Read Johnny B. Fast: The Super Spy Part One Page 10
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Henry knocked weakly on the closed door of the conference room.
“Hello?” he practically whispered to the door.
He tried knocking again, and then he waited. Henry could hear voices on the other side, but he wasn’t sure if anyone could hear him. He certainly didn’t want to yell out again, once that day was clearly enough.
“Hello, I found it,” Henry whispered again, clutching several pieces of paper in his hand as he knocked again.
Henry was going to have to assert himself a bit more; he was going to have to open the door and go in boldly. Didn’t Mr. Underling say he needed this report? Henry could picture it now. Mr. Underling was probably at the front of the room stalling for time, waiting for Henry to swoop in and save him with the report. Henry turned the knob of the door as slowly and quietly as he could. The door creaked open and Henry started tiptoeing into the room. He kept his eyes down and tried to move as slowly as possible so as not to attract any attention. Now he just had to locate Mr. Underling and slide him the report without anyone noticing. He could do it at a time when the presentation was getting loud, and everyone had their attention diverted.
Henry kept his eyes on the ground. He had managed to walk inside, but he was still standing by the door. He was going to have to look up if he was to find where Mr. Underling was. But he didn’t want to look up because, to Henry’s way of thinking, by looking up he would attract attention. Unfortunately, the presentation didn’t seem to be getting louder. Now that Henry thought about it, he couldn’t hear anything at all. The voices that he heard from outside the door had completely stopped since he opened the door. Henry listened, and began to realize that there were no voices at all. Everything in the room was quiet.
Henry looked up. He saw twenty people, all in expensive business suits, looking back at him. Every single person in the room, including his boss Mr. Underling, had stopped what they were doing and were focusing their complete attention on Henry.
Henry wanted to pass out. He noticed that he was still clutching the door knob with a straining hand. Henry smiled weakly and let go of the door. He had been hunched over, trying to make himself smaller when he had gone into the room, and now he straightened up and gave a small wave to everyone.
No one waved back.
Mr. Underling was still angrily staring at him from the front of the room. Henry had interrupted whatever presentation he was giving by trying to enter as quietly as possible.
“Well?” Mr. Underling finally asked.
Well? Well what? What was Henry doing here again? He looked down at his hand and saw the sales report clutched in a shaking, life threatening grip.
“The sales report!” he cried in relief as he held up the papers which were in danger of being crumpled up in his hand.
“Well?” Mr. Underling said again, holding out his hand for the papers.
Henry looked confused at Mr. Underling’s outstretched hand before he realized that Mr. Underling wanted Henry to give him the papers. Henry hated when he got this nervous; it was a wonder that he remembered how to breathe under the stress he felt.
“Yes, here is the sales report,” Henry tried to say with an air of authority as he put the slightly crumpled papers in Mr. Underling’s hand.
“You’ll find everything you need is there for the numbers to make sense,” Henry continued, when he really should have just stayed quiet.
Mr. Underling didn’t respond; he just looked over the reports silently.
Henry looked out to all the other people in the meeting, who were looking blankly back at him and Mr. Underling. Henry didn’t want to keep looking at all those people that were looking at him, so he went back to staring at the floor.
“Mr. Crinkle.”
Henry kept studying the floor.
“Crinkle!”
Henry looked up with a start to see Mr. Underling fuming at him.
“It’s, uh, Clunker, sir,” Henry tried to explain.
Mr. Underling shoved the papers back in Henry’s hands. Henry was confused.
“Aren’t all the papers here?” Henry asked weakly as he started going through them.
“They are there all right, there’s only one small problem,” Mr. Underling was talking in a really calm voice, which was scaring Henry more than if he were yelling at the top of his lungs. And then Henry saw the month beside the date on the sales report.
“Oh no, this is last month’s sales report,” Henry stated with fear.
“It gets better than that,” Mr. Underling said in his deadly calm. “It is last month’s and last year’s sales report!”
Henry slowly moved his eyes back up the page to see the year beside the month beside the date column.
There it was, plain as day. Henry had just delivered a sales report to his boss that was over a year old. Slowly, he looked back up at his boss and tried to smile.
“It looks like the company did well last year,” Henry tried.