Short Fiction, P. G. Wodehouse [books for 20 year olds .txt] 📗

He examined it with a thoughtful stare. He opened it.

The letter was brief. It ran as follows:⁠—

“What about his razors?”

A thrill of dismay shot through him.

Razors!

He had forgotten them.

Clifford Gandle did not delay. Already it might be that he was too late. He hurried down the passage and tapped at Mr. Potter’s door.

“Who’s there?”

Clifford Gandle was relieved. He was in time.

“Can I come in?”

“Who is that?”

“Gandle.”

“What do you want?”

“Can you⁠—er⁠—lend me a razah?”

“A what!”

“A razah.”

There followed a complete silence from within. Mr. Gandle tapped again.

“Are you they-ah?”

The silence was broken by an odd rumbling sound. Something heavy knocked against the woodwork. But that the explanation seemed so improbable, Mr. Gandle would have said that this peculiar publisher had pushed a chest of drawers against the door.

“Mr. Pottah!”

More silence.

“Are you they-ah, Mr. Pottah?”

Additional stillness. Mr. Gandle, wearying of a profitless vigil, gave the thing up and returned to his room.

The task that lay before him, he now realized, was to wait awhile and then make his way along the balcony which joined the windows of the two rooms; enter while the other slept, and abstract his weapon or weapons.

He looked at his watch. The hour was close on midnight. He decided to give Mr. Potter till two o’clock.

Clifford Gandle sat down to wait.

Mr. Potter’s first action, after the retreating footsteps had told him that his visitor had gone, was to extract a couple of nerve pills from the box by his bed and swallow them. This was a rite which, by the orders of his medical adviser, he had performed thrice a day since leaving America⁠—once half an hour before breakfast, once an hour before luncheon, and again on retiring to rest.

In spite of the fact that he now consumed these pills, it seemed to Mr. Potter that he could scarcely be described as retiring to rest. After the recent ghastly proof of Clifford Gandle’s insane malevolence, he could not bring himself to hope that even the most fitful slumber would come to him this night. The horror of the thought of that awful man padding softly to his door and asking for razors chilled Hamilton Potter to the bone.

Nevertheless, he did his best. He switched off the light and, closing his eyes, began to repeat in a soft undertone a formula which he had often found efficacious.

“Day by day,” murmured Mr. Potter, “in every way, I am getting better and better. Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

It would have astonished Clifford Gandle, yawning in his room down the corridor, if he could have heard such optimistic sentiments proceeding from those lips.

“Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

Mr. Potter’s mind performed an unfortunate sideslip. He lay there tingling. Suppose he was getting better and better, what of it? What was the use of getting better and better if at any moment a mad Gandle might spring out with a razor and end it all?

He forced his thoughts away from these uncomfortable channels. He clenched his teeth and whispered through them with a touch of defiance.

“Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better. Day by day, in every way⁠—”

A pleasant drowsiness stole over Mr. Potter.

“Day by day, in every way,” he murmured, “I am getting better and better. Day by day, in every way, I am betting getter and getter. Bay by day, in every way, I am betting getter and wetter. Way by day⁠—”

Mr. Potter slept.

Over the stables the clock chimed the hour of two, and Clifford Gandle stepped out on to the balcony.

It has been well said by many thinkers that in human affairs you can never be certain that some little trifling obstacle will not undo the best-laid of schemes. It was the sunken road at Hougomont that undid the French cavalry at Waterloo, and it was something very similar that caused Clifford Gandle’s plan of action to go wrong now⁠—a jug of water, to wit, which the maid who had brought Mr. Potter’s hot-water can before dinner had placed immediately beneath the window.

Clifford Gandle, insinuating himself with the extreme of caution through the window and finding his foot resting on something hard, assumed that he was touching the floor, and permitted his full weight to rest upon that foot. Almost immediately afterwards the world collapsed with a crash and a deluge of water; and light, flooding the room, showed Mr. Potter sitting up in bed, blinking.

Mr. Potter stared at Clifford Gandle. Clifford Gandle stared at Mr. Potter.

“Er⁠—hullo!” said Clifford Gandle.

Mr. Potter uttered a low, curious sound like a cat with a fish-bone in its throat.

“I⁠—er⁠—just looked in,” said Clifford Gandle.

Mr. Potter made a noise like a second and slightly larger cat with another fish-bone in its throat.

“I’ve come for the razah,” said Clifford Gandle. “Ah, there it is,” he said, and, moving towards the dressing-table, secured it.

Mr. Potter leaped from his bed. He looked about him for a weapon. The only one in sight appeared to be the typescript of Ethics of Suicide, and that, while it would have made an admirable instrument for swatting flies, was far too flimsy for the present crisis. All in all, it began to look to Mr. Potter like a sticky evening.

“Good night,” said Clifford Gandle.

Mr. Potter was amazed to see that his visitor was withdrawing towards the window. It seemed incredible. For a moment he wondered whether Bobbie Wickham had not made some mistake about this man. Nothing could be more temperate than his behaviour at the moment.

And then, as he reached the window, Clifford Gandle smiled, and all Mr. Potter’s fears leaped into being again.

The opinion of Clifford Gandle regarding this smile was that it was one of those kindly, reassuring smiles⁠—the sort of smile to put the most nervous melancholiac at his ease. To Mr. Potter it seemed precisely the kind of maniac grin which he would have expected from such a source.

“Good night,” said Clifford Gandle.

He smiled again, and was gone. And Mr. Potter, having stood rooted to the spot for some minutes, crossed the floor and closed the window. He then bolted the window. He