The Head of Kay'sWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
The Head of Kay's
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Schools -- Fiction
His study was at the side of the house. At the back were the kitchen,
the scullery, and the dining-room, and above these more studies and a
couple of dormitories. As a last resort he might fling rocks and other
solids at the windows until he woke somebody up. But he did not feel
like trying this plan until every other had failed. He had no desire
to let a garrulous dormitory into the secret of his wanderings. What
he hoped was that he might find one of the lower windows open.
And so he did.
As he turned the corner of the house he saw what he had been looking
for. The very first window was wide open. His spirits shot up, and for
the first time since he had left the theatre he was conscious of
taking a pleasure in his adventurous career. Fate was with him after
all. He could not help smiling as he remembered how he had felt during
that ten minutes on the garden-seat, when the future seemed blank and
devoid of any comfort whatsoever. And all the time he could have got
in without an effort, if he had only thought of walking half a dozen
yards.
Now that the way was open to him, he wasted no time. He climbed
through into the dark room. He was not certain which room it was, in
spite of his lengthy residence at Kay's.
He let himself down softly till his foot touched the floor. After a
moment's pause he moved forward a step. Then another. At the third
step his knee struck the leg of a table. He must be in the
dining-room. If so, he was all right. He could find his way up to his
room with his eyes shut. It was easy to find out for certain. The
walls of the dining-room at Kay's, as in the other houses, were
covered with photographs. He walked gingerly in the direction in which
he imagined the nearest wall to be, reached it, and passed his hand
along it. Yes, there were photographs. Then all he had to do was to
find the table again, make his way along it, and when he got to the
end the door would be a yard or so to his left. The programme seemed
simple and attractive. But it was added to in a manner which he had
not foreseen. Feeling his way back to the table, he upset a chair. If
he had upset a cart-load of coal on to a sheet of tin it could not, so
it seemed to him in the disordered state of his nerves, have made more
noise. It went down with an appalling crash, striking the table on its
way. "This," thought Fenn, savagely, as he waited, listening, "is
where I get collared. What a fool I am to barge about like this."
He felt that the echoes of that crash must have penetrated to every
corner of the house. But no one came. Perhaps, after all, the noise
had not been so great. He proceeded on his journey down the table,
feeling every inch of the way. The place seemed one bristling mass of
chairs. But, by the exercise of consummate caution, he upset no more
and won through at last in safety to the door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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