John Brown's Body Read Online Free PDF Page A

were, Ralph observed, still in the packet – and lit one with a match. So he had sold his case and lighter. This seemed to make matters worse, it verified them and so far nothing had done that, not even the blank space on the Sweetland sheet – which simply looked innocent. Ralph had found himself having to refer back to an anomaly, almost an abstraction, certainly to a Strain on his credulity because without being the soul of honesty or the soul of anything, Krassner had made it seem inconceivable that he could cheat the firm of two hundred pounds. Two thousand perhaps. Was that the shame, that such a man should have to steal two hundred pounds?
    Something landed on Ralph’s blotter and rebounded against his hand. It was the tossing-stone. He looked up and saw that Krassner had thrown it.
    “Why so glum, old boy? You’re not the felon.”
    He was impatient, a little annoyed. Ralph felt foolish, there was a joke somewhere which was going against himself. He put the stone into a drawer.
    “Don’t call me ‘old boy’.”
    Krassner said again, “What are you going to do?”
    It had been on Ralph’s conscience that he would have to do something. He resented his part in the matter. He would have to have a part, in fact he already had it. It began at the moment he picked up the receipt book, or at least at the moment when the adding-machine in his brain registered that there was a gap in the sequence of stubs.
    Krassner sucked at his cigarette. “The first – and last – thing you need to do is tell Pecry. That takes it right off your hands.”
    “You must pay the money back. At once.”
    “Certainly. Will you take a cheque?”
    “You’ve got a bonus due in a couple of months. I’ll bring it forward and make it payable now.”
    “On grounds of merit?”
    “We must do something about that stub.” Ralph fretted around his desk searching for the receipt book.
    “Why?” said Krassner. “It’s evidence. You’ll need it in Court.”
    Ralph looked at him. He was smoking peaceably. “Don’t you care about being found out?”
    “If I told you that being found out was the least of my worries you wouldn’t know what to say, would you, old chap?” He was bitter-pleased. At the moment this was as high as his credit went, but it was high enough for him and he was assured, perhaps, that it could never go lower.
    “I’d say you were a fool.”
    “Would you? Would you, by God. Well, I wasn’t born a whole man like you.”
    “Me?”
    “Sufficient unto yourself. In the round.” Krassner voluptuously shaped the air with his hands. “That’s you, old chap. Damn me if I wouldn’t rather be lacking and have something to go after. That’s life in my opinion.”
    His opinion had never weighed much with Ralph, but life – yes, Krassner must know all about life. It was the knowledge Ralph would have wished to have, as he would once have wished to be a lion-tamer or a fireman.
    “Is this what you’re looking for?” Krassner pushed the receipt-book across the desk. “Pecry will be able to tell you there’s a stub short just by looking at the thickness. Do you remember when poor old Jeffney defied security and took the overseas ledger home? Pecry bowled him out because he had spilt a drop of gravy on it.”
    Ralph put the receipt-book in the desk drawer with the tossing-stone and locked it.
    “Aren’t you going to take it to Pecry?”
    “No.”
    Krassner raised his eyebrows. “Just going to put the money back and say nothing?”
    Ralph had seen the joke against himself. It was an old one. A long time ago, at school, he suffered agonies of guiltwhen other boys cheated. It was so burdensome that he even thought of turning Catholic so that he could go to confession and get absolution.
    “Puts me in a bit of a spot,” said Krassner. “You see, that bonus was keeping a tiger at bay.”
    Ralph looked up fiercely. “Get out!”
    Krassner nodded and stretched himself. His chest arched splendidly, his nylon shirt