The Clicking of Cuthbert

because the demand is enormous and pretty soon it may be too late. I

wrote at once, and luckily I was in time, because Professor Rollitt did

have a copy left, and it's just arrived. I've been looking through it,

and it seems splendid."

She held out a small volume. I glanced at it. There was a frontispiece

showing a signed photograph of Professor Orlando Rollitt controlling

himself in spite of having long white whiskers, and then some reading

matter, printed between wide margins. One look at the book told me the

professor's methods. To be brief, he had simply swiped Marcus

Aurelius's best stuff, the copyright having expired some two thousand

years ago, and was retailing it as his own. I did not mention this to

Millicent. It was no affair of mine. Presumably, however obscure the

necessity, Professor Rollitt had to live.

"I'm going to start Mitchell on it today. Don't you think this is good?

'Thou seest how few be the things which if a man has at his command his

life flows gently on and is divine.' I think it will be wonderful if

Mitchell's life flows gently on and is divine for seven shillings,

don't you?"

       *       *       *       *       *

At the club-house that evening I encountered Rupert Dixon. He was

emerging from a shower-bath, and looked as pleased with himself as

usual.

"Just been going round with old Paterson," he said. "He was asking

after you. He's gone back to town in his car."

I was thrilled. So the test had begun!

"How did you come out?" I asked.

Rupert Dixon smirked. A smirking man, wrapped in a bath towel, with a

wisp of wet hair over one eye, is a repellent sight.

"Oh, pretty well. I won by six and five. In spite of having poisonous

luck."

I felt a gleam of hope at these last words.

"Oh, you had bad luck?"

"The worst. I over-shot the green at the third with the best

brassey-shot I've ever made in my life--and that's saying a lot--and

lost my ball in the rough beyond it."

"And I suppose you let yourself go, eh?"

"Let myself go?"

"I take it that you made some sort of demonstration?"

"Oh, no. Losing your temper doesn't get you anywhere at golf. It only

spoils your next shot."

I went away heavy-hearted. Dixon had plainly come through the ordeal as

well as any man could have done. I expected to hear every day that the

vacant treasurership had been filled, and that Mitchell had not even

been called upon to play his test round. I suppose, however, that

Alexander Paterson felt that it would be unfair to the other competitor

not to give him his chance, for the next I heard of the matter was when

Mitchell Holmes rang me up on the Friday and asked me if I would

accompany him round the links next day in the match he was playing with

Alexander, and give him my moral support.

"I shall need it," he said. "I don't mind telling you I'm pretty

nervous. I wish I had had longer to get the stranglehold on that 'Are

You Your Own Master?' stuff. I can see, of course, that it is the real

tabasco from start to finish, and absolutely as mother makes it, but

the trouble is I've only had a few days to soak it into my system. It's

like trying to patch up a motor car with string. You never know when

the thing will break down. Heaven knows what will happen if I sink a

ball at the water-hole. And something seems to tell me I am going to do

it."

There was a silence for a moment.

"Do you believe in dreams?" asked Mitchell.

"Believe in what?"

"Dreams."

"What about them?"

"I said, 'Do you believe in dreams?' Because last night I dreamed that

I was playing in the final of the Open Championship, and I got into the

rough, and there was a cow there, and the cow looked at me in a sad

sort of way and said, 'Why don't you use the two-V grip instead of the

interlocking?' At the time it seemed an odd sort of thing to happen,

but I've been thinking it over and I wonder if there isn't something in

it. These things must be sent to us for a purpose."

"You can't change your grip on the day of an important match."

"I suppose not. The fact is, I'm a bit jumpy, or I wouldn't have

mentioned it. Oh, well! See you tomorrow at two."

       *       *       *       *       *

The day was bright and sunny, but a tricky cross-wind was blowing when

I reached the club-house. Alexander Paterson was there, practising

swings on the first tee; and almost immediately Mitchell Holmes

arrived, accompanied by Millicent.

"Perhaps," said Alexander, "we had better be getting under way. Shall I

take the honour?"

"Certainly," said Mitchell.

Alexander teed up his ball.

Alexander Paterson has always been a careful rather than a dashing

player. It is his custom, a sort of ritual, to take two measured

practice-swings before addressing the ball, even on the putting-green.

When he does address the ball he shuffles his feet for a moment or two,

then pauses, and scans the horizon in a suspicious sort of way, as if

he had been expecting it to play some sort of a trick on him when he

was not looking. A careful inspection seems to convince him of the

horizon's bona fides, and he turns his attention to the ball