HE Romans who cut the old road through Kent must have established a fort in the place where Mill Lane meets Church Street; for here the street way bulges northward and there is a comparatively wide-open space which is called magnificently "the Broadway," to distinguish it from all other Broadways in the world. Here, on Saturdays particularly, there are fine stalls where the thrifty market, in the mistaken belief that it is cheaper to buy from a trolley than from a shop. On Sundays there are public meetings. Political orators roar, earnest workers for prohibition bellow, sincere Christians gather in knots under the light of an oil lamp and listen to good men struggling with other people's perversities, or else sing together in thin, reedy voices.
The Athletic Sports Club is in one of the streets leading out of the Broadway, a fairly new building erected by a local patriot who made war goods at a large profit and would have been a rich man to-day if some interfering person had not stopped the war just as he was furnishing his new house on Blackheath. Since the war was, indeed, over, the factory became a superfluity. The actual workshops became a garage, whilst the handsome office buildings fell into the hands of Elijah Sterner, an expert in club management, and the Athletic Sports Club was inaugurated under the auspices of eminent and innocent bigwigs. It was the idea that this should be a centre of sport; that here should be discovered and encouraged the white hopes of the future. When the garage proprietor became bankrupt, following the course of four fifths of all garage proprietors, a boxing ring was added, and here on Saturdays good lads fought for microscopic purses to the deafening encouragement of the patrons.
Here sport began and ended, if you except the racing which kept three bookmakers busy in the club proper.
Men and women (it was a mixed club) crowded the flashily decorated club-room on the second floor every afternoon when racing was in progress. By ticker and telephone vital news came and was recorded—pandemonium reigned until the tape machine buzzed and the magic words "They're off!" brought an unearthly silence to the members. Somewhere under God's sky, lithe, lean racehorses were rounding the bend for the home stretch—green turf beneath the flying hooves; a shimmer of silken jackets in the sun, a forest of glasses levelled from the stand....
"London Call won!"
Grimy hands, trembling with excitement, are outstretched to the bookmaker, a growl of passionless blasphemy from the losers...
"Ladies present—moderate your language, gen'l'men." The white-coated barman said this mechanically.
On the wall over the serried ranks of bottles is a printed card:
It is a classy proverb, believed to be in the Bible by many.
Racing was over for the day; the track and ticker portion of the club had drifted away. At a long table in the corner of the room Lee Campbell, Li Sterner's manager and partner, held the bank in a forbidden game of baccarat— played according to rules framed by Elijah and his manager.
Elijah, a stout, broad-shouldered man, slumbered noisily in a Windsor chair, his head lolling on his shoulder, his cigar still between his fingers. The barman, wiping the counter with slow, leisurely strokes, had his mind and eyes on the card players, when there came a faint tinkle of sound and the barman took down the receiver of a wall telephone.
"Who is it?" Li Sterner was awake and on his feet.
For answer the man handed him the receiver.
"Huh? Come right up!"
He swung round to the door as it opened.
The girl who came in would have been fashionably dressed in Park Lane. Deptford might well hold its breath as it did. From the Paris hat on her shapely golden head to the tips of her Fifth Avenue shoes she was exquisite. She brought into the room the elusive fragrance of a perfume unknown to men and women who could do little more than distinguish the tang of synthetic violets from the poison gas of peppermint.
Her features were regular and small, the chin too full for perfection, her eyes a limpid blue. She owed something to art for the clarity of her complexion and the redness of the full lips.
Li took the little white-gloved hand in his and was politely interested rather than enthusiastic.
"Glad to see you back, Cora. You fellers can get on with your game. I don't want any nosing round here." This to the fascinated group at the table. Then, in a lower voice: "You've got a nerve—in daylight, too!"
She dropped into the chair he had vacated a few seconds before and laughed.