The Doors Open by Michael Gilbert Read Free Book Online Page B

directors, talk to the Stock Exchange wallahs, attend bankruptcy meetings and make a note of who is doing the buying. Well, as a chartered accountant you’ve obviously got the financial qualifications. I know you like scribbling – and – in short – I mentioned your name.”
    “Oh, Paddy – a journalist!”
    “Well, why not, Jenny. Dash it, it’ll make a change from sitting on my – well, anyway, it’ll be a change from Barrows and Co.”
    “There’s this further point,” said Nap, “which I think may have escaped you. In your new job, you’ll be perfectly situated to investigate the affairs of the Stalagmite – unobtrusively.”
    “I’m game,” said Paddy. “And – it’s damned decent of you, Nap.”
    “There’s one other thing. I mention it as a purely practical point. I don’t think you’re very well situated for either job if you go on living out at Staines. I mean, think of the trailing that head cashier from opium den to opium den along Limehouse Causeway, and then finding you’ve missed your last train home.”
    “Curse it,” said Paddy, “of course I want to live in London. Who doesn’t? But there’s nothing to be had except hideous furnished flats in Hampstead at £500 a year.”
    “I was going to suggest,” said Nap calmly, “that you came and lived here, with your legal adviser. There’s plenty of room – until the happy event comes off, I mean.”
    “Nap,” said Jenny, “you’re a dear.” She rose to her feet and kissed him warmly on the tip of his button nose.
    Mr Rumbold accepted the salute with an aplomb which Paddy considered must have been due to his French upbringing, and merely said: “Remember, please, that I also am a respectably engaged young man.”
     
     
    4
     
    Living together, as Anne of Cleves was once heard to remark, can be a trial to both parties: but the Rumbold–Yeatman-Carter ménage seemed to stagger along very equably on a basis of mutual misunderstanding.
    Nap thought Paddy the most typical Englishman of his acquaintance. Athletic, obstinate, straightforward and (once the ice was broken), eminently “clubbable”.
    He hadn’t the faintest conception of the real thoughts and ambitions which hived inside his friend’s untidy head: though he had been near to some of them when he had said, “I know you like scribbling.” In fact, Paddy had always wanted to write. He was honest enough to know that he had no flair for creation, but he had a knack of description. Had he not been an accountant he would have made a good reporter.
    Paddy, on the other hand, thought Nap pleasant but unstable. Rather French. He had known him when they were lieutenants together in an infantry training battalion in the early days of the war. Nap had not been a good lieutenant. In Paddy’s opinion he had lacked the wholehearted enthusiasm which is the basis of good regimental soldiering. In 1941, when Paddy got his captaincy, Nap had disappeared. Friends had reported from time to time that he held some sort of staff job in London. His duties had seemed to take him fairly frequently to the ‘Salted Almond’ and the ‘Berkeley Buttery’ and he appeared to keep a permanent room at the Savoy.
    On the third morning of his stay in the Inner Temple Paddy got down first to breakfast and sorted out the mail. He had a good laugh over this when he discovered a letter addressed to Lieut. Colonel N Rumbold, DSO. “You’ve gone up in the world, my lad,” he said to Nap, who came in at this moment.
    Nap opened the letter without comment and looked at the signature. “Silly young goat,” was the only remark he made before starting on his toast.
    “Who’s the joker?”
    “Burtonshaw, at the War Office. Just a note about some arrears of pay.”
    “What’s the idea of – I mean, why did he – good God,” said Paddy, as an awful thought struck him. “You aren’t all that, are you?”
    ‘‘Certainly not,” said Nap. “And he’d no right to put it. I became plain N