Indecent Exposure by Tom Sharpe Read Free Book Online Page B

him on the back seat of the Rolls was portrayed with an exactitude he would never have believed possible the face of the man he wanted to be. The book was As Other Men Are by Dornford Yates. The Kommandant took out his notebook and wrote the title down.
    By the time Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon and his party returned to the Clubhouse, the Kommandant had left and was making his way to the Public Library in the certain knowledge that he was about to learn, from the works of Dornford Yates, the secret of that enigma which had puzzled him for so long, how to be an English gentleman.
    By the time Luitenant Verkramp left the police station that evening and returned to his flat to change he was a supremely happy man. The ease with which he had allayed the Kommandant’s suspicions, the results he was getting from the questionnaires, the prospects of spending the evening in the company of Dr von Blimenstein all contributed to the Luitenant’s sense of well-being. Above all, the fact that the Kommandant’s house was still bugged and that he would be able to lie in bed and listen to every movement the Kommandant was indiscreet enough to make in his home lent a piquancy to Verkramp’s sense of achievement. Like the Kommandant, Luitenant Verkramp felt himself on the brink of a discovery that would change his whole life and transform him from merely second-in-command into a position of authority more suited to his ability. As he waited for his bath water to run, Luitenant Verkramp adjusted the receiver in his bedroom and checked the tape recorder connected to it. Before long he could make out the Kommandant shuffling about his house and opening and shutting cupboards. Satisfied that his listening device was functioning properly, Verkramp switched it off and went and had his bath. He had just finished and was climbing out when the front-door bell rang.
    “Damn,” said Verkramp grabbing a towel and wondering who the hell was visiting him at this inconvenient moment. He went out into the hall trailing drops of bath water as he went, opened the door irritably and was amazed to see Dr von Blimenstein standing on the landing. “I don’t want …” said Verkramp, reacting automatically to the sound of his doorbell at inconvenient moments before he realized who his visitor was.
    “Don’t you, darling?” said Dr von Blimenstein loudly and opened her musquash coat to disclose a tight-fitting dress of some extremely shiny material. “Are you sure you don’t…”
    “For hell’s sake,” Verkramp said, looking wildly round. He was conscious that his neighbours were extremely respectable people and that Dr von Blimenstein, for all her education and professional standing as a psychiatrist, was not at the best of times overly worried about observing the social niceties. And now, with a bath towel round his middle and the doctor with whatever it was she had round her middle and top and bottom, was not the best of times. “Come in quick,” he squawked. Somewhat disappointed by the reception he had given her, Dr von Blimenstein drew her coat around her and entered the flat. Verkramp hurriedly shut the door and scurried past her into the safety of his bathroom. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he shouted softly. “I was coming up to the hospital to collect you.”
    “I couldn’t wait to see you,” the doctor shouted back, “and I thought I’d give you a little surprise.”
    “You did that all right,” Verkramp muttered, desperately searching for a sock that had hidden itself somewhere in the bathroom.
    “I didn’t quite catch that. You’ll have to speak up.”
    Verkramp found the sock under the washbasin. “I said you did give me a surprise.” He hit his head on the washbasin straightening up and ended with a curse.
    “You’re not angry with me coming like this?” the doctor inquired. In the bathroom Verkramp sat on the edge of the bath and pulled his sock on. It was wet.
    “No, of course not. Come whenever you like,” he said