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  We finished our drinks and we both tried to pay the bill, so we tossed for it and I won. It came to sixteen dollars and twenty-five cents. He gave the waiter a two-dollar tip.

  We got up and walked around the tables and over to the door.

  ‘Taxi,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, must have a taxi.’

  There wasn’t a doorman. We stood out on the kerb waiting for a taxi to come along and he said, ‘This is a good town.’

  ‘Wonderful town,’ I said. I felt fine. It was dark outside, but there were a few street-lamps, and we could see the cars going by and the people walking on the other side of the street. There was a thin, quiet drizzle falling, and the wetness on the black street shone yellow under the lights of the cars and under the street-lamps. The tyres of the cars hissed on the wet surface.

  ‘Let’s go to a place which has lots of whisky,’ he said. ‘Lots of whisky and a man with egg on his beard serving it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Somewhere where there are no other people but just us and the man with egg on his beard. Either that.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Either that or what?’

  ‘Or a place with a hundred thousand people in it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘O.K.’

  We stood there waiting and we could see the lights of the cars as they came round the bend over to the left, coming towards us with the tyres swishing on the wet surface and going past us up the road to the bridge which goes over the river. We could see the drizzle falling through the beams of their headlights and we stood there waiting for a taxi.

  Acknowledgements

  My sincere thanks to The Saturday Evening Post, Tomorrow, Harper’s Magazine, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Town and Country, in which some of these stories have previously been published.

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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

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

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  First published in the United States of America by Reynal & Hitchcock 1946

  Published in Penguin Books 1973

  Published in Penguin Classics 2010

  Copyright 1942, 1944, 1945 by Curtis Publishing Co.

  Copyright 1944 by Creative Age Press

  Copyright 1944, 1945 by Harper and Bros.

  Copyright 1945 by Hearst Magazines, Inc.

  Copyright 1945, 1946 by Roald Dahl

  Foreword copyright © Alex James, 2010

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author of the foreword has been asserted

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

  ISBN: 978-0-14-196206-1

  There’s More to Roald Dahl than Great Stories …

  Did you know that 10 per cent of author royalties* from this book go to help the work of the Roald Dahl charities?

  Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity exists to make life better for seriously ill children because it believes that every child has the right to a marvellous life.

  This marvellous charity helps thousands of children each year living with serious conditions of the blood and the brain – causes important to Roald Dahl in his lifetime – whether by providing nurses, equipment or toys for today’s children in the UK, or helping tomorrow’s children everywhere through pioneering research.

  Can you do something marvellous to help others? Find out how at: www.marvellouschildrenscharity.org

  The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, based in Great Missenden just outside London, is in the Buckinghamshire village where Roald Dahl lived and wrote. At the heart of the Museum, created to inspire a love of reading and writing, is his unique archive of letters and manuscripts. As well as two fun-packed biographical galleries, the Museum boasts an interactive Story Centre. It is a place for the family, teachers and their pupils to explore the exciting world of creativity and literacy.

  Find out more at www.roalddahlmuseum.org

  Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity (RDMCC) is a registered charity no. 1137409.

  The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre (RDMSC) is a registered charity no. 1085853.

  The Roald Dahl Charitable Trust is a registered charity no. 1119330 and supports the work of RDMCC and RDMSC.

  * Donated royalties are net of commission

  Roald Dahl also wrote some rather popular children’s stories:

  ‘Roald Dahl is without question the most successful children’s writer in the world’

  Independent