Page:Famous Fantastic Mysteries (1951-03).djvu/4



■ at the end of my tether.

It has been said that the world owes each of us a living. This may be so, but it goes with such an indifferent sense of obligation that the only way to extract the debt is to take the world by the throat and shake the living out of it. Such, at least, is my experience; and by some weakness of training or temperament that method of collecting the due is beyond me. Had I known how, I would have certainly tried it; but, lacking the highwayman's courage (or skill), I had been reduced to beggary, while the world went on its comfortable way with buttoned-up pockets. So this bright September morning found me, Richard Haldham, nearing my thirtieth year, seated in the grill-room of a Strand hotel, eating the last lunch for which I could hope to pay, and wondering where I was to obtain the next.

"London puts every man in his place, and it's the one city in the world where a woman may starve."

These words came to my mind as I sat there, in the midst of the thronged tables under green palms. I had heard, them from a Londoner during the war—one who had returned from the Far East at fifty to fight for the flag. I had smiled inwardly at his cynicism then, thinking it too severe to be true; but now I was not so sure. At any rate, London had put me in my place, and that was an embittering thought.