The Rumour Hound He came up to us in the club the other evening, with the fixed look in his eye—you know the sort of thing: the look which the official spokesman assumes when he is going to put over a particularly fast one—and grabbing us by the lapel of our coat started:
"Have you heard..."
"Don't, please don't tell us" we pleaded. "Don't make our blood curdle any more."
"But you don't know what I am going to say."
"Oh, yes. I do."
"Well what is it then, if you're so smart?"
"I know. The big push is going to start to-morrow. You have got it on the best authority. Indeed right out of the horse's mouth."
"Well, it isn't exactly that. That big push I know definitely is to start tomorrow, but believe it or not, the "Japanese boast that they will have least one-hundred-and-sixty-two aeroplanes in the air.
"You don't say,"
"Yes. One-hundred-and-sixty-two."
"Uh! I should worry. Seems to me they couldn't be in a better place than in the air."
"But fancy one-hundred-and-sixty-two!"
"Are you sure of your fact."
"Absolutely, el man. Ive got a friend whose amah's first cousin Works in an egg factory, and she says it is bound to come to-morrow. You know I don't like that number."
"Neither do I"
"Why not?"
"Well for one thing you can't divide it by four, and if you could what's the use "Then gently disengaging his grip on our coat, and avoiding the fixity of his eye we knocked one back. Just to keep our spirits up.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.