Read Short Stories 1927-1956 for Free Online Page B

divided. One at least of those long, fleshy, hairy ears was cocked in another direction. And at last the question that had been on my tongue throughout most of the evening popped out almost inadvertently. I asked if he was expecting a visitor. At the moment his round black back was turned on me; he was rummaging in a corner cupboard for glasses to accompany the decanter of whisky he had produced; his head turned slyly on his heavy shoulders.
    ‘A visitor? You astonish me. Here? Now? As if, my dear Mr Dash, this rural retreat were Bloomsbury or Mayfair. You amuse me. Callers! Thank heaven, not so. You came, you saw, but you did not expect a welcome. The unworthy tenant of Montrésor took you by surprise. Confess it! So be it. And why not? What if you yourself were my looked-for visitor? What then? There are surmises, intuitions, forebodings – to give a pleasant tinge to the word. Yes, yes, I agree. I was on the watch; patiently, patiently. In due time your charming little car appears at my gate. You pause: I say to myself, Here he is. Company at last; discussion; pow-wow; even controversy perhaps. Why not? We are sharing the same hemisphere. Plain as a pikestaff. I foresaw your decision as may the shepherd in contemplation of a red sunrise foresee the deluge. I step downstairs; and here we are!’
    My reply came a little more warmly than I intended. I assured Mr Bloom that if it had not been for the loss of my key, I shouldn’t have stayed five minutes. ‘I prefer not to be expected in a strange house.’ It was unutterably gauche.
    He chuckled; he shrugged his shoulders; he was vastly amused. ‘Ah, but are we not forgetting that such little misadventures are merely part and parcel of the general plan? The end-shaping process, as the poet puts it?’
    ‘What general plan?’
    ‘Mr Dash, when you fire out your enquiries at me like bullets out of the muzzle of a gun, I am positively disconcerted, I can scarcely keep my wits together. Pray let us no longer treat each other like witnesses in the witness-box , or even’ – a cat-like smile crept into his face – ‘like prisoners in the dock. Have a little whisky? Pure malt; a tot? It may be whimsical, but for me one of the few exasperating things about my poor secretary, Mr Champneys , was his aversion to “alcohol”. His own word! £ 300 a year – Mr Dash. No less. And everything “found”. No expenses except tobacco, shockers – his own word again – pyjamas, tooth-powder and petrol – a motor-bicycle, in fact, soon hors de combat. And “alcohol”, if you please! The libel! These specialists! Soda water or Apollinaris?’
    In sheer chagrin I drank the stuff, and rose to turn in. Not a bit of it! With covert glances at his watch, Mr Bloom kept me there by hook and by crook until it was long past midnight, and try as he might to conceal it, the disquietude that had peeped out earlier in the evening became more and more obvious. The only effect of this restlessness on his talk, however, was to increase its volume and incoherence. If Mr Bloom had been play-acting, and had been cast for his own character, his improvisations could not have been more masterly. He made no pretence now of listening to my own small part in this display; and when he did, it was only in order to attend to some other business he had in mind. Ever and again, as if to emphasize his point, he would haul himself up out of his deep-bottomed chair, and edge off towards the door – with the pretence perhaps of looking for a book. He would pause there for but an instant – and the bumbling muffled voice would yet again take up the strain. Once, however, he came to a dead stop, raised his hand and openly stood listening.
    ‘A nightingale certainly; if not two,’ he murmured sotto voce ,‘but tell me, Mr Dash,’ he called softly out across the room, ‘was I deceived into thinking I heard a distant knocking? In a house as large as this; articles of some value perhaps; we read even of