Summer Moonshine Read Online Free PDF Page B

Billing, who always cannily smeared himself with oil, he had adopted no precautions against blisters and was suffering the consequences.
    'Send Mr Vanringham to me,' he said.
    The Outer Office replied that Mr Vanringham had not yet returned.
    'Eh?' said Mr Busby dangerously. He did not approve of his employees wandering from the fold during business hours.
    'Returned? Where's he gone?'
    'If you remember, sir,' the Outer Office reminded him, 'you left instructions that Mr Vanringham was to go to Waterloo this morning to see Miss Gray off on the boat train.'
    Mr Busby's severity softened. He recalled now that Miss Gwenda Gray, star author on his list, was sailing for
America today to add one more to the long roll of English lecturers who have done so much to keep the depression going in that unfortunate country; and that Joe Vanringham, in his capacity of odd-job man and hey-you to the firm, had been dispatched to the train with fruit and flowers.
    'All right,' he said. 'Send him in when he comes back.'
    He had hardly replaced the receiver when the telephone rang again. More cautiously this time, he stretched out a hand to it.
    'Hullo?'
    'Hello, chief.'
    'Who's that?'
    'Vanringham, chief.'
    'Don't call me "chief".'
    'Okay, chief. Well, here I am at St Pancras.'
    Mr Busby quivered from the top of his round head to the soles of his number ten shoes.
    'What in the name of—What on earth are you doing at St Pancras?'
    'Waiting for Miss Gray. You told me to see her off to Scotland this morning.'
    A slight bubbling noise was all that Mr Busby was able to achieve for some moments. Then he recovered speech.
    'You infernal idiot! America! She's going to America.'
    'America? Are you sure?'
    'Of all the—'
    There came from the other end of the wire the sound of a remorsefully clicked tongue.
    'You're absolutely right. It all comes back to me. It was America.'
    'The boat train leaves from Waterloo.'
    'By golly, you're right again. That explains why she hasn't shown up. But why did you tell me St Pancras?'
    'I did not tell you St Pancras. I said Waterloo. Waterloo!'
    Then that's how I came to get confused. I don't know if you are aware of it, but when you say "Waterloo", it sounds just like "St Pancras". Some slight defect of speech, no doubt, which a good elocution teacher could soon put right. Well, what I called up to ask was, shall I eat the fruit?'
    'Listen,' said Mr Busby, in a strangled voice. Miss Gray was a novelist who sold her steady twenty thousand copies a year and was inclined, if proper attention was not paid to her, to become touchy. 'There may be just time. Get in a taxi—'
    An odious chuckle floated over the wire.
    'Cheer up, chief. I've only been indulging in a little persiflage. You know how you come over all whimsy sometimes. I'm at Waterloo, all right, and everything has gone like a breeze. I gave her the fruit and flowers, and she was tickled to death. The train has just pulled out, and the last I saw of her, she was leaning out of the window, sucking an orange and crying, "God bless Mr Busby!"'
    Mr Busby hung up the receiver. His face was a pretty purple, and his lips moved soundlessly. He was telling himself for the hundredth time that this was the end and that today he really would strike the name of Vanringham from his pay roll. But for the hundredth time there came to him the disconcerting thought that he would have to seek far to find another slave as good at his job as Joe.
    A considerable proportion of Mr Busby's clients were women who paid for the publication of their books and were apt, when their bills came in, to call at the office in a rather emotional spirit. Whatever Joe's faults, he had a magic touch with these. They
were as wax in his hands. So Mortimer Busby, groaning inwardly, forced himself to suffer him. He did not like Joe. He resented his sardonic smile and that look of his of amused astonishment, as if he could never get used to the idea that anything like Mr Busby was sharing the same planet