Another Man's Shoes — Context and Discussion

Billy looked at it with the eye of a connoisseur. "You're lucky it wasn't poisoned," he remarked. "What about the gold?"

"I can find the place again all right," I said, "but I want money. It's not a one-man job. That's why I came to London."

I shook my head. "On the contrary, I've spent what I had. They're a shy lot here, Billy--and I wasn't going to give the show away absolutely. I shall have to try New York."

"You're about right," answered Billy. "Unless you roll up in a frock-coat with introductions, the average Britisher's got no manner of use for you. You'll do better in the States. When are you going?"

"As soon as I can get a ship," I replied. "I've hung on here till I've got just enough left to square my bill. To-morrow I shall go down to the docks and sign on in the first boat that will take me."

"I wish I was coming with you," said Billy wistfully.

"Why not?" I suggested.

He shook his head. "I'm putting in for a job," he explained: "some prospecting business in Mexico that Maxwells are running. They've kept me hanging about for six weeks, so I may as well see it out now."

"Well, give me an address of some kind," I said. "In case my business comes off and yours doesn't, I'd like to have you with me."

Billy pulled out a pencil and a bit of paper and scribbled down a few words. "This is where I'm staying," he said: "34 Vauxhall Road. I'll tell 'em where to forward letters when I leave."

I put the paper in my pocket, and turned my attention to the sardines and potato salad which the waiter had just dumped down in front of me. Billy's two bottles of wine, which arrived immediately afterwards, soon put us into a cheerfully reminiscent mood, and throughout dinner we yarned away about old friends and old days in the Argentine, where five years before we had first run across each other.

I suggested winding up the evening at a music-hall; but Billy, unfortunately, had some appointment connected with his job, which prevented him from coming. However, he not only paid for dinner, but insisted on lending me a couple of sovereigns, which, to tell the truth, I was very glad to accept. But for this, by the time I had paid my bill the next morning, I should have been practically penniless.

I said good-bye to him regretfully at the bottom of Gerrard Street, and then, walking across Leicester Square, made my way slowly down to the Embankment. I was lodging in Chelsea, and I thought I might just as well stroll home as waste threepence on a bus.

It was a fine, soft summer evening, with a faint breeze stirring the trees, and now and then lifting a scrap of paper from the roadway and dropping it again languidly after it had tumbled it a few yards. There were not many people on the Embankment; those that were there consisting chiefly of engaged couples, with here and there a tattered piece of human wreckage apparently on the look-out for a comfortable open-air lodging for the coming night.

I sauntered slowly on, clinking Billy's two sovereigns in my pocket, and pondering idly over my own affairs. I had left Bolivia four months before in high spirits, thinking that for the first time in my life I had the chance of making some money. That I had found gold in richly paying quantities I had no shadow of doubt, and I felt confident that in London I should be able to raise sufficient capital to get together a proper expedition for penetrating the interior. I knew enough of the Bolivian authorities to be sure that, as far as State permission went, a generous measure of bribery was the only thing necessary.

Seven or eight weeks in England had been enough to dash all my high hopes. I suppose English business men are naturally cautious--requiring to know a great deal about a stranger's record before they care to accept his statement. Now my record, though highly interesting to myself, had been of a little too chequered a nature to inspire confidence in the breast of a capitalist whose ideas of life are bounded by Lombard Street and, shall we say, Maidenhead. At all events, I had failed dismally in my purpose, and, as I had told Billy, had reached the end of my resources without getting any further in my quest than when I had started.