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By Root 2227 0

they held a gift. He unrolled himself, revealing an extraordinary length of black limb, and came delicately towards me on toes and fingertips; his body was slightly pigeon chested and his fur dense and short, his head was spherical, without the poodle-snout of his neighbours—merely two eyes and a line of yellow teeth set in leather, like a bare patch worn in a rug. He was less like a man than any of his kind and he lacked their human vulgarity. When, at short range, he realized that I held nothing for him he leapt suddenly at the bars and hung there, spread out to his full span, spiderish, snarling with contempt; then dropped to the floor and turning about walked delicately back to the corner from which I had lured him. So I looked at him and thought of Lucy, and the minutes passed.

Presently I was aware of someone passing behind me from the salaaming monkey to the troup of tumblers, and back again, and at either side peering not at the animals but at me. I gazed fixedly at the ape, hoping that this nuisance would pass. Finally a voice said, “I say.”

I turned and found Arthur Atwater. He was dressed as I had seen him before, in his raincoat, though it was a fine, warm day, and his soft grey hat, worn at what should have been a raffish angle but which, in effect, looked merely lopsided. (He explained the raincoat in the course of our conversation, saying, “You know how it is in digs. If you leave anything behind when you go out for the day, someone’s sure to take a fancy to it.”) “It is Plant, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Thought so. I never forget a face. They call it the royal gift, don’t they?”

“Do they?”

“Yes, that and punctuality. I’m punctual too. It’s a curious thing because you see, actually, though I don’t make any fuss about it in the position I’m in, I’m descended from Henry VII.” There seemed no suitable answer to this piece of information so, since I was silent, he added suddenly, “I say, you do remember me, don’t you?”

“Vividly.”

He came closer and leant beside me on the rail which separated us from the cage. It was as though we stood on board ship and were looking out to sea, only instead of the passing waters we saw the solitary, still person of Humboldt’s Gibbon. “I don’t mind telling you,” said Atwater, “I’ve had a pretty thin time of it since we last met.”

“I saw you were acquitted at the trial. I thought you were very fortunate.”

“Fortunate! You should have heard the things the beak said. Things he had no right to say and wouldn’t have dared say to a rich man, and said in a very nasty way, too—things I shan’t forget in a hurry. Mr. Justice Longworth—Justice, that’s funny. Acquitted without a stain!—innocent! Does that give me back my job?”

“But I understood from the evidence at the trial that you were under notice to go anyway.”

“Yes. And why? Because sales were dropping. Why should I sell their beastly stockings for them anyway? Money—that’s all anyone cares about now. And I’m beginning to feel the same way. When do you suppose I had my last meal—my last square meal?”

“I’ve really no idea, I’m afraid.”

“Tuesday. I’m hungry, Plant—literally hungry.”

“You could have saved yourself the sixpence admission here, couldn’t you?”

“I’m a Fellow,” said Atwater with surprising readiness.

“Oh.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

“I have no reason not to.”

“I can prove it; look here—Fellow’s tickets, two of them.” He produced and pressed on my attention two tickets of admission signed in a thin, feminine hand. “My dear Atwater,” I said, “these don’t make you a Fellow; they’ve merely been given you by someone who is—not that it matters.”

“Not that it matters! Let me tell you this: D’you know who gave me these?—the mother of a chap I know; chap I know well. I dropped round to see him the other evening, at the address I found in the telephone book. It was his mother’s house as it happened. My pal was abroad. But, anyway, I got talking to the mother and told her about how I was placed and what pals her son and I had been. She seemed a decent old bird. At the end she said, ‘How very sad. Do let me give