O authors, remember to join your flats!
The novel was going splendidly. I had been revelling in it. I was
sitting in one chair, with my feet in another, not far from the fire,
plunged in the story, when all of a sudden my pleasure went.
It was in Chapter xvii., where the young doctor takes a taxi and rushes
up to the actress's flat so as to be there first, before Lord
Burlington. You must understand that the young doctor is newly in
practice and has the greatest difficulty in making both ends meet. Well,
it says that he sprang from the cab and was half-way up the stairs in a
moment. That was all right, but the point is that he stayed two hours
hunting for the missing letter. Now this is a very exciting passage,
because we know that the detective may be here any minute, and Lord
Burlington is coming too, and if either of them--well, the point is
that, owing to the author forgetting to make the young doctor pay the
taxi-man, all my pleasure went.
I am not unduly economical, but I hate downright waste, and here was the
taximeter ticking all through the rest of that chapter and the next, and
further still. Had it been Lord Burlington's cab I should have cared
less, for he was rich; had it been the detective's I should not have
cared at all, because the driver might have gone to Scotland Yard for
his money. But the young doctor was so poor, and sooner or later he
would have to come out of the flat again, and then he would be caught
and faced with an impossible bill; and this got on my nerves.
As I say, the story was frightfully exciting just there, but I found
myself, instead of participating in the excitement, saying, "Another
twopence"; "Twopence more"; "It must be four shillings by now," "Five
shillings," and so on. Not even when the face of the Chinaman appeared
at the window--he had climbed up the water-pipe and had a dagger in his
teeth--could I really concentrate. "Seven-and-six by now," was all I
said.
The result was that the effect of the book was lost on me and I cared
nothing for what happened to any one. The taximeter ticked through every
subsequent page. Long after we got away from London altogether and the
young doctor was on his way to Hong Kong, racing the detective, I still
heard the taximeter ticking; just because the man had never been paid.
It ticked through the wedding bells; and it ticked through the
strangling of Lord Burlington in one of the Adelphi arches, with which
the story closes.
And that is why I say, O authors, remember to join your flats.
* * * * *
The Slump in Prussians.
(SORTES VERGILIANÆ.)
"_Procumbit humi Bosch._"
* * * * *