Argosy, September 1955 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

8 KEM BENNETT some interest for him, if they wished to go out fishing or take a trip to Polperro or Mevagissey; now they had none. He dismissed the two men from his thoughts as if they had already returned to London, or Mars, or wherever it was that they followed their mysterious livelihood. Presently he took the ketchup bottle out of his pocket and stared at it. Unscrewed the top. Sniffed. He put the neck to his lips and tilted his head back. A fire started behind his uvula. Albert happily let it burn for a few seconds, then reached for the pint of bitter beer on the table in front of him. He quenched the fire. Vapours wreathed round the back of his palate. Arrh! From across the room, Herbert Whiteway was watching, envy in his small eyes. Albert beamed at him. ‘“ Physic,” he said. *““ Doctor give it me for me guts. Proper tasty, ’tis.” The bar shook with laughter. Only Herbert Whiteway did not laugh. Even the strangers smiled palely. Albert took out his pipe. He took a rope of twist from a tin in his pocket and cut slivers from it which he started to roll between the palms of his small, hard hands. ‘Then he said conversationally, “‘ Harry Sims told me they was running, Herbert.” Whiteway said, “ So they may be.” ‘“°'Tis early for they.”’ No reply. Albert took a pull at his beer and lit his pipe. “‘ If you ask me,” he said blandly, ‘‘ they’m not Cornish fish at all, boy.” The bar was suddenly silent. It was the old joke; the good joke; the joke that never failed. Whiteway fell for it, as usual. ‘‘ Gerraway!” he said. “ Talk sense, man.” ‘*'They’m Canadian steelheads.”’ Albert’s voice was pontifical, the voice of a man pronouncing dogma. “ They’m Canadians driven over by the porps, and as such they can be fished.” Whiteway said nastily, “If I catch you fishing them before February month I’ll have you up before the Bench, all the same. Fifty pound or three months it’ll cost you—unless you can get the fish to show a Canadian passport, ha ha! ” Nobody laughed. Albert stared at the bailiff, saying nothing. He let the poor joke fall, flatten, fail, and by its very failure recoil upon its originator. Then, at last, he said smugly, “ You didn’t ought to make threats like that, boy. You’m a public servant. *Tis up to you to keep a civil tongue in your head, now.” There was a pause, loaded with hatred. Whiteway drained the half-pint of rough cider called “scrumpy” that was all his parsimony would permit him to drink, and rose to his feet, a long- faced, stooping, miserable man. ‘““You’re a poaching, sneering, smuggling good-for-nothing, comiclooks.conn