staring straight in front of him with an unseeing gaze.
Mr Birdsey tapped the young man on the shoulder.
‘Some game!’ he said.
The young man looked at him and smiled.
‘You bet,’ he said.
‘I haven’t seen a ball-game in five years.’
‘The last one I saw was two years ago next June.’
‘Come and have some dinner at my hotel and talk it over,’ said Mr Birdsey impulsively.
‘Sure!’ said the young man.
Mr Birdsey turned and tapped the shoulder of the man on his left.
The result was a little unexpected. The man gave a start that was almost a leap, and the pallor of his face became a sickly white. His eyes, as he swung round, met Mr Birdsey’s for an instant before they dropped, and there was panic fear in them. His breath whistled softly through clenched teeth.
Mr Birdsey was taken aback. The cordiality of the clean-shaven young man had not prepared him for the possibility of such a reception. He felt chilled. He was on the point of apologizing with some murmur about a mistake, when the man reassured him by smiling. It was rather a painful smile, but it was enough for Mr Birdsey. This man might be of a nervous temperament, but his heart was in the right place.
He, too, smiled. He was a small, stout, red-faced little man, and he possessed a smile that rarely failed to set strangers at their ease. Many strenuous years on the New York Stock Exchange had not destroyed a certain childlike amiability in Mr Birdsey, and it shone out when he smiled at you.
‘I’m afraid I startled you,’ he said soothingly. ‘I wanted to ask you if you would let a perfect stranger, who also happens to be an exile, offer you dinner tonight.’
The man winced. ‘Exile?’
‘An exiled fan. Don’t you feel that the Polo Grounds are a good long way away? This gentleman is joining me. I have a suite at the Savoy Hotel, and I thought we might all have a quiet little dinner there and talk about the game. I haven’t seen a ball-game in five years.’
‘Nor have I.’
‘Then you must come. You really must. We fans ought to stick to one another in a strange land. Do come.’
‘Thank you,’ said the bearded man; ‘I will.’
When three men, all strangers, sit down to dinner together, conversation, even if they happen to have a mutual passion for baseball, is apt to be for a while a little difficult. The first fine frenzy in which Mr Birdsey had issued his invitations had begun to ebb by the time the soup was served, and he was conscious of a feeling of embarrassment.
There was some subtle hitch in the orderly progress of affairs. He sensed it in the air. Both of his guests were disposed to silence, and the clean-shaven young man had developed a trick of staring at the man with the beard, which was obviously distressing that sensitive person.
‘Wine,’ murmured Mr Birdsey to the waiter. ‘Wine, wine!’
He spoke with the earnestness of a general calling up his reserves for the grand attack. The success of this little dinner mattered enormously to him. There were circumstances which were going to make it an oasis in his life. He wanted it to be an occasion to which, in grey days to come, he could look back and be consoled. He could not let it be a failure.
He was about to speak when the young man anticipated him. Leaning forward, he addressed the bearded man, who was crumbling bread with an absent look in his eyes.
‘Surely we have met before?’ he said. ‘I’m sure I remember your face.’
The effect of these words on the other was as curious as the effect of Mr Birdsey’s tap on the shoulder had been. He looked up like a hunted animal.
He shook his head without speaking.
‘Curious,’ said the young man. ‘I could have sworn to it, and I am positive that it was somewhere in New York. Do you come from New York?’
‘Yes.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Mr Birdsey, ‘that we ought to introduce ourselves. Funny it didn’t strike any of us before. My name is Birdsey, J. Wilmot Birdsey. I come from New York.’
‘My name is Waterall,’ said the young man. ‘I come from New York.’
The bearded man hesitated.
‘My name is Johnson. I—used to live in New York.’
‘Where do you live now, Mr Johnson?’ asked Waterall.
The bearded man hesitated again. ‘Algiers,’ he said.
Mr Birdsey was inspired to help matters along with small-talk.
‘Algiers,’ he said. ‘I have never been there, but I understand that it is quite a place. Are you in business there, Mr Johnson?’
‘I live there for my health.’
