A Shilling for Candles Read Online Free PDF Page B

how you were living in the same house with a woman whose
name you didn’t know? You did tell the County Police that, didn’t you?”
    “Yes. I expect it sounds incredible. Silly, too. But it’s quite simple.
You see, I was standing on the pavement opposite the Gaiety one night, very
late, wondering what to do. I had fivepence in my pocket, and that was
fivepence too much, because I had aimed at having nothing at all. And I was
wondering whether to have a last go at spending the fivepence (there isn’t
much one can do with fivepence) or to cheat, and forget about the odd
pennies. So—”
    “Just a moment. You might explain to a dullard just why these five pennies
should have been important.”
    “They were the end of a fortune, you see. Thirty thousand. I inherited it
from my uncle. My mother’s brother. My real name is Stannaway, but Uncle Tom
asked that I should take his name with the money. I didn’t mind. The Tisdalls
were a much better lot than the Stannaways, anyhow. Stamina and ballast and
all that. If I’d been a Tisdall I wouldn’t be broke now, but I’m nearly all
Stannaway. I’ve been the perfect fool, the complete Awful Warning. I was in
an architect’s office when I inherited the money, living in rooms and just
making do; and it went to my head to have what seemed more than I could ever
spend. I gave up my job and went to see all the places I’d wanted to see and
never hoped to. New York and Hollywood and Budapest and Rome and Capri and
God knows where else. I came back to London with about two thousand, meaning
to bank it and get a job. It would have been easy enough two years
before—I mean, to bank the money. I hadn’t anyone to help spend it
then. But in those two years I had gathered a lot of friends all over the
world, and there were never less than a dozen of them in London at the same
time. So I woke up one morning to find that I was down to my last hundred. It
was a bit of a shock. Like cold water. I sat down and thought for the first
time for two years. I had the choice of two things: sponging—you can
live in luxury anywhere in the world’s capitals for six months if you’re a
good sponger: I know; I supported dozens of that sort—and disappearing.
Disappearing seemed easier. I could drop out quite easily. People would just
say, ‘Where’s Bobby Tisdall these days?’ and they’d just take it for granted
that I was in some of the other corners of the world where their sort went,
and that they’d run into me one of these days. I was supposed to be
suffocatingly rich, you see, and it was easier to drop out and leave them
thinking of me like that than to stay and be laughed at when the truth began
to dawn on them. I paid my bills, and that left me with fifty-seven pounds. I
thought I’d have one last gamble then, and see if I could pick up enough to
start me off on the new level. So I had thirty pounds—fifteen each way;
that’s the bit of Tisdall in me—on Red Rowan in the Eclipse. He
finished fifth. Twenty-odd pounds isn’t enough to start anything except a
barrow. There was nothing for it but tramping. I wasn’t much put out at the
thought of tramping—it would be a change—but you can’t tramp with
twenty-seven pounds in the bank, so I decided to blue it all in one grand
last night. I promised myself that I’d finish up without a penny in my
pocket. Then I’d pawn my evening things for some suitable clothes and hit the
road. What I hadn’t reckoned with was that you can’t pawn things in the
west-end on a Saturday midnight. And you can’t take to the road in evening
things without being conspicuous. So I was standing there, as I said, feeling
resentful about these five pennies and wondering what I was to do about my
clothes and a place to sleep. I was standing by the traffic lights at the
Aldwych, just before you turn around into Lancaster Place, when a car was
pulled up by the red lights. Chris was in it,