THE SUNDAY FICTION MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 10, 19.16
Tme TRUTH ABO
E BITS not a dozen
yards away. If X
glance over my Bhoul
der I can see him.
And if I catch his eye
and usually I catch
his eye it meets me .
with an expression
It is mainly an Imploring look and
yet with suspicion in it.
Confound his suspicion! If I wanted
to tell on him I should have told long
ago, I don't tell and I don't tell, and he
'ought to feel at ease. As if anything so
cross and fat as he could feel at ease!
Who would believe me if I did tell?
Poor old Pyecraft! Great, uneasy
Jelly of substance! The fattest club man
in London.
He eits at one of the little club tables
in the huge bay by the fire, stuffing.
What is he stuffing? I glance judicious
ly and catch him biting at a round of
hot buttered tea cake, with his eyes on
me. Confound him! with his eyes on
me!
That settles it, Pyecraft! Since you
will be abject, since you will behave as
though I was not a man of honor, here,
right under your embedded eyes, I write
the thing down the plain , truth about
Pyecraft. The man I helped, the man
I shielded, and who requited me by mak
ing my club unendurable, absolutely un
endurable, with his liquid appeal, with
the perpetual "don't tell" of his looks.
And besides, why does he keep on
eternally eating?
"Well, here goes for the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth!
Pyecraft I made the acquaintance
of Pyecraft in this very smoking-room.
I was a young, nervous new member,
and he saw it I was sitting all alone,
wishing I knew more of the members,
and suddenly he came, a great rolling
- front of chins and abdomina, toward me,
and grunted and sat down in a chair
close by me and wheezed for a' space,
and scraped for a space with a match
and lit a cigar, and then addressed me.
I forget what he said something about
! the matches not lighting properly, and
afterward as he talked he kept stopping
' the waiters one by one as they went by,
and telling them about the matches in
i that thin, fluty voicehe has. But, any-
how, It was in some way we began our
talking.
He talked aboujt various things and
then came round to games. And thence
ti my figure and complexion. "You
ought to be a good cricketer," he said. I
suppose I am slender, slender to what
some people would call lean, and I sup
pose I am rather dark, still I am not
ashamed of.having a Hindu great-grandmother,
but, for all that, I don't want
casual strangers to see through me at a
By M. C.
Wells
' glance to her. So that I was set against
Pyecraft from the beginning.
But he only talked about me in order
! to get to himself.
"I expect," he said, "you take no more
exercise than I do, and probably you eat
! ti laea " fT .Irak tll AVAAacdvalw sViaoa nnt
-lie he fancied he ate nothing.) "Tet'V
and he smiled an oblique smile "we dif
fer." . ,
And then he began to talk about his
fatness and his fatness; all he did for
his fatness and all he was going to do
; for his fatness; what people had advised
' him to do for his fatness. and what he
had heard 6f people doing for fatness
similar to his. "A priori," he said, "one
would think a question of nutrition
. could be answered by dietary and a
. , question of assimilation by drugs." It
. vas stifling. .It was dumpling talk. It
..made me feel swelled to hear him.
. KJllU DUUiUO VMOLfc evil Vi CL IIUIJKT QQCO
In a Wfi v nt Ji dun. mit a timA rnu
lie took to me altogether too conspicu
ously. I could never go into the smok
u lag-room but he would come wallowing
toward me, and sometimes he came and
Illustrated by Ben Cohen
mwmmmmmmmmmmmmma
f Y"OU might sympathize with the man who tells this B
1 story or you might have a heart throb for Pyecraft.
In any event you'll have a laugh.
i . i
gormandised round and about me while
I bad my lunch. He seemed at times
almost to be clinging to me. He was a
bore, but not so fearful a bore as to be
limited to me; and from the first there
was something 1 A his manner almost as
though he knew, almost as though he
penetrated to the fact that I might
that there was a remote, exceptional
chance In me that no one else presented.
"I'd give anything to get it down,"
Jie would say "anything," and peer at
me over his vast cheeks and pant.
.
POOR old Pyecraft! He had just
longed, no doubt, to order another
buttered tea cake!
He came to the actual thing one day.
"Our pharmacopeia," he said, "our
western- pharmacopeia, is anything but
the last word of medical science. In the
East, I've been told "
He stopped and stared at me. It was
like being at an aquarium.
I was quite suddenly angry with him.
"Look here," I said, "who told you about
my great-grandmother's recipes ?"
"Well." he fenced.
"Every time we've met for a week," I
said "and-we've met pretty often
you've given me a broad hint or so about
that little secret of mine."
"Well," he said, "now the cat's out of
father was near making me promise "
"He didn't?"
"No. But he warned me. He him
self used one-Mince."
"Ah! But do you think ? Suppose
suppose there did happen to be one- "
"The things are curious documents,"
I said. "Even the smell of 'em No!
But after going, so far Pyecraft was
resolved I should go further. I was al
ways a little afraid if I tried his patience
too much he would fall on me suddenly
and smother me. I own I was weak.
But I was also annoyed with Pyecraft.
I had got to that state of feeling with
him that disposed me to say, "Well, take
the.risk!" The little affair of Pattison
to which I have alluded was a different
matter altogether. What it was doesn't
concern us now, but I knew, anyhow,
that the particular recipe I had used
then was safe. The rest I didn't know
so much about, and, on the whole, I was
inclined to doubt their safety pretty
completely.
Yet even if Pyecraft got poisoned
I must confess the poisoning of Pye
craft struck me as an immense under
taking. That evening I took that queer, odd
scented sandalwood box out of my safe
and turned the rustling skins over. The
gentleman who wrote the recipes for my
great-grandmother evidently had a
weakness for skins of a miscellaneous
origin, and his handwriting was cramped
to the last degree. Some of the things
are quite unreadable to me though my
family, with Its Indian civil service asso
ciations, has kept up a knowledge of
Hindustani from generation to. genera
tionand none are absolutely plain sail-
jfetf fl )
IJlJY''
Poor old Pyecraft!
Great, uneasy jelly of
substance. The fattest
clubman in London.
the bag, I'll admit, yes, it is so. I had
it "
"From Pattison."
"Indirectly, he said, which I believe
was lying, "yes.
"PatHson," I said, "took that stuff at
his own risk."
He pursed his mouth and bowed.
"My great-grandmother's recipes,' I
said, "are queer things to handle. My
ing. But 1 rouna tne one I knew was
there soon enough, and sat on the floor
by my safe for some time looking at' it
"Look here," said I to Pyecraft next,
day, and snatched the slip away from
his eager grasp.
"So far as I can make out, this Is a
recipe for loss of weight. ('Ah!' said
Pyecraft.) I'm not-absolutely sure, but
I think It's that. And if yon take my
advice, you'll leave it alone. Because,
you know I blacken my blood in your
interest, Pyecraft my ancestors on that
side were, so far as I can gather, a Jolly
queer lot. See?"
"Let me try it," said Pyecraft
I leaned back in my chair. My imag
ination made one mighty effort and fell
flat within me. "What in heaven's name,
Pyecraft," I asked, "do you think you'll
look like when you get thin?"
He was Impervious to reason. I made
him promise never to aay a word to me
about his disgusting fatness again,
whatever happened never, and then I
handed him that little piece of skin.
"It's nasty stuff," I said.
"No matter," he said, and took It.
He goggled at It "But but " he
said.
He had just discovered that it wasn't
English.
"To the best of my ability," J said, "I
will do you a translation."
I did my best. After that we didn't
speak for a fortnight Whenever he ap
proached me I frowned and motioned
him away, and he respected our com
pact but at the end of a fortnight he
was as fat as ever. And then he got a
word in. .
"I must speak," he said. "It Isn't
fairi. There's something wrong. It's
done me no good. You're not doing your
great-grandmother justice."
"Where's the recipe?"
HE PRODUCED it gingerly from hisH
pocketbook.
I ran my eye over the Items. "Was
the egg addled V I asked.
"No. Ought It to have been?"
"That" I said, "goes without saying
In all my poor dear great-grandmother's
recipes. When condition or quality is
not specified you must get the worst.
She was drastic or "nothing. And there's
one or two possible alternatives to some
of these other things. You got fresh rat
tlesnake venom?"
"I got a rattlesnake from Jamrach's.
It cost it cost "
"That's your affair, anyhow. This
last item "
. "I know a man who
"Yes. H'm. Well. ril write the al
ternatives down. So far as I know tho
language, the spelling of this recipe Is
particularly atrocious. By the by, dog
here probably means pariah dog."
For a month after that I saw Pye
craft constantly at the club, and as fat
and anxious as ever. He kept our treaty,
but at times he broke the spirit "of it by
shaking his head despondently. Then
one day in the cloakroom he said: "Your
great-grandmother "
"Not a word against her."
I said; and he held his peace,
I could have fancied he had
desisted, and I saw him one
day talking to three new mem
bers about his fatness as
though he was In search of
other recipes. And, then, un
expectedly, his telegram came.
"Mr. Formalyn!" bawled a
page boy under my nose, and
I took the telegram and
opend It at once.
"For heaven's sake, come.
"Ptecraft."
"H'm." said I, and to tell
the truth I was so pleased at
: the rehabilitation of my great
. grandmother's reputation this
evidently promised that I
made a most excellent lunch.
I got Pyecraft's address from the ball
porter. Pyecraft inhabited the tipper
half of a house in Bloomsbury, and I
went there so soon as I had done my
coffee and Trappistine. I did not wait
to finish my cigar. .
"Mr. Pyecraf tV said I at the front
door.
They believed he was ill; he hadn't
been out for two days.
"He expects me." said I, and they