DEATH COST A PENNY

By LESLIE HALWARD

ICAN'T help it. Every time I see a fat man getting in or out of a Daimler or Rolls-Royce I become furious. The fatter the man and the bigger the car, the more furious I become. You see, I'm hardly anything but skin and bone and I've never owned a car in my life, not even a second- hand Ford. I've never had any money to speak of. I've starved. In a week it will be two years since I had a job.

A very fat man got out of one of the biggest Rolls-Royces I've ever seen only the other evening just as I was passing the Ritz Hotel. The sight made my blood boil. I said to another fellow, who happened to be standing near, " Look at that great bloated — ! '

He grinned. " Know who that is ? " he asked.

" No, I don't," I said. " And I don't care, either. No man ought to be as fat as that nor ride about in a car as big. If I had my way " That's Sir John Wingle," the fellow said.

" Never heard of him," I said.

" He was knighted a year ago," the fellow said.

" What for ? What was he knighted for ? " I wanted to know. • The fellow didn't answer me. He was looking into space, thinking. " I used to know Jack Wingle," he said.

" Pal of yours ? " I asked, sarcastically.

`,` Not exactly," he said. " I knew him, though."

" You knew him, did you ? " I said. " Well, you don't know him now, do you ? Leastways, he didn't know you."

" He'd know me all right if I gave his memory a jog," the fellow said.

" Well, why don't you ? He might ---."

The fellow shook his head. " No," he said. " I wouldn't want that." He was looking into space again, thinking. " sack Wingle didn't always have money," he said.

" No ? "

" No. Do you know something ?" he said. "If Jack Wingle had possessed a penny piece, a single penny piece,. fifteen years ago, he wouldn't be alive today."

" No ? "

" No." He looked at my shabby suit, my broken shoes. " Fifteen years ago Jack Wingle was in a worse plight than you are."

" I doubt it," I said.

" I know it," the fellow said.

" Tell me about it," I said.

" He was born in a Birmingham slum," the fellow said. " In a filthy, stinking hovel that would turn the stomach of a decent dog. Seven of them lived in a couple of rooms about the size of a rabbit hutch, like pigs, eating offal, sleeping all together in flea-ridden beds. Every Saturday night the parents had a stand-up fight." ,c Well ?

" Jack Wingle stuck that life for fourteen years. Then he broke loose. He ran away. He got a job, living in, with a jeweller and silversmith. He was a conscientious, hard- working kid in spite of the way he'd been dragged up, and his boss took a fancy to him, showed him the ropes. To cut a long story short, when he was thirty Jack Wingle was a partner in the firm, and a couple of years later, when the old man died, he was number one. " Up till then he hadn't concerned himself with women. He'd been too busy getting as far away from the old life as he could. But he was in the money now. He felt safe. He looked about him for a wife. He found a girl who took his fancy, married her, and settled down in a nice home in one of the suburbs.

" The War didn't hurt him. He got out of that all right and made a pile while it was on. You remember the slump that came a year or two after ? Well, that hit Jack Wingle smack in the midriff. The business began to go down. Investments went wrong. Everything went wrong. Within three years of getting married he was broke. The business had gone, the house had gone. He and his wife were living in cheap lodgings and he was tramping the streets for a job.

" Well, there came a day when he hadn't a penny in his pocket. Not a penny. He was back to where he'd started from. Abject poverty, the thing he feared and hated most, had caught up with him again. His wife didn't know he was quite as broke as that. She'd asked him for enough money to pay the butcher or the baker or whoever it was, and before going out he'd emptied his pockets of every cent. All day long he wandered about without a bite to eat. He had no luck. There wasn't a job to be got. Dog-tired, almost fainting, he dragged himself back to his lodgings, only to find that his wife, too rotten to stick by him when he was down, had gone off.

" That was the last straw. There was nothing left, nothing to live for. In the little scullery at the back of the house there was a gas oven. Almost without thinking, he made his way towards it. The house was quiet. He opened the oven door, lay down, and put his head inside. He reached up and turned on the gas. It hissed, and the smell, filling his head, made his senses reel.

" Then, after a second or two, the hissing ceased. No gas was coming. The meter was one of those penny-in-the-slot affairs. He stood up, swaying like a drunken man, and felt in his pocket for a coin. And then he laughed. God, what a joke ! Death cost a penny and he couldn't die !

" I know, of course, and so did he, that there are more ways than one of committing suicide, but having just tried and failed you stop to think a bit, and Jack Wingle was struck by the irony of the situation. More than that, it seemed to him that Fate or Providence or what you will had decreed that he shouldn't die. Something of his old fighting spirit came back. He was damned if he would die ! The idea of suicide was dismissed from his mind. He would live. He would start all over again. Others before him had done as much and made a go of it. He went outside for a while to think and to get some air. Then he went to bed.

" The next morning he woke full of determination. That was fifteen years ago. His determination never left him. His luck changed. He got a job. Then another and a better. He made money, saved it. He climbed again as high as he had got before, went on climbing. Now he's Sir John Wingle. He dines at the Ritz Hotel. I've got a great deal of admiration for that man."

" You might have," I said. " But I still say that no man ought to be as fat as that nor ride about in a car as big. If I had my way