“I don’t get you.”
“Skedaddled. Taken the petty cash. Overdrawn at the bank. Done a moonlight flit last night.”
“Oh!” said Mame sternly as light broke upon her. “You mean he’s quit.”
The torpid gentleman having reinforced his lucidity by a pull at his jug of beer, remarked pensively: “Yuss. The pawty in question ’as quit.”
Mame’s vision of being paid on the spot in honest cash for value honestly given began to recede. “Well, I want my money.” But the futility of such a demand was clear.
“Other pawties wants it too,” said the roughneck mildly. “That’s why I’m setting here.”
The light continued to broaden. “Then you must be a-a-what-do-you-call-em?” Mame was confronted suddenly by a limit to her knowledge of the British idiom.
“A bailiff.” The roughneck buried his face in the jug.
“Can you tell me how to get the bucks he owes me?” Mame had given up all hope. But there was no harm in asking the question.
The bailiff shook his large and ugly yet not ill-humoured head. “A bad egg, I fancy. The paper’s broke. Between you and me, missy”—the beery voice grew confidential—“I’ve been put in by the debenture holders. As you might say I represent a little matter of four thousand quid.”