Statement of John Munting
It was a mistake from the very beginning for Lathom and myself to set up housekeeping together. It happened purely by chance—one of those silly, unnecessary chances that set one spinning out cheap platitudes about fatality and the great issues that hang upon an accidental meeting. It used to be considered highly unphilosophical to indulge in speculations about coincidence, still more to base any work of art upon it—but that was in the days when we believed in causality. Now, thanks to the Quantum theory and the second law of thermodynamics, we know better. We know that the element of randomness is what makes the Universe go round, and that the writers of sensation novels are wiser in their generation than the children of sweetness and light.
All the same, there still remains an appearance of causation here and there, and I persist in attributing some of the blame to the imbecilities of the public-school system. If Lathom had not worn an old Wincastrian tie, I should never have spoken to him in the little restaurant Au Bon Bourgeois in Greek Street. Or, at the most, I should have asked him to pass the French mustard. As it was, my natural aversion to my fellow-creatures being broken down by Burgundy, I was fool enough to say: “Hullo! you come from the old school, I see. Did I know you?”—and was instantly swamped and carried away in the flood of Lathom’s expansiveness.
Lathom is an incorrigible extrovert. His thyroids and liver function with riotous vigour. He beams out enthusiastically upon the world and is refracted out from everything and everybody he meets in a rainbow of colour. That is his fatal charm. In the ordinary way I am ill-adapted for prismatic function. That evening was an unfortunate exception. I couldn’t keep it up afterwards; that was the trouble.