Short Fiction P. G. Wodehouse (good books to read in english .txt) 📖

phone, and she is catching the night express.”

Henry sat up in bed.

“What!”

“What’s the trouble now?”

“Sidney Crane’s wife?”

“What about her?”

A bleakness fell upon Henry’s soul.

“She was the woman who was employing me. Now I shall be taken off the job and have to go back to London.”

“You don’t mean that it was really Crane’s wife?”

Jelliffe was regarding him with a kind of awe.

“Laddie,” he said, in a hushed voice, “you almost scare me. There seems to be no limit to your powers as a mascot. You fill the house every night, you get rid of the Weaver woman, and now you tell me this. I drew Crane in the sweep, and I would have taken twopence for my chance of winning it.”

“I shall get a telegram from my boss tomorrow recalling me.”

“Don’t go. Stick with me. Join the troupe.”

Henry stared.

“What do you mean? I can’t sing or act.”

Jelliffe’s voice thrilled with earnestness.

“My boy, I can go down the Strand and pick up a hundred fellows who can sing and act. I don’t want them. I turn them away. But a seventh son of a seventh son like you, a human horseshoe like you, a king of mascots like you⁠—they don’t make them nowadays. They’ve lost the pattern. If you like to come with me I’ll give you a contract for any number of years you suggest. I need you in my business.” He rose. “Think it over, laddie, and let me know tomorrow. Look here upon this picture, and on that. As a sleuth you are poor. You couldn’t detect a bass-drum in a telephone-booth. You have no future. You are merely among those present. But as a mascot⁠—my boy, you’re the only thing in sight. You can’t help succeeding on the stage. You don’t have to know how to act. Look at the dozens of good actors who are out of jobs. Why? Unlucky. No other reason. With your luck and a little experience you’ll be a star before you know you’ve begun. Think it over, and let me know in the morning.”

Before Henry’s eyes there rose a sudden vision of Alice: Alice no longer unattainable; Alice walking on his arm down the aisle; Alice mending his socks; Alice with her heavenly hands fingering his salary envelope.

“Don’t go,” he said. “Don’t go. I’ll let you know now.”

The scene is the Strand, hard by Bedford Street; the time, that restful hour of the afternoon when they of the gnarled faces and the bright clothing gather together in groups to tell each other how good they are.

Hark! A voice.

“Rather! Courtneidge and the Guv’nor keep on trying to get me, but I turn them down every time. ‘No,’ I said to Malone only yesterday, ‘not for me! I’m going with old Wally Jelliffe, the same as usual, and there isn’t the money in the Mint that’ll get me away.’ Malone got all worked up. He⁠—”

It is the voice of Pifield Rice, actor.

Black for Luck

He was black, but comely. Obviously in reduced circumstances, he had nevertheless contrived to retain a certain smartness, a certain air⁠—what the French call the tournure. Nor had poverty killed in him the aristocrat’s instinct of personal cleanliness; for even as Elizabeth caught sight of him he began to wash himself.

At the sound of her step he looked up. He did not move, but there was suspicion in his attitude. The muscles of his back contracted, his eyes glowed like yellow lamps against black velvet, his tail switched a little, warningly.

Elizabeth looked at him. He looked at Elizabeth. There was a pause, while he summed her up. Then he stalked towards her, and, suddenly lowering his head, drove it vigorously against her dress. He permitted her to pick him up and carry him into the hallway, where Francis, the janitor, stood.

“Francis,” said Elizabeth, “does this cat belong to anyone here?”

“No, miss. That cat’s a stray, that cat is. I been trying to locate that cat’s owner for days.”

Francis spent his time trying to locate things. It was the one recreation of his eventless life. Sometimes it was a noise, sometimes a lost letter, sometimes a piece of ice which had gone astray in the dumbwaiter⁠—whatever it was, Francis tried to locate it.

“Has he been round here long, then?”

“I seen him snooping about a considerable time.”

“I shall keep him.”

“Black cats bring luck,” said Francis sententiously.

“I certainly shan’t object to that,” said Elizabeth. She was feeling that morning that a little luck would be a pleasing novelty. Things had not been going very well with her of late. It was not so much that the usual proportion of her manuscripts had come back with editorial compliments from the magazine to which they had been sent⁠—she accepted that as part of the game; what she did consider scurvy treatment at the hands of fate was the fact that her own pet magazine, the one to which she had been accustomed to fly for refuge, almost sure of a welcome⁠—when coldly treated by all the others⁠—had suddenly expired with a low gurgle for want of public support. It was like losing a kind and openhanded relative, and it made the addition of a black cat to the household almost a necessity.

In her flat, the door closed, she watched her new ally with some anxiety. He had behaved admirably on the journey upstairs, but she would not have been surprised, though it would have pained her, if he had now proceeded to try to escape through the ceiling. Cats were so emotional. However, he remained calm, and, after padding silently about the room for awhile, raised his head and uttered a crooning cry.

“That’s right,” said Elizabeth, cordially. “If you don’t see what you want, ask for it. The place is yours.”

She went to the icebox, and produced milk and sardines. There was nothing finicky or affected about her guest. He was a good trencherman, and he did not care who knew it. He concentrated himself on the restoration