Then, unlike the missing money, it all came back to him.
The rush of traffic was diminishing now, and the roar of a few minutes back had become a mere rumble. It was almost as if London, sympathising with his sorrow, had delicately hushed its giant voice. To such an extent, in fact, was its voice hushed that that of the Wellington Street vocalist was once more plainly audible, and there was in what he was singing a poignant truth which had not impressed itself upon Sam when he had first heard it.
“Sailors don’t care,” chanted the vocalist. “Sailors don’t care. It’s something to do with the salt in the blood. Sailors don’t care.”
CHAPTER FOUR
SCENE OUTSIDE FASHIONABLE NIGHT-CLUB
THE mental condition of a man who at half past eleven at night suddenly finds himself penniless and without shelter in the heart of the great city must necessarily be for a while somewhat confused. Sam’s first coherent thought was to go back and try to recover that half-crown from the wandering minstrel. After a very brief reflection, however, he dismissed this scheme as too visionary for practical consideration. His acquaintance with the other had been slight, but he had seen enough of him to gather that he was not one of those rare spiritual fellows who give half-crowns back. The minstrel was infirm and old, but many years would have to elapse before he became senile enough for that. No, some solution on quite different lines was required; and, thinking deeply, Sam began to move slowly in the direction of Charing Cross.
He was as yet far from being hopeless. Indeed, his mood at this point might have been called optimistic; for he realised that, if this disaster had been decreed by fate from the beginning of time—and he supposed it had been, though that palmist had made no mention of it—it could hardly have happened at a more convenient spot. The Old Wrykynian dinner had only just broken up, which meant that this portion of London must be full of men who had been at school with him and would doubtless be delighted to help him out with a temporary loan. At any moment now he might run into some kindly old schoolfellow.
And almost immediately he did. Or, rather, the old schoolfellow ran into him. He had reached the Vaudeville Theatre and had paused, debating within himself the advisability of crossing the street and seeing how the hunting was on the other side, when a solid body rammed him in the back.
“Oh, sorry! Frightfully sorry! I say, awfully sorry!”
It was a voice which had been absent from Sam’s life for some years, but he recognised it almost before he had recovered his balance. He wheeled joyfully round on the stout and red-faced young man who was with some difficulty retrieving his hat from the gutter.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but you are extraordinarily like a man I used to know named J. W. Braddock.”