THE TYPES WERE SPOOFING MADLY WHEN MR YARROW JOINED them in the pub. Three matches each and you had to guess the total; they greeted him with clenched fists raised like a party salute: ‘Come on Yarrow, get them up,’ ‘Room for you in the next round,’ but Mr Yarrow as a rule guessed wrong, and he disliked losing.
‘Be with you in a moment, boys.’ He forced his way through to the bar; behind him the fists were flourished again in the air and the stranger, entering at that moment, stopped in astonishment, believing he had blundered into the beginning of a fight.
From: Julian Maclaren-Ross, The Dark Diceman (1947), unfinished novel based on the Eugen Weidmann mass-murderer case in Paris, 1939.
Buddy Holly: Learning The Game (Link)
