TheRomancers.doc.doc

The Romancers By Hector Hugh Munro It was autumn in London, that blessed season between the harshness of winter and the insincerities of summer; a trustful season when one buys bulbs and sees to the registration of ones vote, believing perpetually in spring and a change of Government. Morton Crosby sat on a bench in a secluded corner of Hyde Park, lazily enjoying a cigarette and watching the slow grazing promenade of a pair of snow-geese, the male looking rather like an albino edition of the russet-hued female. Out of the corner of his eye Crosby also noted with some interest the hesitating hoverings of a human figure, which had passed and repassed his seat two or three times at shortening intervals, like a wary crow about to alight near some possibly edible morsel. Inevitably the figure came to an anchorage on the bench, within easy talking distance of its original occupant. The uncared-for clothes, the aggressive, grizzled beard, and the furtive, evasive eye of the new-comer bespoke the professional cadger, the man who would undergo hours of humiliating tale-spinning and rebuff rather than adventure on half a days decent work. For a while the new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of him in a strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with the insinuating inflection of one who has a story to retail well worth any loiterers while to listen to. Its a strange world, he said. As the statement met with no response he altered it to the form of a question. I daresay youve found it to be a strange world, mister? As far as I am concerned, said Crosby, the strangeness has worn off in the course of thirty-six years. Ah, said the greybeard, I could tell you things that youd hardly believe. Marvellous things that have really happened to me. Nowadays there is no demand for marvellous things that have really happened, said Crosby discouragingly; the professional writers of fiction turn these things out so much better. For instance, my neighbours t