§ 249 The Affair in Half Moon Street
Ever since I first heard it—and that must be fully ten years ago now—I have treasured the story of the gentleman, living at Number 5 Half Moon Street, who inserted the advertisement in the Agony Column of the London Times.
The advertisement stated, in effect, that a person of scientific attainments, living at Number 5 Half Moon Street, was preparing to go on a journey of exploration into Equatorial Africa, and desired, as a paid companion, a young man who was a good rifle-shot, experienced in the tropics and acquainted with the languages of the native tribes.
The same evening a youth-about-town was sitting in his club. He picked up a copy of that morning’s Times and his eye fell upon this advertisement. He read it through and then he said to himself what an Englishman always says when confronted by anything which seems to him striking or interesting.
“Most ’straordinary! Most remarkably ’straordinary that any Johnnie living in Half Moon Street should wish to leave his diggings and go to Africa and take a strange Johnnie with him!”
The impression of what he had read lingered in his mind all through the evening. Pondering it over, he drank more perhaps than was good for him. At least, what he drank was not good for his speech—it made it thick and hiccuppy. Also it tangled his legs.
At 1 A. M. he arose and, leaving the club, set out for his lodgings. He rambled off his route and presently he found himself in Half Moon Street. By another coincidence he was directly in front of Number 5. Groggily, he stood for a space trying to couple these facts with some foggy recollections which lurked in the back of his brain. Then he remembered.
He made his fumbling way up the steps to the door and rang the bell and rang it again and again. At length footsteps sounded in the passage within and the door was opened by an individual who, despite his state of partial undress, plainly was a butler.
“Well, sir?” he asked.
“I desire (hic) to shee your master,” said the inebriate. “Mush shee him at once.”
“But the hour is very late, sir,” remonstrated the servant. “The master has retired. He is in bed asleep. Can’t I take the message, sir, and deliver it in the morning?”
“Not at all,” said the clubman. “Thish is mosh pressing and imperative. Businish is strictly between your master (hic) and myself.”
So the butler went away, leaving him there, and eventually there appeared in the doorway, a middle-aged gentleman of an irritable aspect, in dressing-gown and slippers who plainly had just been aroused from slumber.
“Well, sir, well, sir,” he snapped, “what is it you wish to say to me?”
“Are you the gen’l’m who inserted (hic) advertishment in Times stating you wished engage servishes of a young man ’company you to Africa?”
“I am. What of it?”
“Well, (hic) I jus’ happened to be passing and I dropped in to tell you that, pershonally, I can’t shee my way clear to going.”