Sinister Street, Compton Mackenzie [classic books for 10 year olds .TXT] 📗

if an onlooker punches this functionary, then I did assault the constable.”

“This sort of insolence won’t do,” said the magistrate trembling with a curious rarefied passion. “I have a very good mind to send you to prison without the option of a fine, but in consideration.⁠ ⁠…”

Somehow or other it was made to appear a piece of extraordinary magnanimity on the part of the magistrate that Michael was only fined three guineas and costs.

“I wish to pay the fines of Miss Palmer and Miss Wearne,” he announced.

Later in the morning Michael, with the two girls, emerged into the garish summer day. Not even yet was the illusion of a nightmare dissipated, for as he looked at his two companions, feathered, frilled and bedraggled, who were walking beside him, he could scarcely acknowledge even their probable reality here in the sun.

“I shan’t drink hot whisky-and-lemon again in a hurry,” vowed Daisy. “I knew it was going to bring me bad luck when I said it tasted so funny.”

“But you said your hat was going to be lucky,” Michael pointed out.

“Yes, I’ve been properly sucked in over that,” Daisy agreed.

“Nothing ever brings me luck,” grumbled Dolly resentfully.

As Michael looked at the long retreating chin and down-drawn mouth he was inclined to agree that nothing could invigorate this fatal mournfulness with the prospect of good fortune.

“I reckon I’ll go home and have a good lay down,” said Daisy. “Are you going to have dinner with me?” she asked, turning to Dolly.

“Dinner?” echoed Dolly. “Nice time to talk to anyone about their dinner, when they’ve got the sick like I have! Dinner!”

They had reached Piccadilly Circus by now, and Michael wondered if he might not put them into a cab and send them back to Guilford Street. He found it embarrassing when the people slowly turned away from Swan and Edgar’s window to stare instead at him and his companions.

Daisy pressed him to come back with them, but he promised he would call upon her very soon. Then he slipped into her hand the change from the second five-pound note into which the law had broken.

“Is this for us?” she asked.

He nodded.

“You are a sport. Mind you come and see us. Come to tea. Doll’s going to live with me a bit now, aren’t you, Doll?”

“I suppose so,” said Doll.

Michael really admired the hospitality which was willing to shelter this lugubrious girl, and as he contemplated her, looking in the sunlight like a moist handkerchief, he had a fleeting sympathy with Hungarian Dave.

When the girls had driven off, Michael recovered his ordinary appearance by visiting a barber and a hosier. The effect of the shampoo was almost to make him incredulous of the night’s event, and he could not help paying a visit to the Café d’Orange, to verify the alcove in which he had sat. The entrance of the beerhall was closed, however, and he stood for a moment like a person who passes a theater which the night before he has seen glittering. As Michael was going out of the bar, he thought he recognized a figure leaning over the counter. Yes, it was certainly Meats. He went up and tapped him on the shoulder, addressing him by name. Meats turned round with a start.

“Don’t you remember me?” asked Michael.

“Of course I do,” said Meats nervously. “But for the love of Jerusalem drop calling me by that name. Here, let’s go outside.”

In the street Michael asked him why he had given up being Meats.

“Oh, a bit of trouble, a bit of trouble,” said Meats.

“You are a strange chap,” said Michael. “When I first met you it was Brother Aloysius. Then it was Meats. Now⁠—”

“Look here,” said Meats, “give over, will you? I’ve told you once. If you call me that again I shall leave you. Barnes is what I am now. Now don’t forget.”

“Come and have a drink, and tell me what you’ve been doing in the four years since we met,” Michael suggested.

“B-a-r-n-e-s. Have you got it?”

Michael assured him that everything but Barnes as applicable to him had vanished from his mind.

“Come on, then,” said Barnes. “We’ll go into the Afrique, upstairs.”

Michael fancied he had met Barnes this time in a reincarnation that was causing him a good deal of uneasiness. He had lost the knowingness which had belonged to Meats and the sheer lasciviousness which had seemed the predominant quality of Brother Aloysius. Instead, sitting at the round marble table opposite Michael saw an individual who resembled an actor out of work in the lowest grades of his profession. There was the cheesy complexion, and the over-fashioned suit of another season too much worn and faded now to flaunt itself objectionably, but with its dismoded exaggerations still conveying an air of rococo smartness; perhaps, thought Michael, these signs had always been obvious and it had merely been his own youth which had supposed a type to be an exception. Certainly Barnes could not arouse now anything but a compassionate amusement. How this figure with its grotesque indignity as of a puppet temporarily put out of action testified to his own morbid heightening of common things in the past. How incredible it seemed now that this Barnes had once been able to work upon his soul with influential doctrine.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” Michael asked again.

“Oh, hopping and popping about. I’ve got the rats at present.”

“Where are you living?”

Barnes looked at Michael in suspicious astonishment. “What do you want to know for?” he asked.

“Mere inquisitiveness,” Michael assured him. “You really needn’t treat me like a detective, you know.”

“My mistake,” said Barnes. “But really, Fane. Let’s see, that is your name? Thought it was. I don’t often forget a name. No, without swank, Fane, I’ve been hounded off my legs lately. I’m living in Leppard Street. Pimlico way.”

“I’d like to come and see you some time,” said Michael.

“Here, straight, what is your game?” Barnes could not conceal his suspicion.

“Inquisitiveness,” Michael declared again. “Also I rather want a Sancho Panza.”

“Oh, of course,