The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl Volume 1 Read online

  "No," the man said.

  Mrs Bixby turned and went out of the shop on to the street where the taxi was waiting. Ten minutes later, she was home.

  "Darling," she said as she bent over and kissed her husband. "Did you miss me?"

  Cyril Bixby laid down the evening paper and glanced at the watch on his wrist. "It's twelve and a half minutes past six," he said. "You're a bit late, aren't you?"

  "I know. It's those dreadful trains. Aunt Maude sent you her love as usual. I'm dying for a drink, aren't you?"

  The husband folded his newspaper into a neat rectangle and placed it on the arm of his chair. Then he stood up and crossed over to the sideboard. His wife remained in the centre of the room pulling off her gloves, watching him carefully, wondering how long she ought to wait. He had his back to her now, bending forward to measure the gin, putting his face right up close to the measurer and peering into it as though it were a patient's mouth.

  It was funny how small he always looked after the Colonel. The Colonel was huge and bristly, and when you were near to him he smelled faintly of horseradish. This one was small and neat and bony and he didn't really smell of anything at all, except peppermint drops, which he sucked to keep his breath nice for the patients.

  "See what I've bought for measuring the vermouth," he said, holding up a calibrated glass beaker. "I can get it to the nearest milligram with this."

  "Darling, how clever."

  I really must try to make him change the way he dresses, she told herself. His suits are just too ridiculous for words. There had been a time when she thought they were wonderful, those Edwardian jackets with high lapels and six buttons down the front, but now they merely seemed absurd. So did the narrow stovepipe trousers. You had to have a special sort of face to wear things like that, and Cyril just didn't have it. His was a long bony countenance with a narrow nose and a slightly prognathous jaw, and when you saw it coming up out of the top of one of those tightly fitting oldfashioned suits it looked like a caricature of Sam Weller. He probably thought it looked like Beau Brummel. It was a fact that in the office he invariably greeted female patients with his white coat unbuttoned so that they would catch a glimpse of the trappings underneath; and in some obscure way this was obviously meant to convey the impression that he was a bit of a dog. But Mrs Bixby knew better. The plumage was a bluff. It meant nothing. It reminded her of an ageing peacock strutting on the lawn with only half its feathers left. Or one of those fatuous self-fertilizing flowers-like the dandelion. A dandelion never has to get fertilized for the setting of its seed, and all those brilliant yellow petals are just a waste of time, a boast, a masquerade. What's the word the biologists use? Subsexual. A dandelion is subsexual. So, for that matter, are the summer broods of water fleas. It sounds a bit like Lewis Carroll, she thought-water fleas and dandelions and dentists.

  "Thank you, darling," she said, taking the Martini and seating herself on the sofa with her handbag on her lap. "And what did you do last night?"

  "I stayed on in the office and cast a few inlays. I also got my accounts up to date."

  "Now really, Cyril, I think it's high time you let other people do your donkey work for you. You're much too important for that sort of thing. Why don't you give the inlays to the mechanic?"

  "I prefer to do them myself. I'm extremely proud of my inlays."

  "I know you are, darling, and I think they're absolutely wonderful. They're the best inlays in the whole world. But I don't want you to burn yourself out. And why doesn't that Pulteney woman do the accounts? That's part of her job, isn't it?"

  "She does do them. But I have to price everything up first. She doesn't know who's rich and who isn't."

  "This Martini is perfect," Mrs Bixby said, setting down her glass on the side table. "Quite perfect." She opened her bag and took out a handkerchief as if to blow her nose. "Oh look!" she cried, seeing the ticket. "I forgot to show you this! I found it just now on the seat of my taxi. It's got a number on it, and I thought it might be a lottery ticket or something, so I kept it."

  She handed the small piece of stiff brown paper to her husband who took it in his fingers and began examining it minutely from all angles, as though it were a suspect tooth.

  "You know what this is?" he said slowly.

  "No dear, I don't."

  "It's a pawn ticket."

  "A what?"

  "A ticket from a pawnbroker. Here's the name and address of the shop-somewhere on Sixth Avenue."

  "Oh dear, I am disappointed. I was hoping it might be a ticket for the Irish Sweep."

  "There's no reason to be disappointed," Cyril Bixby said. "As a matter of fact this could be rather amusing."

  "Why could it be amusing, darling?"

  He began explaining to her exactly how a pawn ticket worked, with particular reference to the fact that anyone possessing the ticket was entitled to claim the article. She listened patiently until he had finished his lecture.

  "You think it's worth claiming?" she asked.

  "I think it's worth finding out what it is. You see this figure of fifty dollars that's written here? You know what that means?"

  "No, dear, what does it mean?"

  "It means that the item in question is almost certain to be something quite valuable."

  "You mean it'll be worth fifty dollars?"

  "More like five hundred."

  "Five hundred!"

  "Don't you understand?" he said. "A pawnbroker never gives you more than about a tenth of the real value."

  "Good gracious! I never knew that."

  "There's a lot of things you don't know, my dear. Now you listen to me. Seeing that there's no name and address of the owner… "

  "But surely there's something to say who it belongs to?"

  "Not a thing. People often do that. They don't want anyone to know they've been to a pawnbroker. They're ashamed of it."

  "Then you think we can keep it?"

  "Of course we can keep it. This is now our ticket."

  "You mean my ticket," Mrs Bixby said firmly. "I found it."

  "My dear girl, what does it matter? The important thing is that we are now in a position to go and redeem it any time we like for only fifty dollars. How about that?"

  "Oh, what fun!" she cried. "I think it's terribly exciting, especially when we don't even know what it is. It could be anything, isn't that right, Cyril? Absolutely anything!"

  "It could indeed, although it's most likely to be either a ring or a watch."

  "But wouldn't it be marvellous if it was a real treasure? I mean something really old, like a wonderful old vase or a Roman statue."

  "There's no knowing what it might be, m dear. We shall just have to wait and see."

  "I think it's absolutely fascinating! Give me the ticket and I'll rush over first thing Monday morning and find out!"

  "I think I'd better do that."

  "Oh no!" she cried. "Let me do it!"

  "I think not. I'll pick it up on my way to work."

  "But it's my ticket! Please let me do it, Cyril! Why should you have all the fun?"

  "You don't know these pawnbrokers, my dear. You're liable to get cheated."

  "I wouldn't get cheated, honestly I wouldn't. Give the ticket to me, please."

  "Also you have to have fifty dollars," he said, smiling. "You have to pay out fifty dollars in cash before they'll give it to you."

  "I've got that," she said. "I think."

  "I'd rather you didn't handle it, if you don't mind."

  "But Cyril, I found it. It's mine. Whatever it is, it's mine, isn't that right?"

  "Of course it's yours, my dear. There's no need to get so worked up about it."

  "I'm not. I'm just excited, that's all."

  "I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that this might be something entirely masculine a pocket-watch, for example, or a set of shirt-studs. It isn't only women that go to pawnbrokers, you know."

  "In that case I'll give it to you for Christmas," Mrs Bixby said magnanimously.