Man With Two Left Feet | Page 4

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