Читать книгу Plain Murder - Cecil Louis Troughton Smith - Страница 6

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THE strain of the afternoon in the office was worse than in the morning. Even Harrison felt it, and came to regret more acutely than ever that Mr. Campbell was out of London so that the business could not be settled out of hand. He welcomed the arrival of callers in consequence with a warmth that astonished them; even the men who came calling hopelessly soliciting business for quite impossible art studios. He rang up the printing office which the firm usually employed and wasted a large amount of the foreman’s time talking about nothing at all important. Finally, when one of the two elegant young men who spent their time seeking new business for the Universal Advertising Agency came in bubbling over with a quite unjustifiable hope that a certain gigantic motor-car firm might be induced to entrust their advertising to the agency, he treated the matter as positively serious.

Glad of a chance to relieve the tension, he summoned Clarence and Morris to his table, and the four of them began solemnly to try to design advertisements which would induce the motor-car firm, at sight of them, to scrap their exceedingly efficient advertising staff and put their affairs in the hands of the Universal Agency. Clarence stood at one shoulder, and Morris stood at the other, while the elegant young man hopped about in front in bewildered pleasure at having been taken seriously in this fashion. Slogans were debated: “Nebuchadnezzar Cars won’t eat grass, but they consume very little petrol.” Mr. Harrison even considered verse:

“Whatever the make or type of your car,

You’d do better still with a Nebuchadnezzar.”

Twice Clarence was sent away to rough out a plan which had momentarily caught Mr. Harrison’s fancy, and each time he was called back because Mr. Harrison had suddenly thought of a better plan still. Morris stood at his shoulder, shifting his weight first from one foot and then from the other.

“Nebuchadnezzars Are—as—Lively,” said Mr. Harrison, speaking in Large Type, “when your Foot is on the Brake—as Other Cars are—when you step on the—Accelerator. What do you think about that, Morris?”

Yesterday, before he knew that he was going to be dismissed, Morris would have played for safety. He would have accorded moderate praise to the suggestion—praise because it never pays to sneer at one’s superior’s ideas, yet moderate because Mr. Harrison probably would change his mind about it later—and because Mr. Campbell would veto the idea for certain. But to-day, with safety out of reach, and a very bad night behind him, and his head full of another idea altogether, Morris was incapable of displaying tact. He looked at Mr. Harrison’s vague outlines. He turned over in his mind Mr. Harrison’s astonishing headlines. Then he gave a considered judgment.

“I think,” said Morris slowly, “I think it’s all ——”

What Morris said it was cannot be written here. He used vulgar bad language with astonishing point and vigour. It called forth a grin on Clarence’s face; it made Oldroyd and Reddy mistrust their hearing. All the same, it was an excellent criticism of Mr. Harrison’s little notion. But it made Mr. Harrison compress his lips and flush bright pink.

The etiquette of bad language in advertising offices is quite elastic. A senior can use it before a junior without hesitation. A junior, provided he is sufficiently deferential, can use it before a senior on subjects indifferent to both. But no junior can ever, ever, ever say the words Morris employed about a senior’s own special suggestion. Yet, after all, finished advertisements are usually the product of combined effort, and even destructive criticism, by the tradition of the profession, should be welcomed. Anyone can give an adverse criticism of an advertisement quite safely, because he has only to pose as a half-witted member of the half-witted general public for whom the designer intends the advertisement. If he does not like it, then a section at least of the public will not like it either, and the originator ought to be glad to hear about that before spending further time over it.

It was this convention which tied Mr. Harrison’s hands. He swallowed the insolence with an effort.

“Umph,” said Mr. Harrison, struggling with his feelings. “We’d better try some other line, then. What about——”

His new suggestion was hardly more effective, and Mr. Harrison knew it. What was particularly annoying to Mr. Harrison was the feeling that he had only started this discussion in order to bring about a more amicable atmosphere in the office, and this was a poor return for his kindly efforts. And Morris displayed a lamentable lack of tact again. After his first outburst he left off being rude, but he was not encouraging. He showed up the weaknesses of Mr. Harrison’s idea in a few brief sentences. He did it again later, tired of fidgeting about first on one foot and then on the other while Mr. Harrison prosed on about impossibilities. His blunt, pigheaded criticisms eventually drove Mr. Harrison distracted.

“Good Lord lumme,” exploded Mr. Harrison, slapping down the papers on the table, “I might as well be trying to make up ads. with a—a mule! And what in hell are you laughing at, Reddy? I’m sick to death of the whole pack of you. Thank God that——” He checked himself. Clarence and the other young fellow were in the room, and it was undesirable that they should know of the scandal in the office. But the words he had intended to finish the sentence were plain enough to anyone in the secret.

“What’s the time?” went on Harrison, changing the subject. “Five o’clock? I’m going out to get a cup of tea. Send Shepherd round to Spott’s for those new pulls as soon as he comes back. And have those roughs for the Scottish Series ready for me when I come back.”

He went out, and the three guilty ones looked at each other. Even Oldroyd felt a stirring of hero worship for this vigorous young man who had said to Harrison exactly what Oldroyd had wanted to say on several occasions. As for Reddy, he blinked at Morris, standing flushed and magnificent on the dais, as he would have blinked at the sun in splendour. The elegant young man, annoyed at this sudden neglect of his fine idea, picked up his hat and his gloves and his cane and lounged out again after Mr. Harrison. Clarence, whistling dolefully, threw himself into his adjustable chair and filled his brush with his Indian ink. Morris beckoned Reddy across to him where he still stood at Harrison’s table, and Reddy came, docile.

“I want you to-night, Reddy,” said Morris in a low voice. Reddy nodded. “I want you and your motor-bike. That’s running all right, I hope?”

“Yes,” said Reddy.

“Good! Meet me down by Meadwell Station. Can’t say what time—depends on when we get away from here. Go straight home, get your bike out, and come along to pick me up. We’ll be going to Oldroyd’s first.”

Reddy merely nodded again. No saving sense of reality came to help him. He was Morris’s man, first and last, at present. Murder was a queer, impossible happening. He could picture no possible horror resulting from their expedition this evening. Perhaps if he had been asked he would have said that he expected nothing to happen. Any dreadful vague event in the future was of small importance compared with the certainty of losing Morris’s friendship on the spot by hesitation now. Morris looked at him with a smile and led him back across the room, arm in arm. It is impossible to say how Morris had acquired this happy certainty of the force of his own personality. But, with a mind wrought up to fever pitch, he was full of certainty and efficiency. There were two things which had brought him to this high level—extreme danger and the need for intrigue. Between them they had changed Morris from a rather slack lay-out clerk into a man of extreme elasticity of thought and vigour of resolution.

He passed behind Clarence, who was bent over his lettering, and leaned over Oldroyd’s shoulder as he stared rather blankly at the advertisement pasted on a sheet of foolscap which he had to redesign.

“I will be coming round to your place this evening,” said Morris in his ear. “I won’t be stopping long. Only just to call for something.”

Oldroyd turned his head and stared at him over his shoulder. Their eyes met at a range of a foot, Oldroyd’s nondescript hazel eyes staring into Morris’s lustrous brown ones. They might have posed at that moment, the two of them, for a mediæval picture—Satan muttering temptation into the ear of some surprised artisan.

“Do you understand?” asked Morris. He mouthed the words rather than said them.

Oldroyd nodded. He was fascinated too. And to him, as to Reddy, the whole business seemed too fantastic to be believable. Also, even though this feeling of improbability was not quite so numbing as in Reddy’s case, he was supported by the comfortable feeling that he, anyway, would not be involved. His mind had not the penetrative power to see any flaws in Morris’s arguments at present, and Morris had spoken plausibly enough. By the time Morris turned that magnetic stare away from him and went back to his place Oldroyd’s slow decision had been formed to join Morris in the plan. He might have changed his mind once more had he been given twenty-four hours to think it over. But as it was he had no more than two—half an hour before Harrison returned and gave them leave to go, and an hour and a half spent in travelling home and waiting for Morris to arrive.