ALL SQUARE

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 65, 17 March 1936, Page 18

ALL SQUARE

By " X " P~ 'GARLAND

MRS. SIDNEY SMITH'S plump face showed signs of annoyance as she swept into the library where Mr. Sidney Smith was dozing after a heavy lunch. '- • ■ ' ; . _ _ _ "Sidney," said she in a serious; tone/ "look at this." ; v , 'He took the Sunday newspaper from her and glanced at the paragraph she indicated. It read:— . MAGISTRATE'S 10.000 TH CASE. Mr. Walter Fremley, of Bayswater Police Court, in fining Sidney Smith, of Bartholomew Mews, on Thursday last 5/ for creating a disturbance on licensed premises/ ■ stated that this was the 10,000 th case on which he had adjudicated in that court. "Well ?" said Mrs. Smith's husband. "Well," she repeated ill-humouredly. "Is that all you have to 1 say? Here you are as good as libelled and—" "Libelled? What do you mean?" "What I say. It's as good as a libel." "But it's nothing to do with me," said the man angrily. "This isn't Bartholomew Mews. This is Bartholomew Place." "We know that, but the whole world doesn't. It may easily get around that a certain Sidney Smith, of Bartholomew Something has been guilty of kicking up a row in a public-house. And they may think it's you." Mr. Smith pondered over his wife's remarks and began to see that there was a good deal of truth in them. Unfortunately, there Were far too many Smiths in the country, and even Sidney Smiths were anything but rare. It was not, in fact, a remarkable coincidence that one Sidney Smith should inhabit Bartholomew Mews, a semi-slum, while another bearer of the name occupied a V large Victorian house in the adjacent Bartholomew Place, an offshoot of Bartholomew Square. But the general public were not prone to accuracy in such matters. They would —some of them, at least —come to the conclusion that he, the Sidney Smith, chairman of several city companies, had been convicted of a vulgar offence like brawling in a pub. Something had to be done'. * * * • The outcome was that two days later the personal column of half a dozen of the foremost London dailies contained the following advertisement: — Mr. Sidney Smith, of 3, Bartholomew Place, W. 3, wishes to make it known that ho is not the Sidney Smith, of Bartholomew Mews, who on Thursday last, the Bth inst., was fined 5/ at Bayswater Police Court for creating a disturbance on licensed premises." "It's worth the money," said Mrs. Sidney Smith. "It will put things right with people, and it will give you some publicity." That evening, as she and Sidney were enjoying their coffee after dinner, the butler opened the front door to a middleaged man, who, though neat and cleanly in appearance, showed by his garb that ho was not of the class with whom the family were on visiting terms. Dubiously the butler held the door half-open. "Mr. Sidney Smith," said the caller. Then with a jerk of, his thumb towards the interior, "Is he in?" "You want to see him personally?" asked the butler. "I do that. You can tell him it's Sidney Smith wants to have a word with him." The butler looked more interested. The family upstairs, like many others, had relations of whom they were not too proud, but who had to be treated with respect. So he decided to admit him. \ * • » • A few minutes later the caller was ushered iifto the library where the master of the house greeted him dubiously.* "You wanted to see me?" said he frigidly to his namesake. "That's right," was the reply. "It's about this." And he drew from his pocket a copy of the paper containing the "agony" advertisement. "You put this piece in the paper?" went on the visitor. "Certainly," was the reply. "What for?" "What for? Simply to make it clear that I was not the person in question." "Oh, that was it, was it? .Well, what right have you to interfere? It's none of your business if I was fined for kicking up a row in the Albert Hall, much less a pub. Why did you want to bring the thing up when it was all over and done with?" But his host was not used to being spoken to in this by the working classes. "Look here, my good man," said he. "You don't seem to understand. It was quite possible that certain foolish people —nobody who knows me, of course— might bo led to believe that it was I that had been guilty of this offence, and I was pot going to have such a stigma on my good name. "A what-ma?" "A stigma. A blot on it." "Oh, I see. And what about my good name?" "Yours ?" "Yes, mine. The same as yours — Sidney Smith;" "I'm afraid there's a difference. I do not need to tell you that our social positions are very different." "I don't know what yours is, but I'm a respectable working man, see. And I'm going to tell you something. That trouble in the Red Cow was all because I was done in > the eye by a blinking barmaid." "I'm afraid that does not interest me," was the haughty comment. "No, it wouldn't. But I'm going to tell you about it all the same. Now listen. "Monday evening I drop into the Red Cow to have a half-pint of pig's ear before going to bed. I give the barmaid half a crown and get the change. Then I go home. Next morning I take a penny workman's ticket to my job in Tottenham Court Road, and when I get to Nosey Branter's—you don't know Nosey, do you ?—he keeps a coffee stall—l ask for a packet of gaspers and. put down a two-bob piece. Nosey lias a look at it and then bites it. " 'Here,' says he, 'what's the idea, Sid? That two-bob would be all right for a plumber, but it ain't no good to me.' And blow me if lie wasn't right! The two-bob was a dud." "Excuse me," 6aid the other Sidney Smith, "but' I can't see why you should "Hang on a minute," said the visitor imperatively, "and you will see.: , "Now," he continued, "I knew where I'd got that blinking two-bob. It was the Red Cow. 'Cos why? 'Cos I'd had nothing but half a crown and a couple of coppers when I'd gone in there the previous evening. So as soon as I get back from work I march in there and tell the boss what happened. He calls the barmaid. She says she never gave it

(SHORT STORY.)

to me. I swear she did, because I know she did. The boss backs the- barmaid up.. Says lie's, had that' thing,'.worked before. I say I won't go till I .get my money back. There's an arglerbargle, and it ends in the boss sending for a copper and'l'm . summoned and fined fiye bob. -And all because that fat barmaid at the Red Cow worked a off on me. Nice business, ain't it? • « * • "As I said before," ■ said the other man indifferently, "I don't see how it ""concerns me." "But it concerns me. And a way you mightn't think. I'm walking out witli a , lady. A widow she is, and I'll tell you on the quiet we're as good as engaged. And now she may beooine Mrs. Sidney Smith." The other man. perceptibly shuddered. "Put the point is this. Mrs. Carden —that's her name—is a very respectable lady. Her last was iji the lino business and used to blow the organ at a swell church Sundays, and she don't like anything to do with the police. She'd think it low. So when I had this little trouble at the Red Cow I thought I'd be able to keep it dark. She doesn't read the Sunday papers—she's very strict—and it looked O.K. until you put that piece about it in the papers. Now the chances are she'll see it and she may turn me down. If she does it'll be your blinking fault. You wouldn't let sleeping dogs lie. You had to go and drag the thing up again. You had to tell the world. You've got me into a proper mess, you have." But the, other Sidney Smith had had enough. It hurt his pride that a common working man should bear the same name as himself, and he wanted to get back to his cigar and the radio. "That will do," said he. "I think it is a piece of impertinence on your part to come here. If you kept out of the clutches of the law there would be no need of such a notice as I have had to give to the Press. Let it be a lesson to you." "All right, guv'nor," said the visitor. "Keep on being high and haughty. Maybe you'll have a fall." Then the butler showed him out. • • • * One month later Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Smith again sat in the lounge after dinner in Bartholomew Place, but this time much of Sidney's arrogance had disappeared. And his loving spouse wore a cold and menacing look. i "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," the lady was saying. "A man in your position to do such a thing! It looks so common. I knew you were having too many whiskies and sodas that night." "I was sober enough," was the sullen reply. "But you could have told him to go without assaulting him." "I know, but he made me wild. I'd been thoroughly sick of his superior air long enough. You'd think I was the butler the airs he put on. I'd told him off before for admitting that fellow that called himself 'Sidney Smith,' afid in spite of it, he admitted another Smith that I did not know from Adam. And when I told him he was incompetent he had the nerve to tell me that he thought it might be a relation of mine. It made me see red." "It may have been irritating, but you should not have assaulted him. It looks so terrible." And as if to dismiss the matter, she picked up the evening paper and began to look through it."Anyhow, it doesn't matter now," said her husband. "In three days not a solitary paper has reported it." "Yes, but there may have been somebody around the court who—" his wife was beginning, when she stopped short and gazed fascinated at something on the page before her. Then she breathed heavily and with a tragic gesture handed him the paper. "Read that," said she in a hoarse voice. He did—and did not like what he read. It was:— "Mr. Sidney Smith, of 4, Bartholomew Mews, W. 3, wishes to make it known that he is not the Sidney Smith of Bartholomew Place who, on Friday, the 13th inst., at Bayswater Police Court, was fined one guinea and costs for assaulting his butler with a claret jug." » » ♦ * "That'll learn him," said the other Sidney Smith to his admiring fiancee, as he proudly read aloud his one and only contribution to the Press.