Deception

by Roald Dahl

  In Los Angeles, and in nearby Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where the film people live, Henry sought out the very best make-up man in the business. This was Max Engelman. Henry called on him. He liked him immediately.

  ‘How much do you earn?’ Henry asked him.

  ‘Oh, about forty thousand dollars a year,’ Max told him.

  ‘I’ll give you a hundred thousand,’ Henry said, ‘if you will come with me and be my make-up artist.’

  ‘What’s the big idea?’ Max asked him.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Henry said. And he did.

  Max was only the second person Henry had told. John Winston was the first. And when Henry showed Max how he could read the cards, Max was flabbergasted.

  ‘Great heavens, man!’ he cried. ‘You could make a fortune!’

  ‘I already have,’ Henry told him. ‘I’ve made ten fortunes. But I want to make ten more.’ He told Max about the orphanages. With John Winston’s help, he had already set up three of them, with more on the way.

  Max was a small dark-skinned man who had escaped from Vienna when the Nazis went in. He had never married. He had no ties. He became wildly enthusiastic. ‘It’s crazy!’ he cried. ‘It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life! I’ll join you, man! Let’s go!’

  From then on, Max Engelman travelled everywhere with Henry and he carried with him in a trunk such an assortment of wigs, false beards, sideburns, moustaches and make-up materials as you have never seen. He could turn his master into any one of thirty or forty unrecognizable people, and the casino managers, who were all watching for Henry now, never once saw him again as Mr Henry Sugar. As a matter of fact, only a year after the Las Vegas episode, Henry and Max actually went back to that dangerous city, and on a warm starry night Henry took a cool eighty thousand dollars from the first of the big casinos he had visited before. He went disguised as an elderly Brazilian diplomat, and they never knew what had hit them.

  Now that Henry no longer appeared as himself in the casinos, there were, of course, a number of other details that had to be taken care of, such as false identity cards and passports. In Monte Carlo, for example, a visitor must always show his passport before being allowed to enter the casino. Henry visited Monte Carlo eleven more times with Max’s assistance, every time with a different passport and in a different disguise.

  Max adored the work. He loved creating new characters for Henry. ‘I have an entirely fresh one for you today!’ he would announce. ‘Just wait till you see it! Today you will be an Arab sheikh from Kuwait!’

  ‘Do we have an Arab passport?’ Henry would ask. ‘And Arab papers?’

  ‘We have everything,’ Max would answer. ‘John Winston has sent me a lovely passport in the name of His Royal Highness Sheikh Abu Bin Bey!’

  And so it went on. Over the years, Max and Henry became as close as brothers. They were crusading brothers, two men who moved swiftly through the skies, milking the casinos of the world and sending the money straight back to John Winston in Switzerland, where the company known as ORPHANAGES S.A. grew richer and richer.

  Henry died last year, at the age of sixty-three; his work was completed. He had been at it for just on twenty years.

  His personal reference book listed three hundred and seventy-one major casinos in twenty-one different countries or islands. He had visited them all many times and he had never lost.

  According to John Winston’s accounts, he had made altogether one hundred and forty-four million pounds.

  He left twenty-one well-established well-run orphanages scattered about the world, one in each country he visited. All these were administered and financed from Lausanne by John and his staff.

  But how do I, who am neither Max Engelman nor John Winston, happen to know all this? And how did I come to write the story in the first place?

  I will tell you.

  Soon after Henry’s death, John Winston telephoned me from Switzerland. He introduced himself simply as the head of a company calling itself ORPHANAGES S.A., and asked me if I would come out to Lausanne to see him with a view to writing a brief history of the organization. I don’t know how he got hold of my name. He probably had a list of writers and stuck a pin into it. He would pay me well, he said. And he added, ‘A remarkable man has died recently. His name was Henry Sugar. I think people ought to know a bit about what he has done.’

  In my ignorance, I asked whether the story was really interesting enough to merit being put on paper.

  ‘All right,’ said the man who now controlled one hundred and forty-four million pounds. ‘Forget it. I’ll ask someone else. There are plenty of writers around.’

  That needled me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Wait. Could you at least tell me who this Henry Sugar was and what he did? I’ve never even heard of him.’

  In five minutes on the phone, John Winston told me something about Henry Sugar’s secret career. It was secret no longer. Henry was dead and would never gamble again. I listened, enthralled.

  ‘I’ll be on the next plane,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you,’ John Winston said. ‘I would appreciate that.’

  In Lausanne, I met John Winston, now over seventy, and also Max Engelman, who was about the same age. They were both still shattered by Henry’s death. Max even more so than John Winston, for Max had been beside him constantly for over thirteen years. ‘I loved him,’ Max said, a shadow falling over his face. ‘He was a great man. He never thought about himself. He never kept a penny of the money he won, except what he needed to travel and to eat. Listen, once we were in Biarritz and he had just been to the bank and given them half a million francs to send home to John. It was lunchtime. We went to a place and had a simple lunch, an omelette and a bottle of wine, and when the bill came, Henry hadn’t got anything to pay it with. I hadn’t either. He was a lovely man.’

  John Winston told me everything he knew. He showed me the original dark-blue notebook written by Dr John Cartwright in Bombay in 1934, and I copied it out word for word.

  ‘Henry always carried it with him,’ John Winston said. ‘In the end, he knew the whole thing by heart.’

  He showed me the accounts books of ORPHANAGES S.A. with Henry’s winnings recorded in them day by day over twenty years, and a truly staggering sight they were.

  When he had finished, I said to him, ‘There’s a big gap in this story, Mr Winston. You’ve told me almost nothing about Henry’s travels and about his adventures in the casinos of the world.’

  ‘That’s Max’s story,’ John Winston said. ‘Max knows all about that because he was with him. But he says he wants to have a shot at writing it himself. He’s already started.’

  ‘Then why not let Max write the whole thing?’ I asked.

  ‘He doesn’t want to,’ John Winston said. ‘He only wants to write about Henry and Max. It should be a fantastic story if he ever gets it finished. But he is old now, like me, and I doubt he will manage it.’

  ‘One last question,’ I said. ‘You keep calling him Henry Sugar. And yet you tell me that wasn’t his name. Don’t you want me to say who he really was when I do the story?’

  ‘No,’ John Winston said. ‘Max and I promised never to reveal it. Oh, it’ll probably leak out sooner or later. After all, he was from a fairly well-known English family. But I’d appreciate it if you don’t try to find out. Just call him plain Mr Henry Sugar.’

  And that is what I have done.

  The Umbrella Man

  First published in More Tales of the Unexpected (1980)

  I’m going to tell you about a funny thing that happened to my mother and me yesterday evening. I am twelve years old and I’m a girl. My mother is thirty-four but I am nearly as tall as her already.

  Yesterday afternoon, my mother took me up to London to see the dentist. He found one hole. It was in a back tooth and he filled it without hurting me too much. After that, we went to a café. I had a banana split and my mother had a cup of coffee. By the time we got up to leave, it was about six o’clock.

&nb
sp; When we came out of the café it had started to rain. ‘We must get a taxi,’ my mother said. We were wearing ordinary hats and coats, and it was raining quite hard.

  ‘Why don’t we go back into the café and wait for it to stop?’ I said. I wanted another of those banana splits. They were gorgeous.

  ‘It isn’t going to stop,’ my mother said. ‘We must get home.’

  We stood on the pavement in the rain, looking for a taxi. Lots of them came by but they all had passengers inside them. ‘I wish we had a car with a chauffeur,’ my mother said.

  Just then, a man came up to us. He was a small man and he was pretty old, probably seventy or more. He raised his hat politely and said to my mother, ‘Excuse me. I do hope you will excuse me …’ He had a fine white moustache and bushy white eyebrows and a wrinkly pink face. He was sheltering under an umbrella, which he held high over his head.

  ‘Yes?’ my mother said, very cool and distant.

  ‘I wonder if I could ask a small favour of you,’ he said. ‘It is only a very small favour.’

  I saw my mother looking at him suspiciously. She is a suspicious person, my mother. She is especially suspicious of two things – strange men and boiled eggs. When she cuts the top off a boiled egg, she pokes around inside it with her spoon as though expecting to find a mouse or something. With strange men, she has a golden rule which says, ‘The nicer the man seems to be, the more suspicious you must become.’ This little old man was particularly nice. He was polite. He was well spoken. He was well dressed. He was a real gentleman. The reason I knew he was a gentleman was because of his shoes. ‘You can always spot a gentleman by the shoes he wears,’ was another of my mother’s favourite sayings. This man had beautiful brown shoes.

  ‘The truth of the matter is,’ the little man was saying, ‘I’ve got myself into a bit of a scrape. I need some help. Not much, I assure you. It’s almost nothing, in fact, but I do need it. You see, madam, old people like me often become terribly forgetful …’

  My mother’s chin was up and she was staring down at him along the full length of her nose. It is a fearsome thing, this frosty-nosed stare of my mother’s. Most people go to pieces completely when she gives it to them. I once saw my own headmistress begin to stammer and simper like an idiot when my mother gave her a really foul frosty-noser. But the little man on the pavement with the umbrella over his head didn’t bat an eyelid. He gave a gentle smile and said, ‘I beg you to believe, madam, that I am not in the habit of stopping ladies in the street and telling them my troubles.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ my mother said.

  I felt quite embarrassed by my mother’s sharpness. I wanted to say to her, ‘Oh, Mummy, for heaven’s sake, he’s a very very old man, and he’s sweet and polite, and he’s in some sort of trouble, so don’t be so beastly to him.’ But I didn’t say anything.

  The little man shifted his umbrella from one hand to the other. ‘I’ve never forgotten it before,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve never forgotten what?’ my mother asked sternly.

  ‘My wallet,’ he said. ‘I must have left it in my other jacket. Isn’t that the silliest thing to do?’

  ‘Are you asking me to give you money?’ my mother said.

  ‘Oh, good gracious me, no!’ he cried. ‘Heaven forbid I should ever do that!’

  ‘Then what are you asking?’ my mother said. ‘Do hurry up. We’re getting soaked to the skin standing here.’

  ‘I know you are,’ he said. ‘And that is why I’m offering you this umbrella of mine to protect you, and to keep for ever, if … if only …’

  ‘If only what?’ my mother said.

  ‘If only you would give me in return a pound for my taxi-fare just to get me home.’

  My mother was still suspicious. ‘If you had no money in the first place,’ she said, ‘then how did you get here?’

  ‘I walked,’ he answered. ‘Every day I go for a lovely long walk and then I summon a taxi to take me home. I do it every day of the year.’

  ‘Why don’t you walk home now?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Oh, I wish I could,’ he said. ‘I do wish I could. But I don’t think I could manage it on these silly old legs of mine. I’ve gone too far already.’

  My mother stood there chewing her lower lip. She was beginning to melt a bit, I could see that. And the idea of getting an umbrella to shelter under must have tempted her a good deal.

  ‘It’s a lovely umbrella,’ the little man said.

  ‘So I’ve noticed,’ my mother said.

  ‘It’s silk,’ he said.

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Then why don’t you take it, madam,’ he said. ‘It cost me over twenty pounds, I promise you. But that’s of no importance so long as I can get home and rest these old legs of mine.’

  I saw my mother’s hand feeling for the clasp on her purse. She saw me watching her. I was giving her one of my own frosty-nosed looks this time and she knew exactly what I was telling her. Now listen, Mummy, I was telling her, you simply mustn’t take advantage of a tired old man in this way. It’s a rotten thing to do. My mother paused and looked back at me. Then she said to the little man, ‘I don’t think it’s quite right that I should take a silk umbrella from you worth twenty pounds. I think I’d just better give you the taxi-fare and be done with it.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ he cried. ‘It’s out of the question! I wouldn’t dream of it! Not in a million years! I would never accept money from you like that! Take the umbrella, dear lady, and keep the rain off your shoulders!’

  My mother gave me a triumphant sideways look. There you are, she was telling me. You’re wrong. He wants me to have it.

  She fished into her purse and took out a pound note. She held it out to the little man. He took it and handed her the umbrella. He pocketed the pound, raised his hat, gave a quick bow from the waist, and said, ‘Thank you, madam, thank you.’ Then he was gone.

  ‘Come under here and keep dry, darling,’ my mother said. ‘Aren’t we lucky? I’ve never had a silk umbrella before. I couldn’t afford it.’

  ‘Why were you so horrid to him in the beginning?’ I asked.

  ‘I wanted to satisfy myself he wasn’t a trickster,’ she said. ‘And I did. He was a gentleman. I’m very pleased I was able to help him.’

  ‘Yes, Mummy,’ I said.

  ‘A real gentleman,’ she went on. ‘Wealthy, too, otherwise he wouldn’t have had a silk umbrella. I shouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t a titled person. Sir Harry Goldsworthy or something like that.’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘This will be a good lesson to you,’ she went on. ‘Never rush things. Always take your time when you are summing someone up. Then you’ll never make mistakes.’

  ‘There he goes,’ I said. ‘Look.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Over there. He’s crossing the street. Goodness, Mummy, what a hurry he’s in.’

  We watched the little man as he dodged nimbly in and out of the traffic. When he reached the other side of the street, he turned left, walking very fast.

  ‘He doesn’t look very tired to me, does he to you, Mummy?’

  My mother didn’t answer.

  ‘He doesn’t look as though he’s trying to get a taxi, either,’ I said.

  My mother was standing very still and stiff, staring across the street at the little man. We could see him clearly. He was in a terrific hurry. He was bustling along the pavement, sidestepping the other pedestrians and swinging his arms like a soldier on the march.

  ‘He’s up to something,’ my mother said, stony-faced.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ my mother snapped. ‘But I’m going to find out. Come with me.’ She took my arm and we crossed the street together. Then we turned left.

  ‘Can you see him?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Yes. There he is. He’s turning right down the next street.’

  We came to the corner and turned right. The little man was about twenty yards ahead of us.
He was scuttling along like a rabbit and we had to walk fast to keep up with him. The rain was pelting down harder than ever now and I could see it dripping from the brim of his hat on to his shoulders. But we were snug and dry under our lovely big silk umbrella.

  ‘What is he up to?’ my mother said.

  ‘What if he turns round and sees us?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t care if he does,’ my mother said. ‘He lied to us. He said he was too tired to walk any further and he’s practically running us off our feet! He’s a barefaced liar! He’s a crook!’

  ‘You mean he’s not a titled gentleman?’ I asked.

  ‘Be quiet,’ she said.

  At the next crossing, the little man turned right again.

  Then he turned left.

  Then right.

  ‘I’m not giving up now,’ my mother said.

  ‘He’s disappeared!’ I cried. ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘He went in that door!’ my mother said. ‘I saw him! Into that house! Great heavens, it’s a pub!’

  It was a pub. In big letters right across the front it said THE RED LION.

  ‘You’re not going in, are you, Mummy?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ll watch from outside.’

  There was a big plate-glass window along the front of the pub, and although it was a bit steamy on the inside, we could see through it very well if we went close.

  We stood huddled together outside the pub window. I was clutching my mother’s arm. The big raindrops were making a loud noise on our umbrella. ‘There he is,’ I said. ‘Over there.’

  The room we were looking into was full of people and cigarette smoke, and our little man was in the middle of it all. He was now without his hat or coat, and he was edging his way through the crowd towards the bar. When he reached it, he placed both hands on the bar itself and spoke to the barman. I saw his lips moving as he gave his order. The barman turned away from him for a few seconds and came back with a smallish tumbler filled to the brim with light-brown liquid. The little man placed a pound note on the counter.