Читать книгу Plain Murder - Cecil Louis Troughton Smith - Страница 5

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THE Universal Advertising Agency in James Street, Strand, would in the eyes of an unsympathetic person hardly have seemed important enough to rouse the emotions which surged so strongly in the breasts of the young men who composed three-quarters of its creative staff. It occupied a first floor office. The reception room which one entered from the main door was furnished lavishly in good reception room taste (for what that recommendation is worth), and the next room, which was Mr. Campbell’s, displayed painstakingly all the latest devices in office equipment which could conceivably find a place in a managing director’s private room. Representatives of big businesses were ushered in here—men possibly with an advertising appropriation of a hundred thousand pounds to dispense—and it was necessary that they (who, ex officio, must know how a business should be run) should be suitably impressed with the efficiency of the Universal Advertising Agency.

But big business never penetrated beyond Mr. Campbell’s office. The next room, wherein were materialized the rosy visions which Mr. Campbell poetically called up before the eyes of big business, was in striking contrast. There was not an armchair, nor a dictaphone, nor a desk of enamelled steel to be seen. Bare boards were all that composed the floor, blotched with ink—Mr. Campbell’s polished parquet and rugs stopped short at the threshold of the communicating door. Most of the space was occupied by half a dozen chipped and battered wooden tables, littered with papers and dog-eared files. Even these tables were allotted to the staff in a manner which displayed no decent attention to the rules of seniority. The centre one of the three under the long window was given over to the staff artist—the long-legged, weedy, lugubrious Mr. Clarence—where he had the best of the light to assist him in his eternal task of lettering and rough sketching. As Mr. Clarence said, his rough sketches might not perhaps be as good as Goya’s finished work, but his lettering was better than any lettering which Sargent had ever exhibited; Goya and Sargent were people for whose work Mr. Clarence had a very sincere admiration—a fact which constitutes a measure of how much Mr. Clarence enjoyed his daily duties of lettering out “Morish Marmalade” and “Sleepwell Mattresses.”

On Mr. Clarence’s right sat Mr. Oldroyd; on his left sat Mr. Reddy. Behind them sat Mr. Morris, but, as has been said, the decent rules of precedence were abruptly interrupted at this point by the fact that beside Mr. Morris was the table of Shepherd, the office boy. Not that Shepherd was much at his table, because most of his time was occupied in journeys to studios, and printing offices, and newspaper offices, arriving everywhere, as Shepherd observed with fifteen-year-old pathos, half an hour late, without gaining his due credit for the fact that anyone not as efficient as Shepherd would have arrived half an hour later still.

Behind Mr. Morris was the seat of power. Symbolically, perhaps, or perhaps so that he could better supervise the work of his juniors, Mr. Harrison’s chair and table were set on a low dais. It was here that the main decisions were reached; it was here that Mr. Harrison held those conferences with representatives from commercial art studios which might result in the launching upon a surfeited world of some new mythical character, some Doctor Healthybody to advise the taking of Perfect Pills perhaps, or Sunray Toilet Soap Girl to declare that Ultra-violet Soap abolishes wrinkles. It was from this dais that Mr. Harrison would step down with fitting solemnity to enter Mr. Campbell’s office to obtain his approval of the final idea.

On this particular morning Mr. Harrison’s frame of mind was peculiarly disturbed. There was no important work to occupy him; a glance at the ruled and dated sheet pinned to his desk assured him that all the advertisements which the office were responsible for sending out that week were either despatched or were in process of final composition on the tables of Morris, or Oldroyd, or Reddy. There were no callers. Mr. Campbell—“Mac,” as Mr. Harrison thought of him—was in Glasgow and not due to return until to-morrow. Mr. Harrison was free to make up his mind as to the action he would take on Mr. Campbell’s return. Mr. Harrison set his lips and stared thoughtfully at the bent backs of his subordinates.

Reddy—his fair hair was illumined by the light from the window—was a good boy, although he had no brains. He would never have thought of the scheme which had been put into practice, which had resulted in the disappearance of the New Commercial Art Company’s suggestions, in the consequent commissioning of the Adelphi Art Studios for a whole series of drawings, and in the payment of six pounds in secret commissions to the three young men before him. Reddy could be excused, perhaps, on the grounds that he had been led astray by the others.

Oldroyd, now. He was a good deal older, twenty-five at least, and he knew enough about the ways of the advertising world not to believe that the obtaining of secret commissions was an excusable frolic. But he had always been reliable up to the present. He had a nice eye for the lay-out of an advertisement, and he was sound on the subjects of sizes of type, and he was a careful proof reader. Mr. Harrison realized that it would be a tedious business replacing Oldroyd if Oldroyd were dismissed. Lay-out men at three ten a week who could be relied upon to carry out routine work satisfactorily without supervision were hard to find; Mr. Harrison flinched a little from the prospect of breaking a new-comer into the ways of the office and fitting him into the niche which Oldroyd filled so adequately. If Oldroyd showed himself properly contrite to-morrow, Mr. Harrison might (although his mind remained open on the subject) put in that word with Mr. Campbell which would save him from starvation and cold.

But it was quite a different matter as regards Morris. Mr. Harrison bent his gaze almost with hatred on Morris’s unresponsive back. He must have been the ringleader—that was clear to anyone who knew the three culprits. It was he who had devised the plan, and who had secured the co-operation of the others. It was he who had filched in underhand fashion from Mr. Harrison’s authority, depriving him of a bit of that patronage which Mr. Harrison dispensed with strict honesty but with a pleasant sense of his own importance.

Morris must go; there was no doubt about it. He had a wife, he had two children, and his savings, if he had any, must have been scraped out of a maximum income of four pounds ten a week. That did not affect the ethics of the case. Morris knew, when he concocted the plan, that he was exposing his wife and children to the chance of poverty and starvation. That was part of the stake he had risked; he had no right to grumble if he lost. Mr. Harrison’s conscience felt more comfortable as he reached this conclusion, because Mr. Harrison was uneasily aware that he was glad that the chance had arisen of getting rid of Morris. The fellow was altogether too dangerous. More than once Mac had looked upon him with an approving eye, on the awkward occasions when a knotty point was under debate and a subordinate had been called in to the high councils of Mr. Campbell and Mr. Harrison. Morris then had had the impertinence to proffer a suggestion to Mr. Campbell which Mr. Harrison had already decided against, and Mr. Harrison had had the mortification of seeing the suggestion accepted with delight, so that Mr. Harrison had trembled for the security of his own job. Morris had too much sense of his own abilities. He could design advertisements with a “punch”; he could form a sound estimate of the respective values of the different advertising media; he had plenty of energy and ambition (too much, thought Mr. Harrison); and he was perfectly capable of coveting Mr. Harrison’s position.

Mr. Harrison would never have dreamed of intriguing to get Morris out of the way. But now that the opportunity had presented itself Mr. Harrison had no hesitation in seizing it. He hated the offence of which Morris was guilty—not once had Mr. Harrison ever yielded to the thousands of similar temptations which came his way—he disliked the young chap personally, he distrusted him, and he was afraid of him. There was no mercy for Morris in Mr. Harrison’s mind. He would have dismissed Morris himself, bag and baggage, yesterday, had it not been for the fact that Mr. Campbell had not delegated to him the power of dismissal.

Moreover, the internal debate within Mr. Harrison’s mind had somehow worked him into a bad temper. He set his thin lips and glowered at Morris’s bent back with a voiceless rage. He disliked Morris much more now than he did half an hour ago. Perhaps his hatred made itself felt telepathically in the room. Oldroyd shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Reddy, with a despairing gesture, tore up the draft lay-out with which he had been experimenting. Clarence made use of the licence granted to an admitted artist to put his feet on his table and stretch himself. The only one that did not stir was Morris, who kept his thick shoulders bowed over his table, while ostensibly he occupied himself with reading the proofs of the new lubricating oil booklet, and while actually he gave loose rein to his racing thoughts.

The entrance of Maud, Mr. Campbell’s particular typist, with the letters she had been typing for Mr. Harrison, provided a welcome break in the gloomy silence which enveloped the room. Mr. Harrison could be jocular at any moment with one of the opposite sex.

“Well, Maud,” said Mr. Harrison, “this is the last day of your holiday.”

“My holiday, sir?” giggled Maud.

“Yes, when Mr. Campbell comes back to-morrow you’ll have to start in and do a spot of work, won’t you?”

“Don’t you think you give me enough to do, then?” asked Maud.

“Not as much as Mr. Campbell does, now, do I? But to-day’s the last day. No more packing up at half-past four when he comes back.”

“Half-past four? Oh, I never——”

“Oh, Maud, Maud!” said Mr. Harrison. “And it’s Guy Fawkes’ day to-day. I suppose it’ll be half-past three this afternoon, because you want to get home and let your fireworks off.”

“I haven’t got any,” said Maud. “Too old for such things, Mr. Harrison, don’t you know. What about you, sir? Aren’t you going to have any?”

“To tell the truth,” answered Mr. Harrison, “I am going to have some. Rockets and Catherine wheels and goodness knows what. And a bonfire.”

“Goodness!” said Maud.

“Oh, just for the kiddies,” said Mr. Harrison offhandedly. “They like it, you know. We’ve got the bonfire all piled up in the garden already. Fat lot of tea those kids’ll let me eat when I get home to-night.”

Mr. Harrison smoothed the wisps of hair over the bald top of his head and smiled benevolently. His conversation with Maud continued for several more minutes, but what he had already said was enough to make his fate certain.

Morris had been listening intently to every word he said, straining his attention so as not to miss a syllable; so intently and with such attention, in fact, that, absurd as it sounds, he had felt his ears move as he listened. Morris had the information he needed. He knew now that in the evening a state of affairs would arise when he could kill Mr. Harrison. The trivial talk about fireworks and bonfires had given him that information. For Morris had been more than once about work to Mr. Harrison’s house on those occasions when bad colds kept Harrison from the office, and he knew the arrangement of Mr. Harrison’s house and garden.

If Morris had been asked about the matter by some one from Mars, let us say—some one at any rate of no influence at all in the world’s affairs, and most certainly not in his own, some one to whom Morris could freely speak about his motives (which in practice would be quite inconceivable), he would have said in all sincerity that he had more right to kill Mr. Harrison than Harrison had to have him dismissed. He would have said so, and believed it, and meant it, quite simply and literally. It was far more important to Morris that Morris should remain in employment than that Harrison should remain alive. If Harrison was bent upon dismissing Morris, and the only way to stop him was to kill him—then it was quite right to do so. Morris did not even pause to think this out. He leapt instantly to that conclusion. To his dying day he never saw any flaw in it.

That is why it is absurd to mention conscience in any discussion of this Morris affair. Morris was acting, it might be said, in accordance with the dictates of his conscience when he plotted Harrison’s murder. It was right, in Morris’s eyes, that he should not be sacked from the office. It was monstrously wrong if he should be, and that was the end of the argument. Morris had that disproportionate sense of the importance of his own well-being as compared with other people’s which is one-half of the equipment of the deliberate murderer. The other factors Morris possessed as well—unfortunately for him, perhaps—the ingenuity to devise a plan, the imagination to attend to details, and the resolution to carry it through.

The blood flowed hot under Morris’s skin as he sat at his table, with his back to Harrison, and worked out the possibilities of this opportunity which fate had presented to him. It was an exalted creative moment—Morris devising a murder was in the same lofty, superhuman state of mind as is a poet in the full current of composition. Thoughts poured through his brain in clear, rushing streams. This he could do, and that. This would guard against that possibility, and that would strengthen that weakness. Yes, and then——There seemed no limit to Morris’s clear-sighted ingenuity at the moment, as he sat there, his left hand clenched, the fingers of his right tapping on the table, his head bowed in thought, and his heavy jaw setting harder and harder as his resolution became more and more fixed—as he realized more and more clearly that the thing was possible.

Clarence, the artist, stretched himself and rose from his chair.

“Don’t you blokes ever feel hungry?” he inquired plaintively. “One o’clock, and I’m off. ORPH. Anyone coming?”

The three looked at him, and with one accord they shook their heads and muttered refusals. They did not want to have Clarence with them while they continued their debate of the evening before about the matter which had dictated every thought since yesterday.

“All right,” said Clarence, reaching for his hat, “be unsociable, if you want to. So long. I’ll have that lettering done by about three, Mr. Harrison.”

He lounged out of the room; his method of maintaining the dignity of Art was by displaying a careless lack of deference toward every one, even towards Mr. Harrison.

Mr. Harrison rose as the door closed, and he reached for his hat too.

“I’ll get my lunch now as well,” he announced. “You three can do as you like as long as some one’s here until I come back.”

He stepped down from the dais and walked towards the door. Perhaps if it had only been one yard to the door instead of five Mr. Harrison would be alive now. As it was the two or three seconds which it took him to cross the room were too long for him to get through in silence; he was self-conscious under the gaze of three pairs of eyes, and with the knowledge that three people were waiting breathlessly to know his decision. And when Mr. Harrison was self-conscious he talked. And on this occasion the only subject Mr. Harrison could think of to talk about was the one which had occupied the minds of all four of them that morning.

“I haven’t said anything to anyone as yet,” he announced, with his hand on the door handle, “about this business with the Adelphi Studio. We don’t want the girls and Clarence talking until it has got to come out. I shall speak about it to Mr. Campbell to-morrow morning, though.”

He looked round at them—Reddy with his frail figure and fair hair, Oldroyd bovine and stupid, Morris big and thickset and dangerous. It was that dangerous look about Morris which stung him into one last self-assertive remark.

“And if I were you,” he added, “I should start thinking about hunting up another job. In the Colonies.”

Mr. Harrison felt a vague satisfaction as he went down the stairs at having thus displayed his power, although he would perhaps hardly have considered it worth it had he foreseen that every word he had spoken was the equivalent of another nail in his coffin.

“That settles it,” said Oldroyd at the end of the pause that followed Harrison’s departure. “He means to get us the boot from Mac to-morrow all right.”

Oldroyd knew nothing of Mr. Harrison’s late decision to put in the deciding word on his behalf with Mr. Campbell.

“Yes,” said Morris. He spoke with deliberation, and he looked steadily into the eyes first of Oldroyd and then of Reddy. He walked quietly over to the door of the room, pulled it open suddenly, and looked out. There was no one there—the office was empty. He shut it again and turned back. “Yes, but——We’ve still got a chance. We’ve got till to-morrow.”

“What’s the good of that?” grumbled Oldroyd. “What are you going to do? Tell him you’ll be a good boy if he’ll let you off this time? He won’t. You know what Harrison’s like by now.”

“He’ll tell Campbell, anyway, just to show off in front of him,” put in Reddy, with a perspicacity which surprised himself as much as the others.

“He will,” said Morris still deliberately, “unless we stop him.”

There was a hidden, grim meaning obviously underlying his words. The speech demanded a question.

“Stop him?” asked Reddy, almost in a whisper. He guessed, somehow, at what Morris was hinting, which was more than Oldroyd did.

“Yes,” said Morris solemnly.

The superhuman exaltation had not left him yet. His mind was working with the rapidity and accuracy of a calculating machine. The glances he was darting at Oldroyd and at Reddy were reading their very thoughts. The force of his personality was overwhelming them steadily. Reddy was his man already; Oldroyd might soon follow.

“But how?” demanded Oldroyd; his tone of despairing contempt was not quite genuine.

“You’ve got a gun, haven’t you?” asked Morris. “A revolver?”

“That’s so,” said Oldroyd, “but——”

The weapon was a little plated affair of 22 calibre only, bought by Oldroyd two years ago, out of an unexpected bonus, for the usual motiveless motive which induces a very young man to buy a weapon.

“But——” said Oldroyd. “Do you mean—murder, you fool?”

“That’s what I mean,” said Morris.

“Bah!” said Oldroyd. “Don’t be a fool. I’m not going to have anything to do with it. You’re mad.”

“No, I’m not,” said Morris. “Do I look like it? Look at me.”

But Oldroyd was able to meet Morris’s eyes with north-country stolidity. Morris saw his first plan for making Oldroyd an accomplice collapse into failure. It certainly had been a highfalutin idea to try and get Oldroyd to do the killing himself. But like lightning Morris was ready with his alternative scheme, and so quickly and easily that the others did not, could not, perceive the change.

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” said Morris. “You needn’t have anything to do with it at all. I’ll do it all—with Reddy, here, to do a little bit for me. You won’t be mixed up with it in any way. All I want is for you to lend me your gun.”

“What for?”

“You know what for as well as I do. But it won’t make any difference to you—it won’t incriminate you, I mean. It only makes me safer. I could go and buy a gun across the road there now. But if some one were to sell a revolver to-day and then read in the papers to-morrow that some one’s been shot he might put two and two together. There’s a bit of danger there.”

“Yes?”

“But if you lend me your gun. You can chuck it off Waterloo Bridge if you like afterwards. There’ll be no danger there to you or to me.”

“But how are you going to do it!”

“To do it?”

“To do—what you were talking about.”

“Easy. Trust me for that. You know I’m not the sort of chap to make a mess of a simple job.”

“But——” said Oldroyd.

“God damn you and your ‘buts.’ That’s the tenth time you’ve said ‘but’ already,” burst out Morris. “ ‘But’ this and ‘but’ that—God bless my soul, man, d’you want to lose your job? You heard what Harrison said about the Colonies? You’d starve there the same as you would here, and you know it. It’s November now. Five months of winter to go through. You’ve been out of work before, haven’t you, you know what it’s like? Nothing to eat and always damned cold. Sitting in a Free Library by the hot-water pipes until a porter turns you out. And it needn’t happen if you just let me have that gun of yours for half an hour. You needn’t know what I want it for. You’ll be all right even if they catch me—which they won’t.”

Oldroyd’s solid north-country temperament made him a target worthy of all the arrows of Morris’s impassioned rhetoric and artful pleading. It called for plenteous argument to convert him even to the contemplation of murder. Murder was a new idea to him, one which he had never considered before; he would have been slow to adopt it if its legality had been without question. Yet Morris could see that the objections he was raising were now more the result of obstinacy than of reason.

“They’ll get you for certain,” said Oldroyd. “Then they’ll hang you.”

“If they do, as I said, it’ll be my own look out. But they won’t. D’you know how many murders there are each year where they don’t find who did it? Dozens. And they won’t get me. D’you think I’d be so keen on it if I thought there’d be any chance of that? Not likely. See here, Oldroyd. You know as well as I do that what they start to look for in these cases is motive. Who’s got any motive for killing Harrison? They won’t find anyone. Harrison said himself he hadn’t told anyone about our business. I can work it all right and I can get away without being seen. Trust me for that, I tell you. What do the police do then? They come along. No one has the least idea who has done it. Well, say the police, who’s likely to, or who wanted to? They ask his wife. They might come and ask Mac here. His wife doesn’t know anyone who would. Nor does Mac. There is nothing more they can do. Shrug their shoulders and say that probably some one made a mistake and got the wrong man. Or they might think it was done because of a woman—Mrs. Harrison wouldn’t know anything about that. And if they start looking along that line I don’t know what they’ll find, but they won’t find me.”

“Oh, yes, it sounds all right,” said Oldroyd. He did not mean that; what he meant was it sounded all wrong, but that he could not define his objection accurately.

Morris took him literally for the purpose of his argument.

“Of course it’s all right. For you it’s absolutely all right. Look what you stand to win by it—you keep your job, and you might get Harrison’s job as well. And what do you stand to lose by it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You’re not fond of Harrison by any chance?”

“No, I’m not that,” replied Oldroyd reluctantly.

“Right,” said Morris.

It is doubtful whether Morris, on his own initiative, would have had the art to break off the argument there and allow his words to have their solvent effect on Oldroyd’s inertia. Probably he would. He was in that superhuman mood of his, when his intellect was working at its very best. But, as it was, the decision was made for him. They heard a step in the corridor outside, and then women’s voices. Instantly the three fell apart instinctively. Morris strode across to the door, pulled it open, and looked outside. There was no one in the corridor; the voices came from the room the other side.

“Maudie and Miss Knight have come back from lunch,” announced Morris to the others. “What about it, you chaps? Coming now?”

The three of them strolled out of the room, but Morris’s mind was still working at top speed. Before joining the others he peered into Mr. Campbell’s room. No one was there. He scuttled across and looked into the reception room. No one there. On their way out he looked into the typing room.

“Hullo, Maudie!” he said. “Hullo, Miss Knight! What was it to-day? Baked beans on toast or a cup of tea and a bun?”

“Neither, Mr. Knowall,” said Maudie. Morris’s coarse good looks had rather an appeal for Maudie.

But that was all right. There were only those two in the room, and from the way in which they were taking off their hats and gloves they had clearly only just come in. There had been no one in the office listening to their conversation. No one with his ear to the door to catch a few muttered words which might hang him later. It was most improbable, anyway, but——Morris’s painful experience of being found out in his first misdemeanour had made him careful. From now on he was going to take no chances.

It was an odd luncheon party, in the teashop, the atmosphere stifling with heat and steam, and the ears deafened with the clatter of crockery. The three of them sat at their table eyeing each other. They were dallying with the idea of murder, although with so many listening ears around them no one dared to discuss the subject. They said nothing at all in consequence. They could only look at each other, apprehensively or inquiringly as the case might be, as they ate sausages and mashed potatoes and turned over in their minds the notion of shooting Mr. Harrison.