to be terrified of that which hides and doesn't declare itself
whether for good or evil.
"My own early experiments have, I admit, been amateurish. But I
shall acquire skill, and the appetite shall learn refinements,
to keep it in health. I don't think it was bad sport, on the
whole, to open with low comedy. It tickled me, anyhow, to watch
Farrell emerge from a sort of bathing-machine upon the _plage_,
moderately nude and quite unsuspicious--having given me that
artful slip in Paris--and, approaching the machine from the
rear, to insert his shirt-collar, with my card, into his
left-hand shoe.
"That was the first card I left on him. He was putting up at the
_Albion_--I had no need to search; for the local paper, of
course, prints a Visitors' List which it collects from the
hotels, and there my gentleman was, under his own name.
(Oh, we're in the simple stages of the process, thus far, and he
hasn't yet had recourse to so much as an _alias_.) But I
didn't call on him at the _Albion_.
"I have since learnt from him that the discovery of my card in
the bathing-machine shook him up--well, pretty much as the
footprint on the sand shook up Robinson Crusoe. But there's a
difference, as he'll learn, between being shaken and being
scared into fits. At all events, he didn't bolt: for I kept out
of sight and molested him no more that day. Next morning he
took courage and started off for the golf-links, which lie out
to the north, beyond the lighthouse. He was enjoying his
liberty, you understand: for I had made him carry his clubs
about and up and down the Riviera, but never allowed him to
play. That was a part of our understanding. Also he may have
had some hazy notion that, golf being to me as holy water to the
Devil, he'd be safe out there, within a charmed circle.
"There's something in it, too, Roddy. And I've half a mind, if
he doesn't wake up and improve, to offer him a handicap.
He shall be safe, all the world over, when he can find a
golf-course for sanctuary, and shall play his little game while
I wait for him and:"
Sit on a stile
And continue to smile.
"I wonder what sort of a hell it would be, going round and
round on endless rounds of golf--with a real Colonel Bogey
sitting on the stile and wat
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