“Lord ‘Chum-ley’!” he yelled.
He eventually spotted Cholmondeley and gave him the telegram. Jim’s eyes opened wide.
“Say, that ain’t your name, is it?”
Cholmondeley nodded.
“Wal, if that don’t beat the band!”
A man that could make “Chumley” out of Cholmondeley was certainly a juggler with letters.
“Why in hell do you spell it that way?”
“Euphony, my deah chap—euphony!”
Who “Euphony” might have been Jim hadn’t the foggiest notion. He relapsed into a moody silence, wishing the club at the bottom of the sea and himself back at Medicine Bow, where men pronounced words in the way they were spelt—more or less.
Jim’s career in that club was anything but smooth. Under the wing of Cholmondeley he was saved from absolute ostracism. Two weeks of utter purgatory were lived through, but Cholmondeley 42 was staunch. Every day he turned up at the club and bade Jim, on peril of his life, do likewise.