“Then an idea struck me as I caught sight of Scrubby, the dramatic critic of The Scorcher, at the other end of the room, already preparing to leave. Scrubby was a reliable man, I knew, and the best available for the purpose I had in my mind. Crossing over to where he was, I showed him the telegram, and explained my difficulty.
“‘Nothing easier, my boy,’ he exclaimed, clapping me on the back. ‘Trust to me. I’m going down to the show, and will leave you a program here, marked with my notes, on my way to the office. If you’re back here by half-past ten, you’ll find it waiting. Then you can scribble your notices for the two papers from my notes, and send them in in the usual way.’
“Warmly shaking him by the hand, I accepted his offer, and hastened away to Twickenham. When I reached the house I found my darling already delirious in the first stages of a high fever, and calling for me. I remained by her side, holding her hand in mine and soothing her as best I could until she had fallen off into a fitful doze. Then I stole quietly away, whispering to Mrs. Rayburn that I would return as soon as my business in town was concluded.
“When I got back to the club I found, as I expected, the program lying in the rack, inside an envelope addressed to me. Scrubby’s analysis of the production, play and acting, was distinctly unfavorable, his marginal notes having such a bitterly acrid flavor that I concluded it must all have been very bad indeed; and so I followed suit with good interest, cutting up everything and everybody concerned in the most unmerciful manner. The notices written, I put them into separate envelopes, the one addressed to The Blunderer, the other to The Bullseye, and sent them to the offices by the club messenger. This done, I went back to Twickenham.
“Returning to town the following morning, almost the first person I met was Charlie Dashwood. I made to speak to him, when, to my utter bewilderment, he stopped me short with a motion of his hand, looked me full in the face, and slowly drew a copy of that morning’s Bullseye from his pocket. Opening it, he pointed to my criticism of the production of ‘For Life or Death,’ at the Lorne Theatre, and held it up close to my eyes, then, deliberately turning his back upon me, passed on without uttering a syllable. I stared after him in a kind of daze as he rapidly disappeared. What on earth could he mean? What could he be driving at? In all my experience of him I had never known him to act so strangely. Could he be going off his head, or was I going off mine, or what?
“If I wanted an explanation I had not long to wait for one. As I entered the office, the hall-keeper handed me a letter, the superscription of which I recognized as that of the editor. I opened the letter with an unaccountable trembling at the fingertips. What I found inside was a check for three months’ salary, with a notification to the effect that in consequence of my great success in having that morning made The Blunderer the laughing stock of all London, the proprietors considered it due recognition of my talents that I should not enter the office again. For explanation I was referred to the enclosed cuttings from that day’s daily newspapers. I lifted one of the slips from out of the envelope, and what then met my eyes caused me to stagger back speechless and breathless against the wall, for there in that brief announcement of the postponement at the last moment of ‘For Life or Death,’ I saw the evidence of the horrible treachery of which I had been a victim. The evidence of my own ruin, utter and irremediable, stared me in the face. I had actually written a detailed report and criticism of an audience which had never assembled, of actors who had never appeared, of a piece which had never been produced!”
* * * * * *
“What need is there for me to tell you more, when you can guess the rest for yourself? You don’t want to hear that I and the papers with which I had been connected became the by-word and scoff of England, and that The Bullseye in particular never survived the shock. Nor do you need to be told that the few hundred enemies whom I had contrived to raise around me by my exceeding smartness turned the story in all ways so as to tell to my disadvantage, or that my journalistic career, which meant my livelihood, was practically at an end, if you can understand the charitable eyes with which an editor would be apt to look upon that kind of mistake. Whatever I tried, wherever I went, London or the provinces, it was always the same—the black shadow pursued me and closed every door in my face. Lizzie, of all the world, was the only one who clung to me in my trouble, and insisted on carrying out her promise and marrying me in the teeth of her parents, who threw her off when they found her bent on allying herself to a pauper. She struggled on by my side for two years, comforting and sustaining me in our bitterest adversity with her love and faith, until one day she died in my arms, and the light of my life went out. Then, having nothing else in the world to cling to, I clung to the drink the while it dragged me down, down, down to what I am.
“One thing more I have to mention,” said the sandwich man, as he rose from his seat and proceeded to hang the boards over his shoulders again; “it was one day some months after the events described that I met Scrubby. ‘I can’t for the life of me understand how you came to fall into that terrible blunder,’ he said, ‘especially after the note I left for you, telling how we had all gone down to the theatre on a wild-goose chase, only to find that the piece was postponed until the following week.’
“‘Note! Left for me by you!’ I ejaculated.