The Clicking of Cuthbert

to the swimming bath, mastered its contents, and dived in and won the

big race. In just such a spirit did Vincent Jopp start to play golf. He

committed McHoots's hints to memory, and then went out on the links and

put them into practice. He came to the tee with a clear picture in his

mind of what he had to do, and he did it. He was not intimidated, like

the average novice, by the thought that if he pulled in his hands he

would slice, or if he gripped too tightly with the right he would pull.

Pulling in the hands was an error, so he did not pull in his hands.

Gripping too tightly was a defect, so he did not grip too tightly. With

that weird concentration which had served him so well in business he

did precisely what he had set out to do--no less and no more. Golf with

Vincent Jopp was an exact science.

The annals of the game are studded with the names of those who have

made rapid progress in their first season. Colonel Quill, we read in

our Vardon, took up golf at the age of fifty-six, and by devising an

ingenious machine consisting of a fishing-line and a sawn-down bedpost

was enabled to keep his head so still that he became a scratch player

before the end of the year. But no one, I imagine, except Vincent Jopp,

has ever achieved scratch on his first morning on the links.

The main difference, we are told, between the amateur and the

professional golfer is the fact that the latter is always aiming at the

pin, while the former has in his mind a vague picture of getting

somewhere reasonably near it. Vincent Jopp invariably went for the pin.

He tried to hole out from anywhere inside two hundred and twenty yards.

The only occasion on which I ever heard him express any chagrin or

disappointment was during the afternoon round on his first day out,

when from the tee on the two hundred and eighty yard seventh he laid

his ball within six inches of the hole.

"A marvellous shot!" I cried, genuinely stirred.

"Too much to the right," said Vincent Jopp, frowning.

He went on from triumph to triumph. He won the monthly medal in May,

June, July, August, and September. Towards the end of May he was heard

to complain that Wissahicky Glen was not a sporting course. The Greens

Committee sat up night after night trying to adjust his handicap so as

to give other members an outside chance against him. The golf experts

of the daily papers wrote columns about his play. And it was pretty

generally considered throughout the country that it would be a pure

formality for anyone else to enter against him in the Amateur

Championship--an opinion which was borne out when he got through into

the final without losing a hole. A safe man to have betted on, you

would have said. But mark the sequel.

       *       *       *       *       *

The American Amateur Championship was held that year in Detroit. I had

accompanied my employer there; for, though engaged on this

nerve-wearing contest, he refused to allow his business to be

interfered with. As he had indicated in his schedule, he was busy at

the time cornering wheat; and it was my task to combine the duties of

caddy and secretary. Each day I accompanied him round the links with my

note-book and his bag of clubs, and the progress of his various matches

was somewhat complicated by the arrival of a stream of telegraph-boys

bearing important messages. He would read these between the strokes and

dictate replies to me, never, however, taking more than the five

minutes allowed by the rules for an interval between strokes. I am

inclined to think that it was this that put the finishing touch on his

opponents' discomfiture. It is not soothing for a nervous man to have

the game hung up on the green while his adversary dictates to his caddy

a letter beginning "Yours of the 11th inst. received and contents

noted. In reply would state----" This sort of thing puts a man off his

game.

I was resting in the lobby of our hotel after a strenuous day's work,

when I found that I was being paged. I answered the summons, and was

informed that a lady wished to see me. Her card bore the name "Miss

Amelia Merridew." Amelia! The name seemed familiar. Then I remembered.

Amelia was the name of the girl Vincent Jopp intended to marry, the

fourth of the long line of Mrs. Jopps. I hurried to present myself, and

found a tall, slim girl, who was plainly labouring under a considerable

agitation.

"Miss Merridew?" I said.

"Yes," she murmured. "My name will be strange to you."

"Am I right," I queried, "in supposing that you are the lady to whom

Mr. Jopp----"

"I am! I am!" she replied. "And, oh, what shall I do?"

"Kindly give me particulars," I said, taking out my pad from force of

habit.

She hesitated a moment, as if afraid to speak.

"You are caddying for Mr. Jopp in the Final tomorrow?" she said at

last.

"I am."

"Then could you--would you mind--would it be giving you too much

trouble if I asked you to shout 'Boo!' at him when he is making his

stroke, if he looks like winning?"

I was perplexed.

"I don't understand."

"I see that I must tell you all. I am sure you will treat what I say as

absolutely confidential."