Murder Must Advertise

Chapter IV. Remarkable Acrobatics of a Harlequin

It has already been hinted that Tuesday was a day of general mortification in Pym’s copy-department. The trouble was caused by Messrs. Toule & Jollop, proprietors of Nutrax, Maltogene, and Jollop’s Concentrated Lactobeef Tablets for Travellers. Unlike the majority of clients who, though all tiresome in their degree, exercised their tiresomeness by post from a reasonable distance and at reasonable intervals, Messrs. Toule & Jollop descended upon Pym’s every Tuesday for a weekly conference. While there, they reviewed the advertising for the coming week, rescinding the decisions taken at the previous week’s conference, springing new schemes unexpectedly upon Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong, keeping those two important men shut up in the Conference Room for hours on end, to the interruption of office-business, and generally making nuisances of themselves. One of the items discussed at this weekly séance was the Nutrax 11-inch double for Friday’s Morning Star, which occupied an important position in that leading news-organ on the top right-hand corner of the Home page, next to the special Friday feature. It subsequently occupied other positions in other journals, of course, but Friday’s Morning Star was the real matter of importance.

The usual procedure in respect of this exasperating advertisement was as follows. Every three months or so, Mr. Hankin sent out an S O S to the copy-department to the effect that more Nutrax copy was urgently required. By the united ingenuity of the department, about twenty pieces of copy were forthwith produced and submitted to Mr. Hankin. Under his severely critical blue-pencil, these were reduced to twelve or so, which went to the Studio to be laid out and furnished with illustrative sketches. They were then sent or handed to Messrs. Toule & Jollop, who fretfully rejected all but half-a-dozen, and weakened and ruined the remainder by foolish alterations and additions. The copy-department was then scourged into producing another twenty efforts, of which after a similar process of elimination and amendment, a further half-dozen contrived to survive criticism, thus furnishing the necessary twelve half-doubles for the ensuing three months. The department breathed again, momentarily, and the dozen lay-outs were stamped in purple ink “Passed by Client,” and a note was made of the proposed order of their appearance.

On Monday of each week, Mr. Tallboy, group-manager for Nutrax, squared his shoulders and settled down to the task of getting Friday’s half-double safely into the Morning Star. He looked out the copy for the week and sent round to collect the finished sketch from the Studio. If the finished sketch was really finished (which seldom happened), he sent it down to the block-makers, together with the copy and a carefully drawn lay-out. The block-makers, grumbling that they never were allowed proper time for the job, made a line-block of the sketch. The thing then passed to the printers, who set up the headlines and copy in type, added a name-block of the wrong size, locked the result up in a forme, pulled a proof and returned the result to Mr. Tallboy, pointing out in a querulous note that it came out half an inch too long. Mr. Tallboy corrected the misprints, damned their eyes for using the wrong name-block, made it clear to them that they had set the headlines in the wrong fount, cut the proof to pieces, pasted it up again into the correct size and returned it. By this time it was usually 11 o’clock on Tuesday morning, and Mr. Toule or Mr. Jollop, or both of them, were closeted in the Conference Room with Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong, calling loudly and repeatedly for their 11-inch double. As soon as the new proof arrived from the printer’s, Mr. Tallboy sent it down to the Conference Room by a boy, and escaped, if he could, for his elevenses. Mr. Toule or Mr. Jollop then pointed out to Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong a great number of weaknesses in both sketch and copy. Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong, sycophantically concurring in everything the client said, confessed themselves at a loss and invited suggestions from Mr. Toule (or Mr. Jollop). The latter, being, as most clients are, better at destructive than constructive criticism, cudgelled his brains into stupor, and this reduced himself to a condition of utter blankness, upon which the persuasiveness of Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong could work with hypnotic effect. After half an hour of skilled treatment, Mr. Jollop (or Mr. Toule) found himself returning with a sense of relief and refreshment to the rejected lay-out. He then discovered that it was really almost exactly what he required. It only needed the alteration of a sentence and the introduction of a panel about gift-coupons. Mr. Armstrong then sent the lay-out up again to Mr. Tallboy, with a request that he would effect these necessary alterations. Mr. Tallboy, realizing with delight that these involved nothing more drastic than the making of a new lay-out and the complete re-writing of the copy, sought out the copywriter whose initials appeared on the original type-script, instructing him to cut out three lines and incorporate the client’s improvements, while he himself laid the advertisement out afresh.

When all this had been done, the copy was returned to the printer to be re-set, the forme was sent to the block-makers, a complete block was made of the whole advertisement, and a fresh proof was returned. If, by any lucky chance, there turned out to be no defects in the block, the stereotypers got to work and made a sufficient number of stereos to be sent out to the other papers carrying the Nutrax advertising, with a proof to accompany each. On Thursday afternoon, the stereos were distributed by the dispatching department to the London papers by hand, and to the provincial papers by post and train, and if nothing went wrong with these arrangements, the advertisement duly appeared in Friday’s Morning Star and in other papers on the dates provided for. So long and arduous a history it is, that lies behind those exhortations to “Nourish your Nerves with Nutrax,” which smite the reader in the eye as he opens his Morning Star in the train between Gidea Park and Liverpool Street.

On this particular Tuesday, exasperation was intensified. To begin with, the weather was exceptionally close, with a thunderstorm impending, and the top floor of Pym’s Publicity was like a slow oven beneath the broad lead roof and the great glass skylights. Secondly, a visit was expected from two directors of Brotherhood’s, Ltd., that extremely old-fashioned and religiously-minded firm who manufacture boiled sweets and non-alcoholic liquors. A warning had been sent round that all female members of the staff must refrain from smoking, and that any proofs of beer or whisky advertising must be carefully concealed from sight. The former restriction bore hardly upon Miss Meteyard and the copy-department typists, whose cigarettes were, if not encouraged, at least winked at in the ordinary way by the management. Miss Parton had been further upset by a mild suggestion from Mr. Hankin that she was showing rather more arm and neck than the directors of Brotherhood’s, Ltd., would think seemly; out of sheer perversity, she had covered the offending flesh with a heavy sweater, and was ostentatiously stewing and grumbling and snapping the head off every one who approached her. Mr. Jollop, who was, if anything, slightly more cautious than Mr. Toule, arrived particularly early for the weekly Nutrax conference, and had distinguished himself by firmly killing no less than three advertisements which Mr. Toule had previously passed. This meant that Mr. Hankin had been obliged to send out his S O S nearly a month earlier than usual. Mr. Armstrong had toothache, and had been exceptionally short with Miss Rossiter, and something had gone wrong with Miss Rossiter’s typewriter, so that its spacing was completely unreliable.

To Mr. Ingleby, perspiring over his guard-books, entered the detested form of Mr. Tallboy, a sheet of paper in his hand.

“Is this your copy?”

Mr. Ingleby stretched out a languid hand, took the paper, glanced at it and returned it.

“How often have I got to tell you blasted incompetents,” he demanded amiably, “that those initials are on the copy for the purpose of identifying the writer? If you think my initials are DB you’re either blind or potty.”

“Who is DB anyway?”

“New fellow, Bredon.”

“Where is he?”

Mr. Ingleby jerked his thumb in the direction of the next room.

“Empty,” announced Mr. Tallboy, after a brief excursion.

“Well, have a look for him,” suggested Ingleby.

“Yes, but look here,” said Mr. Tallboy, persuasively, “I only want a suggestion. What the devil are the Studio to do with this? Do you mean to say Hankin passed that headline?”

“Presumably,” said Ingleby.

“Well, how does he or Bredon or anybody suppose we’re going to get it illustrated? Has the client seen it? They’ll never stand for it. What’s the point in laying it out? I can’t think how Hankin came to pass it.”

Ingleby stretched his hand out again.

“Brief, bright and brotherly,” he observed. “What’s the matter with it?”

The headline was:

____________________!

IF LIFE’S A BLANK

TAKE NUTRAX

“And in any case,” grumbled Tallboy, “the Morning Star won’t take it. They won’t put in anything that looks like bad language.”

“Your look-out,” said Ingleby. “Why not ask ’em?”

Tallboy muttered something impolite.

“Anyway, if Hankin’s passed it, it’ll have to be laid out, I suppose,” said Ingleby. “Surely the Studio-oh! hullo! here’s your man. You’d better worry him. Bredon!”

“That’s me!” said Mr. Bredon. “All present and correct!”

“Where’ve you been hiding from Tallboy? You knew he was on your tail.”

“I’ve been on the roof,” admitted Bredon, apologetically. “Cooler and all that. What’s the matter. What have I done?”

“Well, this headline of yours, Mr. Bredon. How do you expect them to illustrate it?”

“I don’t know. I left it to their ingenuity. I always believe in leaving scope to other people’s imagination.”

“How on earth are they to draw a blank?”

“Let ’em take a ticket in the Irish Sweep. That’ll larn ’em,” said Ingleby.

“I should think it would be rather like a muchness,” suggested Bredon. “Lewis Carroll, you know. Did you ever see a drawing of a muchness?”

“Oh, don’t fool,” growled Tallboy. “We’ve got to do something with it. Do you really think it’s a good headline, Mr. Bredon?”

“It’s the best I’ve written yet,” said Bredon enthusiastically, “except that beauty Hankie wouldn’t pass. Can’t they draw a man looking blank? Or just a man with a blank face, like those ‘Are these missing features yours?’ advertisements?”

“Oh, I suppose they could,” admitted Tallboy, discontentedly. “I’ll put it up to them anyhow. Thanks,” he added, belatedly, and bounced out.

“Cross, isn’t he?” said Ingleby. “It’s this frightful heat. Whatever made you go up on the roof? It must be like a gridiron.”

“So it is, but I thought I’d just try it. As a matter of fact, I was chucking pennies over the parapet to that brass band. I got the bombardon twice. The penny goes down with a tremendous whack, you know, and they look up all over the place to see where it comes from and you dodge down behind the parapet. It’s a tremendous high parapet, isn’t it? I suppose they wanted to make the building look even higher than it is. It’s the highest in the street in any case. You do get a good view from up there. ‘Earth hath not anything to show more fair.’ It’s going to rain like billy-ho in about two ticks. See how black it’s come over.”

“You seem to have come over pretty black, if it comes to that,” remarked Ingleby. “Look at the seat of your trousers.”

“You do want a lot,” complained Bredon, twisting his spine alarmingly. “It is a bit sooty up there. I was sitting on the skylight.”

“You look as if you’d been shinning up a pipe.”

“Well, I did shin down a pipe. Only one pipe-rather a nice pipe. It took my fancy.”

“You’re loopy,” said Ingleby, “doing acrobatics on dirty pipes in this heat. Whatever made you?”

“I dropped something,” said Mr. Bredon, plaintively. “I went down on to the glass roof of the wash-place. I nearly put my foot through. Wouldn’t old Smayle have been surprised if I’d tumbled into the wash-basin on top of him? And then I found I needn’t have gone down the pipe after all; I came back by the staircase-the roof-door was open on both floors.”

“They generally keep them open in hot weather,” said Ingleby.

“I wish I’d known. I say, I could do with a drink.”

“All right, have a glass of Sparkling Pompayne.”

“What’s that?”

“One of Brotherhood’s non-alcoholic refreshers,” grinned Ingleby. “Made from finest Devon apples, with the crisp, cool sparkle of champagne. Definitely anti-rheumatic and non-intoxicant. Doctors recommend it.”

Bredon shuddered.

“I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public.”

“Ah, yes-but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine ’em with one hand and build ’em with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody ’s Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury’s Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over-once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands-including you and me.”

“This wonderful world!” Bredon sighed ecstatically. “How many pores should you say there were in the human skin, Ingleby?”

“Damned if I know. Why?”

“Headline for Sanfect. Could I say, at a guess, ninety million? It sounds a good round number. ‘Ninety Million Open Doors by which Germs can Enter-Lock Those Doors with Sanfect.’ Sounds convincing, don’t you think? Here’s another: ‘Would you Leave your Child in a Den of Lions?’ That ought to get the mothers.”

“It’d make a good sketch-Hullo! here comes the storm and no mistake.”

A flash of lightning and a tremendous crack of thunder broke without warning directly over their heads.

“I expected it,” said Bredon. “That’s why I did my roof-walk.”

“How do you mean, that’s why?”

“I was on the look-out for it,” explained Bredon. “Well, it’s here. Phew! that was a good one. I do adore thunderstorms. By the way, what has Willis got up against me?”

Ingleby frowned and hesitated.

“He seems to think I’m not nice to know,” explained Bredon.

“Well-I warned you not to talk to him about Victor Dean. He seems to have got it into his head you were a friend of his, or something.”

“But what was wrong with Victor Dean?”

“He kept bad company. Why are you so keen to know about Dean, anyway?”

“Well, I suppose I’m naturally inquisitive. I always like to know about people. About the office-boys, for instance. They do physical jerks on the roof, don’t they? Is that the only time they’re allowed on the roof?”

“They’d better not let the Sergeant catch ’em up there in office-hours. Why?”

“I just wondered. They’re a mischievous lot, I expect; boys always are. I like ’em. What’s the name of the red-headed one? He looks a snappy lad.”

“That’s Joe-they call him Ginger, of course. What’s he been doing?”

“Oh, nothing. I suppose you get a lot of cats prowling about this place.”

“Cats? I’ve never seen any cats. Except that I believe there’s a cat that lives in the canteen, but she doesn’t seem to come up here. What do you want a cat for?”

“I don’t-anyway, there must be dozens of sparrows, mustn’t there?”

Ingleby began to think that the heat had affected Bredon’s brain. His reply was drowned in a tremendous crash of thunder. A silence followed, in which the street noises came thinly up from without; then heavy drops began to spit upon the panes. Ingleby got up and shut the window.

The rain came down like rods and roared upon the roof. In the lead gutters it danced and romped, rushing in small swift rivers into the hoppers. Mr. Prout, emerging from his room in a hurry, received a deluge of water down his neck from the roof and yelled for a boy to run along and shut the skylights. The oppression of heat and misery lifted from the office like a cast-off eiderdown. Standing at the window of his own room, Bredon watched the hurrying foot-passengers six stories below, open their umbrellas to the deluge, or, caught defenceless, scurry into shop doorways. Down below, in the Conference Room, Mr. Jollop suddenly smiled and passed six lay-outs and a three-colour folder, and consented to the omission of the Fifty-six Free Chiming Clocks from the current week’s half-double. Harry, the lift-man, ushering a dripping young woman into the shelter of the cage, expressed sympathy with her plight, and offered her a wipedown with a duster. The young woman smiled at him, assured him that she was quite all right and asked if she could see Mr. Bredon. Harry handed her on to Tompkin, the reception clerk, who said he would send up, and what was her name, please?

“Miss Dean-Miss Pamela Dean-on private business.”

The clerk became full of sympathetic interest.

“Our Mr. Dean’s sister, miss?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, yes, miss. A dreadful sad thing about Mr. Dean, miss. We were all very sorry to lose him like that. If you’ll just take a seat, miss, I’ll tell Mr. Bredon you’re here.”

Pamela Dean sat down and looked about her. The reception-hall was on the lower floor of the agency and contained nothing but the clerk’s semi-circular desk, two hard chairs, a hard settle and a clock. It occupied the space which, on the upper floor, was taken up by the Dispatching, and just outside the door was the lift and the main staircase, which wound round the lift-shaft and went the whole way to the roof, though the lift itself went no further than the top floor. The clock pointed to 12.45, and already a stream of employees was passing through the hall, or clattering down from the floor above for a wash and brush-up before going out to lunch. A message from Mr. Bredon arrived to say that he would be down in a moment, and Pamela Dean entertained herself by watching the various members of the staff as they passed. A brisk, neat young man, with an immaculate head of wavy brown hair, a minute dark moustache and very white teeth (Mr. Smayle, had she known it, group-manager for Dairyfields, Ltd.); a large, bald man with a reddish, clean-shaven face and a masonic emblem (Mr. Harris of the Outdoor Publicity); a man of thirty-five, with rather sulky good looks and restless light eyes (Mr. Tallboy, brooding on the iniquities of Messrs. Toule & Jollop); a thin, prim, elderly man (Mr. Daniels); a plump little man with a good-natured grin and fair hair, chatting to a square-jawed, snub-nosed red-head (Mr. Cole, group-manager for Harrogate Bros, of soap fame, and Mr. Prout, the photographer); a handsome, worried, grey-haired man in the forties, accompanying a prosperous baldpate in an overcoat (Mr. Armstrong escorting Mr. Jollop away to a mollifying and expensive lunch); an untidy, saturnine person with both hands in his trousers-pockets (Mr. Ingleby); a thin, predatory man with a stoop and jaundiced eyeballs (Mr. Copley, wondering whether his lunch was going to agree with him); then a lean, fair-haired, anxious-looking youth, who, at sight of her, stopped dead in his tracks, flushed, and then passed on. This was Mr. Willis; Miss Dean gave him a glance and a cool nod, which was as coolly returned. Tompkin, the reception clerk, who missed nothing, saw the start, the flush, the glance and the nods and mentally added another item to his fund of useful knowledge. Then came a slim man of forty or so, with a long nose and straw-coloured hair, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a pair of well-cut grey trousers which seemed to have received recent ill-treatment; he came up to Pamela and said, more as a statement than as a question:

“Miss Dean.”

“Mr. Bredon?”

“Yes.”

“You ought not to have come here,” said Mr. Bredon, shaking his head reproachfully, “it’s a little indiscreet, you know. However-hullo, Willis, want me?”

It was evidently not Mr. Willis’ lucky day. He had conquered his nervous agitation and turned back with the obvious intention of addressing Pamela, just in time to find Bredon in possession. He replied, “Oh, no, not at all”-with such patent sincerity that Tompkin made another ecstatic mental note, and was, indeed, forced to dive hurriedly behind his counter to conceal his radiant face. Bredon grinned amiably and Willis, after a moment’s hesitation, fled through the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” said Miss Dean. “I didn’t know-”

“Never mind,” said Bredon, and then, in a louder tone: “You’ve come for those things of your brother’s, haven’t you? I’ve got them here; I’m working in his room, don’t you know. I say, er, how about, er, coming out and honouring me by taking in a spot of lunch with me, what?”

Miss Dean agreed; Bredon fetched his hat and they passed out.

“Ho!” said Tompkin in confidence to himself. “Ho! what’s the game, I wonder? She’s a smart jane all right, all right. Given the youngster a chuck and now she’s out after the new bloke, I shouldn’t be surprised. And I don’t know as I blame her.”

Mr. Bredon and Miss Dean went sedately down together in silence, affording no pasture for the intelligent ears of Harry the lift-man, but as they emerged into Southampton Row, the girl turned to her companion:

“I was rather surprised when I got your letter…”

Mr. Willis, lurking in the doorway of a neighbouring tobacconist’s shop, heard the words and scowled. Then, pulling his hat over his eyebrows and buttoning his mackintosh closely about him, he set out in pursuit. They walked through the lessening rain to the nearest cab-rank and engaged a taxi. Mr. Willis, cunningly waiting till they were well started, engaged the next.

“Follow that taxi,” he said, exactly like somebody out of a book. And the driver, nonchalant as though he had stepped from the pages of Edgar Wallace, replied, “Right you are, sir,” and slipped in his clutch.

The chase offered no excitement, ending up in the tamest possible manner at Simpson’s in the Strand. Mr. Willis paid off his taxi, and climbed, in the wake of the couple, to that upper room where ladies are graciously permitted to be entertained. The quarry found a table near the window; Mr. Willis, ignoring the efforts of a waiter to pilot him to a quiet corner, squeezing in at the table next to them, where a man and woman, who obviously wanted to lunch alone, made way for him indignantly. Even so, he was not very well placed, for, though he could see Bredon and the girl, they had their backs to him, and their conversation was perfectly inaudible.

“Plenty of room at the next table, sir,” suggested the waiter.

“I’m all right here,” replied Willis, irritably. His neighbour glared, and the waiter, with a glance as much as to say, ‘Loopy-but what can a man do?’ presented the bill of fare. Willis vaguely ordered saddle of mutton and red-currant jelly with potatoes and gazed at Bredon’s slim back.

“… very nice today, sir.”

“What?”

“The cauliflower, sir-very nice today.”

“Anything you like.”

The little black hat and the sleek yellow poll seemed very close together. Bredon had taken some small object out of his pocket and was showing it to the girl. A ring? Willis strained his eyes-

“What will you drink, sir?”

“Lager,” said Willis, at random.

“Pilsener, sir, or Barclay’s London Lager?”

“Oh, Pilsener.”

“Light or dark, sir?”

“Light-dark-no, I mean light.”

“Large light Pilsener, sir?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Tankard, sir?”

“Yes, no-damn it! Bring it in anything that’s got a hole in the top.” There seemed no end to the questions that could be asked about beer. The girl had taken the object, and was doing something with it. What? For heaven’s sake, what?

“Roast or new potatoes, sir?”

“New.” The man had gone, thank goodness. Bredon was holding Pamela Dean’s hand-no, he was turning over the object that lay on her palm. The woman opposite Willis was stretching across for the sugar-basin-her head obstructed his view-deliberately, as it seemed to him. She moved back. Bredon was still examining the object-

A large dinner-wagon, laden with steaming joints under great silver covers was beside him. A lid was lifted-the odour of roast mutton smote him in the face.

“A little more fat, sir? You like it underdone?”

Great God! What monster helpings they gave one at this place! What sickening stuff mutton was! How vile were these round yellow balls of potato that the man kept heaping on his plate! What disgusting stuff cauliflower could be-a curdle of cabbage! Willis, picking with nauseated reluctance at the finest roast saddle in London, felt his stomach cold and heavy, his feet a-twitch.

The hateful meal dragged on. The indignant couple finished their gooseberry pie and went their affronted way without waiting for coffee. Now Willis could see better. The other two were laughing now and talking eagerly. In a sudden lull a few words of Pamela’s floated clearly back to him: “It’s to be fancy dress, so you’ll slip in all right.” Then she dropped her voice again.

“Will you take any more mutton, sir?”

Try as he would, Willis could catch nothing more. He sat on in Simpson’s until Bredon, glancing at his watch, appeared to remind himself and his companion that advertising copy-writers must work sometimes. Willis was ready for them. His bill was paid. He had only to shelter behind the newspaper he had brought in with him until they had passed him and then-what? Follow them out? Pursue them again in a taxi, wondering all the time how closely they were clasped together, what they were saying to one another, what appointments they were making, what new devilment there was still in store for Pamela, now that Victor Dean was out of the way, and what he would or could do next to make the world safe for her to live in?

He was spared the decision. As the two came abreast of them, Bredon, suddenly popping his head over the Lunch Edition of the Evening Banner, observed cheerfully:

“Hullo, Willis! enjoyed your lunch? Excellent saddle, what? But you should have tried the peas. Can I give you a lift back to the tread-mill?”

“No, thanks,” growled Willis; and then realized that if he had said, “Yes, please,” he would at least have made an ardent tête-à-tête in the taxi impossible. But ride in the same taxi with Pamela Dean and Bredon he could not.

“Miss Dean, unhappily, has to leave us,” went on Bredon. “You might come and console me by holding my hand.”

Pamela was already half-way out of the room. Willis could not decide whether she knew to whom her escort was speaking and had studied to avoid him, or whether she supposed him to be some friend of Bredon’s unknown of her. Quite suddenly he made up his mind.

“Well,” he said, “it is getting a bit late. If you’re having a taxi, I’ll share it with you.”

“That’s the stuff,” said Bredon. Willis rose and joined him and they moved on to where Pamela was waiting.

“I think you know our Mr. Willis?”

“Oh, yes,” Pamela smiled a small., frozen smile. “Victor and he were great friends at one time.”

The door. The stairs. The entrance. They were outside at last.

“I must be getting along now. Thank you so much for my lunch, Mr. Bredon. And you won’t forget?”

“I certainly will not. ’Tisn’t likely, is it?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Willis.”

“Good afternoon.”

She was gone, walking briskly in her little, high-heeled shoes. The roaring Strand engulfed her. A taxi purred up to them.

Bredon gave the address and waved Willis in before him.

“Pretty kid, young Dean’s sister,” he remarked, cheerfully.

“See here, Bredon; I don’t know quite what your game is, but you’d better be careful. I told Dean and I tell you-if you get Miss Dean mixed up with that dirty business of yours-”

“What dirty business?”

“You know well enough what I mean.”

“Perhaps I do. And what then? Do I get my neck broken, like Victor Dean?”

Bredon slewed round as he spoke and looked Willis hard in the eye.

“You’ll get-” Willis checked himself. “Never mind,” he said darkly, “you’ll get what’s coming to you. I’ll see to that.”

“I’ve no doubt you’ll do it very competently, what?” replied Bredon. “But do you mind telling me exactly where you come into it? From what I can see, Miss Dean does not seem to welcome your championship with any great enthusiasm.”

Willis flushed a dusky red.

“It’s no business of mine, of course,” went on Bredon, airily, while their taxi chugged impatiently in a traffic jam at Holborn Tube Station, “but then, on the other hand, it doesn’t really seem to be any business of yours, does it?”

“It is my business,” retorted Willis. “It’s every decent man’s business. I heard Miss Dean making an appointment with you,” he went on, angrily.

“What a detective you would make,” said Bredon, admiringly. “But you really ought to take care, when you are shadowing anybody, that they are not sitting opposite a mirror, or anything that will serve as a mirror. There is a picture in front of the table where we were sitting, that reflects half the room. Elementary, my dear Watson. No doubt you will do better with practice. However, there is no secret about the appointment. We are going to a fancy dress affair on Friday. I am meeting Miss Dean for dinner at Boulestin’s at 8 o’clock and we are going on from there. Perhaps you would care to accompany us?”

The policeman dropped his arm, and the taxi lurched forward into Southampton Row.

“You’d better be careful,” growled Willis, “I might take you at your word.”

“I should be charmed, personally,” replied Bredon. “You will decide for yourself whether Miss Dean would or would not be put in an embarrassing position if you joined the party. Well, well, here we are at our little home from home. We must put aside this light badinage and devote ourselves to Sopo and Pompayne and Peabody ’s Piper Parritch. A delightful occupation, though somewhat lacking in incident. But let us not complain. We can’t expect battle, murder and sudden death more than once a week or so. By the way, where were you when Victor Dean fell downstairs?”

“In the lavatory,” said Willis, shortly.

“Were you, indeed?” Bredon looked at him once more attentively. “In the lavatory? You interest me strangely.”

The atmosphere of the copy-department was much less strained by tea-time. Messrs. Brotherhood had been and gone, having seen nothing to shock their sense of propriety; Mr. Jollop, mellowed by his lunch, had passed three large poster designs with almost reckless readiness and was now with Mr. Pym, being almost persuaded to increase his appropriation for the autumn campaign. The suffering Mr. Armstrong, released from attendance on Mr. Jollop, had taken himself away to visit his dentist. Mr. Tallboy, coming in to purchase a stamp from Miss Rossiter for his private correspondence, announced with delight that the Nutrax half-double had gone to the printer’s.

“Is that ‘KITTLE CATTLE’?” asked Ingleby. “You surprise me. I thought we should have trouble with it.”

“I believe we did,” said Tallboy. “Was it Scotch, and would people know what it meant? Would it suggest that we were calling women cows? And wasn’t the sketch a little modernistic? But Armstrong got it shoved through somehow. May I drop this in your ‘Out’ basket, Miss Rossiter?”

“Serpently,” replied the lady, with gracious humour, presenting the basket to receive the latter. “All billy-doos receive our prompt attention and are immediately forwarded to their destination by the quickest and surest route.”

“Let’s see,” said Garrett. “I bet it’s to a lady, and him a married man, too! No, you don’t, Tallboy, you old devil-stand still, will you? Tell us who it is, Miss Rossiter.”

“K. Smith, Esq.,” said Miss Rossiter. “You lose your bet.”

“What a swizz! But I expect it’s all camouflage. I suspect Tallboy of keeping a harem somewhere. You can’t trust these handsome blue-eyed men.”

“Shut up, Garrett. I never,” said Mr. Tallboy, extricating himself from Garrett’s grasp and giving him a playful punch in the wind, “in my life, met with such a bunch of buttinskis as you are in this department. Nothing is sacred to you, not even a man’s business correspondence.”

“How should anything be sacred to an advertiser?” demanded Ingleby, helping himself to four lumps of sugar. “We spend our whole time asking intimate questions of perfect strangers and it naturally blunts our finer feelings. ‘Mother! has your Child Learnt Regular Habits?’ ‘Are you Troubled with Fullness after Eating?’ ‘Are you satisfied about your Drains?’ ‘Are you Sure that your Toilet-Paper is Germ-free?’ ‘Your most Intimate Friends dare not Ask you this question.’ ‘Do you Suffer from Superfluous Hair?’ ‘Do you Like them to Look at your Hands?’ ‘Do you ever ask yourself about Body-Odour?’ ‘If anything Happened to you, would your Loved Ones be Safe?’ ‘Why Spend so much Time in the Kitchen?’ ‘You think that Carpet is Clean-but is it?’ ‘Are you a Martyr to Dandruff?’ Upon my soul, I sometimes wonder why the long-suffering public doesn’t rise up and slay us.”

“They don’t know of our existence,” said Garrett. “They all think advertisements write themselves. When I tell people I’m in advertising, they always ask whether I design posters-they never think about the copy.”

“They think the manufacturer does it himself,” said Ingleby.

“They ought to see some of the suggestions the manufacturer does put up when he tries his hand at it.”

“I wish they could.” Ingleby grinned. “That reminds me. You know that idiotic thing Darling’s put out the other day-the air-cushion for travellers with a doll that fits into the middle and sits up holding an ‘ENGAGED’ label?”

“What for?” asked Bredon.

“Well, the idea is, that you plank the cushion down in the railway carriage and the doll proclaims that the place is taken.”

“But the cushion would do that without the doll.”

“Of course it would, but you know how silly people are. They like superfluities. Well, anyway, they-Darling’s, I mean-got out an ad. for the rubbish all by their little selves, and were fearfully pleased with it. Wanted us to put it through for them, till Armstrong burst into one of his juicy laughs and made them blush.”

“What was it?”

“Picture of a nice girl bending down to put the cushion in the corner of a carriage. And the headline? ‘DONT LET THEM PINCH YOUR SEAT.’”

“Attaboy!” said Mr. Bredon.

The new copy-writer was surprisingly industrious that day. He was still in his room, toiling over Sanfect (“Wherever there’s Dirt there’s Danger!”

“The Skeleton in the Watercloset,”

“Assassins Lurk in your Scullery!”

“Deadlier than Shell-Fire-GERMS!!!”) when Mrs. Crump led in her female army to attack the day’s accumulated dirt-armed, one regrets to say, not with Sanfect, but with plain yellow soap and water.

“Come in, come in!” cried Mr. Bredon, genially, as the good lady paused reverently at his door. “Come and sweep me and my works away with the rest of the rubbish.”

“Well, I’m sure, sir,” said Mrs. Crump, “I’ve no need to be disturbing you.”

“I’ve finished, really,” said Bredon. “I suppose there’s an awful lot of stuff to clear out here every day.”

“That there is, sir-you’d hardly believe. Paper-well, I’m sure paper must be cheap, the amount they waste. Sackfuls and sackfuls every evening goes out. Of course, it’s disposed of to the mills, but all the same it must be a dreadful expense. And there’s boxes and boards and odds and ends-you’d be surprised, the things we picks up. I sometimes think the ladies and gentlemen brings up all their cast-offs on purpose to throw ’em away here.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“And mostly chucked on the floor,” resumed Mrs. Crump, warming to her theme, “hardly ever in the paper-baskets, though goodness knows they make ’em big enough.”

“It must give you a lot of trouble.”

“Lor’, sir, we don’t think nothing of it. We just sweeps the lot up and sends the sacks down by the lift. Though sometimes we has a good laugh over the queer things we finds. I usually just give the stuff a look through to make sure there’s nothing valuable got dropped by mistake. Once I found two pound-notes on Mr. Ingleby’s floor. He’s a careless one and no mistake. And not so long ago-the very day poor Mr. Dean had his sad accident, I found a kind of carved stone lying round in the passage-looked as though it might be a charm or a trinket or something of that. But I think it must have tumbled out of the poor gentleman’s pocket as he fell, because Mrs. Doolittle said she’d seen it in his room, so I brought it in here, sir, and put it in that there little box.”

“Is this it?” Bredon fished in his waistcoat pocket and produced the onyx scarab, which he had unaccountably neglected to return to Pamela Dean.

“That’s it, sir. A comical-looking thing, ain’t it? Like it might be a beetle or such. It was lying in a dark corner under the iron staircase and at first I thought it was just a pebble like the other one.”

“What other one?”

“Well, sir, I found a little round pebble in the very same place only a few days before. I said at the time, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s a funny thing to find there.’ But I reckon that one must have come from Mr. Atkins’s room, him having taken his seaside holiday early this year on account of having been ill, and you know how people do fill up their pockets with sea-shells and pebbles and such.”

Bredon hunted in his pocket again.

“Something like that, was it?” He held out a smooth, water-rounded pebble, about the size of his thumbnail.

“Very like it, sir. Did that come out of the passage, sir, might I ask?”

“No-I found that up on the roof.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Crump. “It’ll be them boys up to their games. When the Sergeant’s eye is off them you never know what they’re after.”

“They do their drill up there, don’t they? Great stuff. Hardens the muscles and develops the figure. When do they perform? In the lunch-hour?”

“Oh, no, sir. Mr. Pym won’t have them running about after their dinners. He says it spoils their digestions and gives them the colic. Very particular, is Mr. Pym. Half-past eight regular they has to be on duty, sir, in their pants and singlets. Twenty minutes they has of it and then changed and ready for their dooties. After dinner they sets a bit in the boys’ room and has a read or plays something quiet, as it might be, shove ha’penny or tiddley-winks or such. But in their room they must stay, sir; Mr. Pym won’t have nobody about the office in the dinner-hour, sir, not without, of course, it’s the boy that goes round with the disinfectant, sir.”

“Ah, of course! Spray with Sanfect and you’re safe.”

“That’s right, sir, except that they uses Jeyes’ Fluid.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Mr. Bredon, struck afresh by the curious reluctance of advertising firms to use the commodities they extol for a living. “Well, we’re very well looked after here, Mrs. Crump, what?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Mr. Pym pays great attention to ’ealth. A very kind gentleman, is Mr. Pym. Next week, sir, we has the Charwomen’s Tea, down in the canteen, with an egg-and-spoon race and a bran-tub, and bring the kiddies. My daughter’s little girls always look forward to the tea, sir.”

“I’m sure they must,” said Mr. Bredon, “and I expect they’d like some new hair-ribbons or something of that sort-”

“It’s very kind of you, sir,” said Mrs. Crump, much gratified.

“Not at all.” A couple of coins clinked. “Well, I’ll push off now and leave you to it.”

A very nice gentleman, in Mrs. Crump’s opinion, and not at all proud.

It turned out precisely as Mr. Willis had expected. He had tracked his prey from Boulestin’s, and this time he felt quite certain he had not been spotted. His costume-that of a member of the Vehmgericht, with its black cassock and black, eyeleted hood covering the whole head and shoulders-was easily slipped on over his every-day suit. Muffled in an old burberry, he had kept watch behind a convenient van in Covent Garden until Bredon and Pamela Dean came out; his taxi had been in waiting just round the corner. His task was made the easier by the fact that the others were driving, not in a taxi, but in an enormous limousine, and that Bredon had taken the wheel himself. The theatre rush was well over before the chase started, so that there was no need to keep suspiciously close to the saloon. The trail had led westward through Richmond and still west, until it had ended at a large house, standing in its own grounds on the bank of the river. Towards the end of the journey they were joined by other cars and taxis making in the same direction; and on arrival they found the drive a parking-place for innumerable vehicles. Bredon and Miss Dean had gone straight in, without a glance behind them.

Willis, who had put on his costume in the taxi, anticipated some difficulty about getting in, but there was none. A servant had met him at the door and asked if he was a member. Willis had replied boldly that he was and given the name of William Brown, which seemed to him an ingenious and plausible invention. Apparently the club was full of William Browns, for the servant raised no difficulty, and he was ushered straight in to a handsomely furnished hall. Immediately in front of him, on the skirts of a crowd of people drinking cocktails, was Bredon, in the harlequin black and white which had been conspicuous as he stepped into his car after dinner. Pamela Dean, in an exiguous swan’s-down costume representing a powder-puff, stood beside him. From a room beyond resounded the strains of a saxophone.

“The place,” said Mr. Willis to himself, “is a den of iniquity.” And for once, Mr. Willis was not far wrong.

He was amazed by the slackness of the organization. Without question or hesitation, every door was opened to him. There was gambling. There was drink in oceans. There was dancing. There were what Mr. Willis had heard described as orgies. And at the back of it all, he sensed something else, something that he did not quite understand; something that he was not precisely kept out of, but to which he simply had not the key.

He was, of course, partnerless, but he soon found himself absorbed into a party of exceedingly bright young people, and watching the evolutions of a danseuse whose essential nakedness was enhanced and emphasized by the wearing of a top hat, a monocle and a pair of patent-leather boots. He was supplied with drinks-some of which he paid for, but the majority of which were thrust upon him, and he suddenly became aware that he would have made a better detective had he been more hardened to mixed liquors. His head began to throb, and he had lost sight of Bredon and Pamela. He became obsessed with the idea that they had departed into one of the sinister little cubicles he had seen-each heavily curtained and furnished with a couch and a mirror. He broke away from the group surrounding him and began a hurried search through the house. His costume was hot and heavy, and the sweat poured down his face beneath the stifling black folds of his hood. He found a conservatory full of amorous drunken couples, but the pair he was looking for was not among them. He pushed open a door and found himself in the garden. Cries and splashes attracted him. He plunged down a rose-scented alley beneath a pergola and came out upon an open space with a round fountain-pool in the centre.

A man with a girl in his arms came reeling past him, flushed and hiccuping with laughter, his leopard-skin tunic half torn from his shoulders and the vine-leaves scattering from his hair as he ran. The girl was shrieking like a steam-engine. He was a broad-shouldered man, and the muscles of his back gleamed in the moonlight as he swung his protesting burden from him and tossed her, costume and all, into the pool. Yells of laughter greeted this performance, renewed as the girl, draggled and dripping, crawled back over the edge of the basin and burst into a stream of abuse. Then Willis saw the black-and-white harlequin.

He was climbing the statue-group in the centre of the pool-an elaborate affair of twined mermaids and dolphins, supporting a basin in which crouched an amorino, blowing from a conch-shell a high spout of dancing water. Up and up went the slim chequered figure, dripping and glittering like a fantastic water-creature. He caught the edge of the upper basin with his hands, swung for a moment and lifted. Even in that moment, Willis felt a pang of reluctant admiration. It was the easy, unfretted motion of the athlete, a display of muscular strength without jerk or effort. Then his knee was on the basin. He was up and climbing upon the bronze cupid. Yet another moment and he was kneeling upon the figure s stooped shoulders-standing upright upon them, the spray of the fountain blowing about him.

“Good God!” thought Willis, “the fellow’s a tight-rope walker-or he’s too drunk to fall.” There were yells of applause, and a girl began to shriek hysterically. Then a very tall woman, in a moonlight frock of oyster satin, who had made herself the centre of the most boisterous of all the parties, pushed past Willis and stood out on the edge of the basin, her fair hair standing out like a pale aureole round her vivid face.

“Dive!” she called out, “dive in! I dare you to! Dive in!”

“Shut up, Dian!” One of the soberer of the men caught her round the shoulders and put his hand over her mouth. “It’s too shallow-he’ll break his neck.”

She pushed him away.

“You be quiet. He shall dive. I want him to. Go to hell, Dickie. You wouldn’t dare do it, but he will.”

“I certainly wouldn’t. Stow it!”

“Come on, Harlequin, dive!”

The black and white figure raised its arms above its fantastic head and stood poised.

“Don’t be a fool, man,” bawled Dickie.

But the other women were fired with the idea and their screams drowned his voice.

“Dive, Harlequin, dive.”

The slim body shot down through the spray, struck the surface with scarcely a splash and slid through the water like a fish. Willis caught his breath. It was perfectly done. It was magnificent. He forgot his furious hatred of the man and applauded with the rest. The girl Dian ran forward and caught hold of the swimmer as he emerged.

“Oh, you’re marvellous, you’re marvellous!” She clung to him, the water soaking into her draggled satin.

“Take me home, Harlequin-I adore you!”

The Harlequin bent his masked face and kissed her. The man called Dickie tried to pull him away, but was neatly tripped and fell with a jerk into the pool, amid a roar of laughter. The Harlequin tossed the tall girl across his shoulder.

“A prize!” he shouted. “A prize!”

Then he swung her lightly to her feet and took her hand. “Run,” he called, “run! Let’s run away, and let them catch us if they can.”

There was a sudden stampede. Willis saw the angry face of Dickie as he lurched past him and heard him swearing. Somebody caught his hand. He ran up the rose-alley, panting. Something caught his foot, and he tripped and fell. His companion abandoned him, and ran on, hooting. He sat up, found his head enveloped in his hood and struggled to release himself.

A hand touched his shoulder.

“Come on, Mr. Willis,” said a mocking voice in his ear, “Mr. Bredon says I am to escort you home.”

He succeeded in dragging the black cloth from his head and scrambled to his feet.

Beside him stood Pamela Dean. She had taken off her mask, and her eyes were alight with mischief.