It was Turee who first remarked on the passage of time and the absence of Harry Bream and Galloway. “Peculiar thing Galloway hasn’t come yet. He makes such a point of being punctual.”
“I hate punctuality,” Winslow stated. “It is the hobgoblin of small minds. Right, fellows?”
Hepburn said it was chastity that was the hobgoblin of small minds and Turee corrected them both, as usual, and said it was consistency, and eventually they got back to Galloway.
“Galloway called me last night,” Turee said, “and told me he was going to pick Harry up in Weston and drive on up here and arrive about nine-thirty.”
“There,” Winslow said. “There you have it.”
“Have what?”
“The crux of the situation. Harry. Harry’s always late for everything.”
It was a logical as well as an agreeable theory, and they were all having another drink to toast Harry, the crux of the situation, when, about eleven-thirty, Harry unintentionally ruined the whole thing by walking in the front door. He was wearing a mackintosh, a deer-hunter’s cap with the flaps up, and carrying his fishing gear.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said cheerfully. “Something went wrong with the fuel pump the other side of Owen Sound.”
They all stared at him in such a peculiar and disgruntled way that even Harry, who was not given to subtleties, sensed something was wrong.
“What’s the matter with you guys anyway? Have I broken out in spots or something?”
“Where’s Galloway?” Turee asked.
“I thought he was here.”
“Wasn’t he supposed to come with you?”
“That was the original plan, but I had an emergency call to make at a clinic down in Mimico, so I left word with Thelma to tell Galloway to go ahead without me. I know how he hates to be late. You don’t suppose Thelma got her signals switched?”
It was generally agreed among the fellows that Thelma had been born with her signals switched, but none of them wanted to state this outright because it might hurt Harry’s feelings. Harry adored his wife. Her little eccentricities seemed endlessly fascinating to him and he was always entertaining his friends with detailed reports of her opinions and experiences.
Because he’d been the sole support of his parents, Harry had not married until they were both dead and then he wasted no time. His marriage, at the age of thirty-five, to a woman who worked as a receptionist in a doctor’s office, came as a shock to his friends, especially to Galloway who had become used to having Harry at his beck and call, and ready for anything. The carefree bachelor Harry had been suddenly replaced by the hopelessly married Harry, subject to rules and restrictions and at the mercy of whims and worries. Though Thelma and Esther did not get along well, the two men remained the best of friends, partly because Thelma seemed to like Galloway and encouraged Harry to see him, and partly because the two men had been friends ever since their prep school years together. As a senior, Harry had been president of the class. He still possessed the yearbook with his graduation picture in it, and the caption: Henry Ellsworth Bream. A great future is predicted for our Harry, who holds a warm place in all our hearts.
He still held a warm place in a good many hearts but the future remained elusive. He had missed a number of boats, by inches or minutes, by oddities of fate like a flat tire, a delay in traffic, a wrong turning, a misplaced key, a sudden blizzard, a mistake in a telephone number.
“Poor Harry,” people said. “Always running into bad luck.”
It was generally expected that when his parents died fate would step in and make up to Harry for all his misfortunes by handing him a real stroke of luck. By Harry’s standards, fate had. The luck was Thelma.
“She probably didn’t give him the message,” Turee said. “Perhaps she suddenly decided to go to a movie or something and Galloway’s still sitting there waiting for you to turn up.”
Harry shook his head. “Thelma wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“Not on purpose, of course.”
“Not accidentally, either. Thelma’s got a wonderful memory.”
“Oh?”
“That girl’s never forgotten a thing in her life.”
“Well, all right, all right. It just seemed the logical explanation, that’s all.”
It was midnight by this time, and Bill Winslow, who couldn’t hold his liquor but would die trying, had reached the point of saturation. The excess fluid was seeping out of his eyes in the form of tears.
“Poor old Galloway, sitting down there on his can, sitting on his poor old lonely can, while we’re up here lapping up his liquor and having a swell time. It’s not cricket. Fellows, I ask you, is that cricket?”
Turee scowled at him across the room. “For God’s sake, stop blubbering, will you? I’m trying to think.”
“Poor old Galloway. Not cricket. Here we are having a swell time and there he sits on his poor old...”
“Hepburn, see if you can haul him off to bed.”
Hepburn put his hands under Winslow’s armpits and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, Billy-boy. Let’s go beddy-bye.”
“I don’t want to go to bed. I want to stay down here and have a swell time with you fellows.”
“Look, Billy-boy, we’re not having a swell time.”
“Y’aren’t?”
“No. So let’s get moving. Where’d you leave your suitcase?”
“I don’t know.”
“I put it upstairs with mine, in the room next to Galloway’s,” Turee said.
“I don’t want to go to bed. I’m sad.”
“So I see.”
Winslow tried to brush the moisture off his cheeks with his forearm. “I keep thinking about poor old Galloway and poor little Princess Margaret.”
“How did Princess Margaret get into this?”
“Ought to marry somebody, have kids, be happy. Everybody should be happy.”
“Certainly.”
“I’m happy.”
“Sure you are.”
“I’m having a swell time with you fellows, aren’t I?”
“Not for long, Billy-boy. Come on.”
With the tears still spouting from his eyes, Winslow shuffled across the room and began to ascend the staircase on all fours like a trained dog going up a ladder. Halfway up he collapsed and Hepburn had to drag him the rest of the way.
Turee got up and put another log on the fire and kicked it impatiently with his foot. “Well, what do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said gloomily. “This isn’t like Ron, to keep people waiting.”
“He might have had an accident.”
“He’s a good driver. He’s got a real bug on safety, seat belts and everything.”
“Even good drivers occasionally have accidents. The point is, since there’s no phone here, if something happened we’d have no way of finding out unless Esther sent a telegram to Wiarton and it was delivered out here.”
“Esther would be too upset to think of doing that.”
“All right, here’s another theory: Galloway never left home. He suffered an attack of indigestion, perhaps, and decided not to come.”
“Now that’s more like,” Harry said with enthusiasm. “Last time I saw him he was complaining about his stomach. I gave him a couple of those new ulcer capsules my firm’s putting out.”
“Galloway hasn’t got an ulcer.”
“He may have. The capsules worked like a charm.”
Turee turned away with an expression of distaste. He was the only one of the group who refused to have anything personal to do with either Harry’s diagnoses or Harry’s pills.