Kay's report of his luck, when we met again that evening
was meagre; he had met an English Shakespearean
actor, Bob Mantell, and a Toronto acquaintance, the
"Duke." The actor, however, had given him an introduction
or two, and the Duke had asked us to play next
day in a cricket match on Staten Island. It was an
eleven of Actors v. the Staten Island Club, and Kay would
meet useful people. In sanguine mood we agreed to go.
It proved a momentous match for me.
Before it came off, however, something else had happened that may seem very small beer, but that provided me with a recurrent horror for many months to come, a horror perhaps disproportionate to its cause. It filled me, at any rate, with a peculiar loathing as of some hideous nightmare. I had never seen the things before; their shape, their ungainly yet rapid movement, their uncanny power of disappearing in a second, their number, their dirty colour, above all their smell, now gave me the sensations of acute nausea. Kay's laughter, though he too felt disgust and indignation, brought no comfort. We eventually got up and lit the gas. We caught it. I had my first view of the beast. We stared at each other in horror. Then Kay sniffed the air. "That explains it," he said, referring to a faint odour of oil we had both noticed when engaging the room. "They put it in the woodwork to kill them," he added. "It's the only thing. But it never really gets rid of them, I'm afraid."
The anger of Mrs. Bernstein when we accused her in the morning, her indignant denials, her bluster about "insoults," and that "never had sooch a t'ing been said of her house pefore," were not half as comic as her expression when I suddenly produced the soap-dish with its damning evidence--17 all told.
She stared, held her breath a second, then very quietly said "Ach, Ach! If you stay, chentelmen, I take von tollar off the price."
It was impossible not to laugh with her; there was something kind and motherly, something good and honest
and decent about her we both liked; she would do her best,
