I spent my first evening in going over my clothing and other possessions, ripping out name tags, obliterating initials, and cleaning off fingerprints. I would not be trapped again as I had nearly been in Manchester.
The second day and the early evening thereof I walked through the streets, thinking furiously. And the only conclusions I could come to anent my problems were bitter and lonely and hopeless.
Going "home" about eight o'clock, I wandered into the parlor and was accosted diffidently by a very low-looking form of life, which begged the pleasure of my company in a nearby hooch hut. I agreed. I would have stood drinks to a wolverine if the creature would have listened to me. I was starved for speech.
When I had bought him a few rounds, his taste running to that noble old British concoction, a four-o'-gin-hot, we began to talk freely: of anything, the weather, the latest race results, the difficulty of getting "real prime raw gin"....
He was a curious fellow. The name he gave me was Arold Smiff, which I imagine had once been Harold Smith; he was small and stringy and of a tobacco-brown hue, with eyes in which liquor-broken veins had long since stained the irises and the white to an all-over muddy-crimson. He stank like a shebeen, his breath would have shriveled a brass monkey, but I soon noticed something really odd about him--he did not seem to be at all intoxicated. I made bold to comment on this.
"Why, General," he said, grinning wryly, "fak is, I been lushed for so long, I can't get lushed any more hardly at all. You ever had the snykes?"
I shook my head. He nodded wisely. "Ar, I thought not. You're clarss. Me, I got a permanent case of 'em, bloody snykes and 'orrors all the tyme. You wouldn't know what it's lyke, General, seeing such 'orrors all the bloody damn tyme."
_Would I not, I said to myself, oh, would I not!_
"No, you're clarss, any bloody fool could see that." He leaned over confidentially, and I could fairly feel my eyebrows curl under that breath. "Between pals, now, wot's your lay?"
"Gyme, General, gyme! I knew you was hot stuff the mo' I seen yer at Old Mag's. Wot's your specialty--jools?"
Good Lord! The man took me for a jewel-thief!
We were sitting in a booth. He craned his neck around to see that no one could overhear us. "Aye, but it's something fust-rate. You're no bloomin' snaveler nor knuckler."