“What did you say in the imaginary ones?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I said I saw Count Cincinnati going into Espinosa’s in a green bowler … things like that.”
“You said that?”
“Yes, wasn’t it a good thing to say. … Angel, is anything wrong?”
“Oh, God.”
Adam dashed to the telephone.
“Central ten thousand … put me through to the night editor. … Look here, I’ve got to make a correction in the Chatterbox page … it’s urgent.”
“Sorry, Symes. Last edition went to bed half an hour ago. Got everything made up early tonight.”
So Adam went back to finish his oysters.
“Bad tabulation there,” said Lord Monomark next morning, when he saw the paragraph.
So Miles Malpractice became Mr. Chatterbox.
“Now we can’t be married,” said Nina.
X
Adam and Miss Runcible and Miles and Archie Schwert went up to the motor races in Archie Schwert’s car. It was a long and cold drive. Miss Runcible wore trousers and Miles touched up his eyelashes in the dining-room of the hotel where they stopped for luncheon. So they were asked to leave. At the next hotel they made Miss Runcible stay outside, and brought her cold lamb and pickles in the car. Archie thought it would be nice to have champagne, and worried the wine waiter about dates (a subject which had always been repugnant to him). They spent a long time over luncheon because it was warm there, and they drank Kümmel over the fire until Miss Runcible came in very angrily to fetch them out.
Then Archie said he was too sleepy to drive any more, so Adam changed places with him and lost the way, and they travelled miles in the wrong direction down a limitless bypass road.
And then it began to be dark and the rain got worse. They stopped for dinner at another hotel, where everyone giggled at Miss Runcible’s trousers in a dining-room hung with copper warming pans.
Presently they came to the town where the race was to be run. They drove to the hotel where the dirt-track racer was staying. It was built in the Gothic style of 1860, large, dark and called the Imperial.
They had wired him to book them rooms, but “Bless you,” said the woman at the counter marked “Reception,” “all our rooms have been booked for the last six months. I couldn’t fit you in anywhere, not if you was the Speed Kings themselves, I couldn’t. I don’t suppose you’ll find anything in the town tonight. You might try at the Station Hotel. That’s your only chance.”
At the Station Hotel they made Miss Runcible wait outside, but with no better success.
“I might put one of you on the sofa in the bar parlour, there’s only a married couple in there at present and two little boys, or if you didn’t mind sitting up all night, there’s always the palm lounge.” As for a bed, that was out of the question. They might try at the Royal George, but she doubted very much whether they’d like that even if there was room, which she was pretty sure there was not.
Then Miss Runcible thought that she remembered that there were some friends of her father who lived quite near, so she found out their telephone number and rang them up, but they said no, they were sorry, but they had a completely full house and practically no servants, and that as far as they knew they had never heard of Lord Chasm. So that was no good.
Then they went to several more hotels, sinking through the various graduations of Old Established Family and Commercial, plain Commercial, High Class Board Residence pension terms, Working Girls’ Hostel, plain Pub. and Clean Beds: Gentlemen Only. All were full. At last, by the edge of a canal, they came to the Royal George. The landlady stood at the door and rounded off an argument with an elderly little man in a bowler hat.
“First ’e takes off ’is boots in the saloon bar,” she said, enlisting the sympathy of her new audience, “which is not the action of a gentleman.”
“They was wet,” said the little man, “wet as ’ell.”
“Well, and who wants your wet boots on the counter, I should like to know. Then, if you please, he calls me a conspiring woman because I tells him to stop and put them on before he goes ’ome.”
“Want to go ’ome,” said the little man. “ ’Ome to my wife and kids. Trying to keep a man from ’is wife.”
“No one wants to keep you from your wife, you old silly. All I says is for Gawd’s sake put on your boots before you go ’ome. What’ll your wife think of you coming ’ome without boots.”
“She won’t mind ’ow I come ’ome. Why, bless you, I ain’t been ’ome at all for five years. It’s ’ard to be separated from a wife and kids by a conspiring woman trying to make yer put on yer boots.”
“My dear, she’s quite right, you know,” said Miss Runcible. “You’d far better put on your boots.”
“There, ’ear what the lady says. Lady says you’ve to put on your boots.”
The little man took his boots from the landlady, looked at Miss Runcible with a searching glance, and threw them into the canal. “Lady,” he said with feeling. “Trousers,” and then he paddled off in his socks into the darkness.
“There ain’t no ’arm in ’im really,” said the landlady, “only he do get a bit wild when he’s ’ad the drink. Wasting good boots like that. … I expect he’ll spend the night in
