Read The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham - II - The World Over for Free Online Page A

give her away; perhaps she didn’t care if I did. I stole a glance at her now and then while she was quietly listening to the excited babbling of the three young people, but her friendly, pleasant face told me nothing. If I hadn’t known otherwise I would have sworn that no untoward circumstance had ever troubled the course of her uneventful life.
    The evening came to an end and this is the end of my story, but for the fun of it I am going to relate a small incident that happened when Wyman and I got back to his house. We decided to have a bottle of beer before going to bed and went into the kitchen to fetch it. The clock in the hall struck eleven and at that moment the phone rang. Wyman went to answer it and when he came back was quietly chortling to himself.
    “What’s the joke?” I asked.
    “It was one of my students. They’re not supposed to call members of the faculty after ten-thirty, but he was all hot and bothered. He asked me how evil had come into the world.”
    “And did you tell him?”
    “I told him that St Thomas Aquinas had got hot and bothered too about that very question and he’d better worry it out for himself. I said that when he found the solution he was to call me, no matter what time it was. Two o’clock in the morning if he liked.”
    “I think you’re pretty safe not to be disturbed for many a long night,” I said.
    “I won’t conceal from you that I have formed pretty much the same impression myself,” he grinned.

THE MAN WITH THE SCAR
     

    I T WAS on account of the scar that I first noticed him, for it ran, broad and red, in a great crescent from his temple to his chin. It must have been due to a formidable wound and I wondered whether this had been caused by a sabre or by a fragment of shell. It was unexpected on that round, fat and good-humoured face. He had small and undistinguished features, and his expression was artless. His face went oddly with his corpulent body. He was a powerful man of more than common height. I never saw him in anything but a very shabby grey suit, a khaki shirt and a battered sombrero. He was far from clean. He used to come into the Palace Hotel at Guatemala City every day at cocktail time and strolling leisurely round the bar offer lottery tickets for sale. If this was the way he made his living it must have been a poor one, for I never saw anyone buy, but now and then I saw him offered a drink. He never refused it. He threaded his way among the tables with a sort of rolling walk as though he were accustomed to traverse long distances on foot, paused at each table, with a little smile mentioned the numbers he had for sale and then, when no notice was taken of him, with the same smile passed on. I think he was for the most part a trifle the worse for liquor.
    I was standing at the bar one evening, my foot on the rail, with an acquaintance—they make a very good dry martini at the Palace Hotel in Guatemala City—when the man with the scar came up. I shook my head as for the twentieth time since my arrival he held out for my inspection his lottery tickets. But my companion nodded affably.
    “Qué tal, general? How is life?”
    “Not so bad. Business is none too good, but it might be worse.”
    “What will you have, general?"
    “A brandy.”
    He tossed it down and put the glass back on the bar. He nodded to my acquaintance.
    “Gracias. Hasta luego.”
    Then he turned away and offered his tickets to the men who were standing next to us.
    “Who is your friend?” I asked. “That’s a terrific scar on his face."
    “It doesn’t add to his beauty, does it? He’s an exile from Nicaragua. He’s a ruffian of course and a bandit, but not a bad fellow. I give him a few pesos now and then. He was a revolutionary general and if his ammunition hadn’t given out he’d have upset the government and be minister of war now instead of selling lottery tickets in Guatemala. They captured him, along with his staff, such as it was, and tried him by