Hole in One by Walter Stewart Page A

each other.
    â€œHey, that’s great,” I said. “We can use the same head on both of them: Hole in One.”
    Tommy glowered some more, but a gleam of comprehension came into his eyes, and I could see he was thinking that perhaps this was not such a good idea after all. He shoved himself back from the computer.
    â€œAh, hell, I’ve got better things to do than write the news,” he said, and went off to ogle Olga in his office, which was certainly a better thing for him to be doing than writing about his golf game, though equally futile. I wiped out his news bulletin and sloped along to the office library to check the Bosky Dell file for background on the golf course.
    That sounds more sophisticated than it is. For office library, read, “back issues.” We keep old copies in piles in one corner of the office kitchen-cum-lunchroom, which has thus become the library. I found there,
inter alia,
half a deceased ham sandwich, a couple of porno magazines, representing the spiritual fodder of my fellow reporter, Billy Haldane, and a four-year-old feature story on Sir John Flannery and his bequest to Bosky Dell.
    It was headed, “They Called Him ‘St. John,’” which, incidentally, nobody ever, ever did, but which gives you some of the flavour of the thing. The story said that it was a condition of the Flannery bequest to the village that neither the golf course nor the church was to be sold; they were to be held in perpetuity for the “pleasure and instruction of future generations.” The village council had given the necessary undertaking at the time, which was sixty-four years ago. It was possible, of course, that the story was dead wrong; they often are, and since, as I noticed, this was one of my own effusions—I knew the subject had a familiar ring to it—there was a pretty good chance that it was wrong. There was also a chance that the council had said, “Yassiree, Bob,” six decades ago, and a new council had, more recently, said “Nuts to that.” We all know that “in perpetuity” in legal terms means whatever a gaggle of lawyers and a judge decide.
    Just the same, it seemed, on the face of it, that Winifred Martin was talking nonsense, and I was feeling more than somewhat puzzled as I laid the back issues to rest, chucked the sandwich in the wastebasket, stuffed the porno magazines in a jacket pocket—I would give them back to Billy Haldane and tell him to keep them out of the office—and strode briskly out into the newsroom and right smack, dab, into the form of H. Klovack, Photographer, who happened to be passing the library-cum-kitchen door just as I popped out of it. I clutched her for support, and Hanna clutched me for ditto, then drew back, affronted.
    â€œCarlton,” she snapped. “What is this? Lying in wait, are we?”
    â€œNo, we’re not,” I informed her. “If you come barrelling along, not looking where you’re going . . .”
    â€œLurking around corners until something female shows and then pouncing . . .”
    â€œ. . . not honking your horn or anything, accidents are bound to occur.”
    â€œAccidents! Hah!”
    â€œIf you think, Miss Klovack, that I would stoop so low as to force my attentions, unwanted . . .”
    â€œWell, if you think they’re wanted, Buster, you’ve got another think coming.”
    â€œ. . . that I am so starved for female companionship . . .”
    â€œOh, you’re not starved for female companionship, eh?”
    â€œNo, of course not.”
    â€œOh, yeah. Name one.”
    â€œOne what?”
    â€œOne female companion that you’re not starved for—you know what I mean.”
    â€œSurely, Klovack, you don’t expect a gentleman to . . . to bandy names?”
    â€œYes. Sure. Bandy me a name.”
    â€œI would never,” I remarked stiffly, “bandy a name. One doesn’t treat the opposite sex as