John Brown's Body Read Online Free PDF Page B

approach of men in bars offering what they called “connoisseurs’ lines”. Not that she said anything out of place, it was her beckoning and nudging looks that signified.
    Ralph speared his chop and a little pink blood came through. It was not inconceivable that he would one day accept what Madame Belmondo was offering in order to find out exactly what it was.
    The cat had finished its meal and looked at Ralph with an unanalysable stare, baleful and triumphant. He sometimes thought that it exulted in its power to make him provide food. It would feel powerful, coming in and dropping its flank down and getting its stomach filled without hunting, without effort. Perhaps it despised him for not providing the taste of blood. “Git!” Ralph said to it and the creature switched its tail and leaped on the window-sill.
    As Ralph ate, his mind went back to the affair of Jeffney and the gravy. What a scene that had been. Jeffney had cried and actually wrung his hands and Pecry – Pecry should have paid for the performance because he enjoyed it so much. It was a rare opportunity for him to use his wit in full company. The investigation had not excluded even those who had no access and no reason for access to the ledgers, they were all present in Pecry’s office to identify the gravy stain.
    Whose gravy? That was the question. “It looks like steak and kidney,” said Krassner, “with mushroom. Too dark for curry – can you rule out mulligatawny?”
    Pecry sat at his desk and waited like a maestro for silence before the overture.
    “I am not satisfied that everyone here has a proper conception of loyalty. Or of honesty. We must first examine what is in shortest supply – your honesty to your employers and to each other.”
    Krassner always said that Pecry’s function was to louse up life but Ralph sometimes thought that Pecry was a missing link between present and far future man and was glad that he himself had already been born.
    “It would seem,” Pecry had said later when the net was drawn tight, “that the working day is not long enough for you, Mr Jeffney.”
    “I didn’t mind putting in some extra time, I didn’t mind at all –”
    “That is, not long enough for you to do your work here in the office where you are contracted to do it.”
    “This is the first time, I swear it!” Jeffney clasped his hands beseechingly and they all looked away. “I swear I have never before removed a ledger!”
    “Since you had to continue to work throughout the evening I can only conclude that the work here is too much for you. Altogether too much,” said Pecry. “You could not stop for a meal, you had to go on working even while you were eating.”
    “No! It was an accident, the ledger was on the table and my wife must have – as she passed – a drop of gravy –”
    “You should have told me you were behind schedule. It was not your secret, Mr Jeffney, inefficiency is not anybody’s secret.” Pecry, looking round, drew them all into the net. “That’s what I mean by honesty to your employers. The principle should be paramount. Evidently it is not.”
    Ralph chewed steadily at his chop. If a spot of gravy on a ledger was lack of principle, what was a deficit of two hundred pounds? It was dishonesty, he had to admit, to the most impartial assessor: to Pecry, the fanatic, it would be a capital crime. Pecry could invoke the law and for two hundredpounds he would invoke the Public Prosecutor and the Lord Chief Justice and probably M.I.5 as well.
    Ralph had no fear for Krassner, whatever happened Krassner would end on top, certainly on top of the Board. He was made to best everyone without being definably better himself. Krassner would not suffer more than a temporary inconvenience, but Ralph would. He pushed his plate away and fetched a sheet of paper from the bureau. This he ruled into two columns. On the left he wrote ‘Telling’: on the right, ‘Not Telling’, and underneath each he put a subheading: