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    The Man With Two Left Feet
    The Man With Two Left Feet
    The Man With Two Left Feet
    Ebook258 pages4 hours

    The Man With Two Left Feet

    By P. G. Wodehouse

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The Man With Two Left Feet, and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom in 1917 by Methuen & Co., London. Many of the stories had previously appeared in the Strand in the UK and the Saturday Evening Post in the U.S. Most of the stories concern relationships, sports, and household pets. None feature any of Wodehouse's regular characters. "Extricating Young Gussie" marks the first appearance of some of Wodehouse's most well-known and beloved characters, Jeeves and his master Bertie Wooster (although here Bertie's surname appears to be Mannering-Phipps, and Jeeves' role is very small), along with Bertie's fearsome Aunt Agatha.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateDec 12, 2012
    ISBN9781625582201
    The Man With Two Left Feet
    Author

    P. G. Wodehouse

    P. G. Wodehouse was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the twentieth century.

    Read more from P. G. Wodehouse

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    Reviews for The Man With Two Left Feet

    3.5/5

    150 ratings13 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I had picked this book up primarily to read 'Extracting Young Gussie', the story where the beloved Jeeves and Bertie Wooster duo are first introduced. Jeeves, however, isn't quite himself and serving tea is about all the action that he gets in this story. Bertie, who is a Mannering-Phipps and not a Wooster, still refers to Jeeves as "my man", but otherwise there is no sign that Jeeves is going to be something special. (Perhaps Wodehouse was still formulating his idea of a genius valet.)

      Anyhow, the other stories do more than make up for that slight disappointment of a first Jeeves and Wooster story. My favorite ones were the two stories narrated by the cutest little dog that has ever narrated a short story.
    • 3/5

      This is a wonderful collection of thirteen stories. Some are silly, some are bitter-sweet, but all have a good ending. Anyone in need of a light book, this could be it. Even when they start as sad stories, each ends with a wonderful note. A hopeful note.

      Some stories I really liked and some I loved.

      BILL THE BLOODHOUND - a funny story about a detective (sort of) finding his true calling.

      "There might be detectives whose work was above this reproach, but he was a confirmed creeper, and he knew it. It wasn't his fault. The boss told him to creep, and he crept."

      EXTRICATING YOUNG GUSSIE - Bertie Wooster was sent by his horrible aunt Agatha to New York to prevent his cousin to marry a vaudeville artist.

      "She bosses her husband, Spencer Gregson, a battered little chappie on the Stock Exchange. She bosses my cousin, Gussie Mannering-Phipps. She bosses her sister-in-law, Gussie's mother. And, worst of all, she bosses me. She has an eye like a man-eating fish, and she has got moral suasion down to a fine point."

      The funniest description of aunt Agatha:

      "I have never met anyone who can give a better imitation of the Ancient Mariner."

      WILTON'S HOLIDAY - a wonderful love story: a man lied he lost his girlfriend to save himself from friendly people who seem to think he is there only to listen, but after he proposed to a girl he liked, she refused him because of that non existent dead girl. I loved it.

      THE MIXER are two stories about luck and misunderstandings told by a dog.

      CROWNED HEADS - Katie lives with her grandfather whose latest delusion is thinking that he is the King of England. Then she meets a young man who is famous and wants to marry her. But her grandfather doesn't want her to marry a commoner.

      AT GEISENHEIMER'S - a professional dancer's story how she taught a man from country how he should value his wife and found herself along the way. The story has a great ending.

      THE MAKING OF MAC'S - a beautiful story of a very successful restaurant.

      ONE TOUCH OF NATURE - What's a baseball game worth to a fan who hasn't seen one for five years?

      BLACK FOR LUCK - A black cat has decided to make a building his domain. He is moving from one artist to another bringing his own brand of luck.

      THE ROMANCE OF AN UGLY POLICEMAN - a scarred beat policeman with a broken nose's love story. I didn't like the unfair ending of this story.

      A SEA OF TROUBLES - After trying a number of things which will stop the stomach pain, Mr Meggs decided to kill himself. "Mr Meggs's point, the main plank, as it were, in his suicidal platform, was that with him it was beside the question whether or not it was nobler to suffer in the mind. The mind hardly entered into it at all."

      THE MAN WITH TWO LEFT FEET is a story of a man who couldn't dance so he decided to ask someone to teach him because he wanted to surprise his wife. A wonderful story.
    • 4/5
      Although this is very early Wodehouse, I enjoyed this varied selection of short stories, including one which -I later learned - was the first time he wrote about Bertie Wooster and his manservant Jeeves.

      I'm pretty sure I've read some of these stories before, but that didn't matter at all. I particularly enjoyed a two-part tale narrated by a dog where the humour relies on the dog's trust in human nature, and some rather clever writing that lets the reader understand what's really going on. There are also more standard stories of relationships marred by misunderstandings, of mishaps and mistakes that, while naturally seeming a little old fashioned, are still relevant to the modern mind.

      The title story - about a man who is unable to dance - is the last one in the book, and one which, like several, was rather predictable; not that this matters with Wodehouse humour, as the gently ironic style and upper-class language are what make the stories so enjoyable. While his brilliant use of language hasn't quite come to the fore in this selection, there were some passages that made me smile; for instance, in describing an area populated with artistes of all kind, from the perspective of a policemen, he writes:

      'They assault and batter nothing but pianos, they steal nothing but ideas, they murder nobody except Chopin and Beethoven.'

      Definitely recommended for any Wodehouse fans who enjoy short stories, but not ideal as an introduction to the great man. Free in ebook form from Project Gutenberg.
    • 4/5
      A lovely assortment of stories -- clever, funny and very sweet without being maudlin. I never read Wodehouse before and I was simply blown away by these stories. They were so refreshing. I particularly loved "The Mixer" written from a dog's point of view and "The Romance of an Ugly Policeman," but there wasn't a single one of them that I didn't thoroughly enjoy.
    • 4/5
      Thirteen short stories by Wodehouse. Only one is a Jeeves and Wooster tale, and Jeeves hardly appears. Our two favorites were "The Mixer" parts one and two, told from the perspective of a dog.
    • 5/5
      Loved ðis. Some funny, underſtated ſtories; ſome pugnant ones to ðe point of elicitiŋ a feƿ, tender tears.
    • 4/5
      This is a lovely selection of short stories from Wodehouse. The 13 stories are largely absent of the famed, and often hilarious, Bertie and Jeeves but are still enjoyable in their own right. Each story has a sense of playfulness to them making them fun to read despite the sometimes heavy subject matter (like suicide) .
    • 3/5

      This is a wonderful collection of thirteen stories. Some are silly, some are bitter-sweet, but all have a good ending. Anyone in need of a light book, this could be it. Even when they start as sad stories, each ends with a wonderful note. A hopeful note.

      Some stories I really liked and some I loved.

      BILL THE BLOODHOUND - a funny story about a detective (sort of) finding his true calling.

      "There might be detectives whose work was above this reproach, but he was a confirmed creeper, and he knew it. It wasn't his fault. The boss told him to creep, and he crept."

      EXTRICATING YOUNG GUSSIE - Bertie Wooster was sent by his horrible aunt Agatha to New York to prevent his cousin to marry a vaudeville artist.

      "She bosses her husband, Spencer Gregson, a battered little chappie on the Stock Exchange. She bosses my cousin, Gussie Mannering-Phipps. She bosses her sister-in-law, Gussie's mother. And, worst of all, she bosses me. She has an eye like a man-eating fish, and she has got moral suasion down to a fine point."

      The funniest description of aunt Agatha:

      "I have never met anyone who can give a better imitation of the Ancient Mariner."

      WILTON'S HOLIDAY - a wonderful love story: a man lied he lost his girlfriend to save himself from friendly people who seem to think he is there only to listen, but after he proposed to a girl he liked, she refused him because of that non existent dead girl. I loved it.

      THE MIXER are two stories about luck and misunderstandings told by a dog.

      CROWNED HEADS - Katie lives with her grandfather whose latest delusion is thinking that he is the King of England. Then she meets a young man who is famous and wants to marry her. But her grandfather doesn't want her to marry a commoner.

      AT GEISENHEIMER'S - a professional dancer's story how she taught a man from country how he should value his wife and found herself along the way. The story has a great ending.

      THE MAKING OF MAC'S - a beautiful story of a very successful restaurant.

      ONE TOUCH OF NATURE - What's a baseball game worth to a fan who hasn't seen one for five years?

      BLACK FOR LUCK - A black cat has decided to make a building his domain. He is moving from one artist to another bringing his own brand of luck.

      THE ROMANCE OF AN UGLY POLICEMAN - a scarred beat policeman with a broken nose's love story. I didn't like the unfair ending of this story.

      A SEA OF TROUBLES - After trying a number of things which will stop the stomach pain, Mr Meggs decided to kill himself. "Mr Meggs's point, the main plank, as it were, in his suicidal platform, was that with him it was beside the question whether or not it was nobler to suffer in the mind. The mind hardly entered into it at all."

      THE MAN WITH TWO LEFT FEET is a story of a man who couldn't dance so he decided to ask someone to teach him because he wanted to surprise his wife. A wonderful story.
    • 4/5
      I started reading this short story collection for the Jeeves story, "Extricating Young Gussie", but I really enjoyed all of the stories. My favorites were "Bill the Bloodhound" (Henry and Alice, awww), "Wilton's Holiday", "The Mixer" (Part 1), "At Geisenheimer's" (nice twist ending), and "The Man with Two Left Feet" (Henry and Minnie, awww).

      Some quotes I bookmarked:

      "Spencer was one of those slack-jawed youths who are constitutionally incapable of preserving a secret."

      "Gussie is making a perfect idiot of himself...He has lost his head over a creature."

      "Mary, in these days, simply couldn't see that he was on the earth. She looked round him, above him, and through him, but never at him; which was rotten from Wilton's point of view, for he had developed a sort of wistful expression—I am convinced that he practised it before the mirror after his bath—which should have worked wonders, if only he could have got action with it. But she avoided his eye as if he had been a creditor whom she was trying to slide past on the street."
    • 3/5
      I picked up this classic from P G Wodehouse purely based on his authorship and he has stood true to his reputation. Book is collection of interesting, humorous and sensitive stories from various angles - all somehow connected to theatrical circle. BILL THE BLOODHOUND is by far the most hilarious story in the collection where a below-average detective falls in love with a drama girl. MIXER stories are unique by nature of being narrated from point of view of a dog. AT GEISENHEIMER is very sensitive and has good climax. SEA OF TROUBLES had good start but frizzled end. And titled story MAN WITH TWO LEFT FEET is romantic with sensitive end.
    • 3/5
      A bit of a mixed bag, but absolutely worth the read for 'At Geisenheimer's' alone - a wonderful short story, so good that I felt compelled to read it out loud to the family.
    • 4/5
      I am reading this through DailyLit, a website which sends you free parts of books everyday in an email. I find it works with books I find too much to read in a sitting. I don't work for them, just find that it effects how I see a book.

      I loved this, each tale is so short and so hilarious. The characters get into such ridiculous circumstances and yet it works out in the end. No development, just quick snappy stories.

      He ridicules so much, I laughed out loud many times.
    • 3/5
      This is one of my first Wodehouse ventures, and I must say I did enjoy it. The Man with Two Left Feet is full of charming short stories full of wit and humor. I particularly enjoyed The Ugly Policeman, and the story told in the voice of the guard dog was unique and entertaining. I can't really say whether this collection is typical of Wodehouse's work, but I hope it is!

    Book preview

    The Man With Two Left Feet - P. G. Wodehouse

    Bill the Bloodhound

    There’s a divinity that shapes our ends. Consider the case of Henry Pifield Rice, detective.

    I must explain Henry early, to avoid disappointment. If I simply said he was a detective, and let it go at that, I should be obtaining the reader’s interest under false pretences. He was really only a sort of detective, a species of sleuth. At Stafford’s International Investigation Bureau, in the Strand, where he was employed, they did not require him to solve mysteries which had baffled the police. He had never measured a footprint in his life, and what he did not know about bloodstains would have filled a library. The sort of job they gave Henry was to stand outside a restaurant in the rain, and note what time someone inside left it. In short, it is not ‘Pifield Rice, Investigator. No. 1.–The Adventure of the Maharajah’s Ruby’ that I submit to your notice, but the unsensational doings of a quite commonplace young man, variously known to his comrades at the Bureau as ‘Fathead’, ‘That blighter what’s-his-name’, and ‘Here, you!’

    Henry lived in a boarding-house in Guildford Street. One day a new girl came to the boarding-house, and sat next to Henry at meals. Her name was Alice Weston. She was small and quiet, and rather pretty. They got on splendidly. Their conversation, at first confined to the weather and the moving-pictures, rapidly became more intimate. Henry was surprised to find that she was on the stage, in the chorus. Previous chorus-girls at the boarding-house had been of a more pronounced type–good girls, but noisy, and apt to wear beauty-spots. Alice Weston was different.

    ‘I’m rehearsing at present,’ she said. ‘I’m going out on tour next month in The Girl From Brighton. What do you do, Mr Rice?’

    Henry paused for a moment before replying. He knew how sensational he was going to be.

    ‘I’m a detective.’

    Usually, when he told girls his profession, squeaks of amazed admiration greeted him. Now he was chagrined to perceive in the brown eyes that met his distinct disapproval.

    ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, a little anxiously, for even at this early stage in their acquaintance he was conscious of a strong desire to win her approval. ‘Don’t you like detectives?’

    ‘I don’t know. Somehow I shouldn’t have thought you were one.’

    This restored Henry’s equanimity somewhat. Naturally a detective does not want to look like a detective and give the whole thing away right at the start.

    ‘I think–you won’t be offended?’

    ‘Go on.’

    ‘I’ve always looked on it as rather a sneaky job.’

    ‘Sneaky!’ moaned Henry.

    ‘Well, creeping about, spying on people.’

    Henry was appalled. She had defined his own trade to a nicety. There might be detectives whose work was above this reproach, but he was a confirmed creeper, and he knew it. It wasn’t his fault. The boss told him to creep, and he crept. If he declined to creep, he would be sacked instanter. It was hard, and yet he felt the sting of her words, and in his bosom the first seeds of dissatisfaction with his occupation took root.

    You might have thought that this frankness on the girl’s part would have kept Henry from falling in love with her. Certainly the dignified thing would have been to change his seat at table, and take his meals next to someone who appreciated the romance of detective work a little more. But no, he remained where he was, and presently Cupid, who never shoots with a surer aim than through the steam of boarding-house hash, sniped him where he sat.

    He proposed to Alice Weston. She refused him.

    ‘It’s not because I’m not fond of you. I think you’re the nicest man I ever met.’ A good deal of assiduous attention had enabled Henry to win this place in her affections. He had worked patiently and well before actually putting his fortune to the test. ‘I’d marry you tomorrow if things were different. But I’m on the stage, and I mean to stick there. Most of the girls want to get off it, but not me. And one thing I’ll never do is marry someone who isn’t in the profession. My sister Genevieve did, and look what happened to her. She married a commercial traveller, and take it from me he travelled. She never saw him for more than five minutes in the year, except when he was selling gent’s hosiery in the same town where she was doing her refined speciality, and then he’d just wave his hand and whiz by, and start travelling again. My husband has got to be close by, where I can see him. I’m sorry, Henry, but I know I’m right.’

    It seemed final, but Henry did not wholly despair. He was a resolute young man. You have to be to wait outside restaurants in the rain for any length of time.

    He had an inspiration. He sought out a dramatic agent.

    ‘I want to go on the stage, in musical comedy.’

    ‘Let’s see you dance.’

    ‘I can’t dance.’

    ‘Sing,’ said the agent. ‘Stop singing,’ added the agent, hastily.

    ‘You go away and have a nice cup of hot tea,’ said the agent, soothingly, ‘and you’ll be as right as anything in the morning.’

    Henry went away.

    A few days later, at the Bureau, his fellow-detective Simmonds hailed him.

    ‘Here, you! The boss wants you. Buck up!’

    Mr Stafford was talking into the telephone. He replaced the receiver as Henry entered.

    ‘Oh, Rice, here’s a woman wants her husband shadowed while he’s on the road. He’s an actor. I’m sending you. Go to this address, and get photographs and all particulars. You’ll have to catch the eleven o’clock train on Friday.’

    ‘Yes, sir.’

    ‘He’s in The Girl From Brighton company. They open at Bristol.’

    It sometimes seemed to Henry as if Fate did it on purpose. If the commission had had to do with any other company, it would have been well enough, for, professionally speaking, it was the most important with which he had ever been entrusted. If he had never met Alice Weston, and heard her views upon detective work, he would have been pleased and flattered. Things being as they were, it was Henry’s considered opinion that Fate had slipped one over on him.

    In the first place, what torture to be always near her, unable to reveal himself; to watch her while she disported herself in the company of other men. He would be disguised, and she would not recognize him; but he would recognize her, and his sufferings would be dreadful.

    In the second place, to have to do his creeping about and spying practically in her presence–

    Still, business was business.

    At five minutes to eleven on the morning named he was at the station, a false beard and spectacles shielding his identity from the public eye. If you had asked him he would have said that he was a Scotch business man. As a matter of fact, he looked far more like a motor-car coming through a haystack.

    The platform was crowded. Friends of the company had come to see the company off. Henry looked on discreetly from behind a stout porter, whose bulk formed a capital screen. In spite of himself, he was impressed. The stage at close quarters always thrilled him. He recognized celebrities. The fat man in the brown suit was Walter Jelliffe, the comedian and star of the company. He stared keenly at him through the spectacles. Others of the famous were scattered about. He saw Alice. She was talking to a man with a face like a hatchet, and smiling, too, as if she enjoyed it. Behind the matted foliage which he had inflicted on his face, Henry’s teeth came together with a snap.

    In the weeks that followed, as he dogged ‘The Girl From Brighton’ company from town to town, it would be difficult to say whether Henry was happy or unhappy. On the one hand, to realize that Alice was so near and yet so inaccessible was a constant source of misery; yet, on the other, he could not but admit that he was having the very dickens of a time, loafing round the country like this.

    He was made for this sort of life, he considered. Fate had placed him in a London office, but what he really enjoyed was this unfettered travel. Some gipsy strain in him rendered even the obvious discomforts of theatrical touring agreeable. He liked catching trains; he liked invading strange hotels; above all, he revelled in the artistic pleasure of watching unsuspecting fellow-men as if they were so many ants.

    That was really the best part of the whole thing. It was all very well for Alice to talk about creeping and spying, but, if you considered it without bias, there was nothing degrading about it at all. It was an art. It took brains and a genius for disguise to make a man a successful creeper and spyer. You couldn’t simply say to yourself, ‘I will creep.’ If you attempted to do it in your own person, you would be detected instantly. You had to be an adept at masking your personality. You had to be one man at Bristol and another quite different man at Hull–especially if, like Henry, you were of a gregarious disposition, and liked the society of actors.

    The stage had always fascinated Henry. To meet even minor members of the profession off the boards gave him a thrill. There was a resting juvenile, of fit-up calibre, at his boarding-house who could always get a shilling out of him simply by talking about how he had jumped in and saved the show at the hamlets which he had visited in the course of his wanderings. And on this ‘Girl From Brighton’ tour he was in constant touch with men who really amounted to something. Walter Jelliffe had been a celebrity when Henry was going to school; and Sidney Crane, the baritone, and others of the lengthy cast, were all players not unknown in London. Henry courted them assiduously.

    It had not been hard to scrape acquaintance with them. The principals of the company always put up at the best hotel, and–his expenses being paid by his employer–so did Henry. It was the easiest thing possible to bridge with a well-timed whisky-and-soda the gulf between non-acquaintance and warm friendship. Walter Jelliffe, in particular, was peculiarly accessible. Every time Henry accosted him–as a different individual, of course–and renewed in a fresh disguise the friendship which he had enjoyed at the last town, Walter Jelliffe met him more than half-way.

    It was in the sixth week of the tour that the comedian, promoting him from mere casual acquaintanceship, invited him to come up to his room and smoke a cigar.

    Henry was pleased and flattered. Jelliffe was a personage, always surrounded by admirers, and the compliment was consequently of a high order.

    He lit his cigar. Among his friends at the Green-Room Club it was unanimously held that Walter Jelliffe’s cigars brought him within the scope of the law forbidding the carrying of concealed weapons; but Henry would have smoked the gift of such a man if it had been a cabbage-leaf. He puffed away contentedly. He was made up as an old Indian colonel that week, and he complimented his host on the aroma with a fine old-world courtesy.

    Walter Jelliffe seemed gratified.

    ‘Quite comfortable?’ he asked.

    ‘Quite, I thank you,’ said Henry, fondling his silver moustache.

    ‘That’s right. And now tell me, old man, which of us is it you’re trailing?’

    Henry nearly swallowed his cigar.

    ‘What do you mean?’

    ‘Oh, come,’ protested Jelliffe; ‘there’s no need to keep it up with me. I know you’re a detective. The question is, Who’s the man you’re after? That’s what we’ve all been wondering all this time.’

    All! They had all been wondering! It was worse than Henry could have imagined. Till now he had pictured his position with regard to ‘The Girl From Brighton’ company rather as that of some scientist who, seeing but unseen, keeps a watchful eye on the denizens of a drop of water under his microscope. And they had all detected him–every one of them.

    It was a stunning blow. If there was one thing on which Henry prided himself it was the impenetrability of his disguises. He might be slow; he might be on the stupid side; but he could disguise himself. He had a variety of disguises, each designed to befog the public more hopelessly than the last.

    Going down the street, you would meet a typical commercial traveller, dapper and alert. Anon, you encountered a heavily bearded Australian. Later, maybe, it was a courteous old retired colonel who stopped you and inquired the way to Trafalgar Square. Still later, a rather flashy individual of the sporting type asked you for a match for his cigar. Would you have suspected for one instant that each of these widely differing personalities was in reality one man?

    Certainly you would.

    Henry did not know it, but he had achieved in the eyes of the small servant who answered the front-door bell at his boarding-house a well-established reputation as a humorist of the more practical kind. It was his habit to try his disguises on her. He would ring the bell, inquire for the landlady, and when Bella had gone, leap up the stairs to his room. Here he would remove the disguise, resume his normal appearance, and come downstairs again, humming a careless air. Bella, meanwhile, in the kitchen, would be confiding to her ally the cook that ‘Mr Rice had jest come in, lookin’ sort o’ funny again’.

    He sat and gaped at Walter Jelliffe. The comedian regarded him curiously.

    ‘You look at least a hundred years old,’ he said. ‘What are you made up as? A piece of Gorgonzola?’

    Henry glanced hastily at the mirror. Yes, he did look rather old. He must have overdone some of the lines on his forehead. He looked something between a youngish centenarian and a nonagenarian who had seen a good deal of trouble.

    ‘If you knew how you were demoralizing the company,’ Jelliffe went on, ‘you would drop it. As steady and quiet a lot of boys as ever you met till you came along. Now they do nothing but bet on what disguise you’re going to choose for the next town. I don’t see why you need to change so often. You were all right as the Scotchman at Bristol. We were all saying how nice you looked. You should have stuck to that. But what do you do at Hull but roll in in a scrubby moustache and a tweed suit, looking rotten. However, all that is beside the point. It’s a free country. If you like to spoil your beauty, I suppose there’s no law against it. What I want to know is, who’s the man? Whose track are you sniffing on, Bill? You’ll pardon my calling you Bill. You’re known as Bill the Bloodhound in the company. Who’s the man?’

    ‘Never mind,’ said Henry.

    He was aware, as he made it, that it was not a very able retort, but he was feeling too limp for satisfactory repartee. Criticisms in the Bureau, dealing with his alleged solidity of skull, he did not resent. He attributed them to man’s natural desire to chaff his fellow-man. But to be unmasked by the general public in this way was another matter. It struck at the root of all things.

    ‘But I do mind,’ objected Jelliffe. ‘It’s most important. A lot of money hangs on it. We’ve got a sweepstake on in the company, the holder of the winning name to take the entire receipts. Come on. Who is he?’

    Henry rose and made for the door. His feelings were too deep for words. Even a minor detective has his professional pride; and the knowledge that his espionage is being made the basis of sweepstakes by his quarry cuts this to the quick.

    ‘Here, don’t go! Where are you going?’

    ‘Back to London,’ said Henry, bitterly. ‘It’s a lot of good my staying here now, isn’t it?’

    ‘I should say it was–to me. Don’t be in a hurry. You’re thinking that, now we know all about you, your utility as a sleuth has waned to some extent. Is that it?’

    ‘Well?’

    ‘Well, why worry? What does it matter to you? You don’t get paid by results, do you? Your boss said Trail along. Well, do it, then. I should hate to lose you. I don’t suppose you know it, but you’ve been the best mascot this tour that I’ve ever come across. Right from the start we’ve been playing to enormous business. I’d rather kill a black cat than lose you. Drop the disguises, and stay with us. Come behind all you want, and be sociable.’

    A detective is only human. The less of a detective, the more human he is. Henry was not much of a detective, and his human traits were consequently highly developed. From a boy, he had never been able to resist curiosity. If a crowd collected in the street he always added himself to it, and he would have stopped to gape at a window with ‘Watch this window’ written on it, if he had been running for his life from wild bulls. He was, and always had been, intensely desirous of some day penetrating behind the scenes of a theatre.

    And there was another thing. At last, if he accepted this invitation, he would be able to see and speak to Alice Weston, and interfere with the manoeuvres of the hatchet-faced man, on whom he had brooded with suspicion and jealousy since that first morning at the station. To see Alice! Perhaps, with eloquence, to talk her out of that ridiculous resolve of hers!

    ‘Why, there’s something in that,’ he said.

    ‘Rather! Well, that’s settled. And now, touching that sweep, who is it?’

    ‘I can’t tell you that. You see, so far as that goes, I’m just where I was before. I can still watch–whoever it is I’m watching.’

    ‘Dash it, so you can. I didn’t think of that,’ said Jelliffe, who possessed a sensitive conscience. ‘Purely between ourselves, it isn’t me, is it?’

    Henry eyed him inscrutably. He could look inscrutable at times.

    ‘Ah!’ he said, and left quickly, with the feeling that, however poorly he had shown up during the actual interview, his exit had been good. He might have been a failure in the matter of disguise, but nobody could have put more quiet sinister-ness into that ‘Ah!’ It did much to soothe him and ensure a peaceful night’s rest.

    On the following night, for the first time in his life, Henry found himself behind the scenes of a theatre, and instantly began to experience all the complex emotions which come to the layman in that situation. That is to say, he felt like a cat which has strayed into a strange hostile back-yard. He was in a new world, inhabited by weird creatures, who flitted about in an eerie semi-darkness, like brightly coloured animals in a cavern.

    ‘The Girl From Brighton’ was one of those exotic productions specially designed for the Tired Business Man. It relied for a large measure of its success on the size and appearance of its chorus, and on their constant change of costume. Henry, as a consequence, was the centre of a kaleidoscopic whirl of feminine loveliness, dressed to represent such varying flora and fauna as rabbits, Parisian students, colleens, Dutch peasants, and daffodils. Musical comedy is the Irish stew of the drama. Anything may be put into it, with the certainty that it will improve the general effect.

    He scanned the throng for a sight of Alice. Often as he had seen the piece in the course of its six weeks’ wandering in the wilderness he had never succeeded in recognizing her from the front of the house. Quite possibly, he thought, she might be on the stage already, hidden in a rose-tree or some other shrub, ready at the signal to burst forth upon the audience in short skirts; for in ‘The Girl From Brighton’ almost anything could turn suddenly into a chorus-girl.

    Then he saw her, among the daffodils. She was not a particularly convincing daffodil, but she looked good to Henry. With wabbling knees he butted his way through the crowd and seized her hand enthusiastically.

    ‘Why, Henry! Where did you come from?’

    ‘I am glad to see you!’

    ‘How did you get here?’

    ‘I am glad to see you!’

    At this point the stage-manager, bellowing from the prompt-box, urged Henry to desist. It is one of the mysteries of behind-the-scenes acoustics that a whisper from any minor member of the company can be heard all over the house, while the stage-manager can burst himself without annoying the audience.

    Henry, awed by authority, relapsed into silence. From the unseen stage came the sound of someone singing a song about the moon. June was also mentioned. He recognized the song as one that had always bored him. He disliked the woman who was singing it–a Miss Clarice Weaver, who played the heroine

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