that if I had laid my
troubled head on Daisy's lap and said, "What a ---- of a world this
is," Daisy would have said, "Absolutely."

Once a man reaches the forties he needs feminine company. Some men,
indeed most men, like something young and fluffy, but I am not like
that. I like a sensible woman. Not one of these hard, practical women,
but a woman who, doesn't giggle. A woman of the world who has had a
couple of black eyes in her time is the best company for a man in his
forties.

I liked Steak.

I filled the glasses and put them down on the floor.

"Daisy," I said, "I'm a married man. My wife has left me; Stanley is my
son and I'm going on for forty."

I had made a clean breast of things--practically.

She patted my hand. "I guessed most of that but thought you were a
widower. Divorced, are you, Jack?"

I nodded glumly.

"Don't worry over things that happened long ago, honey," she said,
smoothing my hair. "Did you like her very much?"

"I always respected her," I answered gently, "until----"

"Don't tell me if it hurts you, Jack?"

"She ran away with a commercial traveller. Lord knows where they went
to. I tried to find her. I heard that he ill-treated her--Ah, well!" I
picked up our glasses.

"Some women don't know when they're well off," she exclaimed. "A fine
man like you----! Thanks, Jack. Here's luck. Don't forget that there are
more fish in the sea and quite a few pebbles left on the beach."

We quaffed.

"My word!" said Steak, after a pause, "what a row those galoots are
making inside!"

"Bedlam!" I exclaimed.

"Absolutely."

I put my arm around her and we snuggled up. There was nothing wrong in
it. Everything was all right. My wife had left me. Certainly, she had
given me the impression that she would be back shortly, but the fact
remained that she wasn't with me. And here was a woman, a friend, who
understood me. Was I to insult her by spurning her affection? I think I
am too much of a gentleman for that.

The noise of the party was increasing, a thing that I had not
considered possible. They were stamping their feet, and singing, "We're
here because we're here because we're here because we're here." A very
ancient and easily remembered song of some fifty-three verses, if I
remember rightly. Extremely popular at smoke concerts and lodge
meetings. I had got used to the monotony of the bellowing, much the
same, I suppose as factory workers get used to the noise of the
machinery, and was feeling comfortable and almost drowsy when Temple,
who lives next door, came to the gate.

"Gudgeon!" he barked, "what's all this damned uproar! Do you know it's
nearly midnight?"

"It's Stanley's party," I answered in the soft voice that turneth away
wrath. "It's his coming-out party."

"Coming out! Well, the sooner he emerges the better. It's a damn riot!
Is he coming out in a tank?"

"Be nice, Temple. Be nice. You were a boy yourself once."

"I'll admit it," he shouted. "But there was no insanity in my family. I
hope," he added, glaring at the doorway, "that when he comes out, he
comes out on his ear!"

"Miserable old cow!" said Steak, as he bounced off.

"You can't take any notice of a man like that," I explained. "He's a
fool. He said I looked old."

"Rot!" she exclaimed contemptuously. "He's mad."

That was a sympathetic, yet sensible observation.

I could see that Daisy was a smart, sensible woman. When I had told
Agatha about Temple's ridiculous remark, instead of laughing heartily,
she had said, "Quite right, too. Of course, you're getting old. You
can't stay young for ever. You, with your hair parted in the middle and
your tight-waisted coats and dynamite ties!"

It set me thinking.

It just shows the difference in women.

But then, every woman is different from every other woman; like
finger-prints; and just as the dissimilarity in finger-prints leads to
many a man's downfall, so with women. Some men think that because they
have produced certain effects with some women by some particular
method, they can do it at any time with any other woman, like the
application of mathematical and chemical formulae. It is not so. It is
decidedly not so. You may live comfortably with Jekyll for a long time,
but sooner or later you are confronted with Hyde. No rnan can
understand women for the quite ordinary reason that they don't
understand themselves. In this they are similar to a lot of other
animals. There is no mystery and no secret. If there had been, it would
have been blabbed long ago. Solomon had more than his share of wives
but he had to give it up at last and admit that a good woman was above
rubies. And I think I have biblical backing when I say that Solomon
knew his way about. It is not my wish to be considered a cynic. I like
women. But the man who runs the circular saw cannot be called a cynic
just because he realizes that it is a saw. Similarly, the man who puts
a guard-rail around his machinery does not distrust the machinery, he
only realizes his own fallibility.

My train of thought was interrupted by a smothered snort from Daisy.
She shifted her head on my shoulder and mumbled something.

"Eh?" I said.

She was asleep. Never before or since have I met a woman so divinely
conversationless. It is a sad fact that very few of them will refrain
from speech when they see that a man wants to think; they imagine that
he is either neglecting them, or thinking of some other woman, or
merely sulking. I must have dozed, myself, shortly after that because
the next thing I remembered was Flannery's barman carrying out the Boys
and stacking them on the pavement. The girls had evidently gone home
earlier. Sadie's boy friend came through the door on all fours,
asserting that he was a cat, and mewing and enjoying himself immensely.
The milkman emerged swaggering ponderously as though the best qualities
of countless milkmen had been merged in him. He flung the gate open
with a sublime gesture of dignity, marched out on to the pavement in
massed formation, and fell into the gutter.

"Are they all out?" yelled the barman.

Artie, Flannery's chucker-out, loomed on the doorstep.

"Z'all out. Posilivly norar one lef'!"

"Lock up, then."

"Hold on!" I cried. "I want to get in."

"Can't geddin. Ish after hours."

"But I live here!" I protested.

"Zame ole tale."

I caught him by the sleeve. "Look here, Artie. I must get in, and I
can't if you snap that lock."

He eyed me suspiciously.

"Well," he said after a pause, "I'll lesher go in this time but be
kefful comin' out. Doan led anyborry see yer carryin' it."

"Come on, Artie," called the barman.

"Comin'," he answered, and rolled toward the gate.

"Now you be kefful!" he added, turning to me.

The barman caught him by the arm.

"I'm comin'!" he said testily. "Godder tellim-kefful." They weaved
their tortuous way up the street, Artie pausing now and then and
exhorting the surrounding air to be very careful.

I grasped Steak by the shoulder and shook her.

"All right," she mumbled, "just half a glass."

She awoke at last and I left her to search for Eggs while I procured a
taxi. Eggs had taken a fancy to some vases and pictures, and the
wrapping of them delayed their departure, but after promising to phone
me in the morning they rode away.

The chilly air heralded the approach of a new morning before I rolled
into my disordered and broken bed and slept. If some of us were granted
a glimpse of the future, most of us would remain asleep indefinitely,
but no matter how battered, we must stand up to every round; so when
the gong went in the morning I was on my feet and shaping up to another
day.




CHAPTER IX



The postman was very late that morning, which surprised me as he was
usually as regular in his movements as a government road-mender. Temple
set his clock by him. When he did appear, it was plain that he had been
a guest at our party the previous night. He flung a letter at me as he
passed and moaned in answer to my cheery greeting. I called him back.

"Only the one letter?"

"There was one from the Gas Company, but I threw it down the drain like
you told me to," he answered huffily.

"That's right," I said. "If you get one that looks as if it came from
the Income Tax Department, put it down the same drain."

He grunted and moved off. I understood how he felt.

The envelope was addressed to Stanley, so I opened it. It contained a
five pound note which I pocketed for Stanley's own good. It might have
got him into trouble and I had to look after the boy. The letter was
written in Agatha's unique spiral back-hand and the gist of it was that
she was sorry she had left him in the same house as myself, but that he
was to keep pure and good nevertheless, and avoid me as much as
possible. Followed sundry items of great interest about Stanley's
grandmother and Stanley's grandmother's parrot. A postscript mentioned
the enclosure of the five pound note and added that Gertrude would
write shortly and send another. Lastly, he was to appeal to Temple if
he needed assistance or protection, or if someone was required to stand
bail for me. Mr. Temple, it seemed, was a very good man. As there was
nothing of real interest to Stanley in the letter, I tore it up. The
fiver was a crisp, new one, quite a rarity, and I thought I would like
to take it up to Flannery and show it to him, calling in at the
tobacconist's on the way back. It was my intention to buy Stanley some
tobacco. I am afraid I spoil the boy.

It was a couple of hours later when I returned. Not until I was inside
the house did I realize that I had forgotten the tobacco and I was
annoyed at my own absent-mindedness. But perhaps Stanley was better
without it. Tobacco is an insidious drug: although it has no harmful
effect on a mature man it is bad for a youth. There are not many
fathers who consider the welfare of their sons as I consider Stanley's.
It is a weakness in me, this paternal assiduity, but I think a
pardonable, even a commendable weakness. Passing through the house in
search of Stanley, I came to the laundry and was surprised to hear
voices in the back-yard. I listened.

I could hear Stanley's voice. "Now gimme a fair go," he was saying.
"Don't crowd in on me. How can I get a good spin if you crowd in on
me?"

"Come on," growled a voice that sounded vaguely familiar, "let some
light under 'em."

There was silence, and then a faint tinkle.

"Two heads! You liddle beauties!" cried Stanley.

I peered cautiously through the window. The postman, the milkman, a
time-payment collector and someone else whom I did not recognize, were
standing in what was meant to be a circle around Stanley. He had a
small piece of flat wood in his hand, on which were balanced two
pennies.

The national game was in progress.

The boy was flushed with the glow of victory.

"I spin for the lot," he called. "Seven and eightpence. Set the centre!
Set the centre!"

"Two bob you tail 'em," said the milkman, casting a florin on the
ground. "That's all I've got."

"I'll set you for the eightpence," said the time-payment collector
casting his mite down beside the florin.

The postman looked worried.

"This is the fourth time you've headed 'em," he exclaimed. "If I'd
known there was a game on I'd have brought some money."

"So would I," murmured the milkman.

The postman was rummaging in his bag.

"Look here," he cried, with sudden cheerfulness, "I got a registered
letter here, it might be worth quids. If you'll take it on the
off-chance, I'll chuck it in and call, it five shillings."

"You're on," said Stanley, "stand away."

Up went the pennies.

"Oh, you liddle King Georges," chanted Stanley, "show those skulls.
Nedkelly, Nedkelly, Ned----"

Clink!

"Two heads!" shouted Stanley. "Horray!"

The postman gave a grunt of disgust and made silently for the gate,
closely followed by the milkman, the timepayment collector and the
stranger.

"Come in again some time," called Stanley. There was no answer.

I left the window and hastened into the kitchen as he turned to
re-enter the house. He strolled in clinking the coins he had been
tossing.

"How much did you win?" I asked.

"Fourteen shillings, counting a registered letter."

He spun a penny in the air and as he failed to catch it, it bounced on
the floor and rolled toward my feet.

"My lucky penny!" he cried. "It's always been lucky. Hand it over!" he
shouted as I put my foot on it.

I picked it up and twirled it between my fingers.

It was double-headed. Whichever way I looked at it, His Majesty's royal
features confronted me.

"You snake!" I hissed. "You cheat! A son of mine--little better than a
common thief!"

He mumbled and looked away. I laughed bitterly. "A Gudgeon," I said,
"with a double-headed penny! Have you no sense of decency? Is the
honourable name of your ancestors nothing to you?"

I took a stride toward him.

"Father!" he cried weakly.

"Silence!" I roared. "Hand over half the winnings."

"Don't be silly!"

I turned and ran toward the front door.

"Milkman!" I shouted. "Milkman!"

"Come here!" shouted Stanley, bounding after me, "Here's five
shillings."

"That's not half. Milkman!"

A musical and peculiarly milkman-like gurgle answered me and the
milkman came into view swinging his pint-measure.

"Here, damn you," hissed Stanley, "seven shillings."

"'Ullo?" said the milkman, leaning against the gate.

"Leave an extra pint in the morning for the future, please, old chap,"
I answered.

He nodded and moved off to his labours and I shut the door.

I could see by Stanley's face that there would be trouble about this
affair. He clicked his fingers in an exasperated manner and looked at
me as a muzzled cat would look at a mouse-hole.

I didn't want to antagonize the boy. We had to live together as happily
as possible, so I tried to win him over.

"Well," I said soothingly, "What have you got that face on you for?"

"Huh!" he grunted, and tasting a glance at my left boot, he turned and
strode back to the kitchen. It is hard to know how to treat a boy like
Stanley. No matter how much I try I cannot please him. I remembered
that he had not even thanked me for the tobacco I had intended to buy
him. Second thoughts reminded me that I had not informed him of my
intentions and I followed him, with the idea of bringing him to a
proper state of gratitude for the tobacco and remorse for his
resentment.

He was sprawled out in a chair near the table, with his hands in his
pockets and the expression of an under-paid bailiff with an abcess.

"Stanley," I said, pulling a chair up to the table. "When I was going
out a little while ago, I thought I would buy you some tobacco."

"Tobacco!"

I never knew until then, the possibilities of a word like tobacco. I
have since decided that should a foreigner ever say "Tobacco!" at me
with sufficient vehemence I shall give him in charge.

"What would I do with seven shillings worth of tobacco?" he spluttered,
after a long pause.

"Stanley," I said quietly. "Do not try to imagine yourself as a member
of the League of Nations and that you have been despoiled and are
entitled to full reparations and then some."

"Haven't I been despoiled?" he demanded.

"You have not," I replied. "We will carry the League of Nations idea a
little farther, so that I may explain to you. You, as a nation, have
robbed other nations--that is, the milkman, etcetera--robbed them by
means of the power given you by your armaments and superior
equipment--the double-headed penny. I, another nation, cannot allow you
to get away with fourteen shillings from your victim without stepping
in----"

"For your cut."

"Don't be so vulgarly direct, Stanley. Remember you are at Geneva now.
As I was saying, I must step in. Now I am a majority."

"Ho, are you!" he bawled.

"Yes, I am. I could lay you out in one hit if necessary, therefore I am
a majority. I must step in and adjudicate and seeing that the milkman
and other nations are unable to protect their own property, I will take
over half the loot and guard it for them. You, I think, are treated
very well in being allowed to keep the other half."

"I see," said Stanley. "If I had to give my half back it would amount
to an admission that I had grabbed it, and then you'd have to give your
half back."

"We won't go into those complications, if you please."

"And where do the milkman and postman nations come in? Do they stay
robbed?"

"Not necessarily. You have to bear the opprobrium as the aggressor and
all you get out of it is two shillings----" I held up my hand as his
mouth opened. "Two shillings," I continued, "and a concession which
will very likely prove valueless."

"You mean the registered letter?"

I nodded and rose to my feet.

"Supposing that it is not valueless," he cried gloatingly, "supposing
that it is very valuable?"

"In that case," I replied, "there will be some more adjudicating."

I left the room. I had a feeling that the registered letter would
contain a disappointment and I did not wish to be present at the
opening ceremony. I was just entering Gertrude's bedroom, which I
preferred to my own as its door was still intact, when he bounded after
me waving the letter.

"Look here!" he shrieked. "Look at it!"

He held the letter before my eyes. The trembling of his hands made it
difficult to read but as near as I can remember it ran:

MY OWNEST,

Why have you not written to me? Is anything wrong? This is the sixth
letter I have written and no answer from my ickle one----

and a lot more of that sort of rot, but no money.

"See it!" he shouted. "I get two shillings and you get seven!"

"Be a sportsman, my boy," I said. "You took a chance and you lost.
There is nothing worse than a bad loser. Be a sportsman."

"Sportsman!" he shouted. "Why, if you were half a sportsman you'd share
that seven shillings with me."

I smiled derisively and walked into the bedroom.

"I'll toss you for it," he cried, following me. "You're such a
sportsman!"

"I am a sportsman," I said gently, "and since you desire it, we will
toss to see whether I halve the seven shillings with you or you pass
over your two shillings to me."

"Right."

"I will toss," I said, "and call."

"You can't toss and call too!" he expostulated.

"Well then, we will place the coin on the top of the door so that the
coin falls on the other side. Is that fair? I wish to be strictly fair
with you, Stanley, and treat you in a sportsmanlike way."

"That's fair enough," he agreed.

I placed the coin on the top of the door, we stepped out into the hall
and I heaved sharply on the door-knob and called heads.

"You said heads?" questioned Stanley. "That means that if it is a tail,
I collect three and six from you."

"And if it is a head, you give me two shillings," I added.

We opened the door slowly. The penny lay on the floor, serene, fateful,
decisive.

"It's a head," I said. "Give me two shillings."

He sighed and handed it to me. He gazed mournfully at me for a while
and then shambled away. I put his double-headed penny in my pocket
again as a coin of this sort is a valuable acquisition to a sporting
man. I then shut the door.




CHAPTER X



Sitting on the bed, I clasped my hands and stared at the clock on the
little table near me. I don't know how long I sat there. I was not
thinking. I was just looking at the clock. Not that there was anything
particularly remarkable about it. I did not regard it so much as a
clock, as something to look at. I am not a man who goes about seeing
sermons in stones or lectures in bricks, or the descent of man in a
piece of bone. I can see material for a debate in a heap of road-metal
but I am not the type that can gaze on a Seville orange and weep for
the glory that was Spain. Had I been like that I would have gazed past
that clock to its old home-town in Switzerland. I would have visioned
the Swiss clock-makers perched on the Alps and yodelling happily over
their work. I would have seen the Swiss maidens condensing the milk and
throwing the nuts into the chocolates. The cows browsing in the
streets. The cheeses by the lake. The lakes clogged with tourists.

But I was just looking at the clock. It was as if my mind had said,
"Now you look at that clock till I come back;" and had then departed
leaving me a mere body, a shell whose whole outlook in life was clock.
Utterly blank-minded. Governmentally employed, so to speak. It is hard
to describe my state of mind--or my lack of any state of mind; but it is
necessary to describe it. I believe that when one is in this state one
gets messages from Beyond. The line is clear, there are no statics, and
one has premonitions, vague prophetic feelings loom on one; the great
Darkness is lit for a while by a feeble blue flame before one is
hurried back to earth and the darkness again.

I had a feeling of impending trouble. As the browsing lamb sees the
shadow of the hawk on the grass, so I saw trouble. Gradually the clock
forced itself on me. It ticked at me. Its little hand went around.
Every tick was a second nearer the grave; my life was ebbing away,
ebbing away--second by second.

I was in a very bad state.

There was a loud knock on the door, and Stanley appeared. A real
Stanley, plain human meat, of the earth earthy. At sight of him my fit
of abstraction vanished and my mind resumed business at the same old
stand.

"Well?" I queried.

"Steak just phoned and said she's going to the races with Eggs and she
wants us to come and meet her out there. You'll have to hurry. I'm
almost ready. Don't bother about a shave."

"Come on, hurry up."

"Races? What races?"

"Randwick races. Get a collar on and a coat. Just as well you have
another coat besides the one that got burnt. I'll have to get you a hat
somewhere. Look lively or we'll be late."

He scurried out of the room, and the bedroom door, the front door and
the gate slammed almost simultaneously behind him. I rose to my feet. I
didn't want to go to the races. I just wanted to sit down and think.
Besides, I had only about eight pounds including Agatha's contribution
and I wasn't going to be financially butchered to make a holiday for
the gimme-girls. I sat down again. A loud crashing of doors and gates
resounded through the house and Stanley suddenly appeared in the room
like a stage demon.

"Not dressed yet!" he squeaked breathlessly.

"I'm not----"

"Here's a hat of Temple's I've borrowed for you," he gasped, and threw
it to me.

"I'm not----"

"Come on. Get your coat. I've phoned for a taxi, it will be here any
moment."

"I'm not going!" I shouted.

"Don't be silly, dad. This collar looks clean enough. I found it in the
hall. Got your studs?"

"Listen to me, Stanley. I am not going. Don't try these tornado tactics
on me; I'm not going."

"Aw, be yourself, dad! You're not working. There's no money coining in.
Steak knows an absolute cert for to-day. Opportunity only knocks once.
Come on!"

The door-bell rang.

"That's the taxi-man!" he exclaimed. "Here, put your coat on."

I clambered into my coat as he rushed out of the room. He was back in
something under a second with my tie and studs.

"You can put these on in the car," he gasped, slamming a hat on my
head. He grasped me by the arm, swung me out of the room, out the front
door, out the gate and into the taxi.

"Randwick!" he cried. "Drive like hell!" and the car leapt forward.

"Keep close to that car in front," I added, "and if it stops, shoot to
kill."

I struggled out of the hat, which was much too small and jammed down on
my ears.

"What are you talking about?" said Stanley. "What car in front?"

"There's always a car in front," I replied testily. "A black closed-in
car, and it winds in and out streets until it pulls up at a deserted
house and they all get out and carry the unconscious girl into the
cellar and we surround the house and capture the Master Mind who turns
out to be the butler."

He stared at me.

"You're mad!" he said.

"Have it your own way," I replied, and proceeded to adjust my collar.

I made no complaint to Stanley for literally dragging me out of the
house and throwing me into a taxi. I had been practically
abducted--shanghaied; but the thing was done. It was no use objecting.
It was all a piece with my presentiments and I sensed the presence of
the finger of fate. I am a fatalist and believe that what will be, will
be; what is, is; and what was, was; and so on through the verbs. I am
not alone in my belief, the modern trend of thought is more and more in
that direction and I sometimes suspect that even the Railway
Commissioners operate their passenger services on the same principle.
Stanley must have been thinking on similar lines. He had been gazing at
the taximeter, a thing I never do in a taxi as it takes half the
pleasure out of the ride. He seemed to be fascinated by the
cold-blooded inexorableness of the thing.

"You know, father," he said, "all life is a gamble."

"A highly original remark, my boy," I replied, "I suppose then that
Randwick race-meeting is the quintessence of life and a royal routine
flush would be the peak of existence?"

"It would be the end of your existence if you were playing at the camp
with the boys. Wouldn't it be funny if we won a thousand pounds
to-day?"

"Funny! The braw laddies of the Highland Society would laugh their
sporrans off. May I inquire the basis of these hopes for fun? How are
we to participate in this huge joke?"

"Don't try to be sarcastic, father. It lessens my respect for you."

"Your respect for your poor old father is already a minus quantity. It
only appears on pay-days. You haven't answered my question."

He leaned over and clutched my ear.

"Steak has a stone moral," he whispered.

"A stone moral."

"Ssh!"

"What's a stone moral?"

"Don't talk so loud. It's a certainty. It can't be beaten. There's only
one horse in it."

"Oh, well, in that case," I said, leaning back in my corner, "it
certainly must win."

"Of course it'll win; you can put your undies on it."

"Seems rather strange, though," I ruminated, "having only one horse in
the race. Any fool ought to see that it must win."

"Arrgh!"

I relapsed into my corner again.

The taximeter, foaming at the mouth, demolished another shilling and
gnashed its teeth in anticipation of the next. The tick menace is not
confined to our country districts.

"Who is going to pay this lightning calculator?" I asked, pointing to
it.

"That's all right. I'll see to that," replied Stanley with a
contemptuous flirt of his hand that must have greatly disheartened the
meter. "It's only twelve shillings," he added.

"Where did you get it?" I exclaimed.

"Temple. Good feller. Stung him for a couple."

"Great!" I cried. "Serves him damn well right!" I had begun to dislike
Temple and to hear of his lending money to Stanley was sweet music to
mine ears. Anything lent to Stanley can be lined up with the Pyramids,
the Sphinx, the national debt and such-like time defying monuments.

"Leger reserve, sir?"

The driver spoke through the back of his neck after the manner of his
kind. The car pulled up and we decanted ourselves on to the pavement.
Stanley paid the driver and we walked toward the entrance.

"Synagogue rules," he said. "Take yourself in and pay for yourself."

We clattered through the turnstiles.

A horde of race-book sellers detonated in our faces. "Book! Book! Book!
Bookertherazes! Book, sir?"

I bought two and handed one to Stanley.

"That squares us," I said. "You paid for the taxi and I've paid for the
programmes."

"If there's a harder man than you," he said, taking the book,

"I'll bet he stands on a pedestal in Hyde Park wrought in solid
bronze."

"Where have we to meet Steak?" I said coldly.

"Over by the first stand--there she is!"

I looked as he pointed, and saw Steak and Eggs with two men, one of
whom seemed to be drunk.

"Who are those men?" I asked, waving my hand at the same time to Steak.

"Dunno," he answered in a puzzled voice.

As we drew nearer to them a strange feeling of apprehension stole over
me. Their faces left me perturbed. I felt that the only way these men
could attain popularity in a civilized community would be for them to
become radio announcers. Unseen Uncle Georges gravely announcing a glut
of onions in the market. Later, when I heard their voices, I was forced
to deny them even this faint hope. We doffed our hats and greeted the
ladies.

"So glad you came," said Eggs in an enthusiastic voice. "I don't think
you've met our friends. Mister Simpson; Mister Gudgeon. Mister Stanley
Gudgeon--Mister Slatter--Gudgeons. Mix!"

As we shook hands I made a mental note of Stanley's perfidy in
divulging my name. Smith is good enough for me.

"Gonna back all the winners?" asked Mr Slatter pleasantly. Or as
pleasantly as he could. He was not the type of man I usually associate
with. He was tall and very broad about the shoulders, attired in a
silvery-grey suit and a hard hat. His features reminded me of the
cliffs at South Head, and his nose, which had evidently been broken at
some time, had a disposition to lounge about his face. I pictured him
shaving with a hammer and a cold chisel.

"I hope so, Mr Slatter," I replied.

"Call me Woggo," he said, spitting over my shoulder. "All the boys call
me that. Where's Dogsbody?" he added, gazing around.

I concluded that "Dogsbody" was the inebriated Mr. Simpson's trade name
and turned to see him a little distance away, leaning on Stanley and
breathing very confidently into his face.

"Come on, Dosb'dy," bawled Woggo. "We're going inter the ring."

I took Steak's arm and moved off toward the betting-ring.

"Your friend has evidently been looking on the wine when it was red," I
remarked to her.

"He'd look on it if it was purple and had frogs in it." She squeezed my
arm. "Glad you came, honey," she said.

"Have you known Mr Slatter long?" I asked.

"Woggo? He's all right. We get the dinkum oil off him. He knows all the
jockeys and trainers and everything. He was born in a horse-trough and
carried round in a nose-bag when he was a child. You don't want to
worry about him."

"What does he know for this race?"

She stopped and put her mouth close to my ear. "King Rabbit," she
whispered. "He's an outsider and he'll be any old price. Put a couple
of pounds on for me."

She kissed me on the ear.

She was a gimme, but twenty years of life fell from me, and I kicked
them out of the way as I walked on. The frantic clamour of the
bookmakers roared around us as we entered the ring. Men and women
surged about the stands hurling money away with both hands. Punters
pleaded to be allowed to lay odds on the favourite and elbowed each
other out of the way in their earnest desire to be robbed.
Tip-slingers, urgers and whisperers slunk like jackals through the
crowd, and grave and massive policemen placed their furtive bets. I
shrunk from the ordeal, but how can man die better than by facing
fearful odds? The rest of the gang came up and with a parting glance at
Steak, I plunged into the riot.

Pausing at a stand, I addressed the open mouth of a bawling bookmaker.

"What price King Rabbit?"

"'Oo? King Rabbit? Never 'eard of it. King Rabbit?--Ar, yes, four to
one, King Rabbit."

I turned away.

"Well, eight to one," he bawled. "Tens!"

I continued on my way.

"Fifteens!" he yelled. "Twenties! Well, go to blazes!"

I emerged at long last with my head throbbing under Temple's hat and
the dust of conflict clinging to my boots.

Steak was waiting for me, with Eggs. I handed her a ticket.

"Sixty-eight pounds!" she shrieked. "He must have been thirty-three to
one!"

"You went to a good school," I said.

"Girnme half if it wins," pleaded Eggs.

Steak impaled her with a glance.

"This is my ticket," she said coldly. "Stanley will get yours."

"But he's only putting ten shillings on for me," wailed Eggs.

"Faulty work," said Steak succinctly. "Come and we'll watch the race,
honey," she added, taking my arm.

Never, never shall I forget that race. When I am old and peevish, sans
teeth, sans hair, and shod with elastic-sided boots, I shall be content
merely with the memory of that race. When St Peter asks me my greatest
display of charity and fortitude on earth, my answer will be that I
refrained from choking Steak when King Rabbit won the Grantham Stakes.

When the barrier went up, the jockey seemed quite oblivious to the fact
that I had four pounds on his mount. He appeared to go to sleep on the
horse's neck. They wallowed round the bend behind everything else that
had legs. The jockey seemed to be about as useful as a wart on the hip
and I groaned aloud.

To this day, I believe the horse heard me. He laid his ears back,
opened his mouth and accelerated. He threw his legs about in wild
abandon. His hoofs touched the turf merely here and there. He flung
himself along like a thing gone mad. His tail stood out. Like a
chestnut bullet he swept past the field, past the favourite, past the
winning-post, and twice around the course before he could be pulled up.
Doped, of course.

The great, beautiful, brave beast, may he live for a hundred years and
die in a lucerne paddock surrounded by his progeny.

Hoarse with shouting, my hands sore from beating the railing, I
assisted the almost unconscious Steak out of the crowd. The stricken
punters were very, very quiet and the happy laughter of the bookmakers
plunged the iron into their souls.

Thirty-three to one! Even now my hand trembles as I write.

One hundred and thirty-six pounds I collected, and sixty-eight for
Steak. If horses have halos when they die, King Rabbit should look like
a zebra. We were joined by the rest of the party. I wanted to go home.
I was padded with notes. Steak was crying on my shoulder; Eggs was in
charge of the matron in the ladies' waiting-room; Stanley and the
drunken Simpson were dancing like bears in the midst of an interested
crowd. Woggo Slatter stood aloof and not a pore of his skin opened or
shut. Not a smile disturbed his granite face. A cigarette hung from the
corner of his mouth, and when I sighted him he was buying a packet of
chewing-gum. Chewing-gum! Fancy being able to chew!

I parked Daisy in the grandstand and went to him.

"Thanks for the tip, old man," I said, grasping him by the hand.
"Thanks very much."

"'Sall right," he drawled. "We has our lucky days. I might want ter put
the fangs inter you for twenty or so one er these days. What are you
goin' to do now?"

"I'm going home."

He shifted his cigarette to the other side of his mouth.

"Don't go yet," he said. "Got another one. Be a short price, but it's
good."

He tipped his hat over one eye and walked away.

Stanley touched my arm.

"Hello!" I said. "Corroboree finished?"

"The police stopped it," he whispered.

"What are you whispering for? Are they after you?"

"No," he said in an almost inaudible voice, "it's my throat. I couldn't
talk at all a while ago. I don't care if I'm never able to yell again.
Wasn't it wonderful?"

"Oh, fair performance, I suppose. What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going home if I can get away from Eggs," he whispered.

I studied the nail on my little finger for a moment. "Don't go yet," I
said. "Got another one. Short price, but good," and tilting my hat over
my forehead I strolled away and left him gaping.

Returning to the stand, I found Maureen and Daisy sitting with their
heads close together. Their talk ceased suddenly as I came up to them.
I know women. I buttoned my coat and sat down warily.

"Oh, gee!" sighed Maureen, "wasn't it just too lovely! Whatever are you
going to buy me with all that money?"

"If you'll excuse me, Maureen," said Steak in a chilly voice, "Jack is
my friend. Go and find Stanley."

"I like Stan," murmured Eggs, "but I don't value his friendship half as
much as Jack's. Besides, he's only a boy, really, isn't he?"

I felt that I was being haggled over. Stanley had evidently been
weighed in the balance and found to be under the limit.

"What about Woggo?" I suggested.

"Woggo!" they echoed. "Ha! Ha!"

That let Woggo out. He was either a member of the syndicate or an
abandoned mine.

"Do you know what this next winner is going to be?" I asked, to change
the subject.

"Dunno," answered Steak. "Woggo will tell you when the time comes. Here
he is now."

Woggo strolled into view and halted before us. Fixing his gaze on the
horizon, he slowly stroked his left ear with three fingers, spat
aimlessly in the general direction of the betting-ring and moved on.
Maureen and Daisy hurriedly turned the pages of their race-books.

"Useless Annie!" they gasped in unison.

"What about her?" I queried, looking around.

"That's it," gabbled Eggs. "That's the pea. Where's Stanley?"

She jumped to her feet and scurried away.

"What do I do now?" I asked, turning to Steak.

"All you've got to do now is to empty the roll out on Useless Annie--and
make it snappy. Off you go! I'll wait here."

"The whole lot!" I gasped.

"Absolutely," she said, giving me a push. "Put a pony on for me."

I hurried away and burrowed into the betting-ring. A striving elbow
bored into my ear as I squirmed through the crowd. It was Stanley. I
might have known that with practically the whole population of Sydney
collected in one place, Stanley would single me out for injury.

I stamped heavily on his foot.

"Sorry, Stan," I said, patting him on the shoulder, "It's the crowd,
you know. What's a pony?"

"Thassall right, dad," he replied, "that wasn't my foot. A pony is a
little horse."

He was swept away on a wave of punters before I could land him one.
Useless Annie, as Woggo foretold, was a short price. One Hennessy, on
the outer edge of the ring, who may possibly have been one of the lost
tribe, offered to lay me fifty pounds to forty and I passed up the
money. He made a quivering stab with his pencil at the betting-ticket
and passed the result down to me.

"What's this?" I asked, staring at the Morse code on the ticket.

"Useless," he snapped, glaring at me. "Fifty pounds to forty. That's
vat you vant, ain't it?"

"Useless Annie?" I inquired meekly.

"Ah, Gor!" he moaned. "Can't you read?"

"All right, all right," I muttered, and wandered away to the bar.

A flying barman, handling glasses like a nervous octopus, extracted the
order from between my teeth before I could utter it, and sped away.

"Snappy, eh?" commented Stanley. He was at my elbow. Ubiquitous.

"Stanley," I said, producing the ticket, "what do you make of this?"

"Useless Annie," he said glancing at it. "Who put you on to that zoo
fodder?"

"Slatter."

"The urger with the ironstone complexion."

I nodded uneasily.

"Born every day," he muttered, shaking his head at his glass. "One a
minute."

"What's wrong with it?" I demanded.

He leaned towards me. "Useless Annie's in the bag." he whispered. "I've
backed Bonser Baby. Get on while you've got time."

"But----" I faltered, waving my ticket.

"Well, of course, if you don't want to--don't," he said, shrugging his
shoulders.

"Do you think I ought to?"

He glanced at me pityingly. "Anyone picked your pocket yet?"

"No."

"Hmm, funny," he said. Then fiercely he added, "Go and get your money
on. Leave your drink; I'll look after that."

I gulped my drink and hurried away with my mind in a whirl.

The bookmakers were howling that they were prepared to lay five to one
against Bonser Baby and I took a hundred and fifty pounds to thirty
pounds in three bets. I stood to win one hundred and fifty, or flay my
thirty pounds' worth out of Stanley. Something seemed to tell me that I
would win. I felt confident. I decided to avoid Steak for the nonce,
and took up a position near the track to watch the race.

It wasn't a race. Some dissatisfied gentleman close to me remarked that
it was a mere sanguinary, lightning-struck, blasted, confounded and
unmentionable procession. Useless Annie might have been sired by a
rocking-horse, and as regards its dam, it was damned by all present.
The jockey made a ferocious display with his whip and then
realistically fell off and left his horse to browse on the track.
Bonser Baby was in front, with another horse gaining on it rapidly and
for a moment it looked as if the jockey of that horse would have to
fall off too. Fortunately Bonser Baby, with the fear of the bone-yard
in him, speeded up his lollop and staggered past the post amidst a
chorus of congratulatory groans. The race had not the thrill of the
previous one, and although I was pleased to collect my winnings, I was
not excited. My presentiments were returning.

I sought Steak and handed her the ticket for Useless Annie.

"I put fifty on for you," I said with a wry smile, "the remainder I put
on for myself."

I sat down heavily beside her.

"Oh, what a pity!" cried Steak. "You poor thing! Are you absolutely
broke?"

"Penniless," I muttered.

"And you put fifty on for me! That was sporty of you, Jack. Here, you'd
better take this fiver."

I waved it aside.

"Don't be foolish," she said, pressing it into my hand.

I took it and thanked her. "Hard luck," I groaned.

"Absolutely."

The stand was half full, but she put an arm round my neck, and drawing
my head close to her mouth kissed me on the chin.

"There's possibilities in you, honey," she whispered.

"'Ullo! Wot's this?" grated a harsh voice.

I looked up and quickly declutched. Slatter was glaring at me and
chewing his lip. He looked, to put it mildly, discontented. I felt an
empty feeling in my stomach as I rose to my feet. It looked like an
even chance of my becoming a co-respondent or a corpse.

"It's all right," cried Steak, rising.

Keeping my eyes on Slatter, I edged, crabwise, away, from him.

"Well--so long," I called, waving my arm.

"'Ere!" growled Woggo.

I hurried on.

"Come 'ere. I want yer!" he bawled savagely.

I broke into a trot.

"'Ell!" he bellowed, and started after me.

It was then that the benefits of living a more or less clean life came
to my aid. There, on that day, without thought of honour or reward, I
put up a performance that would have given any Olympic games aspirant a
lesson. I flashed past Stanley who was strolling towards the gates with
Eggs clinging to his arm like some parasitic growth.

"Father!" he yelled.

"Pace me, boy," I gasped.

"Hey!" called a policeman, dashing toward me.

I slowed down as Stanley came up beside me.

"Whatever you've pinched," he panted, "hand it over to me. They're
bound to search you."

"What's all this?" boomed the constable.

"It--it's his wife," gasped Stanley. "She's dying. We must get a taxi."

I caught a glimpse of Woggo temporarily off the scent in the crowd.

"Dying?" queried the constable.

"Yes," I gulped.

"While the Spring Meeting's on!" he gasped incredulously.

I nodded vigorously. Woggo had sighted us.

"My gore!" said the policeman. "You can't beat women."

"Come on, Stanley!" I cried, and bounded towards the gate.

"'Ere!" shouted Woggo.

"Stop!" bawled a policeman.

"Taxi, sir," queried an angel in uniform, as we dashed out the gate.

I hurled Stanley in and threw myself on top of him. "Woollahra!" I
yelled. "Drive like hell!"

Stanley sat down and straightened his tie as the car bounded away.
"Referring to the car in front," he said, "do we shoot to kill, in the
event of its stopping?"

"If you're trying to be funny, Stanley," I said, scrambling to my
knees, "you have selected an inopportune time and run a grave risk of
disfigurement for life."

"Well, what's it all about?"

"Woggo was going to assault me," I hissed, seating myself.

"Was he? And yet when I first saw him I didn't like him. Funny how you
can be mistaken about a feller." He shook his head. "And I helped you
to get away," he muttered.

"What do you mean?"

Ignoring me, he leaned forward and spoke to the driver.

"Go to Castlereagh Street first," he directed.

"What for?" I asked. "What's on at Castlereagh Street?"

"I want to buy a motor-bike and side-car," he replied, producing a
cigar.

"Now!"

"Of course!" he exclaimed, staring at me.

"But it's a holiday. The shops are not open."

"Aw, gee! No," he moaned. "I'll have to wait till to-morrow."

"What part of Woollahra?" inquired the driver.

"You're not going home, are you?" protested Stanley.

"Why not?"

"What is the symbol of achievement, the delight----"

"Steak and eggs!" I exclaimed. "King Street, driver."

"Can we get steak and eggs at the Ambassadors?" inquired Stanley,
handing me a cigar.

"We could, I suppose, but it would be called viande of the bull AVEC
OEUFS and you'd get it on four plates and have to eat it as if you
didn't want to."

"It must be terrible to be in Society. You've been in Society, haven't
you, dad?"

I nodded. I've been in everything in my time, from the harbour to the
Salvation Army.

"What do you do when you've got your mouth full and someone asks you a
question?"

"Well," I said, "you can pretend you didn't hear, or you can swallow
the lot, or appear to be thinking over the question and chew like mad,
or you can shake your head and give it up--the question, I mean."

"Sounds pretty rotten. I don't think I'd like it," he decided. "And
what about finger-bowls? Do the caterers supply the towel and soap?"

"Well, my boy, nowadays people dance between courses so if you really
needed a wash, I can see no reason why you should not have a warm bath
after the asparagus," I replied.

"We'll go to Guisippi's," decided Stanley. "Pull up at Guisippi's,
driver."

The car slowed to a stop and we alighted. Stanley handed the driver a
note and waved him off with a lordly air. "Keep the change, my man, and
don't get drunk," he drawled, and strolled into the restaurant like a
retired pawnbroker. I wadded my notes well down into my pockets and
followed him. Seating myself on the opposite side of the table, I
twirled my thumbs while he perused the menu.

"H'm!" he mused. "Devilled lambs' kidneys. Hmm. Murray cod. Hm."

The waiter fluttered his pinions fretfully and handed me a menu card.

"Mm!" continued Stanley, stroking his chin, "asparagus on toast. Any
bath here?" he asked, glancing at the waiter.

"Nossir."

"Hmm! Fricasse of tripe. Blah! Broiled whiting. Mm!"

I flung my menu card down disgustedly.

"Steak and blasted eggs!" I said.

"Steak and blasted eggs. Yessir. Steak and blasted eggs, one." "Er--mm.
Yes. Steak and eggs," said Stanley. "Extra special eggs, waiter, and
porterhouse steak."

"Stand the confounded eggs on their edges for him," I added.

"Yessir. Edge on their eggses--er--eggses on their----"

"Never mind," I said kindly, "waft away with the order."

He wrinkled his forehead and padded off.

"Excellent cuisine?" muttered Stanley. "Never tasted it. What's it
like?"

I snatched the menu from him and tore it up. My nerves were worn to a
fine edge with the afternoon's events and I couldn't bear it. "Another
word out of you and I'll brain you with the sauce bottle," I growled.

He scratched his ear slowly with a ten-pound note and eyed me
speculatively.

"What's crawling on you?" he drawled. "You're practically swathed in
money; you've had a wonderful afternoon, and here you are, acting like
an Arab who wants to steal away and can't get his tent to fold up."

The boy was right, to a certain extent. Despite the fact that I was
nearly two hundred and fifty pounds to the good, I was not contented.
My presentiment still gnawed at me. Then there was Slatter. I groaned
quietly and commenced the assault on the steak. Stanley must have read
my mind.

"What was Woggo chasing you for, dad?" he asked, resting both hands on
his fork and staring curiously at me.

"He wasn't chasing me."

"Well, what were you running away from him for?"

"I wasn't. Do you think I'd run away from that ignorant slob!" I
demanded, mopping the gravy off my vest.

"Yes."

Stanley can be disconcerting at