The Adventures of Hiram Holliday Read Free Page A

enough to satisfy his own longings. Laboriously, an hour a week, because it was all he could afford, he mastered the art of flying a plane. He joined the National Guard and drilled once a week. He went to a gymnasium and learned to box, and even acquired a smattering of ju-jitsu. These were the escapes, practised in his time away from the paper which gave him the zest for living. When he faced an opponent steel in hand in the fencing salle, he was D'Artagnan at bay. Of these things no one ever knew. It was unto himself sufficient that he was a man and unafraid. It was here that Hiram Holliday and the average dreamer parted company. Imaginings satisfy the average amongst us. We can see ourselves performing romantic and dramatic deeds, and it suffices even though we know we cannot run a block without puffing and that in a hand-to-hand encounter of any kind we would not last two minutes. It amused Hiram Holliday to be able to put his dreams into practice. But he had never saved anyone's life, fired a shot at anything but a target, or raised his hand in anger against a fellow-man. His protective colouration was against him, his roundish face, his ruffled, sandy hair, his steel-rimmed spectacles, his slight tendency to corpulency and his bland manner. The thing was that people never looked at him twice. If they had they might have noticed something besides the stubborn chin, the firm mouth and the eager, bright blue eyes. A man does not learn to shoot, fence, ride a horse, swim, box and wrestle and fly a plane, even badly, without its leaving a mark on him.
    It was rather indicative of Hiram's life up to that point that his opportunity to fulfil his life's dream and visit Europe should have come about by virtue of a comma - eventually known as the $500,000 comma.
    The Sentinel won a particularly nasty and dangerous half-million-dollar libel suit by virtue of the placement of a comma in the story in question. To have lost it would have cost the paper at least a hundred thousand dollars.
    When the original copy was exhumed and examined after the trial, it was found that no comma had existed there when the story first arrived at the copy desk, but that a large, fat, and pointed one had been inserted with a firm stroke of the pencil by the hand of Hiram Holliday.
    A grateful publisher, mellifluous under a victory that had saved him money and prestige, and willing once and for all to drive home to copy-readers past, present and future, the importance of well-placed commas, awarded Hiram Holliday a bonus of $1,000 and a month's vacation with pay. That, with the money he had saved out of his head-line prizes and the time he had coming to him, brought Hiram his trip. He sailed the next week on the Britannique.
    Hitler was storming at Nuremberg, the French Government was tottering under strikes; the Russian bear was muttering to itself. Sudeten Germans were firing at Czech Customs guards and the Czech Government, too late, was offering concessions to the Sudetens. In England there was a quickening of something called A.R.P., and people actually began inquiring about getting gas masks. The poker-players in Downing Street squeezed their cards - behind them were out-of-date aeroplanes, insufficient aeroplanes, and anti-aircraft guns that had fought the last war, and an unprepared, ill-equipped army - and scratched the chins of lengthening and sallowing faces, faces lined with worry. They were having to decide as they had decided once before that if you are going to call a pat hand that you think is a bluff you really ought to have better than a pair of sixes yourself.
    With mixed emotions Hiram Holliday went ashore at Southampton, boarded the boat special for London and was shunted down the vast dock, through Southampton streets, out into rural England under rain, and headed for grey, sprawling London town. His race had been cradled in England. He was there.
    What Hiram Holliday Saw in London
    The sulphurous black war clouds were piling on the