The Umbrella Man and Other Stories Read online

  A DANGEROUS WAGER . . .

  “No, no. I make you a good bet. I am rich man and I am sporting man also. Listen to me. Outside de hotel iss my car. Iss very fine car. American car from your country. Cadillac—”

  “Hey, now. Wait a minute.” The boy leaned back in his deck chair and he laughed. “I can’t put up that sort of property. This is crazy.”

  “Not crazy at all. You strike lighter ten times running and Cadillac is yours. You like to have dis Cadillac, yes?”

  “Sure, I’d like to have a Cadillac.” The boy was still grinning.

  “All right. Fine. We make a bet and I put up my Cadillac.”

  “And what do I put up?”

  The little man carefully removed the red band from his still unlighted cigar. “I never ask you, my friend, to bet something you cannot afford. You understand?”

  “Then what do I bet?”

  “I make it very easy for you, yes?”

  “OK. You make it easy.”

  “Some small ting you can afford to give away, and if you happen to lose it you would not feel too bad. Right?”

  “Such as what?”

  “Such as, perhaps, the little finger on your left hand.”

  “My what?” The boy stopped grinning.

  —from “Man from the South”

  Books by Roald Dahl

  The BFG

  Boy: Tales of Childhood

  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

  Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

  Danny the Champion of the World

  Dirty Beasts

  The Enormous Crocodile

  Esio Trot

  Fantastic Mr. Fox

  George’s Marvelous Medicine

  The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

  Going Solo

  James and the Giant Peach

  The Magic Finger

  Matilda

  The Minpins

  The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets

  Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes

  Skin and Other Stories

  The Twits

  The Umbrella Man and Other Stories

  The Vicar of Nibbleswicke

  The Witches

  The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

  Roald Dahl

  speak

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Speak

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Great Britain as The Great Automatic Grammatizator

  by Hamish Hamilton Limited, 1996

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000

  This edition published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2003, 2010

  Copyright © Roald Dahl Nominee Limited, 1996

  All rights reserved

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following stories from Kiss Kiss: “Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat,” “The Landlady,” and “Royal Jelly,” copyright © 1959 by Roald Dahl; copyright renewed 1987 by Roald Dahl. “Parson’s Pleasure,” copyright © 1958 by Roald Dahl; copyright renewed 1986 by Roald Dahl. “The Way Up to Heaven,” copyright © 1954 by Roald Dahl; copyright renewed 1982 by Roald Dahl. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  “The Great Automatic Grammatizator,” “Man from the South,” “Taste,” and “Neck” were published in Someone Like You (Knopf). Copyright © 1948, 1949, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1961 by Roald Dahl.

  “The Butler,” “The Umbrella Man,” and “Vengeance Is Mine Inc.” were published in More Tales of the Unexpected (Michael Joseph, London). Copyright © 1973, 1980 by Roald Dahl.

  “Katina” was published in Over to You (Reynal & Hitchcock). Copyright © 1946 by Roald Dahl.

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Dahl, Roald

  The umbrella man and other stories / Roald Dahl.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Thirteen stories, selected for teenagers, from Dahl’s adult writings, including “The Great Automatic Grammatizator,” “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat,” and “Vengeance Is Mine Inc.”

  1. Short stories, English. [1. Short stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D1515Um 1998 97-32549 CIP AC

  ISBN: 978-1-101-63628-2

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  CONTENTS

  The Great Automatic Grammatizator

  Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat

  The Butler

  Man from the South

  The Landlady

  Parson’s Pleasure

  The Umbrella Man

  Katina

  The Way Up to Heaven

  Royal Jelly

  Vengeance Is Mine Inc.

  Taste

  Neck

  “Well, Knipe, my boy. Now that it’s finished, I just called you in to tell you I think you’ve done a fine job.”

  Adolph Knipe stood still in front of Mr. Bohlen’s desk. There seemed to be no enthusiasm in him at all.

  “Aren’t you pleased?”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Bohlen.”

  “Did you see what the papers said this morning?”

  “No sir, I didn’t.”

  The man behind the desk pulled a folded newspaper towards him, and began to read: “The building of the great automatic computing engine, ordered by the government some time ago, is now complete. It is probably the fastest electronic calculating machine in the world today. Its function is to satisfy the ever-increasing need of science, industry, and administration for rapid mathematical calculation which, in the past, by traditional methods, would have been physically impossible, or would have required more time than the problems justified. The speed with which the new engine works, said Mr. John Bohlen, head of the firm of electrical engineers mainly responsible for its construction, may be grasped by the fact that it can provide the correct answer in five seconds to a problem that would occupy a mathematician for a month. In three minutes, it can produce a calculation that by hand (if it were possible) would fill half a million sheets of foolscap paper. The automatic computing engine uses