P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

Yet now he was sitting in his office, long after the last clerk had left, long after the hour at which he himself was wont to leave, his mind full of his late employee.

Was this remorse? Was he longing for the touch of the vanished hand, the gleam of the departed spectacles? He was not. His mind was full of Master Bean because Master Bean was waiting for him in the outer office; and he lingered on at his desk, after the day’s work was done, for the same reason. Word had been brought to him earlier in the evening, that Master Roland Bean would like to see him. The answer to that was easy: “Tell him I’m busy.” Master Bean’s admirably dignified reply was that he understood how great was the pressure of Mr. Ferguson’s work, and that he would wait till he was at liberty. Liberty! Talk of the liberty of the treed ‘possum, but do not use the word in connection with a man bottled up in an office, with Roland Bean guarding the only exit.

Mr. Ferguson kicked the waste-paper basket savagely. The unfairness of the thing hurt him. A sacked office-boy ought to stay sacked. He had no business to come popping up again like Banquo’s ghost. It was not playing the game.

The reader may wonder what was the trouble-why Mr. Ferguson could not stalk out and brusquely dispose of his foe; but then the reader has not employed Master Bean for a month. Mr. Ferguson had, and his nerve had broken.

A slight cough penetrated the door between the two offices. Mr. Ferguson rose and grabbed his hat. Perhaps a sudden rush-he shot out with the tense concentration of one moving towards the refreshment- room at a station where the train stops three minutes.

“Good evening, sir!” was the watcher’s view halloo.

“Ah, Bean,” said Mr. Ferguson, flitting rapidly, “you still here? I thought you had gone. I’m afraid I cannot stop now. Some other time-”

He was almost through.

“I fear, sir, that you will be unable to get out,” said Master Bean, sympathetically. “The building is locked up.”

Men who have been hit by bullets say that the first sensation is merely a sort of dull shock. So it was with Mr. Ferguson. He stopped in his tracks and stared.

“The porter closes the door at seven o’clock punctually, sir. It is now nearly twenty minutes after the hour.”

Mr. Ferguson’s brain was still in the numbed stage.

“Closes the door?” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then how are we to get out?”

“I fear we cannot get out, sir.”

Mr. Ferguson digested this.

“I am no longer in your employment, sir,” said Master Bean, respectfully, “but I hope that in the circumstances you will permit me to remain here during the night.”

“During the night!”

“It would enable me to sleep more comfortably than on the stairs.”

“But we can’t stop here all night,” said Mr. Ferguson, feebly.

He had anticipated an unpleasant five minutes in Master Bean’s company. Imagination boggled at the thought of an unpleasant thirteen hours.

He collapsed into a chair.

“I called,” said Master Bean, shelving the trivial subject of the prospective vigil, “in the hope that I might persuade you, sir, to reconsider your decision in regard to my dismissal. I can assure you, sir, that I am extremely anxious to give satisfaction. If you would take me back and inform me how I have fallen short, I would endeavour to improve. I-

“We can’t stop here all night,” interrupted Mr. Ferguson, bounding from his chair and beginning to pace the floor.

“Without presumption, sir, I feel that if you were to give me another chance I should work to your satisfaction. I should endeavour-”

Mr. Ferguson stared at him in dumb horror. He had a momentary vision of a sleepless night spent in listening to a nicely-polished speech for the defence. He was seized with a mad desire for flight. He could not leave the building, but he must get away somewhere and think.

He dashed from the room and raced up the dark stairs. And as he arrived at the next floor his eye was caught by a thin pencil of light which proceeded from a door on the left.