Psmith, Journalist - P. G. Wodehouse (i am reading a book TXT) 📗

York, being an island, has had no room to spread. It is a town of human sardines. In the poorer quarters the congestion is unbelievable.

Psmith and Mike picked their way through the groups of ragged children who covered the roadway. There seemed to be thousands of them.

“Poor kids!” said Mike. “It must be awful living in a hole like this.”

Psmith said nothing. He was looking thoughtful. He glanced up at the grimy buildings on each side. On the lower floors one could see into dark, bare rooms. These were the star apartments of the tenement houses, for they opened on to the street, and so got a little light and air. The imagination jibbed at the thought of the back rooms.

“I wonder who owns these places,” said Psmith. “It seems to me that there’s what you might call room for improvement. It wouldn’t be a scaly idea to turn that Cosy Moments searchlight we were talking about on to them.”

They walked on a few steps.

“Look here,” said Psmith, stopping. “This place makes me sick. I’m going in to have a look round. I expect some muscular householder will resent the intrusion and boot us out, but we’ll risk it.”

Followed by Mike, he turned in at one of the doors. A group of men leaning against the opposite wall looked at them without curiosity. Probably they took them for reporters hunting for a story. Reporters were the only tolerably well-dressed visitors Pleasant Street ever entertained.

It was almost pitch dark on the stairs. They had to feel their way up. Most of the doors were shut but one on the second floor was ajar. Through the opening they had a glimpse of a number of women sitting round on boxes. The floor was covered with little heaps of linen. All the women were sewing. Mike, stumbling in the darkness, almost fell against the door. None of the women looked up at the noise. Time was evidently money in Pleasant Street.

On the fourth floor there was an open door. The room was empty. It was a good representative Pleasant Street back room. The architect in this case had given rein to a passion for originality. He had constructed the room without a window of any sort whatsoever. There was a square opening in the door. Through this, it was to be presumed, the entire stock of air used by the occupants was supposed to come.

They stumbled downstairs again and out into the street. By contrast with the conditions indoors the street seemed spacious and breezy.

“This,” said Psmith, as they walked on, “is where Cosy Moments gets busy at a singularly early date.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Mike.

“I propose, Comrade Jackson,” said Psmith, “if Comrade Windsor is agreeable, to make things as warm for the owner of this place as I jolly well know how. What he wants, of course,” he proceeded in the tone of a family doctor prescribing for a patient, “is disembowelling. I fancy, however, that a mawkishly sentimental legislature will prevent our performing that national service. We must endeavour to do what we can by means of kindly criticism in the paper. And now, having settled that important point, let us try and get out of this place of wrath, and find Fourth Avenue.”

VII Visitors at the Office

On the following morning Mike had to leave with the team for Philadelphia. Psmith came down to the ferry to see him off, and hung about moodily until the time of departure.

“It is saddening me to a great extent, Comrade Jackson,” he said, “this perpetual parting of the ways. When I think of the happy moments we have spent hand-in-hand across the seas, it fills me with a certain melancholy to have you flitting off in this manner without me. Yet there is another side to the picture. To me there is something singularly impressive in our unhesitating reply to the calls of Duty. Your Duty summons you to Philadelphia, to knock the cover off the local bowling. Mine retains me here, to play my part in the great work of making New York sit up. By the time you return, with a century or two, I trust, in your bag, the good work should, I fancy, be getting something of a move on. I will complete the arrangements with regard to the flat.”

After leaving Pleasant Street they had found Fourth Avenue by a devious route, and had opened negotiations for a large flat near Thirtieth Street. It was immediately above a saloon, which was something of a drawback, but the landlord had assured them that the voices of the revellers did not penetrate to it.

When the ferryboat had borne Mike off across the river, Psmith turned to stroll to the office of Cosy Moments. The day was fine, and on the whole, despite Mike’s desertion, he felt pleased with life. Psmith’s was a nature which required a certain amount of stimulus in the way of gentle excitement; and it seemed to him that the conduct of the remodelled Cosy Moments might supply this. He liked Billy Windsor, and looked forward to a not unenjoyable time till Mike should return.

The offices of Cosy Moments were in a large building in the street off Madison Avenue. They consisted of a sort of outer lair, where Pugsy Maloney spent his time reading tales of life in the prairies and heading off undesirable visitors; a small room, which would have belonged to the stenographer if Cosy Moments had possessed one; and a larger room beyond, which was the editorial sanctum.

As Psmith passed through the front door, Pugsy Maloney rose.

“Say!” said Master Maloney.

“Say on, Comrade Maloney,” said Psmith.

“Dey’re in dere.”

“Who, precisely?”

“A whole bunch of dem.”

Psmith inspected Master Maloney through his eyeglass. “Can you give me any particulars?” he asked patiently. “You are well-meaning, but vague, Comrade Maloney. Who are in there?”

“De whole bunch of dem. Dere’s Mr. Asher and the Rev. Philpotts and a