Читать книгу Self Condemned онлайн

11 страница из 92

'Nasty ole man—nasty ole maaan.' She heard 'maaan' repeated several times: it could be none other than Hitler, and Essie, smiling, got up and moved, with a smile still on her face, into the next room.

'Who are you talking about, Mrs. Harradson, Herr Hitler?'

'Not Hitler, not him!' Mrs. Harradson replied, after a violent start at the sound of her employer's voice. 'It's that Lucifer, nasty ole man. Walking the earth, nasty ole man!' She scrubbed harder, as if to scrub him away.

Lucifer was a new one on Essie. She thought in terms of Hitler and such minor devils. But Mrs. Harradson was a devout catholic and she of course saw that the Führer was nothing but a minion of Lucifer's.

Mrs. Harradson was a perpetual Punch and Judy show for Essie. But also, in her way, she had become attached to this little being as she would to a small disgruntled squirrel, had she received so eccentric a gift. One of Essie's morning amusements, for instance, was to ask Mrs. Harradson to TIM it for her on the telephone, to check the exact time. Mrs. Harradson was always very diffident, polite and nervous while speaking on the telephone. It was a piece of pagan music to which she never grew used. The deference she exhibited on these occasions was quite unlike her usual behaviour. She would dial TIM, in obedience to Essie's request, but when the voice began saying, 'At the third stroke, it will be e-l-e-v-e-n forty-three and ten seconds,' she began nodding, bowing and smiling into the telephone, 'Yes, Miss, thank you, Miss. Yes, Miss, twenty seconds. No, Miss, thirty seconds. Yes, Miss, thank you, Miss, forty seconds—thank you, Miss,' a little confused and nervous at the last at the continued affability of this young woman, whose habit it was to say a different time whenever she spoke. Essie was obliged literally to drag her away from the telephone. She became positively mesmerised and without this intervention of her employer, might have stood there all day bowing and smiling.