dying day, Knockout Rugg could not get it out of his head that he had been fouled. Even when his peculiarly aggressive tactics worked, and he walked up the aisle as the winner, his triumph was soured by a sense of grievance. “I dessay you saw what that yeller bastard was going to do to me in the tenth if I hadn’t nailed him in the eighth?” he would say. So it was with Sam Yudenow. It seemed to me then that he despised Godbolt for not having anticipated him, and then hated him for trying to anticipate him.
“You don’t believe, I dare say, what stinkpots a certain type people can be,” Sam Yudenow said, leading me out into the High Street. “That toe-rag! The minute I turned my back, the reptile, what does he do? These ‘ere premises next door ‘e tries to buy up over my ‘ead for a cafe miv a license to sell tobacco! Would you believe it? No. An insult, a bloody insult to my intelligence! Is Sam Yudenow a newborn baby in drapkins sucking ‘is toes? Yesterday was I born? Anybody else, I’d put it dahn to ‘is ignorance, but that twicer ‘e knew—’e knew—where there’s a cinema there’s got to be a cafe. So he goes to Gutter the butcher miv a mysterious smile like a diplomat already, an’ bribes an’ corrupts im to get ‘old o’ these ‘ere premises. ‘E might ‘ave known anybody in show biz miv enough sense to find ‘is nose to pick it at once realizes that in a silent ‘all a showman’s nicest bit o’ bunce comes out o’ eatables. Miv talkies, monkey nuts an’ potato crisps are a thing o’ the past, but in a silent-picture palace they’re ‘alf show biz.
“Treat Sam Yudenow straight an’‘e’s a die; treat ‘im crooked an better thvow a corkscrew into an electric fan. Yes, call me straight an’ I’m a poker; otherwise I too can be a permanent wave.... But it only goes to show you the ... the ... the mentality of such hypocrites! So this Godbolt didn’t know Sam Yudenow would be kind of a jump ahead, sort o’? I ask you—if you say to your grandmother miv a mysterious smile, ‘Darling, let me teach you to suck eggs,’ wouldn’t she be right to give you the left arm in the thvoat an’ the right ‘and in the arse from the trousers? Naturally. But little did Godbolt know.... Two stones miv one bird I knocked dahn. I took the shop an’upper part. The shop I run as a kind o’‘igh-class snack place, sort o’style. Two rooms upstairs is dressing rooms for my variety turns. I wanted to put a bit of a beaver-board partition up in the genevator room, miv a curtain, so the artists could change an’ nip out straight into the ‘all. But Godbolt writes an anonymous letter an’ the sanitary inspector says, ‘Not enough laventries!’ What, a laventry I should build for variety turns? A earthly paradise I make, ‘ere, so laventries they should ‘ave on top of it like Mayfair? Miv velvet seats praps, very likely? ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ I says. ‘I got a cracked lip.’ So upstairs over my restaurant I got two lovely dressing rooms, one male, one female. No sexual intercourse.
“This way it’s simple. Like this, all you got to do is show ‘em in. Let ‘em dress, let ‘em make up to their ‘eart’s content—there’s a looking glass in every room, and in the yard a lovely laventry. Comes five minutes before the hour nip out o’ the ‘all an’ get ‘em out. Then all they got to do is nip dahnstairs, nip into the front entrance, nip through my vestibule, nip up the back o’ the ‘all an’ wait. This you should synchronize to the tick miv the end o’ the second feature, which naturally comes on first. Sometimes, at the last minute, the variety turns get ‘ysterical which one goes on last. Tell ‘em you’ll report ‘em. Never mind who to— that one little word report is quite sufficient. Nip up front, whistle for fights, thvow switches, kick on the partition for the band, swish curtains—an’ for Christ’s sake pull the right string or you go up in
“You don’t believe, I dare say, what stinkpots a certain type people can be,” Sam Yudenow said, leading me out into the High Street. “That toe-rag! The minute I turned my back, the reptile, what does he do? These ‘ere premises next door ‘e tries to buy up over my ‘ead for a cafe miv a license to sell tobacco! Would you believe it? No. An insult, a bloody insult to my intelligence! Is Sam Yudenow a newborn baby in drapkins sucking ‘is toes? Yesterday was I born? Anybody else, I’d put it dahn to ‘is ignorance, but that twicer ‘e knew—’e knew—where there’s a cinema there’s got to be a cafe. So he goes to Gutter the butcher miv a mysterious smile like a diplomat already, an’ bribes an’ corrupts im to get ‘old o’ these ‘ere premises. ‘E might ‘ave known anybody in show biz miv enough sense to find ‘is nose to pick it at once realizes that in a silent ‘all a showman’s nicest bit o’ bunce comes out o’ eatables. Miv talkies, monkey nuts an’ potato crisps are a thing o’ the past, but in a silent-picture palace they’re ‘alf show biz.
“Treat Sam Yudenow straight an’‘e’s a die; treat ‘im crooked an better thvow a corkscrew into an electric fan. Yes, call me straight an’ I’m a poker; otherwise I too can be a permanent wave.... But it only goes to show you the ... the ... the mentality of such hypocrites! So this Godbolt didn’t know Sam Yudenow would be kind of a jump ahead, sort o’? I ask you—if you say to your grandmother miv a mysterious smile, ‘Darling, let me teach you to suck eggs,’ wouldn’t she be right to give you the left arm in the thvoat an’ the right ‘and in the arse from the trousers? Naturally. But little did Godbolt know.... Two stones miv one bird I knocked dahn. I took the shop an’upper part. The shop I run as a kind o’‘igh-class snack place, sort o’style. Two rooms upstairs is dressing rooms for my variety turns. I wanted to put a bit of a beaver-board partition up in the genevator room, miv a curtain, so the artists could change an’ nip out straight into the ‘all. But Godbolt writes an anonymous letter an’ the sanitary inspector says, ‘Not enough laventries!’ What, a laventry I should build for variety turns? A earthly paradise I make, ‘ere, so laventries they should ‘ave on top of it like Mayfair? Miv velvet seats praps, very likely? ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ I says. ‘I got a cracked lip.’ So upstairs over my restaurant I got two lovely dressing rooms, one male, one female. No sexual intercourse.
“This way it’s simple. Like this, all you got to do is show ‘em in. Let ‘em dress, let ‘em make up to their ‘eart’s content—there’s a looking glass in every room, and in the yard a lovely laventry. Comes five minutes before the hour nip out o’ the ‘all an’ get ‘em out. Then all they got to do is nip dahnstairs, nip into the front entrance, nip through my vestibule, nip up the back o’ the ‘all an’ wait. This you should synchronize to the tick miv the end o’ the second feature, which naturally comes on first. Sometimes, at the last minute, the variety turns get ‘ysterical which one goes on last. Tell ‘em you’ll report ‘em. Never mind who to— that one little word report is quite sufficient. Nip up front, whistle for fights, thvow switches, kick on the partition for the band, swish curtains—an’ for Christ’s sake pull the right string or you go up in
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