P. G. Wodehouse: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

14. THREE FROM DUNSTERVILLE (continued)

The policeman searched in his mind for a neat definition.

'Darned crooked, miss,' he said.

He then proceeded to point the way, but the lady had gone.

It was a bomb in a blue dress that Joe found waiting for him at the office next morning. He surveyed it in silence, then raised his hands over his head,

'Don't shoot,' he said. 'What's the matter?'

'What right had you to say that about Eddy? You know what I mean--about Pearl Street.'

Joe laughed.

'Did you take a look at Pearl Street?'

Mary's anger blazed out.

'I didn't think you could be so mean and cowardly,' she cried. 'You ought to be ashamed to talk about people behind their backs, when--when--besides, if he's what you say, how did it happen that you engaged me on his recommendation?'

He looked at her for an instant without replying. 'I'd have engaged you,' he said, 'on the recommendation of a syndicate of forgers and three-card-trick men.'

He stood fingering a pile of papers on the desk.

'Eddy isn't the only person who remembers the old days, Mary,' he said slowly.

She looked at him, surprised. There was a note in his voice that she had not heard before. She was conscious of a curious embarrassment and a subtler feeling which she could not analyse. But before she could speak, Harold, the office-boy, entered the room with a card, and the conversation was swept away on a tidal wave of work.

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