The Man Upstairs (short story)
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"The Man Upstairs" is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse, which first appeared in the United Kingdom in the March 1910 issue of the Strand, and in the United States in the same month's issue of Cosmopolitan, with the setting relocated to New York. It was included in the UK collection The Man Upstairs, (1914), and in the U.S. appeared in the later collection The Uncollected Wodehouse (1976).
[edit] Plot
Annette Brougham, a quick-tempered female composer and music-teacher, is disturbed by a knocking on her ceiling. She visits the flat above to complain, but despite her initial feelings of anger towards him, she soon finds herself drawn to "Alan Beverley", the modest and charming struggling artist she finds there.
Reginald Sellers, another resident of the building, a pompous and self-important painter, criticises the man's work harshly, and Sue defends him, but regrets her cruelty. The boorish Sellers finds some success with his art, selling several paintings to a Glasgow millionaire named Bates, and continues to lord it over his less high-achieving neighbour.
Annette publishes a waltz she has written, and that too begins to sell surprisingly well. She is happy, but disappointed that her friend has yet to sell his work, and upset that Sellers still criticises him.
She answers the communal telephone one day, and takes a message from a friend of "Beverley" who is borrowing his flat, and hears that large quantities of printed music and several bad paintings have been delivered there. She confronts "Beverley", who reveals that his real name is Bill Bates, a Glasgow millionaire. He has been in love with Annette since he first saw her in the street, and took the flat in her building to be near her, banging on the floor to get her attention; he now wants her to marry him.
She berates him for tricking her and treating her like a child, and he counters by revealing that he knows she has bought his painting, through in intermediary. He repeats his proposal of marriage, and she tells him to go away. She hears him pacing around in his room above, and taking a broom, bangs three times on the ceiling with it.
