THE MAN UNDER THE BED

NZ Truth, Issue 1108, 24 February 1927, Page 7

THE MAN UNDER THE BED

(From "N.ZI Truth's" Special; Wellington Representative.) MIGHT. The dull sound of wobbling feet along the wibbly- . * wobbly pith. The blue flame of a match and then the sound of •': a key scraping and scratching its uncertain way to the lock. -

THE door at last .opens and a thick form, silhouetted for a moment, disappears . within to the whispered ' tune of alcoholic hiccoughs. The hiccoughs belong to one James McAndrew, seaman, of Wellington.. He is the real actor m the production. Still night, but a little^ later. A lady arid gentleman return to their abode via the same door of the same house and proceed to the same bedroom as the one who has gone before. They are not aware that he of the wobbly ways and the hiccoughs has rolled blissfully 'neath the bed. How should they? • Then like a shot m the dark, like a mad pig being driven poßt- haste to market against his " pig-Iron will, comes a sound — a rip-roaring, roof-soaring snore. A scream, a grunt and the manunder the bed is. no longer under it. He is blinking curiously, with one of those looks of utter vacancy. His mumbled incoherencies.are taken to mean something like: "Where the deuce am-hic-I— if I aren't homehie?" The only difficulty is that the man and the woman who last appeared on the scene can't answer his conundrum. If HE doesn't know the reason for his appearance m the bedroom they certainly don't. Anyhow, the case, looks fishy and it- develops into a police affair. This is what; came to. pass, and how it came to pass when the magistrate had the job of straightening out the bedroom mystery the next day. It appears that McAndrew, who is a i

hard-working seaman, m company with his better-half lived at a house m ' . Moleswortlr Street, Wellington. ■'•■■ About a week before the incident he" 'J left the place to; go. -down to the sea m A ships, but on the morning of .his return. s his wife had found new quarters and • leTt for them. \ McAndrew, finding himself m the V fierce grip of the heat-wave, discovered temporary solace behind the foam oj a few long beers and gradually as* v sumed what film actors tell usi is a v fade-out. Like the faithful old horse that carried its sleeping master over the precarious road home, co, too. m this case good old Bacohue aotea as the steed and led the deliriously happy one to the place where he .used to live. . Charged with being found by night without lawful excuse (he wasn't m a condition to make any) m enclosed premises, McAndrew pleaded not , guilty and ,got live-wire Lawyer A. J. Mazengarb to put matters right. In answer to the magistrate. Sub \ Inspector Harvey said there was no i question of felonious intent, I, Apparently the man had not been r fully alive to the change of abode and - — coupled with the stimulating medium * through which he sought peace and tranquility — was quite oblivious of the fact that he had chosen as his resting-, > (■'■ place the house m which 'he had once. resided. ' He was ordered to come up for sentence if called upon within six months. The , moral is: "Look before you leap," or, if you can't dp that, then don't leap at all. *■