“You’re wanted there badly,” he explained.
When he had finished we made a dive for the telephone directory, and turned up “625 Chiswick.”
Then we did a grin. It was the number of Wormwood Scrubs Prison!
After an interval our club telephone-bell started a perfect crescendo of violent rings many times repeated, and I’m told that the language that came on the wire from the victims of the joke ought to have shattered the receiver.
What the Governor of Wormwood Scrubs thought (or said) about the affair I have no means of knowing. But I can guess.
Yet another amusing happening at the Vaudeville Club occurs to me. There chanced to saunter in there one afternoon a member known as “Big Fred,” a Leeds man, who rather fancies himself at billiards. There was also in the club at the same time Fred Lindrum, the Australian champion.
The latter was known to everybody there--excepting Big Fred. The conversation was purposely switched on to billiards, and presently a match, for drinks round, was got up between the two Freddies, the champion having previously let it be known to the rest of us that he would not attempt to show his real form until his opponent and he had each made about seventy, when he would wade in and run out.
We rubbed our hands, and smiled. “Cod” bets flew round as thickly as bees in a clover-bed in summer. Big Fred, suspecting nothing, was quite proud of the sensation the match was creating. Lindrum winked at us solemnly behind his opponent’s back. It was his turn to play.
“Now the fun begins,” we whispered to each other.
The champion played several perfect shots in succession, scoring twenty or so. Then he tried an exhibition stroke, and missed by a hair’s breadth.
Big Fred took up the running, scoring eighteen, an unusually big break for him, and leaving the balls in a well-nigh impossible position. Lindrum did his best, but failed. Then Big Fred ran out.
We looked at one another in blank amazement. The impossible had happened. The Australian champion had been beaten, and by a third-rate amateur.
Big Fred was beaming all over, immensely pleased with himself. “I’ll give you ten start this time,” he said.
There was a perfect roar of laughter at this. We simply couldn’t help it. Big Fred was a good deal puzzled. Also he was somewhat nettled. He couldn’t understand what we were laughing at.