In costume, as in most other things, it is best to take a definite line and stick to it. This man had obviously vacillated. His neck was swathed in a green scarf; he wore an evening-dress coat; and his lower limbs were draped in a pair of tweed trousers built for a larger man. To the north he was bounded by a straw hat, to the south by brown shoes.
Archie surveyed the man’s back carefully.
“Bit thick!” he said, sympathetically. “But of course Broadway isn’t Fifth Avenue. What I mean to say is, Bohemian licence and what not. Broadway’s crammed with deuced brainy devils who don’t care how they look. Probably this bird is a master-mind of some species.”
“All the same, man’s no right to wear evening-dress coat with tweed trousers.”
“Absolutely not! I see what you mean.”
At this point the sartorial offender turned. Seen from the front, he was even more unnerving. He appeared to possess no shirt, though this defect was offset by the fact that the tweed trousers fitted snugly under the arms. He was not a handsome man. At his best he could never have been that, and in the recent past he had managed to acquire a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth half-way across his cheek. Even when his face was in repose he had an odd expression; and when, as he chanced to do now, he smiled, odd became a mild adjective, quite inadequate for purposes of description. It was not an unpleasant face, however. Unquestionably genial, indeed. There was something in it that had a quality of humorous appeal.
Archie started. He stared at the man, Memory stirred.
“Great Scot!” he cried. “It’s the Sausage Chappie!”
Reginald van Tuyl gave a little moan. He was not used to this sort of thing. A sensitive young man as regarded scenes, Archie’s behaviour unmanned him. For Archie, releasing his arm, had bounded forward and was shaking the other’s hand warmly.
“Well, well, well! My dear old chap! You must remember me, what? No? Yes?”
The man with the scar seemed puzzled. He shuffled the brown shoes, patted the straw hat, and eyed Archie questioningly.
“I don’t seem to place you,” he said.
Archie slapped the back of the evening-dress coat. He linked his arm affectionately with that of the dress-reformer.
“We met outside St Mihiel in the war. You gave me a bit of sausage. One of the most sporting events in history. Nobody but a real sportsman would have parted with a bit of sausage at that moment to a stranger. Never forgotten it, by Jove. Saved my life, absolutely. Hadn’t chewed a morse for eight hours. Well, have you got anything on? I mean to say, you aren’t booked for lunch or any rot of that species, are you? Fine! Then I move we all toddle off and get a bite somewhere.” He squeezed the other’s arm. fondly. “Fancy meeting you again like this! I’ve often wondered what became of you. But, by Jove, I was forgetting. Dashed rude of me. My friend, Mr. van Tuyl.”
Reggie gulped. The longer he looked at it, the harder this man’s costume was to bear. His eye passed shudderingly from the brown shoes to the tweed trousers, to the green scarf, from the green scarf to the straw hat.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just remembered. Important date. Late already. Er–see you some time–”
He melted away, a broken man. Archie was not sorry to see him go. Reggie was a good chap, but he would undoubtedly have been de trop at this reunion.
“I vote we go to the Cosmopolis,” he said, steering his newly-found friend through the crowd. “The browsing and sluicing isn’t bad there, and I can sign the bill which is no small consideration nowadays.”
The Sausage Chappie chuckled amusedly.
“I can’t go to a place like the Cosmopolis looking like this.”
Archie, was a little embarrassed.
“Oh, I don’t know, you know, don’t you know!” he said. “Still, since you have brought the topic up, you DID get the good old wardrobe a bit mixed this morning what? I mean to say, you seem absent- mindedly, as it were, to have got hold of samples from a good number of your various suitings.”