One of the crowd that had gathered sympathetically round shook his head. He was a charming man with a black eye, who had shaved on the preceding Thursday.
“Much better give him a Dreamland Special.”
A second man, in a sweater and a cloth cap, had yet another theory.
“You can’t beat an Undertaker’s Joy.”
They were all so perfectly delightful and appeared to have his interests so unselfishly at heart that William could not bring himself to choose between them. He solved the problem in diplomatic fashion by playing no favourites and ordering all three of the beverages recommended.
The effect was instantaneous and gratifying. As he drained the first glass, it seemed to him that a torchlight procession, of whose existence he had hitherto not been aware, had begun to march down his throat and explore the recesses of his stomach. The second glass, though slightly too heavily charged with molten lava, was extremely palatable. It helped the torchlight procession along by adding to it a brass band of singular power and sweetness of tone. And with the third somebody began to touch off fireworks inside his head.
William felt better—not only spiritually but physically. He seemed to himself to be a bigger, finer man, and the loss of Myrtle Banks had somehow in a flash lost nearly all its importance. After all, as he said to the man with the black eye, Myrtle Banks wasn’t everybody.
“Now what do you recommend?” he asked the man with the sweater, having turned the last glass upside down.
The other mused, one forefinger thoughtfully pressed against the side of his face.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “When my brother Elmer lost his girl, he drank straight rye. Yes, sir. That’s what he drank—straight rye. ‘I’ve lost my girl,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to drink straight rye.’ That’s what he said. Yes, sir, straight rye.”
“And was your brother Elmer,” asked William, anxiously, “a man whose example in your opinion should be followed? Was he a man you could trust?”
“He owned the biggest duck-farm in the southern half of Illinois.”
“That settles it,” said William. “What was good enough for a duck who owned half Illinois is good enough for me. Oblige me,” he said to the gentlemanly bartender, “by asking these gentlemen what they will have, and start pouring.”
The bartender obeyed, and William, having tried a pint or two of the strange liquid just to see if he liked it, found that he did, and ordered some. He then began to move about among his new friends, patting one on the shoulder, slapping another affably on the back, and asking a third what his Christian name was.
“I want you all,” he said, climbing on to the counter so that his voice should carry better, “to come and stay with me in England. Never in my life have I met men whose faces I liked so much. More like brothers than anything is the way I regard you. So just you pack up a few things and come along and put up at my little place for as long as you can manage. You particularly, my dear old chap,” he added, beaming at the man in the sweater.
“Thanks,” said the man with the sweater.
“What did you say?” said William.
“I said, ‘Thanks.’ ”
William slowly removed his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves.
“I call you gentlemen to witness,” he said, quietly, “that I have been grossly insulted by this gentleman who has just grossly insulted me. I am not a quarrelsome man, but if anybody wants a row they can have it. And when it comes to being cursed and sworn at by an ugly bounder in a sweater and a cloth cap, it is time to take steps.”
And with these spirited words William Mulliner sprang from the counter, grasped the other by the throat, and bit him sharply on the right ear. There was a confused interval, during which somebody attached himself to the collar of William’s waistcoat and the seat of William’s trousers, and then a sense of swift movement and rush of cool air.
William discovered that he was seated on the pavement outside the saloon. A hand emerged from the swing door and threw his hat out. And he was alone with the night and his meditations.
These were, as you may suppose, of a singularly bitter nature. Sorrow and disillusionment racked William Mulliner like a physical pain. That his friends inside there, in spite of the fact that he had been all sweetness and light and had not done a thing to them, should have thrown him out into the hard street was the saddest thing he had ever heard of; and for some minutes he sat there, weeping silently.
Presently he heaved himself to his feet and, placing one foot with infinite delicacy in front of the other, and then drawing the other one up and placing it with infinite delicacy in front of that, he began to walk back to his hotel.
At the corner he paused. There were some railings on his right. He clung to them and rested awhile.
The railings to which William Mulliner had attached himself belonged to a brownstone house of the kind that seems destined from the first moment of its building to receive guests, both resident and transient, at a moderate weekly rental. It was, in fact, as he would have discovered had he been clear-sighted enough to read the card over the door, Mrs. Beulah O’Brien’s Theatrical Boardinghouse (“A Home From Home—No Cheques Cashed—This Means You”).
But William was not in the best of shape for reading cards. A sort of mist had obscured the world, and he was finding it difficult to keep his eyes open. And presently, his chin wedged into the railings, he fell into a dreamless sleep.
He was awakened by light flashing in his eyes; and, opening them,
