“Imagine, therefore, his feelings when the seals were removed to disclose the week’s total:
His 143,567
Hers 32,590
“Osbert stared at the incredible figures with stunned disbelief. Something had gone wrong—but where? There must, he decided, have been a fault in the apparatus. It was annoying, very annoying, for he knew perfectly well that Ermintrude would never let him live it down, even if he proved conclusively that the Counter had gone haywire.
“Ermintrude was still crowing victoriously when Osbert pushed her out of the room and started to dismantle his errant equipment. He was half-way through the job when he noticed something in his waste-paper basket which he was sure he hadn’t put there. It was a closed loop of tape, a couple of feet long, and he was quite unable to account for its presence as he had not used the tape-recorder for several days. He picked it up, and as he did so suspicion exploded into certainty.
“He glanced at the recorder; the switches, he was quite sure, were not as he had left them. Ermintrude was crafty, but she was also careless. Osbert had often complained that she never did a job properly, and here was the final proof.
“His den was littered with old tapes carrying unerased test passages he had recorded; it had been no trouble at all for Ermintrude to locate one, snip off a few words, stick the ends together, switch to “Playback” and leave the machine running hour after hour in front of the microphone. Osbert was furious with himself for not having thought of so simple a ruse; if the tape had been strong enough, he would probably have strangled Ermintrude with it.
“Whether he tried to do anything of the sort is still uncertain. All we know is that she went out of the apartment window, and of course it could have been an accident—but there was no way of asking her, as the Inches lived four storeys up.
“I know that defenestration is usually deliberate, and the Coroner had some pointed words to say on the subject. But nobody could prove that Osbert pushed her, and the whole thing soon blew over. About a year later he married a charming little deaf-and-dumb girl, and they’re one of the happiest couples I know.”
There was a long pause when Harry had finished, whether out of disbelief or out of respect for the late Mrs. Inch it would be hard to say. But before anyone could make a suitable comment, the door was thrown open and a formidable blonde advanced into the private bar of the “White Hart”.
It is seldom indeed that life arranges its climaxes as neatly as this. Harry Purvis turned very pale and tried, in vain, to hide himself in the crowd. He was instantly spotted and pinned down beneath a barrage of invective.
“So this,” we heard with interest, “is where you’ve been giving your Wednesday evening lectures on quantum mechanics! I should have checked up with the University years ago! Harry Purvis, you’re a liar, and I don’t mind if everybody knows it. And as for your friends”—she gave us all a scathing look—“it’s a long time since I’ve seen such a scruffy lot of tipplers.”
“Hey, just a minute!” protested Drew from the other side of the counter. She quelled him with a glance, then turned upon poor Harry again.
“Come along,” she said, “you’re going home. No, you needn’t finish that drink! I’m sure you’ve already had more than enough.”
Obediently, Harry Purvis picked up his brief-case and coat.
“Very well, Ermintrude,” he said meekly.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I will not bore you with the long and still unsettled argument as to whether Mrs Purvis really was called Ermintrude, or whether Harry was so dazed that he automatically applied the name to her. We all have our theories about that, as indeed we have about everything concerning Harry. All that matters now is the sad and indisputable fact that no-one has ever seen him since that evening.
It is just possible that he doesn’t know where we meet nowadays, for a few months later the “White Hart” was taken over by a new management and we all followed Drew lock, stock and barrel—particularly barrel—to his new establishment. Our weekly sessions now take place at the “Sphere,” and for a long time many of us used to look up hopefully when the door opened to see if Harry had managed to escape and find his way back to us. It is, indeed, partly in the hope that he will see this book and hence discover our new location that I have gathered these tales together.
Even those who never believed a word you spoke miss you, Harry. If you have to defenestrate Ermintrude to regain your freedom, do it on a Wednesday evening between six and eleven, and there’ll be forty people in the “Sphere” who’ll provide you with an alibi. But get back somehow; things have never been quite the same since you went.
Tales from the White Hart (Arthur C. Clarke Collection: Short Stories) Page 17
