“I can dismiss you, let me tell you, Mr. Smith, for studied insolence, whether in the office or not.”
“I bow to superior knowledge,” said Psmith politely, “but I confess I doubt it. And,” he added, “there is another point. May I continue to some extent?”
“If you have anything to say, say it.”
Psmith flung one leg over the other, and settled his collar.
“It is perhaps a delicate matter,” he said, “but it is best to be frank. We should have no secrets. To put my point quite clearly, I must go back a little, to the time when you paid us that very welcome weekend visit at our house in August.”
“If you hope to make capital out of the fact that I have been a guest of your father—”
“Not at all,” said Psmith deprecatingly. “Not at all. You do not take me. My point is this. I do not wish to revive painful memories, but it cannot be denied that there was, here and there, some slight bickering between us on that occasion. The fault,” said Psmith magnanimously, “was possibly mine. I may have been too exacting, too capricious. Perhaps so. However, the fact remains that you conceived the happy notion of getting me into this bank, under the impression that, once I was in, you would be able to—if I may use the expression—give me beans. You said as much to me, if I remember. I hate to say it, but don’t you think that if you give me the sack, although my work is satisfactory to the head of my department, you will be by way of admitting that you bit off rather more than you could chew? I merely make the suggestion.”
Mr. Bickersdyke half rose from his chair.
“You—”
“Just so, just so, but—to return to the main point—don’t you? The whole painful affair reminds me of the story of Agesilaus and the Petulant Pterodactyl, which as you have never heard, I will now proceed to relate. Agesilaus—”
Mr. Bickersdyke made a curious clucking noise in his throat.
“I am boring you,” said Psmith, with ready tact. “Suffice it to say that Comrade Agesilaus interfered with the pterodactyl, which was doing him no harm; and the intelligent creature, whose motto was ‘Nemo me impune lacessit,’ turned and bit him. Bit him good and hard, so that Agesilaus ever afterwards had a distaste for pterodactyls. His reluctance to disturb them became quite a byword. The society papers of the period frequently commented upon it. Let us draw the parallel.”
Here Mr. Bickersdyke, who had been clucking throughout this speech, essayed to speak; but Psmith hurried on.
“You are Agesilaus,” he said. “I am the Petulant Pterodactyl. You, if I may say so, butted in of your own free will, and took me from a happy home, simply in order that you might get me into this place under you, and give me beans. But, curiously enough, the major portion of that vegetable seems to be coming to you. Of course, you can administer the push if you like; but, as I say, it will be by way of a confession that your scheme has sprung a leak. Personally,” said Psmith, as one friend to another, “I should advise you to stick it out. You never know what may happen. At any moment I may fall from my present high standard of industry and excellence; and then you have me, so to speak, where the hair is crisp.”
He paused. Mr. Bickersdyke’s eyes, which even in their normal state protruded slightly, now looked as if they might fall out at any moment. His face had passed from the plum-coloured stage to something beyond. Every now and then he made the clucking noise, but except for that he was silent. Psmith, having waited for some time for something in the shape of comment or criticism on his remarks, now rose.
“It has been a great treat to me, this little chat,” he said affably, “but I fear that I must no longer allow purely social enjoyments to interfere with my commercial pursuits. With your permission, I will rejoin my department, where my absence is doubtless already causing comment and possibly dismay. But we shall be meeting at the club shortly, I hope. Goodbye, sir, goodbye.”
He left the room, and walked dreamily back to the Postage Department, leaving the manager still staring glassily at nothing.
XIII
Mike Is Moved On
This episode may be said to have concluded the first act of the commercial drama in which Mike and Psmith had been cast for leading parts. And, as usually happens after the end of an act, there was a lull for a while until things began to work up towards another climax. Mike, as day succeeded day, began to grow accustomed to the life of the bank, and to find that it had its pleasant side after all. Whenever a number of people are working at the same thing, even though that thing is not perhaps what they would have chosen as an object in life, if left to themselves, there is bound to exist an atmosphere of good-fellowship; something akin to, though a hundred times weaker than, the public school spirit. Such a community lacks the main motive of the public school spirit, which is pride in the school and its achievements. Nobody can be proud of the achievements of a bank. When the business of arranging a new Japanese loan was given to the New Asiatic Bank, its employees did not stand on stools, and cheer. On the contrary, they thought of the extra work it would involve; and they cursed a good deal, though there was no denying that it was a big thing for the bank—not unlike winning the Ashburton would be to a school. There is a cold
