Psmith, JournalistWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
Psmith, Journalist
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Humorous stories
"Nothing! You look as if you had been run over by a motor-car."
"The cops did that," said Billy, without any apparent resentment.
"They always turn nasty if you put up a fight. I was a fool to do
it, I suppose, but I got so mad. They knew perfectly well that I
had nothing to do with any pool-room downstairs."
Psmith's eye-glass dropped from his eye.
"Pool-room, Comrade Windsor?"
"Yes. The house where I live was raided late last night. It seems
that some gamblers have been running a pool-room on the ground
floor. Why the cops should have thought I had anything to do with
it, when I was sleeping peacefully upstairs, is more than I can
understand. Anyway, at about three in the morning there was the
dickens of a banging at my door. I got up to see what was doing,
and found a couple of Policemen there. They told me to come along
with them to the station. I asked what on earth for. I might have
known it was no use arguing with a New York cop. They said they had
been tipped off that there was a pool-room being run in the house,
and that they were cleaning up the house, and if I wanted to say
anything I'd better say it to the magistrate. I said, all right,
I'd put on some clothes and come with them. They said they couldn't
wait about while I put on clothes. I said I wasn't going to travel
about New York in pyjamas, and started to get into my shirt. One of
them gave me a shove in the ribs with his night-stick, and told me
to come along quick. And that made me so mad I hit out." A chuckle
escaped Billy. "He wasn't expecting it, and I got him fair. He went
down over the bookcase. The other cop took a swipe at me with his
club, but by that time I was so mad I'd have taken on Jim Jeffries,
if he had shown up and got in my way. I just sailed in, and was
beginning to make the man think that he had stumbled on Stanley
Ketchel or Kid Brady or a dynamite explosion by mistake, when the
other fellow loosed himself from the bookcase, and they started in
on me together, and there was a general rough house, in the middle
of which somebody seemed to let off about fifty thousand dollars'
worth of fireworks all in a bunch; and I didn't remember anything
more till I found myself in a cell, pretty nearly knocked to
pieces. That's my little life-history. I guess I was a fool to cut
loose that way, but I was so mad I didn't stop to think."
Psmith sighed.
"You have told me your painful story," he said. "Now hear mine.
After parting with you last night, I went meditatively back to my
Fourth Avenue address, and, with a courtly good night to the large
policeman who, as I have mentioned in previous conversations, is
stationed almost at my very door, I passed on into my room, and had
soon sunk into a dreamless slumber. At about three o'clock in the
morning I was aroused by a somewhat hefty banging on the door."
"What!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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