He did everything right—too right; and in dress and comportment was
inevitably correct. Not that he was a dandy. Far from it. He was a
college man, in dress and carriage as like as a pea to the type that of
late years is being so generously turned out of our institutions of
higher learning. His handshake was satisfyingly strong and stiff. His
blue eyes were coldly blue and convincingly sincere. His voice, firm and
masculine, clean and crisp of enunciation, was pleasant to the ear. The
one drawback to Freddie Drummond was his inhibition. He never unbent.
In his football days, the higher the tension of the game, the cooler he
grew. He was noted as a boxer, but he was regarded as an automaton, with
the inhuman precision of a machine judging distance and timing blows,
guarding, blocking, and stalling. He was rarely punished himself, while
he rarely punished an opponent. He was too clever and too controlled to
permit himself to put a pound more weight into a punch than he intended.
With him it was a matter of exercise. It kept him fit.
As time went by, Freddie Drummond found himself more frequently crossing
the Slot and losing himself in South of Market. His summer and winter
holidays were spent there, and, whether it was a week or a week-end, he
found the time spent there to be valuable and enjoyable. And there was
so much material to be gathered. His third book, _Mass and Master_,
became a text-book in the American universities; and almost before he
knew it, he was at work on a fourth one, _The Fallacy of the
Inefficient_.
Somewhere in his make-up there was a strange twist or quirk. Perhaps it
was a recoil from his environment and training, or from the tempered seed
of his ancestors, who had been book-men generation preceding generation;
but at any rate, he found enjoyment in being down in the working-class
world. In his own world he was “Cold-Storage,” but down below he was
“Big” Bill Totts, who could drink and smoke, and slang and fight, and be
an all-round favourite. Everybody liked Bill, and more than one working
girl made love to him. At first he had been merely a good actor, but as
time went on, simulation became second nature. He no longer played a
part, and he loved sausages, sausages and bacon, than which, in his own
proper sphere, there was nothing more loathsome in the way of food.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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