A Tale of King Arthur’s Round Table

Some time ago, when spending a delightful week-end at the ancestral
castle of my dear old friend, the Duke of Weatherstonhope (pronounced
Wop), I came across an old black-letter MS. It is on this that the
story which follows is based.

I have found it necessary to touch the thing up a little here and
there, for writers in those days were weak in construction. Their idea
of telling a story was to take a long breath and start droning away
without any stops or dialogue till the thing was over.

I have also condensed the title. In the original it [...] Continue Reading…

The house cricket cup at Wrykyn has found itself on some strange
mantelpieces in its time. New talent has a way of cropping up in the
house matches. Tail-end men hit up fifties, and bowlers who have never
taken a wicket before except at the nets go on fifth change, and
dismiss first eleven experts with deliveries that bounce twice and
shoot. So that nobody is greatly surprised in the ordinary run of
things if the cup does not go to the favourites, or even to the second
or third favourites. But one likes to draw the line. And Wrykyn drew
it at Shields’. And yet, as [...] Continue Reading…

Mr Meggs’s mind was made up. He was going to commit suicide.

There had been moments, in the interval which had elapsed between the
first inception of the idea and his present state of fixed
determination, when he had wavered. In these moments he had debated,
with Hamlet, the question whether it was nobler in the mind to suffer,
or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. But
all that was over now. He was resolved.

Mr Meggs’s point, the main plank, as it were, in his suicidal platform,
was that with him it was beside the question whether or not [...] Continue Reading…

The young man came into the club-house. There was a frown on his
usually cheerful face, and he ordered a ginger-ale in the sort of voice
which an ancient Greek would have used when asking the executioner to
bring on the hemlock.

Sunk in the recesses of his favourite settee the Oldest Member had
watched him with silent sympathy.

“How did you get on?” he inquired.

“He beat me.”

The Oldest Member nodded his venerable head.

“You have had a trying time, if I am not mistaken. I feared as much
when I saw you go out with Pobsley. How many a young man have I seen go
out with [...] Continue Reading…

The clock struck five–briskly, as if time were money. Ruth Warden got
up from her desk and, having put on her hat, emerged into the outer
office where M. Gandinot received visitors. M. Gandinot, the ugliest
man in Roville-sur-Mer, presided over the local mont-de-piete,
and Ruth served him, from ten to five, as a sort of secretary-clerk.
Her duties, if monotonous, were simple. They consisted of sitting,
detached and invisible, behind a ground-glass screen, and entering
details of loans in a fat book. She was kept busy as a rule, for
Roville possesses two casinos, each offering the attraction of
petits chevaux, and just round the corner is [...] Continue Reading…

Paul Boielle was a waiter. The word ‘waiter’ suggests a soft-voiced,
deft-handed being, moving swiftly and without noise in an atmosphere of
luxury and shaded lamps. At Bredin’s Parisian Cafe and Restaurant in
Soho, where Paul worked, there were none of these things; and Paul
himself, though he certainly moved swiftly, was by no means noiseless.
His progress through the room resembled in almost equal proportions the
finish of a Marathon race, the star-act of a professional juggler, and
a monologue by an Earl’s Court side-showman. Constant acquaintance
rendered regular habitues callous to the wonder, but to a stranger the
sight of Paul tearing over the difficult between-tables [...] Continue Reading…

Crossing the Thames by Chelsea Bridge, the wanderer through London
finds himself in pleasant Battersea. Rounding the Park, where the
female of the species wanders with its young by the ornamental water
where the wild-fowl are, he comes upon a vast road. One side of this is
given up to Nature, the other to Intellect. On the right, green trees
stretch into the middle distance; on the left, endless blocks of
residential flats. It is Battersea Park Road, the home of the
cliff-dwellers.

Police-constable Plimmer’s beat embraced the first quarter of a mile of
the cliffs. It was his duty to pace in the measured fashion of the
London [...] Continue Reading…

I think one of the rummiest affairs I was ever mixed up with, in the
course of a lifetime devoted to butting into other people’s business,
was that affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn’t bore you,
don’t you know, for the world, but I think you ought to hear about it.

We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht Circe, belonging to an
old sportsman of the name of Marshall. Among those present were myself,
my man Voules, a Mrs. Vanderley, her daughter Stella, Mrs. Vanderley’s
maid Pilbeam and George.

George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I [...] Continue Reading…

Owen Bentley was feeling embarrassed. He looked at Mr Sheppherd, and
with difficulty restrained himself from standing on one leg and
twiddling his fingers. At one period of his career, before the
influence of his uncle Henry had placed him in the London and Suburban
Bank, Owen had been an actor. On the strength of a batting average of
thirty-three point nought seven for Middlesex, he had been engaged by
the astute musical-comedy impresario to whom the idea first occurred
that, if you have got to have young men to chant ‘We are merry and gay,
tra-la, for this is Bohemia,’ in the Artists’ Ball scene, you [...] Continue Reading…

The painful case of G. Montgomery Chapple, bachelor, of Seymour’s
house, Wrykyn. Let us examine and ponder over it.

It has been well said that this is the age of the specialist.
Everybody, if they wish to leave the world a better and happier place
for their stay in it, should endeavour to adopt some speciality and
make it their own. Chapple’s speciality was being late for breakfast.
He was late not once or twice, but every day. Sometimes he would
scramble in about the time of the second cup of coffee, buttoning his
waistcoat as he sidled to his place. Generally he would arrive just as
the [...] Continue Reading…