Psmith, Journalist, P. G. Wodehouse [top 5 ebook reader .txt] 📗

Hill contingent must have arrived. I sent Comrade Maloney to explain matters to Dude Dawson, and it seems as if that golden-hearted sportsman had responded. There appear to be great doings in the street.”

In the room below confusion had arisen. A scout, clattering upstairs, had brought the news of the Table Hillites’ advent, and there was doubt as to the proper course to pursue. Certain voices urged going down to help the main body. Others pointed out that that would mean abandoning the siege of the roof. The scout who had brought the news was eloquent in favour of the first course.

“Gum!” he cried, “don’t I keep tellin’ youse dat de Table Hills is here? Sure, dere’s a whole bunch of dem, and unless youse come on down dey’ll bite de hull head off of us lot. Leave those stiffs on de roof. Let Sam wait here with his canister, and den dey can’t get down, ’cos Sam’ll pump dem full of lead while dey’re beatin’ it t’roo de trapdoor. Sure.”

Psmith nodded reflectively.

“There is certainly something in what the bright boy says,” he murmured. “It seems to me the grand rescue scene in the third act has sprung a leak. This will want thinking over.”

In the street the disturbance had now become terrific. Both sides were hard at it, and the Irishmen on the roof, rewarded at last for their long vigil, were yelling encouragement promiscuously and whooping with the unfettered ecstasy of men who are getting the treat of their lives without having paid a penny for it.

The behaviour of the New York policeman in affairs of this kind is based on principles of the soundest practical wisdom. The unthinking man would rush in and attempt to crush the combat in its earliest and fiercest stages. The New York policeman, knowing the importance of his own safety, and the insignificance of the gangsman’s, permits the opposing forces to hammer each other into a certain distaste for battle, and then, when both sides have begun to have enough of it, rushes in himself and clubs everything in sight. It is an admirable process in its results, but it is sure rather than swift.

Proceedings in the affair below had not yet reached the police interference stage. The noise, what with the shots and yells from the street and the ear-piercing approval of the roof audience, was just working up to a climax.

Psmith rose. He was tired of kneeling by the trap, and there was no likelihood of Sam making another attempt to climb through. He walked towards Billy.

As he did so, Billy got up and turned to him. His eyes were gleaming with excitement. His whole attitude was triumphant. In his hand he waved a strip of paper.

“I’ve got it,” he cried.

“Excellent, Comrade Windsor,” said Psmith. “Surely we must win through now. All we have to do is to get off this roof, and fate cannot touch us. Are two mammoth minds such as ours unequal to such a feat? It can hardly be. Let us ponder.”

“Why not go down through the trap? They’ve all gone to the street.”

Psmith shook his head.

“All,” he replied, “save Sam. Sam was the subject of my late successful experiment, when I proved that coloured gentlemen’s heads could be hurt with a stick. He is now waiting below, armed with a pistol, ready⁠—even anxious⁠—to pick us off as we climb through the trap. How would it be to drop Comrade Gooch through first, and so draw his fire? Comrade Gooch, I am sure, would be delighted to do a little thing like that for old friends of our standing or⁠—but what’s that!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Is that a ladder that I see before me, its handle to my hand? It is! Comrade Windsor, we win through. Cosy Moments’ editorial staff may be tree’d, but it cannot be put out of business. Comrade Windsor, take the other end of that ladder and follow me.”

The ladder was lying against the farther wall. It was long, more than long enough for the purpose for which it was needed. Psmith and Billy rested it on the coping, and pushed it till the other end reached across the gulf to the roof of the house next door, Mr. Gooch eyeing them in silence the while.

Psmith turned to him.

“Comrade Gooch,” he said, “do nothing to apprise our friend Sam of these proceedings. I speak in your best interests. Sam is in no mood to make nice distinctions between friend and foe. If you bring him up here, he will probably mistake you for a member of the staff of Cosy Moments, and loose off in your direction without waiting for explanations. I think you had better come with us. I will go first, Comrade Windsor, so that if the ladder breaks, the paper will lose merely a subeditor, not an editor.”

He went down on all fours, and in this attitude wormed his way across to the opposite roof, whose occupants, engrossed in the fight in the street, in which the police had now joined, had their backs turned and did not observe him. Mr. Gooch, pallid and obviously ill-attuned to such feats, followed him; and finally Billy Windsor reached the other side.

“Neat,” said Psmith complacently. “Uncommonly neat. Comrade Gooch reminded me of the untamed chamois of the Alps, leaping from crag to crag.”

In the street there was now comparative silence. The police, with their clubs, had knocked the last remnant of fight out of the combatants. Shooting had definitely ceased.

“I think,” said Psmith, “that we might now descend. If you have no other engagements, Comrade Windsor, I will take you to the Knickerbocker, and buy you a square meal. I would ask for the pleasure of your company also, Comrade Gooch, were it not that matters of private moment, relating to the policy of the paper, must be discussed at the table. Some other day, perhaps. We are infinitely obliged to you for your sympathetic cooperation in this little matter. And now goodbye. Comrade