“Let’s telephone the steamship office,” he said, “and find out whether your ship is really going to sail on schedule. They usually don’t these days.”

Mr. O’Flaherty did the telephoning, and, sure enough, the blamed thing’s been postponed till Saturday night.

They asked me what I wanted to do next, and I said I’d like to pay my respects to George and Mary. But I hadn’t let them know I was coming and they’re both out of town.

We went to Murray’s (pronounced Mowrey’s) Club for lunch, though no one in the party was a member and you have to sign checks to get anything. Unlike most clubs, however, you pay cash simultaneously with signing the check, so we weren’t cheating. I signed “Charles Chaplin” to one check and it went unchallenged.

Gene’s two sons are in the British army, and the conversation was confined to them. I was told they were the best two sons a man ever had, but I knew better.