Short Fiction - P. G. Wodehouse (top ten ebook reader txt) 📗

Bean for a month. Mr. Ferguson had, and his nerve had broken.

A slight cough penetrated the door between the two offices. Mr. Ferguson rose and grabbed his hat. Perhaps a sudden rush⁠—he shot out with the tense concentration of one moving towards the refreshment-room at a station where the train stops three minutes.

“Good evening, sir!” was the watcher’s view-hallo.

“Ah, Bean,” said Mr. Ferguson, flitting rapidly, “you still here? I thought you had gone. I’m afraid I cannot stop now. Some other time⁠—”

He was almost through.

“I fear, sir, that you will be unable to get out,” said Master Bean, sympathetically. “The building is locked up.”

Men who have been hit by bullets say the first sensation is merely a sort of dull shock. So it was with Mr. Ferguson. He stopped in his tracks and stared.

“The porter closes the door at seven o’clock punctually, sir. It is now nearly twenty minutes after the hour.”

Mr. Ferguson’s brain was still in the numbed stage.

“Closes the door?” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then how are we to get out?”

“I fear we cannot get out, sir.”

Mr. Ferguson digested this.

“I am no longer in your employment, sir,” said Master Bean, respectfully, “but I hope that in the circumstances you will permit me to remain here during the night.”

“During the night!”

“It would enable me to sleep more comfortably than on the stairs.”

“But we can’t stop here all night,” said Mr. Ferguson, feebly.

He had anticipated an unpleasant five minutes in Master Bean’s company. Imagination boggled at the thought of an unpleasant thirteen hours.

He collapsed into a chair.

“I called,” said Master Bean, shelving the trivial subject of the prospective vigil, “in the hope that I might persuade you, sir, to reconsider your decision in regard to my dismissal. I can assure you, sir, that I am extremely anxious to give satisfaction. If you would take me back and inform me how I have fallen short, I would endeavour to improve, I⁠—”

“We can’t stop here all night,” interrupted Mr. Ferguson, bounding from his chair and beginning to pace the floor.

“Without presumption, sir, I feel that if you were to give me another chance I should work to your satisfaction. I should endeavour⁠—”

Mr. Ferguson stared at him in dumb horror. He had a momentary vision of a sleepless night spent in listening to a nicely-polished speech for the defence. He was seized with a mad desire for flight. He could not leave the building, but he must get away somewhere and think.

He dashed from the room and raced up the dark stairs. And as he arrived at the next floor his eye was caught by a thin pencil of light which proceeded from a door on the left.

No shipwrecked mariner on a desert island could have welcomed the appearance of a sail with greater enthusiasm. He bounded at the door. He knew to whom the room belonged. It was the office of one Blaythwayt; and Blaythwayt was not only an acquaintance, but a sportsman. Quite possibly there might be a pack of cards on Blaythwayt’s person to help pass the long hours. And if not, at least he would be company and his office a refuge. He flung open the door without going through the formality of knocking. Etiquette is not for the marooned.

“I say, Blaythwayt⁠—” he began, and stopped abruptly.

The only occupant of the room was a girl.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I thought⁠—”

He stopped again. His eyes, dazzled with the light, had not seen clearly. They did so now.

“You!” he cried.

The girl looked at him, first with surprise, then with a cool hostility. There was a long pause. Eighteen months had passed since they had parted, and conversation does not flow easily after eighteen months of silence, especially if the nature of the parting has been bitter and stormy.

He was the first to speak.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“I thought my doings had ceased to interest you,” she said. “I am Mr. Blaythwayt’s secretary. I have been here a fortnight. I have wondered if we should meet. I used to see you sometimes in the street.”

“I never saw you.”

“No?” she said indifferently.

He ran his hand through his hair in a dazed way.

“Do you know we are locked in?” he said.

He had expected wild surprise and dismay. She merely clicked her tongue in an annoyed manner.

“Again!” she said. “What a nuisance! I was locked in only a week ago.”

He looked at her with unwilling respect, the respect of the novice for the veteran. She was nothing to him now, of course. She had passed out of his life. But he could not help remembering that long ago⁠—eighteen months ago⁠—what he had admired most in her had been this same spirit, this game refusal to be disturbed by Fate’s blows. It braced him up.

He sat down and looked curiously at her.

“So you left the stage?” he said.

“I thought we agreed when we parted not to speak to one another,” said she, coldly.

“Did we? I thought it was only to meet as strangers.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Is it? I often talk to strangers.”

“What a bore they must think you!” she said, hiding one-eighth of a yawn with the tips of two fingers. “I suppose,” she went on, with faint interest, “you talk to them in trains when they are trying to read their paper?”

“I don’t force my conversation on anyone.”

“Don’t you?” she said, raising her eyebrows in sweet surprise. “Only your company⁠—is that it?”

“Are you alluding to the present occasion?”

“Well, you have an office of your own in this building, I believe.”

“I have.”

“Then why⁠—”

“I am at perfect liberty,” he said, with dignity, “to sit in my friend Blaythwayt’s office if I choose. I wish to see Mr. Blaythwayt.”

“On business?”

He proved that she had established no corner in raised eyebrows.

“I fear,” he said, “that I cannot discuss my affairs with Mr. Blaythwayt’s employees. I must see him personally.”

“Mr. Blaythwayt is not here.”

“I will wait.”

“He will not be here for thirteen hours.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Very well,” she burst out; “you have brought it on yourself. You’ve only yourself to blame. If you had been good and had gone back to your office,