On setting out that night Sam had divided his money into two portions. His baggage, together with his letter of credit, had preceded him across the ocean on the _Mauretania_; and as it might be a day or so before he could establish connection with it, he had prudently placed the bulk of his ready money in his note-case, earmarking it for the purchase of new clothes and other necessaries on the morrow so that he might be enabled to pay his first visit to Tilbury House in becoming state. The remainder, sufficient for the evening’s festivities, he had put in his trousers pockets. It was into his right trousers pocket therefore that he now groped. His fingers closed on a half-crown. He promptly dropped it. He was feeling _seigneurial_, but not so _seigneurial_ as that. Something more in the nature of a couple of coppers was what he was looking for, and it surprised him to find that except for the half-crown the pocket appeared to be empty. He explored the other pocket. That was empty too. The explanation was, of course, that the life of pleasure comes high. You cannot go stuffing yourself and a voracious sea cook at restaurants, taking buses and Underground trains all over the place, and finally winding up at a cinema palace, without cutting into your capital. Sam was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the half-crown was his only remaining spare coin. He was, accordingly, about to abandon the idea of largess and move on, when the vocalist, having worked his way through You’re the Sort of a Girl That Men Forget, began to sing that other popular ballad entitled Sailors Don’t Care. And it was no doubt the desire to refute the slur implied in these words on the great brotherhood of which he was an amateur member that decided Sam to be lavish. The half-crown changed hands. Sam resumed his walk. At a quarter past eleven at night there is little to amuse and interest the stroller east of Wellington Street, so he now crossed the road and turned westward. And he had not been walking more than a few paces when he found himself looking into the brightly lighted window of a small restaurant that appeared to specialise in shellfish. The slab beyond the glass was paved with the most insinuating oysters. Overcome with emotion, Sam stopped in his tracks. There is something about the oyster, nestling in its shell, which in the hours that come when the theatres are closed and London is beginning to give itself up to nocturnal revelry stirs right-thinking men like a bugle. There swept over Sam a sudden gnawing desire for nourishment. Oysters with brown bread and a little stout were, he perceived, just what this delightful evening demanded by way of a fitting climax. He pulled out his note-case. Even if it meant an inferior suit next morning, one of those Treasury notes which lay there must be broken into here and now.