Free Death Among the Sunbathers by E.R. Punshon Page A

would in the future bear an exact ratio to the number of tickets now purchased.
    But as it happened the manager Keene now employed was a fashionable young lady herself, Helen Duncan by name, fully capable of dealing with other fashionable young ladies and today routing the invader with great loss. The salary Miss Duncan received hardly paid for her gloves and cigarettes, but the work provided her with an excuse for being away from a home she appreciated all the more for seeing so little of it. She was quite a good business woman – or would have been had there been any business to transact – really knew something about art and of the commercial as apart from the artistic value of pictures, took a genuine interest in the work; and if she considered herself entitled to take a day or a morning or afternoon off, whenever she felt like it or some attraction offered, that was really but a trifling drawback, especially in these times when there was so little to do. Besides, she was always considerate about this, and when a cocktail party, a visit to a matinee, an afternoon at bridge, claimed her, she was always careful to let Keene know, so that he might have time to cancel any engagement he had made likely to take him out at the same time. She had the additional merit of getting on rather well with the different errand boys, who were now in swift succession the only other employees at Deal Street, and indeed would often be able to get them to stay quite a long time, as much as five or six months sometimes. Also she smoked cigarettes continuously, and she regarded her employer with a lofty and patronizing contempt he resented deeply but dared not show for fear she departed. In her eyes he was a lower middle-class trading person, to whom it was as natural for her to give orders as to the footman at home. But indeed they had a kind of natural instinct for rubbing each other up the wrong way, though they found each other so useful there was at present no prospect either of his rebelling against her domineering ways or of her terminating her connexion with the business. Indeed, more than once she had hinted she would be willing to buy him out, though at a figure which it would have been unduly flattering to describe as a bargain basement price.
    â€˜When I feel like making you a present of the business, I’ll let you know,’ he had answered loweringly, and she had smiled rather maddeningly as she lighted a fresh cigarette and thought to herself that very likely some day soon the liquidator would be willing to consider an offer even smaller. ‘And I’ll thank you,’ he added, making a grab at the waste-paper basket into which she had tossed her match, ‘to be a bit more careful, or you’ll have the whole place on fire, and I don’t happen to want to be burnt out just yet, if it’s all the same to you.’
    â€˜Rot,’ she retorted, ‘don’t talk silly, that match was out all right.’
    â€˜It’s out now,’ he told her; ‘it was alight when you threw it in there.’
    â€˜Liar,’ she retorted simply.
    â€˜If the insurance company knew about you,’ he snapped angrily, ‘they would double the premium – Lord knows, it’s high enough as it is.’
    â€˜I don’t see why you don’t cut it,’ she remarked. ‘You carry too much by half.’
    â€˜Too little, you mean,’ he answered, ‘so long as that Rembrandt’s down there.’
    â€˜Well, I’ve never seen it,’ she observed. ‘I don’t see why you go on keeping it nailed up like that.’
    â€˜Because it’s sold if it isn’t paid for,’ he replied. ‘I told you that before – the money may be paid and delivery claimed at any moment. That was a condition of the sale, and I’m not going to lose the chance either.’
    She shrugged her shoulders indifferently. That Rembrandt had become almost legendary.