The Equalizer by E.V. Lucas
A traveller on a delayed train complains at length to his companion that the railway company owes him recompense: he calculates his time at two guineas an hour, reckons he has lost a guinea through the half-hour's delay caused by a wait outside the junction, and demands to know how he can ever get equal with the company for the money and disrupted plans this has cost him. A little man sitting opposite, whose eyes grow cunning and glittering as he listens, says nothing until the aggrieved traveller has left. He then addresses the narrator, asking why the complaining man did not simply take something from the carriage — the window strap, for instance — to make up for the loss and annoy the company. When the narrator protests that his friend was not serious enough to act on his grievance, the little man dismisses such people as all talk and no action, declaring that he himself always gets back some or all of the money he considers he has been cheated of. He explains his method: in a restaurant, if he has waited a long time and been given poor food, he calculates the extent to which he has been swindled and takes a spoon or two, or perhaps a knife, to balance the account, insisting he is scrupulously honest in doing so. In a theatre, if he judges his time to have been wasted, he takes home the opera-glasses provided in the sixpenny boxes, boasting that he now possesses such opera-glasses from nearly every theatre in London. When the narrator expresses disbelief, the little man insists he is not joking and never jokes, and asks the narrator to repeat his method to the friend the next time they meet, in the hope that it will make him more reasonable.
By E.V. Lucas · Genre: Satirical Fiction, Short Story, Dark Comedy · 497 words
First lines
The Interviewer's Bag
My friend was talking about the difficulty of getting level with life: with the people who charge too much, and with bad management generally; the subject having been started by a long wait outside the junction, which made our train half an hour late.
Genres
- Satirical Fiction — The work is fundamentally satirical, mocking the little man's elaborate rationalizations for theft as 'scrupulous honesty,' exposing the absurdity of self-serving logic that justifies dishonesty.
- Short Story — The narrative is a concise, self-contained story with a clear setup, development, and punchline delivered through dialogue.
- Dark Comedy — The humor is darkly ironic throughout—the protagonist's proud admission of systematic theft from restaurants and theatres, his collection of stolen opera glasses, his claim to never joke while doing exactly that.
- Social Commentary — The work critiques class relations, consumer exploitation by businesses, and the moral compromises of middle-class characters attempting to 'get even' with commercial institutions.
Tags
petty theft · moral ambiguity · consumer grievance · rationalization · retaliation · false honesty · London · theatres · restaurants · railway · satire · irony
What this Textopian page supports
The Equalizer is listed on Textopian as a short story by E.V. Lucas, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Short story
- Author: E.V. Lucas
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Satirical Fiction, Short Story, Dark Comedy, Social Commentary, Realist Fiction
- Length: 497 words
- Structure: 1 section, 15 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Equalizer by E.V. Lucas
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