I』d dropped my papers at the office. Warner is one of these cheap Ameri dentists, and he has his sulting-room, or 『parlour』 as he likes to call it, half a big block of offices, between a photographer and a rubber-goods wholesaler. I was early for my appoi, but it was time for a bit of grub. I don』t knout it into my head to go into a milk-bar. They』re places I generally avoid. We five-to-ten-pound-a-weekers aren』t well served in the way of eating-places in London. If your idea of the amount to spend on a meal is one and threepe』s either Lyons, the Express Dairy, or the A.B.C., or else it』s the kind of funeral snack they serve you in the saloon bar, a pint of bitter and a slab of cold pie, so cold that it』s colder than the beer. Outside the milk-bar the boys were yelling the first editions of the evening papers.
Behind the bright red ter a girl in a tall white cap was fiddling with an ice-box, and somewhere at the back a radio laying, plonk-tiddle-tiddle-plonk, a kind of tinny sound. Why the hell am I ing here? I thought to myself as I went in. There』s a kind of atmosphere about these places that gets me down. Everything slid shiny and streamlined; mirrors, enamel, and plate whichever dire you look in. Everything spent on the decorations and nothing on the food. No real food at all. Just lists of stuff with Ameriames, sort of phantom stuff that you 』t taste and hardly believe in the existence of. Everything es out of a carton or a tin, or it』s hauled out of a refrigerator or squirted out of a tap or squeezed out of a tube. No fort, no privacy. Tall stools to sit on, a kind of narrow ledge to eat off, mirrors all round you. A sort anda floating round, mixed up with the noise of the radio, to the effect that food doesn』t matter, fort doesn』t matter, nothing matters except sliess and shininess and streamlining. Everything』s streamlined nowadays, even the bullet Hitler』s keeping for you. I ordered a large coffee and a couple of frankfurters. The girl in the white cap jerked them at me with about as muterest as you』d throw ants』 eggs to a goldfish.
Outside the door a newsboy yelled 『StarnoosstanNERD!』 I saw the poster flapping against his knees: LEGS. FRESH DISCOVERIES. Just 『legs』, you notice. It had got down to that. Two days earlier they』d found a woman』s legs in a railway waiting-room, done up in a broer parcel, and what with successive editions of the papers, the whole nation was supposed to be so passionately ied in these blasted legs that they didn』t need any further introdu. They were the only legs that were news at the moment. It』s queer, I thought, as I ate a bit of roll, how dull the murders are getting nowadays. All this cutting people up and leaving bits of them about the tryside. Not a pat the old domestic poisoning dramas, Crippen, Seddon, Mrs Maybrick; the truth being, I suppose, that you 』t do a good murder unless you believe yoing to roast in hell for it.
At this moment I bit into one of my frankfurters, and—Christ!
I 』t holy say that I』d expected the thing to have a pleasant taste. I』d expected it to taste of nothing, like the roll. But this—well, it was quite an experience. Let me try and describe it to you.
The frankfurter had a rubber skin, of course, and my temporary teeth weren』t much of a fit. I had to do a kind of sawing movement before I could get my teeth through the skin. And then suddenly— pop! The thing burst in my mouth like a rotten pear. A sort of horrible soft stuff was ooz