"P. G. Wodehouse - Indiscretions of Archie v1 0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wodehouse P G)

emerged, ten minutes later, the charwoman had gone, but J. B.
Wheeler was still absent. Rather glad of the respite, he sat down to
kill time by reading the morning paper, whose sporting page alone he
had managed to master at the breakfast table.

There was not a great deal in the paper to interest him. The usual
bond-robbery had taken place on the previous day, and the police
were reported hot on the trail of the Master-Mind who was alleged to
be at the back of these financial operations. A messenger named
Henry Babcock had been arrested and was expected to become
confidential. To one who, like Archie, had never owned a bond, the
story made little appeal. He turned with more interest to a cheery
half-column on the activities of a gentleman in Minnesota who, with
what seemed to Archie, as he thought of Mr. Daniel Brewster, a good
deal of resource and public spirit, had recently beaned his father-
in-law with the family meat-axe. It was only after he had read this
through twice in a spirit of gentle approval that it occurred to him
that J. B. Wheeler was uncommonly late at the tryst. He looked at
his watch, and found that he had been in the studio three-quarters
of an hour.

Archie became restless. Long-suffering old bean though he was, he
considered this a bit thick. He got up and went out on to the
landing, to see if there were any signs of the blighter. There were
none. He began to understand now what had happened. For some reason
or other the bally artist was not coming to the studio at all that
day. Probably he had called up the hotel and left a message to this
effect, and Archie had just missed it. Another man might have waited
to make certain that his message had reached its destination, but
not woollen-headed Wheeler, the most casual individual in New York.

Thoroughly aggrieved, Archie turned back to the studio to dress and
go away.

His progress was stayed by a solid, forbidding slab of oak. Somehow
or other, since he had left the room, the door had managed to get
itself shut.

"Oh, dash it!" said Archie.

The mildness of the expletive was proof that the full horror of the
situation had not immediately come home to him. His mind in the
first few moments was occupied with the problem of how the door had
got that way. He could not remember shutting it. Probably he had
done it unconsciously. As a child, he had been taught by sedulous
elders that the little gentleman always closed doors behind him, and
presumably his subconscious self was still under the influence. And
then, suddenly, he realised that this infernal, officious ass of a
subconscious self had deposited him right in the gumbo. Behind that
closed door, unattainable as youthful ambition, lay his gent's