by Roald Dahl
When we finally went to bed and the light was out, I could still hear George giving hell to Pantaloon on the telephone.
The next morning we were both woken up by the church clock on the corner striking nine. George got up and went to the door to get the papers and when he came back he was holding a letter in his hand.
‘Open it!’ I said.
He opened it and carefully he unfolded a single sheet of thin notepaper.
‘Read it!’ I shouted.
He began to read it aloud, his voice low and serious at first but rising gradually to a high, almost hysterical shout of triumph as the full meaning of the letter was revealed to him. It said:
‘Your methods appear curiously unorthodox. At the same time anything you do to that scoundrel has my approval. So go ahead. Start with Item 1, and if you are successful I’ll be only too glad to give you an order to work right on through the list. Send the bill to me. William S. Womberg.’
I recollect that in the excitement of the moment we did a kind of dance around the room in our pyjamas, praising Mr Womberg in loud voices and singing that we were rich. George turned somesaults on his bed and it is possible that I did the same.
‘When shall we do it?’ he said. ‘Tonight?’
I paused before replying. I refused to be rushed. The pages of history are filled with the names of great men who have come to grief by permitting themselves to make hasty decisions in the excitement of a moment. I put on my dressing-gown, lit a cigarette and began to pace up and down the room. ‘There is no hurry,’ I said. ‘Womberg’s order can be dealt with in due course. But first of all we must send out today’s cards.’
I dressed quickly, went out to the newsstand across the street, bought one copy of every daily paper there was and returned to our room. The next two hours was spent is reading the columnists’ columns, and in the end we had a list of eleven people – eight men and three women – all of whom had been insulted in one way or another by one of the columnists that morning. Things were going well. We were working smoothly. It took us only another half hour to look up the addresses of the insulted ones – two we couldn’t find – and to address the envelopes.
In the afternoon we delivered them, and at about six in the evening we got back to our room, tired but triumphant. We made coffee and we fried hamburgers and we had supper in bed. Then we re-read Womberg’s letter aloud to each other many many times.
‘What he’s doing he’s giving us an order for six thousand one hundred dollars,’ George said. ‘Items 1 to 5 inclusive.’
‘It’s not a bad beginning. Not bad for the first day. Six thousand a day works out at… let me see… it’s nearly two million dollars a year, not counting Sundays. A million each. It’s more than Betty Grable.’
‘We are very wealthy people,’ George said. He smiled, a slow and wondrous smile of pure contentment.
‘In a day or two we will move to a suite of rooms at the St Regis.’
‘I think the Waldorf,’ George said.
‘All right, the Waldorf. And later on we might as well take a house.’
‘One like Womberg’s?’
‘All right. One like Womberg’s. But first,’ I said, ‘we have work to do. Tomorrow we shall deal with Pantaloon. We will catch him as he comes out of the Penguin Club. At two-thirty a.m. we will be waiting for him, and when he comes out into the street you will step forward and you will punch him once, hard, right upon the point of the nose as per contract.’
‘It will be a pleasure,’ George said. ‘It will be a real pleasure. But how do we get away? Do we run?’
‘We shall hire a car for an hour. We have just enough money left for that, and I shall be sitting at the wheel with the engine running, not ten yards away, and the door will be open and when you’ve punched him you’ll just jump back into the car and we’ll be gone.’
‘It is perfect. I shall punch him very hard.’ George paused. He clenched his right fist and examined his knuckles. Then he smiled again and he said slowly. ‘This nose of his, is it not possible that it will afterwards be so much blunted that it will no longer poke well into other peoples’ business?’
‘It is quite possible.’ I answered, and with that happy thought in our minds we switched out the light and went early to sleep.
The next morning I was woken by a shout and I sat up and saw George standing at the foot of my bed in his pyjamas, waving his arms. ‘Look!’ he shouted, ‘there are four! There are four!’ I looked, and indeed there were four letters in his hand.
‘Open them. Quickly, open them.’
The first one he read aloud: ‘ “Dear Vengeance Is Mine Inc., That’s the best proposition I’ve had in years. Go right ahead and give Mr Jacob Swinski the rattlesnake treatment (Item 4). But I’ll be glad to pay double if you’ll forget to extract the poison from its fangs. Yours Gertrude Porter-Van-dervelt. P.S. You’d better insure the snake. That guy’s bite carries more poison than any rattler’s.” ’
George read the second one aloud: ‘ “My cheque for $500 is made out and lies before me on my desk. The moment I receive proof that you have punched Lionel Pantaloon hard on the nose, it will be posted to you. I should prefer a fracture, if possible. Yours etc. Wilbur H. Gollogly.” ’
George read the third one aloud: ‘ “In my present frame of mind and against my better judgement, I am tempted to reply to your card and to request that you deposit that scoundrel Walter Kennedy upon Fifth Avenue dressed only in his underwear. I make the proviso that there shall be snow upon the ground at the time and that the temperature shall be subzero. H. Gresham.” ’
The fourth one also he read aloud: ‘ “A good hard sock on the nose for Pantaloon is worth five hundred of mine or anyone else’s money. I should like to watch. Yours sincerely, Claudia Calthorpe Hines.” ’
George laid the letters down gently, carefully upon the bed. For a while there was silence. We stared at each other, too astonished, too happy to speak. I began to calculate the value of those four orders in terms of money.
‘That’s five thousand dollars worth,’ I said softly.
Upon George’s face there was a huge bright grin. ‘Claude, he said, ‘should we not move now to the Waldorf?’
‘Soon,’ I answered, ‘but at the moment we have no time for moving. We have not even time to send out any fresh cards today. We must start to execute the orders we have in hand. We are overwhelmed with work.’
‘Should we not engage extra staff and enlarge our organization?’
‘Later,’ I said. ‘Even for that there is no time today. Just think what we have to do. We have to put a rattlesnake in Jacob Swinski’s car… we have to dump Walter Kennedy on Fifth Avenue in his underpants… we have to punch Pantaloon on the nose… let me see… yes, for three different people we have to punch Pantaloon…’
I stopped. I closed my eyes. I sat still. Again I became conscious of a small clear stream of inspiration flowing into the tissues of my brain. ‘I have it!’ I shouted. ‘I have it! I have it! Three birds with one stone! Three customers with one punch!’
‘How?’
‘Don’t you see? We only need to punch Pantaloon once and each of the three customers… Womberg, Gollogly and Claudia Hines… will think it’s being done specially for him or her.’
‘Say it again.’ I said it again.
‘It’s brilliant.’
‘It’s common-sense. And the same principle will apply to the others. The rattlesnake treatment and the other one can wait until we have more orders. Perhaps in a few days we shall have ten orders for rattlesnakes in Swinski’s car. Then we will do them all in one go.’
‘It’s wonderful.’
‘This evening then,’ I said, ‘we will handle Pantaloon. But first we must hire a car. Also we must send telegrams, one to Womberg, one to Gollogly and one to Claudia Hines, telling them where and when the punching will take place.’
We dressed rapidly and went out.
In a dirty silent little garage down on East 9th Street w
e managed to hire a car, a 1934 Chevrolet, eight dollars for the evening. We then sent three telegrams, each one identical and cunningly worded to conceal its true meaning from inquisitive people: ‘Hope to see you outside Penguin Club two-thirty a.m. Regards V.I. Mine.’
‘There is one thing more,’ I said. ‘It is essential that you should be disguised. Pantaloon, or the doorman, for example, must not be able to identify you afterwards. You must wear a false moustache.’
‘What about you?’
‘Not necessary. I’ll be sitting in the car. They won’t see me.’
We went to a children’s toy-shop and we bought for George a magnificent black moustache, a thing with long pointed ends, waxed and stiff and shining, and when he held it up against his face he looked exactly like the Kaiser of Germany. The man in the shop also sold us a tube of glue and he showed us how the moustache should be attached to the upper lip. ‘Going to have fun with the kids?’ he asked, and George said, ‘Absolutely.’
All was now ready, but there was a long time to wait. We had three dollars left between us and with this we bought a sandwich each and then went to a movie. Then, at eleven o’clock that evening, we collected our car and in it we began to cruise slowly through the streets of New York waiting for the time to pass.
‘You’re better put on your moustache so as you get used to it.’
We pulled up under a street lamp and I squeezed some glue on to George’s upper lip and fixed on the huge black hairy thing with its pointed ends. Then we drove on. It was cold in the car and outside it was beginning to snow again. I could see a few small snowflakes falling through the beams of the car-lights. George kept saying, ‘How hard shall I hit him?’ and I kept answering, ‘Hit him as hard as you can, and on the nose. It must be on the nose because that is a part of the contract. Everything must be done right. Our clients may be watching.’
At two in the morning we drove slowly past the entrance to the Penguin Club in order to survey the situation. ‘I will park there,’ I said, ‘just past the entrance in that patch of dark. But I will leave the door open for you.’
We drove on. Then George said, ‘What does he look like? How do I know it’s him?’
‘Don’t worry,’ I answered. ‘I’ve thought of that;’ and I took from my pocket a piece of paper and handed it to him. ‘You take this and fold it up small and give it to the doorman and tell him to see it gets to Pantaloon quickly. Act as though you are scared to death and in an awful hurry. It’s a hundred to one Pantaloon will come out. No columnist could resist that message.’
On the paper I had written: ‘I am a worker in Soviet Consulate. Come to the door very quickly please I have something to tell but come quickly as I am in danger. I cannot come in to you.’
‘You see,’ I said, ‘your moustache will make you look like a Russian. All Russians have big moustaches.’
George took the paper and folded it up very small and held it in his fingers. It was nearly half past two in the morning now and we began to drive towards the Penguin Club.
‘You all set?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘We’re going in now. Here we come. I’ll park just past the entrance… here. Hit him hard,’ I said, and George opened the door and got out of the car. I closed the door behind him but I leant over and kept my hand on the handle so I could open it again quick, and I let down the window so I could watch. I kept the engine ticking-over.
I saw George walk swiftly up to the doorman who stood under the red and white canopy which stretched out over the sidewalk. I saw the doorman turn and look down at George and I didn’t like the way he did it. He was a tall proud man dressed in a fine magenta-coloured uniform with gold buttons and gold shoulders and a broad white stripe down each magenta trouser-leg. Also he wore white gloves and he stood there looking proudly down at George, frowning, pressing his lips together hard. He was looking at George’s moustache and I thought Oh my God we have overdone it. We have over-disguised him. He’s going to know it’s false and he’s going to take one of the long pointed ends in his fingers and then he’ll give it a tweak and it’ll come off. But he didn’t. He was distracted by George’s acting, for George was acting well. I could see him hopping about, clasping and unclasping his hands, swaying his body and shaking his head, and I could hear him saying, ‘Plees plees plees you must hurry. It is life and teth. Plees plees take it kvick to Mr Pantaloon.’ His Russian accent was not like any accent I had heard before, but all the same there was a quality of real despair in his voice.
Finally, gravely, proudly, the doorman said, ‘Give me the note.’ George gave it to him and said, ‘Tank you, tank you, but say it is urgent,’ and the doorman disappeared inside. In a few moments he returned and said, ‘It’s being delivered now.’ George paced nervously up and down. I waited, watching the door. Three or four minutes elapsed. George wrung his hands and said, ‘Vere is he? Vere is he? Plees to go see if he is not coming!’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ the doorman said. Now he was looking at George’s moustache again.
‘It is life and teth! Mr Pantaloon can help! He must come!’
‘Why don’t you shut up,’ the doorman said, but he opened the door again and he poked his head inside and I heard him saying something to someone.
To George he said, ‘They say he’s coming now.’
A moment later the door opened and Pantaloon himself, small and dapper, stepped out. He paused by the door, looking quickly from side to side like a nervous inquisitive ferret. The doorman touched his cap and pointed at George. I heard Pantaloon say, ‘Yes, what did you want?’
George said, ‘Plees, dis vay a leetle so as novone can hear,’ and he led Pantaloon along the pavement, away from the doorman and towards the car.
‘Come on, now,’ Pantaloon said. ‘What is it you want?’
Suddenly George shouted ‘Look!’ and he pointed up the street. Pantaloon turned his head and as he did so George swung his right arm and he hit Pantaloon plumb on the point of the nose. I saw George leaning forward on the punch, all his weight behind it, and the whole of Pantaloon appeared somehow to lift slightly off the ground and to float backwards for two or three feet until the façade of the Penguin Club stopped him. All this happened very quickly, and then George was in the car beside me and we were off and I could hear the doorman blowing a whistle behind us.
‘We’ve done it!’ George gasped. He was excited and out of breath. ‘I hit him good! Did you see how good I hit him!’
It was snowing hard now and I drove fast and made many sudden turnings and I knew no one would catch us in this snowstorm.
‘Son of a bitch almost went through the wall I hit him so hard.’
‘Well done, George,’ I said. ‘Nice work, George.’
‘And did you see him lift? Did you see him lift right up off the ground?’
‘Womberg will be pleased,’ I said.
‘And Gollogly, and the Hines woman.’
‘They’ll all be pleased,’ I said. ‘Watch the money coming in.’
‘There’s a car behind us!’ George shouted. ‘It’s following us! It’s right on our tail! Drive like mad!’
‘Impossible!’ I said. ‘They couldn’t have picked us up already. It’s just another car going somewhere.’ I turned sharply to the right.
‘He’s still with us,’ George said. ‘Keep turning. We’ll lose him soon.’
‘How the hell can we lose a police-car in a nineteen thirty-four Chev,’ I said. ‘I’m going to stop.’
‘Keep going!’ George shouted. ‘You’re doing fine.’
‘I’m going to stop,’ I said. ‘It’ll only make them mad if we go on.’
George protested fiercely but I knew it was no good and I pulled in to the side of the road. The other car swerved out and went past us and skidded to a standstill in front of us.
‘Quick,’ George said. ‘Let’s beat it.’ He had the door open and he was ready to run.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said. ‘Stay wh
ere you are. You can’t get away now.’
A voice from outside said, ‘All right boys, what’s the hurry?’
‘No hurry,’ I answered. ‘We’re just going home.’
‘Yea?’
‘Oh yes, we’re just on our way home now.’
The man poked his head in through the window on my side, and he looked at me, then at George, then at me again.
‘It’s a nasty night,’ George said. ‘We’re just trying to reach home before the streets get all snowed up.’
‘Well,’ the man said, ‘you can take it easy. I just thought I’d like to give you this right away.’ He dropped a wad of banknotes on to my lap. ‘I’m Gollogly,’ he added, ‘Wilbur H. Gollogly,’ and he stood out there in the snow grinning at us, stamping his feet and rubbing his hands to keep them warm. ‘I got your wire and I watched the whole thing from across the street. You did a fine job. I’m paying you double. It was worth it. Funniest thing I ever seen. Goodbye boys. Watch your steps. They’ll be after you now. Get out of town if I were you. Goodbye.’ And before we could say anything, he was gone.