Free Murphy by Samuel Beckett

ruthless tout was now launched in pursuit of Murphy, with the torpor in the Cockpit as the only clue. But many a poor wretch had been nailed by Cooper with very much less to work on. While Cooper was combing London, where he would stay at the usual stew, Neary would be working a line of his own in Dublin, where Wynn’s Hotel would always find him. When Cooper found Murphy, all he had to do was to notify Neary by wire.
    A feature of Miss Counihan’s attitude to Neary had been the regularity of its alternation. Having shown herself cruel, kind, cruel and kind in turn, she could no more welcome his arrival at her hotel than green, yellow, green is a legitimate sequence of traffic lights.
    Either he left the hotel or she did. He did, so that at least he might know whose were the happy beds and breakfasts. If he attempted to speak to her again before he had equipped himself with the – er – discharge papers aforesaid, she would send for the police.
    Neary crawled to the nearest station doss. All depended now on Cooper. If Cooper failed him he would simply post himself early one morning outside her hotel and as soon as she came tripping down the steps take salts of lemon.
    In the meantime there was little he could do. He began feebly to look for a thread that might lead him to Murphy among the nobility, tradesmen and gentry of that name in Dublin, but soon left off, appalled. He instructed the hall porter in Wynn’s to send any telegrams addressed to him from London across the street to Mooney’s, where he would always be found. There he sat all day, moving slowly from one stool to another until he had completed the circuit of the counters, when he would start all over again in the reverse direction. He did not speak to the curates, he did not drink the endless half-pints of porter that he had to buy, he did nothing but move slowly round the ring of counters, first in one direction, then in the other, thinking of Miss Counihan. When the house closed at night he went back to the doss and dossed, and in the morning he did not get up until shortly before the house was due to open. The hour from 2.30 to 3.30 he devoted to having himself shaved to the pluck. The whole of Sunday he spent in doss, as the hall porter at Wynn’s was aware, thinking of Miss Counihan. The power to stop his heart had deserted him.
    ‘My poor friend,’ said Wylie. 
    ‘Till this morning,’ said Neary. Feeling his mouth beginning to twitch he covered it with his hand. In vain. The face is an organised whole. ‘Or rather this afternoon,’ he said, directly he was able.
    He had reached the turn and was thinking of ebbing back when the boots from Wynn’s came in and handed him a telegram. FOUND STOP LOOK SLIPPY STOP COOPER . He was still laughing and crying, to the great relief of the curates, who had grown to detest and dread that frozen face day after day at their counters, when the boots returned with a second telegram. LOST STOP STOP WHERE YOU ARE STOP COOPER .
    ‘I have a confused recollection,’ said Neary, ‘of being thrown out.’
    ‘The curate mentality,’ said Wylie.
    ‘Then nothing more,’ said Neary, ‘until that deathless rump was trying to stare me down.’
    ‘But there is no rump,’ said Wylie. ‘How could there be? What chance would a rump have in the G.P.O.?’
    ‘I tell you I saw it,’ said Neary, ‘trying to downface me.’
    Wylie told him what happened next.
    ‘Do not quibble,’ said Neary harshly. ‘You saved my life. Now palliate it.’
    ‘I greatly fear,’ said Wylie, ‘that the syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The horse leech’s daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.’
    ‘Very prettily put,’ said Neary.
    ‘For an example of what I mean,’ said Wylie, ‘you have merely to consider the young Fellow of Trinity College—’
    ‘Merely is excellent,’ said Neary.
    ‘He sought relief in