Words: send, v.

CONNOISSEURS RELISH Cameron Kay's novel Thieves Fall Out (1950). It brings the spirit of Casablanca to Farouk's Egypt. "Business does not stop because people decide to kill one another on a large scale." There is even a hunchback pianist, who tells the hero, "That was the one song that always sent you."

Sam could have said so to Rick, for the verb goes back to 1932 at least, when Louis Armstrong cabled, "My boy Earl was marvelous as ever yessir he sent me." It was in wide in use for several decades, spawning such phrases Little Richard's "oh, my Linda, / she's a solid sender", and was the title of Sam Cooke's rather more lilting "You Send Me". Jonathon Green, in recording a falling-off in the later Sixties, detects a certain retro chic to it now.