d all over the town during that day and
evening, and although it was in July, the next morning at six o'clock
there were half a dozen men waiting at the yard to ask Misery if there
was 'any chance of a job'.

Bill Bates and the Semi-drunk had had their spree and had got the sack
for it and most of the chaps said it served them right. Such conduct
as that was going too far.

Most of them would have said the same thing no matter what the
circumstances might have been. They had very little sympathy for each
other at any time.

Often, when, for instance, one man was sent away from one 'job' to
another, the others would go into his room and look at the work he had
been doing, and pick out all the faults they could find and show them
to each other, making all sorts of ill-natured remarks about the absent
one meanwhile. 'Jist run yer nose over that door, Jim,' one would say
in a tone of disgust. 'Wotcher think of it? Did yer ever see sich a
mess in yer life? Calls hisself a painter!' And the other man would
shake his head sadly and say that although the one who had done it had
never been up to much as a workman, he could do it a bit better than
that if he liked, but the fact was that he never gave himself time to
do anything properly: he was always tearing his bloody guts out! Why,
he'd only been in this room about four hours from start to finish! He
ought to have a watering cart to follow him about, because he worked at
such a hell of a rate you couldn't see him for dust! And then the
first man would reply that other people could do as they liked, but for
his part, HE was not going to tear his guts out for nobody!

The second man would applaud these sentiments and say that he wasn't
going to tear his out either: and then they would both go back to their
respective rooms and tear into the work for all they were worth, making
the same sort of 'job' as the one they had been criticizing, and
afterwards, when the other's back was turned, each of them in turn
would sneak into the other's room and criticize it and point out the
faults to anyone else who happened to be near at hand.

Harlow was working at the place that had been Macaroni's Cafe when one
day a note was sent to him from Hunter at the shop. It was written on
a scrap of wallpaper, and worded in the usual manner of such notes--as
if the writer had studied how to avoid all suspicion of being unduly
civil:

Harlow go to the yard at once take your tools