The Fiend in Human by John MacLachlan Gray Page A

reader.’ As though to prove his point, Owler begins to recite in a purposeful, resonant baritone:

    ‘O Dermot you look healthy now,
Your dress is neat and clean;
I never see you drunk about,
Then tell me where you’ve been …’

    ‘That is the opening, for your information Mr Whitty,’ says the poet. ‘It sets the scene of a chance encounter.’
    Adds Owler: ‘In the next stanza, Dermot recounts as how he dreamt of his wife’s sudden death.’
    ‘The dream is, or so it seems to me, a most poetic state of mind – do you not agree, Mr Whitty?’

    ‘I do not doubt it, Mr Hollow.’
    ‘Indeed,’ says the patterer, ‘the misery of his children as they cry over their mother’s dead body is wividly described – one can see it before one’s eyes as t’would squeeze a tear from a banker. Now, hark to the redemption:

    ‘I pressed her to my throbbing heart
Whilst joyous tears did stream;
And ever since I’ve heaven blest
For sending me that dream …’

    At the concluding line, the patterer’s substantial baritone tapers to a whisper as though drained; in response, a ripple of applause erupts among the wretches seated about the stove. ‘Of course, with no sheets to sell, even a masterpiece is not worth a farthing.’
    ‘May I take it, Gentlemen, that you are business associates?’
    ‘Mr Hollow were my wersifier for many years, until his infirmity.’
    ‘And what, may I ask, is the infirmity?’
    ‘The eyes, sir,’ says Mr Hollow. ‘I am nearly blind.’
    ‘That is indeed a terrible affliction, and I am sorry to hear it.’
    ‘You are generous, Sir. I can still compose my verses, but they die with me for want of copying.’ Mr Hollow turns to Whitty, who can now perceive a milkiness of the eye. ‘As a professional man, what might be your honest opinion of my work?’
    Honest? Whitty side-steps the subject, having no desire to undermine the raison d‘être of a blind man. ‘Empty praise is cheap, Sir. Allow me to offer you some small sustenance as a gesture.’ So saying, he reaches into his pocket, retrieves the few coppers remaining from the unremembered events of last night, and slides them across the table between Mr Hollow and Mr Owler.
    Sighs the poet, transfixed by the sound of money: ‘A kind gesture, Sir, most kind. Although material reward is a poet’s last consideration, I confess that remuneration of late has reached an unusually low ebb. To make ends meet, I have been occupied in collecting dog manure for use by tanners. I go by the smell, you see.’
    Whitty didn’t know such an occupation existed. ‘A lean business, I should imagine.’
    ‘Not nearly so lean as the writing of poetry, sir.’
    ‘I readily admit it, Mr Hollow.’
    ‘Now, Gentlemen,’ Owler announces, ‘enough banter, for we are here on a wery sober business.’

    He leans over the table (its deal surface has developed into a series of rolling hills, with a long, flat indentation in the centre), removes his crooked hat, sets it upside-down, intertwines his fingers sausage-like and assumes the worrisome aspect he displayed earlier in the privy.
    ‘Mr Whitty, I am not one to mince words or to dance around a thing. I likes to call a thing by what it is, and we are here on a serious matter. Jeremy, this here Mr Whitty, a newspaperman, has indicated in the public mouth that my “Sorrowful Lamentation” concerning Chokee Bill is, to put it baldly’ (the patterer stammers as though he can scarcely produce the word) ‘a c-c-cock, Sir. A flam.’
    ‘Oh dear, Henry, that is very bad.’ The poet turns to the correspondent with grave aspect: ‘I will have you understand, Sir, that in the trade Mr Owler is known as a scholar of murders who has not missed a public execution in a quarter-century. For sheer devotion to the craft he is without peer, having spent more than an hundred hours altogether with criminals in the death cell, conversing with them in great seriousness on the prospect of that eternal world