The Umbrella Man and Other Stories

by Roald Dahl

“I’m telling you, there’s nothing that makes the rich so furious as being mocked and insulted in the newspapers.”

  “Go on,” George said. “Go on.”

  “All right. Now this is the plan.” I was getting rather excited myself. I was leaning over the side of the bed, resting one hand on the little table, waving the other about in the air as I spoke. “We will set up immediately an organization and we will call it . . . what shall we call it . . . we will call it . . . let me see . . . we will call it ‘Vengeance Is Mine Inc.’ . . . How about that?”

  “Peculiar name.”

  “It’s biblical. It’s good. I like it. ‘Vengeance Is Mine Inc.’ It sounds fine. And we will have little cards printed which we will send to all our clients reminding them that they have been insulted and mortified in public and offering to punish the offender in consideration of a sum of money. We will buy all the newspapers and read all the columnists and every day we will send out a dozen or more of our cards to prospective clients.”

  “It’s marvellous!” George shouted. “It’s terrific!”

  “We shall be rich,” I told him. “We shall be exceedingly wealthy in no time at all.”

  “We must start at once!”

  I jumped out of bed, fetched a writing-pad and a pencil and ran back to bed again. “Now,” I said, pulling my knees under the blankets and propping the writing-pad against them, “the first thing is to decide what we’re going to say on the printed cards which we’ll be sending to our clients,” and I wrote, “VENGEANCE IS MINE INC.” as a heading on the top of the sheet of paper. Then, with much care, I composed a finely phrased letter explaining the functions of the organization. It finished up with the following sentence: “Therefore VENGEANCE IS MINE INC. will undertake, on your behalf and in absolute confidence, to administer suitable punishment to columnist........and in this regard we respectfully submit to you a choice of methods (together with prices) for your consideration.”

  “What do you mean, ‘a choice of methods’?” George said.

  “We must give them a choice. We must think up a number of things . . . a number of different punishments. Number one will be . . . ” and I wrote down, “1. Punch him on the nose, once, hard.” “What shall we charge for that?”

  “Five hundred dollars,” George said instantly.

  I wrote it down. “What’s the next one?”

  “Black his eye,” George said.

  I wrote it down, “2. Black his eye . . . $500.”

  “No!” George said. “I disagree with the price. It definitely requires more skill and timing to black an eye nicely than to punch a nose. It is a skilled job. It should be six hundred.”

  “OK,” I said. “Six hundred. And what’s the next one?”

  “Both together, of course. The old one two.” We were in George’s territory now. This was right up his street.

  “Both together?”

  “Absolutely. Punch his nose and black his eye. Eleven hundred dollars.”

  “There should be a reduction for taking the two,” I said. “We’ll make it a thousand.”

  “It’s dirt cheap,” George said. “They’ll snap it up.”

  “What’s next?”

  We were both silent now, concentrating fiercely. Three deep parallel grooves of skin appeared upon George’s rather low sloping forehead. He began to scratch his scalp, slowly but very strongly. I looked away and tried to think of all the terrible things which people had done to other people. Finally, I got one, and with George watching the point of my pencil moving over the paper, I wrote: “4. Put a rattlesnake (with venom extracted) on the floor of his car, by the pedals, when he parks it.”

  “Jesus Christ!” George whispered. “You want to kill him with fright!”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “And where’d you get a rattlesnake, anyway?”

  “Buy it. You can always buy them. How much shall we charge for that one?”

  “Fifteen hundred dollars,” George said firmly. I wrote it down.

  “Now we need one more.”

  “Here it is,” George said. “Kidnap him in a car, take all his clothes away except his underpants and his shoes and socks, then dump him out on Fifth Avenue in the rush hour.” He smiled, a broad triumphant smile.

  “We can’t do that.”

  “Write it down. And charge two thousand five hundred bucks. You’d do it all right if old Womberg were to offer you that much.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose I would.” And I wrote it down. “That’s enough now,” I added. “That gives them a wide choice.”

  “And where will we get the cards printed?” George asked.

  “George Karnoffsky,” I said. “Another George. He’s a friend of mine. Runs a small printing shop down on Third Avenue. Does wedding invitations and things like that for all the big stores. He’ll do it. I know he will.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  We both leapt out of bed and began to dress. “It’s twelve o’clock,” I said. “If we hurry we’ll catch him before he goes to lunch.”

  It was still snowing when we went out into the street and the snow was four or five inches thick on the sidewalk, but we covered the fourteen blocks to Karnoffsky’s shop at a tremendous pace and we arrived there just as he was putting his coat on to go out.

  “Claude!” he shouted. “Hi boy! How you been keeping,” and he pumped my hand. He had a fat friendly face and a terrible nose with great wide-open nose-wings which overlapped his cheeks by at least an inch on either side. I greeted him and told him that we had come to discuss some most urgent business. He took off his coat and led us back into the office, then I began to tell him our plans and what we wanted him to do.

  When I’d got about quarter way through my story, he started to roar with laughter and it was impossible for me to continue; so I cut it short and handed him the piece of paper with the stuff on it that we wanted him to print. And now, as he read it, his whole body began to shake with laughter and he kept slapping the desk with his hand and coughing and choking and roaring like someone crazy. We sat watching him. We didn’t see anything particular to laugh about.

  Finally he quietened down and he took out a handkerchief and made a great business about wiping his eyes. “Never laughed so much,” he said weakly. “That’s a great joke, that is. It’s worth a lunch. Come on out and I’ll give you lunch.”

  “Look,” I said severely, “this isn’t any joke. There is nothing to laugh at. You are witnessing the birth of a new and powerful organization . . . ”

  “Come on,” he said and he began to laugh again. “Come on and have lunch.”

  “When can you get those cards printed?” I said. My voice was stern and businesslike.

  He paused and stared at us. “You mean . . . you really mean . . . you’re serious about this thing?”

  “Absolutely. You are witnessing the birth . . . ”

  “All right,” he said, “all right,” he stood up. “I think you’re crazy and you’ll get in trouble. Those boys like messing other people about, but they don’t much fancy being messed about themselves.”

  “When can you get them printed, and without any of your workers reading them?”

  “For this,” he answered gravely, “I will give up my lunch. I will set the type myself. It is the least I can do.” He laughed again and the rims of his huge nostrils twitched with pleasure. “How many do you want?”

  “A thousand—to start with, and envelopes.”

  “Come back at two o’clock,” he said and I thanked him very much and as we went out we could hear his laughter rumbling down the passage into the back of the shop.

  At exactly two o’clock we were back. George Karnoffsky was in his office and the first thing I saw as we went in was the high stack of printed cards on his desk in front of him. They were large cards, about twice the size of ordinary wedding or cocktail invitation-cards. “There you are,” he said. “All ready for you.” The fool was still laughing.

  He han
ded us each a card and I examined mine carefully. It was a beautiful thing. He had obviously taken much trouble over it. The card itself was thick and stiff with narrow gold edging all the way around, and the letters of the heading were exceedingly elegant. I cannot reproduce it here in all its splendour, but I can at least show you how it read:

  VENGEANCE IS MINE INC.

  Dear....................

  You have probably seen columnist.....................’s slanderous and unprovoked attack upon your character in today’s paper. It is an outrageous insinuation, a deliberate distortion of the truth.

  Are you yourself prepared to allow this miserable malice-monger to insult you in this manner?

  The whole world knows that it is foreign to the nature of the American people to permit themselves to be insulted either in public or in private without rising up in righteous indignation and demanding—nay, exacting—a just measure of retribution.

  On the other hand, it is only natural that a citizen of your standing and reputation will not wish personally to become further involved in this sordid petty affair, or indeed to have any direct contact whatsoever with this vile person.

  How then are you to obtain satisfaction?

  The answer is simple, VENGEANCE IS MINE INC. will obtain it for you. We will undertake, on your behalf and in absolute confidence, to administer individual punishment to columnist...................., and in this regard we respectfully submit to you a choice of methods (together with prices) for your consideration:

  1. Punch him on the nose, once, hard $500

  2. Black his eye $600

  3. Punch him on the nose and black his eye $1000

  4. Introduce a rattlesnake (with venom extracted) into his car, on the floor by his pedals, when he parks it $1500

  5. Kidnap him, take all his clothes away except his underpants, his shoes and socks, then dump him out on Fifth Ave. in the rush hour $2500

  This work executed by a professional.

  If you desire to avail yourself of any of these offers, kindly reply to VENGEANCE IS MINE INC. at the address indicated upon the enclosed slip of paper. If it is practicable, you will be notified in advance of the place where the action will occur and of the time, so that you may, if you wish, watch the proceedings in person from a safe and anonymous distance.

  No payment need be made until after your order has been satisfactorily executed, when an account will be rendered in the usual manner.

  * * *

  George Karnoffsky had done a beautiful job of printing.

  “Claude,” he said, “you like?”

  “It’s marvellous.”

  “It’s the best I could do for you. It’s like in the war when I would see soldiers going off perhaps to get killed and all the time I would want to be giving them things and doing things for them.” He was beginning to laugh again, so I said, “We’d better be going now. Have you got large envelopes for these cards?”

  “Everything is here. And you can pay me when the money starts coming in.” That seemed to set him off worse than ever and he collapsed into his chair, giggling like a fool. George and I hurried out of the shop into the street, into the cold snow-falling afternoon.

  We almost ran the distance back to our room and on the way up I borrowed a Manhattan telephone directory from the public telephone in the hall. We found “Womberg, William S.,” without any trouble and while I read out the address—somewhere up in the East Nineties—George wrote it on one of the envelopes.

  “Gimple, Mrs. Ella H.,” was also in the book and we addressed an envelope to her as well. “We’ll just send to Womberg and Gimple today,” I said. “We haven’t really got started yet. Tomorrow we’ll send a dozen.”

  “We’d better catch the next post,” George said.

  “We’ll deliver them by hand,” I said. “Now, at once. The sooner they get them the better. Tomorrow might be too late. They won’t be half so angry tomorrow as they are today. People are apt to cool off through the night. See here,” I said, “you go ahead and deliver those two cards right away. While you’re doing that I’m going to snoop around the town and try to find out something about the habits of Lionel Pantaloon. See you back here later in the evening . . . ”

  At about nine o’clock that evening I returned and found George lying on his bed smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.

  “I delivered them both,” he said. “Just slipped them through the letter-boxes and rang the bells and beat it up the street. Womberg had a huge house, a huge white house. How did you get on?”

  “I went to see a man I know who works in the sports section of the Daily Mirror. He told me all.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He said Pantaloon’s movements are more or less routine. He operates at night, but wherever he goes earlier in the evening, he always—and this is the important point—he always finishes up at the Penguin Club. He gets there round about midnight and stays until two or two-thirty. That’s when his legmen bring him all the dope.”

  “That’s all we want to know,” George said happily.

  “It’s too easy.”

  “Money for old rope.”

  There was a full bottle of blended whisky in the cupboard and George fetched it out. For the next two hours we sat upon our beds drinking the whisky and making wonderful and complicated plans for the development of our organization. By eleven o’clock we were employing a staff of fifty, including twelve famous pugilists, and our offices were in Rockefeller Center. Towards midnight we had obtained control over all columnists and were dictating their daily columns to them by telephone from our headquarters, taking care to insult and infuriate at least twenty rich persons in one part of the country or another every day. We were immensely wealthy and George had a British Bentley, I had five Cadillacs. George kept practising telephone talks with Lionel Pantaloon. “That you, Pantaloon?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, listen here. I think your column stinks today. It’s lousy.” “I’m very sorry, sir. I’ll try to do better tomorrow.” “Damn right you’ll do better, Pantaloon. Matter of fact we’ve been thinking about getting someone else to take over.” “But please, please sir, just give me another chance.” “OK, Pantaloon, but this is the last. And by the way, the boys are putting a rattlesnake in your car tonight, on behalf of Mr. Hiram C. King, the soap manufacturer. Mr. King will be watching from across the street so don’t forget to act scared when you see it.” “Yes, sir, of course, sir. I won’t forget, sir . . . ”

  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 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 shouting that we were rich. George turned somersaults 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 h
urry,” 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, we 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 in 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’s he 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 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.”