All Fall Down

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Screwing up his eyes in the morning sunlight, Ellis McKay stumped down Regent Street. His rolling walk was slower than usual; slower, and less decisive. As he reached the corner of Vigo Street, he stopped irresolutely, and thrust out his underlip in a gesture of simian perplexity.

It was one of those early summer mornings when nobody seems to be in a hurry. The mild, swimming air, the day’s benign promise, reached all alike. Even those who had definite errands were sauntering, to get the utmost from the sun; some smiling to themselves as if possessed of a happy secret, others looking about them, full of interest in their fellow creatures.

Ellis, standing stockily in the middle of the pavement, drew many a glance of surprise and veiled amusement. The thick, sturdy figure, the cheerful rubicund face with its prominent blue eyes, the high forehead topped by tufts of reddish hair that stood up round a large bald patch like furze round a clearing, had a knack of drawing attention anywhere. This morning, in the mellow, peaceful air, it was quite startlingly incongruous. Ellis was wearing a sports jacket of vivid tweed, a shade between green and blue possible only to the dyers of the Hebrides. His thick legs were clad in dirty gray flannel bags, his check shirt was crumpled, his tie crooked. His crimson cheeks were tinged with a yellowish pallor, the violence of his features blurred with an obdurate red stubble. The grimaces of indecision, and the dolorous tenor humming that accompanied them, completed a study in eccentricity which caused passers-by to give him most of the pavement to himself.

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