Over a whisky-and-soda we got into conversation, and presently he asked me who I was.
“My name is Carlton,” I said, “I’m at the Palace Theatre this week.”
“Oh yes,” he replied, “of course. I saw you the other evening. Wonderful good show, yours.”
“Glad you like it,” I said. “But say—do you remember the day when you took me by the scruff of my neck and threw me out of your old place in the Battersea Park Road, after accusing me of stealing money from the till; money that your wife’s favourite boy afterwards got three months for stealing? Do you remember that—eh?”
The landlord looked surprised. So did his wife, who was behind the bar with him at the time. But they would neither of them admit that they remembered anything about the affair.
Of course they did, though; only they would not acknowledge it. Possibly they thought I might bring an action against them, even after the lapse of all that time, for wrongful dismissal and defamation of character.
But to resume the thread of my story. At the time I was thrown out of the “pub,” and out of work at the same time, we used to live in the neighbourhood of Clapham Junction, in a turning off the Falcon Road.
There was a man at a pitch near here who earned his living at a game called “covering the spot.” On a table covered with white oil-cloth he had painted several round red spots, each about as big as a plate. The player was given five tin discs, for which he paid a penny, and his aim was to drop these on one of the spots so as to completely cover it, leaving not even a peep of the red showing. If he succeeded in doing this he got a watch, which the proprietor of the game, if the winner so willed it, would buy back again for three shillings and sixpence.
It was rather a fascinating game to watch, and having nothing else in particular to do I stood and watched it for a long while. He was a splendid patterer, was the proprietor, and he was simply raking in the pennies like dirt all the while. The game was new then.
“Money for nothing!” was one of his stock phrases he kept shouting out. So it was “money for nothing,” but he was the man who got the money, I noticed. “If you don’t speculate, you can’t accumulate,” was another of his gags. “This, gentlemen, is a scientific game of skill. Span your tins and drop them on. Try it! Try it! Try it! Cover the red, and carry off a watch. Hide the red you win; show the red you lose. Come along, gents! Come along! Come along! Faint heart never won fair lady!” And so on, and so on. And in between his patter, at intervals, he would himself “cover the red” with the five discs to demonstrate how easily it could be done.