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looked upon Christ, although they may certainly have looked upon…”
    “God save all here,” said John Omally, striding into the Swan. Somehow the talkers at the bar had formed themselves into what appeared to be a conspiratorial huddle. “Hello,” said John, “plotting the downfall of the English is it I hope?”
    “We were discussing the Wandering Jew,” said Pooley.
    “Gracious,” said John “and were you now, certainly there’d be a penny or two to be made in the meeting up with that fellow.” The shifting eyes put Omally upon the alert. “He’s not been in and I’ve bloody well missed him?”
    “Not exactly,” said Neville.
    “Not exactly is it, well let me tell you my dear fellow that if you see him lurking hereabouts you tell him that John Vincent Omally of Moby Dick Terrace would like a word in his kosher shell-like.”
    Neville pulled Omally a pint of Large and accepted the exact coinage from the Irishman; upon cashing up the sum he discovered Jim’s washer. Jim, observing this, excused himself and went to the toilet. Shrugging hopelessly the part-time barman took up his NO TRAMPS sign and crossed the bar. Before the open door he hesitated. His mind was performing rapid calculations.
    If this tramp was the Wandering Jew maybe he could be persuaded to… well some business proposition, he would most certainly have seen a few rare old sights, a walking history book, why a man with a literary leaning, himself for instance, could come to some arrangement. This Jew might have personal reminiscences of, well, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Beethoven, he might have strolled around the Great Exhibition of 1851, rubbed shoulders with Queen Victoria, met Attila the Hun (not at the Great Exhibition, of course). The list was endless, there would surely be a great many pennies to be had, as Omally said. Neville fingered the painted sign. The tramp certainly carried with him an aura of great evil. Maybe if he was the Jew he would kill anyone who suspected him, he had nothing to lose. Christ’s second coming might be centuries off, what were a few corpses along the way. Maybe he didn’t want redemption anyway, maybe… But it was all too much, Neville gritted his teeth and hung the sign up at the saloon bar door. Jew or no Jew, he wanted no part whatever of the mystery tramp.
    Alone in the privacy of the gents, Jim Pooley’s head harboured similar thoughts to those of Neville’s; Jim however had not had personal contact with the tramp and could feel only a good healthy yearning to make a few pennies out of what was after all
his
theory. It would be necessary, however, to divert Omally’s thoughts from this; in fact it would be best for one and all if the Irishman never got to hear about the tramp at all. After all Omally was a little greedy when it came to the making of pennies and he might not share whatever knowledge came his way. Pooley would make a few discreet enquiries round and about; others must have seen the tramp. He could quiz Archroy more thoroughly, he’d be there now on his allotment.
    Pooley left the gents and rejoined Norman at the bar. “Where is John Omally?” he asked, eyeing the Irishman’s empty glass.
    “I was telling him about the tramp,” said Norman, “and he left in a hurry to speak to Archroy.”
    “Damn,” said Jim Pooley, “I mean, oh really, well I think I’ll take a stroll down that way myself and sniff the air.”
    “There’s a great deal more to sniffing the air than one might realize,” said Neville, informatively.
    But Jim Pooley had left the bar and naught was to be seen of his passing but foam sliding down a hastily emptied pint glass and a pub door that swung silently to and fro upon its hinge. A pub door that now lacked a NO TRAMPS sign.
    “If our man the Jew is wandering hereabouts,” said Jim to himself upon spying it, “there is no point in discouraging the arrival of the goose that may just be about to lay the proverbial golden egg.”
    Norman would have