No, there could be no doubt that I was all that stood between "Slant" Allen, "Ticket-of-Leavester," beachcomber, black-birder, pearl-pirate and (more or less incidentally to all of the foregoing) murderer, and the Hon. Hartley Allen, second son of the late James Allen, Bart., racing man, polo player and once the greatest gentleman jockey on the Australian turf. Pardon for the comparative peccadilloes--a "pulled" horse or two, a money fraud in connection with a "sweep," and the rather rough treatment of a chorus girl, who had foolishly asked for "time to consider" his proposal that she come to him _at once_ from the Queensland stockman who was only just finishing refurnishing her George Street flat--which, cumulatively, had been responsible for his being packed off to "The Islands," was already assured, and it looked as though more was to come--that his "spectacular and self-sacrificing heroism" was going to wipe out the unpleasant memories that had barred him from sporting and social circles even before the law stepped in. A sporting writer in that morning's _Herald_ had speculated as to whether or not he would be seen again riding "Number 1" for the unbeaten "Boomerang" Four, with whom he had qualified for his handicap of "8," still standing as the highest ever given an Australian polo player; and the racing column of the latest _Bulletin_ had devoted a good part of its restricted space to a discussion of the possibility that the weight he had put on in his years of "easy life in 'The Islands'" might force him to confine his riding to steeplechases. Of the record which had made the name of "Slant" Allen a byword for all that was desperate and devilish from Port Moresby to Papeete, from Yap to Suva, little seemed to be known and nothing at all was said. But then, that old beach-combers' maxim to the effect that "What a man does in 'The Islands' don't figure in St. Peter's 'dope sheet,'" was one from which even I myself had been wont to extract no little solace.
With nothing but my fever-wracked and absinthe-soaked (I may as well confess at the outset that I was "in the grip of the green" at this time) anatomy standing between, on the one hand, and Allen more despicable than even I, who was fairly familiar with the lurid swath he had cut across Polynesia, had ever dreamed he could be, and, on the other hand, an Allen who might easily become more the idol of sporting (which is, of course, the real) Australia than he had ever been at the zenith of his meteoric career as a turfman and athlete, it was plain enough that he would not--nay, could not--ignore for long my presence in a city that was standing on tiptoe to acclaim him as a native son whose deed had done it honour in the eyes of the world. It was something like that the _Telegraph_ had it, I believe.