Free The Umbrella Man and Other Stories by Roald Dahl Page A

language. She shook him so fast you couldn’t see him any more. He became a faint, misty, quickly moving outline, like the spokes of a turning wheel.
    Then she slowed down and the little man came into view again and she hauled him across the room and pushed him backwards on to one of the beds. He sat on the edge of it blinking his eyes and testing his head to see if it would still turn on his neck.
    “I am sorry,” the woman said. “I am so terribly sorry that this should happen.” She spoke almost perfect English.
    “It is too bad,” she went on. “I suppose it is really my fault. For ten minutes I leave him alone to go and have my hair washed and I come back and he is at it again.” She looked sorry and deeply concerned.
    The boy was untying his hand from the table. The English girl and I stood there and said nothing.
    “He is a menace,” the woman said. “Down where we live at home he has taken altogether forty-seven fingers from differentpeople, and has lost eleven cars. In the end they threatened to have him put away somewhere. That’s why I brought him up here.”
    “We were only having a little bet,” mumbled the little man from the bed.
    “I suppose he bet you a car,” the woman said.
    “Yes,” the boy answered. “A Cadillac.”
    “He has no car. It’s mine. And that makes it worse,” she said, “that he should bet you when he has nothing to bet with. I am ashamed and very sorry about it all.” She seemed an awfully nice woman.
    “Well,” I said, “then here’s the key of your car.” I put it on the table.
    “We were only having a little bet,” mumbled the little man.
    “He hasn’t anything left to bet with,” the woman said. “He hasn’t a thing in the world. Not a thing. As a matter of fact I myself won it all from him a long while ago. It took time, a lot of time, and it was hard work, but I won it all in the end.” She looked up at the boy and she smiled, a slow sad smile, and she came over and put out a hand to take the key from the table.
    I can see it now, that hand of hers; it had only one finger on it, and a thumb.

Billy Weaver had travelled down from London on the slow afternoon train, with a change at Swindon on the way, and by the time he got to Bath it was about nine o’clock in the evening and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky over the houses opposite the station entrance. But the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks.
    “Excuse me,” he said, “but is there a fairly cheap hotel not too far away from here?”
    “Try The Bell and Dragon,” the porter answered, pointing down the road. “They might take you in. It’s about a quarter of a mile along on the other side.”
    Billy thanked him and picked up his suitcase and set out to walk the quarter-mile to The Bell and Dragon. He had never been to Bath before. He didn’t know anyone who lived there. But Mr. Greenslade at the Head Office in London had told him it was a splendid city. “Find your own lodgings,” he had said, “and then go along and report to the Branch Manager as soon as you’ve got yourself settled.”
    Billy was seventeen years old. He was wearing a new navy-blue overcoat, a new brown trilby hat, and a new brown suit, and he was feeling fine. He walked briskly down the street. He was trying to do everything briskly these days. Briskness, he had decided, was
the
one common characteristic of all successful businessmen. The big shots up at Head Office were absolutely fantastically brisk all the time. They were amazing.
    There were no shops in this wide street that he was walking along, only a line of tall houses on each side, all of them identical. They had porches and pillars and four or five steps going up to their front doors, and it was obvious that once upon a time they had been very swanky residences. But now, even in the darkness, he could see that the paint was peeling from the woodwork on their doors and windows, and that the handsome