The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl Volume 1 Read online

  I leaned back and closed my eyes, savouring the delicious scene. I saw the headlines in the papers the next morning: PRESIDENT'S BEST PERFORMANCE TO DATE PRESIDENTIAL SECRETS REVEALED TO NATION PRESIDENT INAUGURATES BLUE TV and so on.

  He would be impeached the next day and I would slip quietly out of New York and head back to Paris. Come to think of it, I would be leaving tomorrow!

  I checked the time. It was nearly four o'clock. I dressed myself without hurrying. I took the elevator down to the main lobby and strolled across to Madison Avenue. Somewhere around Sixty-second Street, I found a good florist's shop. There I bought a corsage of three massive orchid blooms all fastened together. The orchids were cattleyas, white and mauve splotches on them. They were particularly vulgar. So, undoubtedly, was Mrs Elvira Ponsonby. I had the shop pack them in a handsome box tied up with gold string. Then I strolled back to the Plaza, carrying the box, and went up to my suite.

  I locked all doors leading to the corridor in case the maid should come in to turn back the bed. I got out the noseplugs and vaselined them carefully. I inserted them in my nostrils, ramming them home very hard. I tied a Surgeon's mask over my lower face as an extra precaution, just as Henri had done. I was ready now for the next step.

  With an ordinary nose-dropper, I transferred my precious cubic centimetre of Bitch from the scent bottle to the tiny capsule. The hand holding the dropper shook a little as I did this, but all went well. I sealed the capsule. After that, I wound up the tiny watch and set it to the correct time. It was three minutes after five o'clock. Lastly, I set the timer to go off and break the capsule at ten minutes past nine.

  The stems of the three huge orchid blooms had been tied together by the florist with a broad oneinch-wide white ribbon and it was a simple matter for me to remove the ribbon and secure my little capsule and timer to the orchid stems with cotton thread. When that was done, I wound the ribbon back around the stems and over my gadget. Then I retied the bow. It was a nice job.

  Next, I telephoned the Waldorf and learned that the dinner was to begin at eight o'clock, but that the guests must be assembled in the ballroom by seven thirty, before the President arrived.

  At ten minutes to seven, I paid off my cab outside the Waldorf Towers entrance and walked into the building. I crossed the small lobby and placed my orchid box on the reception desk. I leaned over the desk, getting as close as possible to the clerk. "I have to deliver this package to Mrs Elvira Ponsonby," I whispered, using a slight American accent. "It is a gift from the President."

  The clerk looked at me suspiciously.

  "Mrs Ponsonby is introducing the President before he speaks tonight in the ballroom," I added. "The President wishes her to have this corsage right away."

  "Leave it here and I'll have it sent up to her suite," the clerk said.

  "No, you won't," I told him. "My orders are to deliver it in person. What's the number of her suite?"

  The man was impressed. "Mrs Ponsonby is in five-o-one," he said.

  I thanked him and went into the elevator. When I got out at the fifth floor and walked along the corridor, the elevator operator stayed and watched me. I rang the bell to five-o-one.

  The door was opened by the most enormous female I had ever seen in my life. I have seen giant women in circuses. I have seen lady wrestlers and weight-lifters. I have seen the huge Masai women in the plains below Kilimanjaro. But never had I seen a female so tall and broad and thick as this one. Nor so thoroughly repugnant. She was groomed and dressed for the greatest occasion of her life, and in the two seconds that elapsed before either of us spoke, I was able to take most of it in the metallic silver-blue hair with every strand glued into place, the brown pig-eyes, the long sharp nose sniffing for trouble, the curled lips, the prognathous jaw, the powder, the mascara, the scarlet lipstick and, most shattering of all, the massive shored-up bosom that projected like a balcony in front of her. It stuck out so far it was a miracle she didn't topple forward with the weight of it all. And there she stood, this pneumatic giant, swathed from neck to ankles in the stars and stripes of the American flag.

  "Mrs Elvira Ponsonby?" I murmured.

  "I am Mrs Ponsonby," she boomed. "What do you want? I am extremely busy."

  "Mrs Ponsonby," I said. "The President has ordered me to deliver this to you in person."

  She melted immediately. "The dear man!" she shouted. "How perfectly gorgeous of him!" Two massive hands reached out to grab the box. I let her have it.

  "My instructions are to make sure you open it before you go to the banquet," I said.

  "Sure I'll open it," she said. "Do I have to do it in front of you?"

  "If you wouldn't mind."

  "Okay, come on in. But I don't have much time."

  I followed her into the living-room of the suite. "I am to tell you," I said, "that it comes with all good wishes from one President to another."

  "Ha!" she roared. "I like that! What a gorgeous man he is!" She untied the gold string of the box and lifted the lid. "I guessed it!" she shouted. "Orchids! How splendid! They're far grander than this poor little thing I'm wearing!"

  I had been so dazzled by the galaxy of stars across her bosom that I hadn't noticed the single orchid pinned to her left-hand side.

  "I must change over at once," she said. "The President will be expecting me to wear his gift."

  "He certainly will," I said.

  Now to give you an idea of how far her chest stuck out in front of her, I must tell you that when she reached forward to unpin the flower, she was only just able to touch it even with her arms fully extended. She fiddled around with the pin for quite a while, but she couldn't really see what she was doing and it wouldn't come undone. "I'm terrified of tearing this gorgeous gown," she said. "Here, you do it." She swung around and thrust her mammoth bust in my face. I hesitated. "Go on!" she boomed. "I don't have all night!" I went to it, and in the end I managed to get the pin unhooked from her dress.

  "Now let's get the other one on," she said.

  I put aside the single orchid and lifted my own flowers carefully from the box.

  "Have they got a pin?" she asked.

  "I don't believe they have," I said. That was something I'd forgotten.

  "No matter," she said. "We'll use the old one." She removed the safety-pin from the first orchid, and then, before I could stop her, she seized the three orchids I was holding and jabbed the pin hard into the white ribbon around the stems. She jabbed it almost exactly into the spot where my little capsule of Bitch was lying hidden. The pin struck something hard and wouldn't go through. She jabbed it again. Again it struck metal. "What the hell's under here?" she snorted.

  "Let me do it!" I cried, but it was too late, because the wet stain of Bitch from the punctured capsule was already spreading over the white ribbon and one hundredth of a second later the smell hit me. It caught me smack under the nose and it wasn't actually like a smell at all because a smell is something intangible. You cannot feel a smell. But this stuff was palpable. It was solid. It felt as though some kind of fiery liquid were being squirted up my nostrils under high pressure. It was exceedingly uncomfortable. I could feel it pushing higher and higher, penetrating far beyond the nasal passages, forcing its way up behind the forehead and reaching for the brain. Suddenly the stars and stripes on Mrs Ponsonby's dress began to wobble and bobble about and then the whole room started wobbling and I could hear my heart thumping in my head. It felt as though I were going under an anaesthetic.

  At that point, I must have blacked out completely, if only for a couple of seconds.

  When I came round again, I was standing naked in a rosy room and there was a funny feeling in my groin. I looked down and saw that my beloved sexual organ was three feet long and thick to match. It was still growing. It was lengthening and swelling at a tremendous rate. At the same time, my body was shrinking. Smaller and smaller shrank my body. Bigger and bigger grew my astonishing organ, and it went on growing, by God, until it had enveloped my entire body and