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Page 59
Psmith started.
'You are not suggesting--! You do not mean that I--!'
'I have no more to say. I shall be glad if you will allow me to read my
paper.'
Psmith waved a damp hand.
'I should be the last man,' he said stiffly, 'to force my conversation
on another. I was under the impression that you enjoyed these little
chats as keenly as I did. If I was wrong--'
He relapsed into a wounded silence. Mr Bickersdyke resumed his perusal
of the evening paper, and presently, laying it down, rose and made his
way to the room where muscular attendants were in waiting to perform
that blend of Jiu-Jitsu and Catch-as-catch-can which is the most
valuable and at the same time most painful part of a Turkish Bath.
It was not till he was resting on his sofa, swathed from head to foot
in a sheet and smoking a cigarette, that he realized that Psmith was
sharing his compartment.
He made the unpleasant discovery just as he had finished his first
cigarette and lighted his second. He was blowing out the match when
Psmith, accompanied by an attendant, appeared in the doorway, and
proceeded to occupy the next sofa to himself. All that feeling of
dreamy peace, which is the reward one receives for allowing oneself to
be melted like wax and kneaded like bread, left him instantly. He felt
hot and annoyed. To escape was out of the question. Once one has been
scientifically wrapped up by the attendant and placed on one's sofa,
one is a fixture. He lay scowling at the ceiling, resolved to combat
all attempt at conversation with a stony silence.
Psmith, however, did not seem to desire conversation. He lay on his
sofa motionless for a quarter of an hour, then reached out for a large
book which lay on the table, and began to read.
When he did speak, he seemed to be speaking to himself. Every now and
then he would murmur a few words, sometimes a single name. In spite of
himself, Mr Bickersdyke found himself listening.
At first the murmurs conveyed nothing to him. Then suddenly a name
caught his ear. Strowther was the name, and somehow it suggested
something to him. He could not say precisely what. It seemed to touch
some chord of memory. He knew no one of the name of Strowther. He was
sure of that. And yet it was curiously familiar. An unusual name, too.
He could not help feeling that at one time he must have known it quite
well.
'Mr Strowther,' murmured Psmith, 'said that the hon. gentleman's
remarks would have been nothing short of treason, if they had not been
so obviously the mere babblings of an irresponsible lunatic. Cries of
"Order, order," and a voice, "Sit down, fat-head!"'
For just one moment Mr Bickersdyke's memory poised motionless, like a
hawk about to swoop. Then it darted at the mark. Everything came to him
in a flash. The hands of the clock whizzed back. He was no longer Mr
John Bickersdyke, manager of the London branch of the New Asiatic Bank,
lying on a sofa in the Cumberland Street Turkish Baths. He was Jack
Bickersdyke, clerk in the employ of Messrs Norton and Biggleswade,
standing on a chair and shouting 'Order! order!' in the Masonic Room of
the 'Red Lion' at Tulse Hill, while the members of the Tulse Hill
Parliament, divided into two camps, yelled at one another, and young
Tom Barlow, in his official capacity as Mister Speaker, waved his arms
dumbly, and banged the table with his mallet in his efforts to restore
calm.
He remembered the whole affair as if it had happened yesterday. It had
been a speech of his own which had called forth the above expression of
opinion from Strowther. He remembered Strowther now, a pale, spectacled
clerk in Baxter and Abrahams, an inveterate upholder of the throne, the
House of Lords and all constituted authority. Strowther had objected to
the socialistic sentiments of his speech in connection with the Budget,
and there had been a disturbance unparalleled even in the Tulse Hill
Parliament, where disturbances were frequent and loud....
Psmith looked across at him with a bright smile. 'They report you
verbatim,' he said. 'And rightly. A more able speech I have seldom
read. I like the bit where you call the Royal Family "blood-suckers".
Even then, it seems you knew how to express yourself fluently and
well.'
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