The Notched Hairpin by H. F. Heard

standard smart dressing are considered to be in too bad taste for a young man to be allowed to go about in public so sprigged out.
    â€œBefore he left us that evening, he gave us a reference to his next possible employer. That was an Armenian who trafficked drugs into Egypt and thence into Europe. We brought him along as our next guest. He entertained us with the ingenuity of the methods—the camels whose beehive throats could be made to hold whole cargoes of heroin packages, and all the conjuror’s costumes of false boots and hats and umbrellas and walking canes. He was the first to mention not merely the scandalous fun of taking in the puritan police and all the official hypocrites—many of whom, he said, were in on his ring and took his stuff—but the other little enticement: money, big money. He certainly was well-off, coming in a fine car and an astrakhan coat.
    â€œâ€˜Of course,’ he said, ‘mine’s the small and respectable side of the under-the-customs trade, almost what you’d call a ladylike occupation, everything done on the petite side. The big shots carry big cargoes—not drugs for the dopees, but guns—big guns for the toughs, the big toughs. I could give you boys some names! You’d like to meet the men who have guts and laugh at the mollycoddles who bow to bishops! Well, I could arrange an introduction to one of those if you liked—if you were really wanting to dine a man without prejudices. As for me,’ and he raised his flat hands palm out to the shoulders, ‘what am I but what my parents were? A poor old peddler, trying to get to poor worn people a little chemical peace—the only peace there is, after all.’ And he actually sighed and looked, as all Near Easterners suddenly can, more ancient and tired than the most desiccated Pharaoh.
    â€œHe went soon after, but not before we had got the name of our next guest—an Alsatian, he claimed to be. He was very discreet, and when he talked he talked with a wonderful front of emotion which we found exquisite—it was in such perfect ill-taste. He spoke of his own dear Alsatia, and hummed The Blue Alsatian Mountains,’ of little people struggling to be free, of their need of a friend, of how easy it was for liberals to print pamphlets and shed tears and have meetings and do nothing. ‘Acts,’ he said, ‘gentlemen, deeds—they alone show sympathy.’
    â€œFrom that he modulated into an account of the secret arms traffic—no names, but just a hint of what great causes of freedom were being sustained, and how. And here again, for the second time, and with a somewhat firmer emphasis, the money theme appeared. It was a gallant trade but expensive, but, thank heaven (yes, heaven was thanked in our hearing, and again we delighted in this worst of taste), if you sowed in such a gallant trade and with a right agricultural adviser—he was gutteral in his pleasure at his little simile—you reaped. Of course, you had denied yourself recognition; you did not expect gratitude, even if the side to which you gave the help won. Hence, you had to be content just with what he would call coverage—and coverage, we discovered, was not less than two hundred per cent profit.
    â€œI believe he would have collected our subscriptions to his crusade—for he saw we had more money than we knew what to do with—if we had not been so green that we hadn’t been thinking of the money line of our jingle couplet. We had been wanting to prove we couldn’t be shocked, and here we were, overlooking hot money. When he was gone, someone raised the point, but most of us were really timid rats and afraid of the police, and so decided that he wouldn’t have let us in on anything anyway.”
    Mr. M. shook his head. “A nice point, and a good point at which to stop and reflect on a remarkable tale, if I may say so, and I have heard a few in my time. So Jane, who is