Читать книгу Murder Must Advertise. A Detective Story - Dorothy Leigh Sayers - Страница 4

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“And by the way,” said Mr. Hankin, arresting Miss Rossiter as she rose to go, “there is a new copy-writer coming in today.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Hankin?”

“His name is Bredon. I can't tell you much about him; Mr. Pym engaged him himself; but you will see that he is looked after.”

“Yes, Mr. Hankin.”

“He will have Mr. Dean's room.”

“Yes, Mr. Hankin.”

“I should think Mr. Ingleby could take him in hand and show him what to do. You might send Mr. Ingleby along if he can spare me a moment.”

“Yes, Mr. Hankin.”

“That's all. And, oh, yes! Ask Mr. Smayle to let me have the Dairyfields guard-book.”

“Yes, Mr. Hankin.”

Miss Rossiter tucked her note-book under her arm, closed the glass-panelled door noiselessly after her and tripped smartly down the corridor. Peeping through another glass-panelled door, she observed Mr. Ingleby seated on a revolving chair with his feet on the cold radiator, and talking with great animation to a young woman in green, perched on the corner of the writing-table.

“Excuse me,” said Miss Rossiter, with perfunctory civility, “but Mr. Hankin says can you spare him a moment, Mr. Ingleby?”

“If it's Tom-Boy Toffee,” replied Mr. Ingleby defensively, “it's being typed. Here! you'd better take these two bits along and make it so. That will lend an air of verisimilitude to an otherwise—”

“It isn't Tom-Boy. It's a new copy-writer.”

“What, already?” exclaimed the young woman. “Before those shoes were old! Why, they only buried little Dean on Friday.”

“Part of the modern system of push and go,” said Mr. Ingleby. “All very distressing in an old-fashioned, gentlemanly firm. Suppose I've got to put this blighter through his paces. Why am I always left with the baby?”

“Oh, rot!” said the young woman, “you've only got to warn him not to use the directors' lav., and not to tumble down the iron staircase.”

“You are the most callous woman, Miss Meteyard. Well, as long as they don't put the fellow in with me—”

“It's all right, Mr. Ingleby. He's having Mr. Dean's room.”

“Oh! What's he like?”

“Mr. Hankin said he didn't know, Mr. Pym took him on.”

“Oh, gosh! friend of the management.” Mr. Ingleby groaned.

“Then I think I've seen him,” said Miss Meteyard. “Tow-coloured, supercilious-looking blighter. I ran into him coming out of Pymmie's room yesterday. Horn-rims. Cross between Ralph Lynn and Bertie Wooster.”

“Death, where is thy sting? Well, I suppose I'd better push off and see about it.”

Mr. Ingleby lowered his feet from the radiator, prised up his slow length from the revolving chair, and prowled unhappily away.

“Oh, well, it makes a little excitement,” said Miss Meteyard.

“Oh, don't you think we've had rather too much of that lately? By the way, could I have your subscription for the wreath? You told me to remind you.”

“Yes, rather. What is it? A bob? Here's half-a-crown, and you'd better take the sweep-money out of it as well.”

“Thanks awfully, Miss Meteyard. I do hope you get a horse this time.”

“High time I did. I've been five years in this beastly office and never even been placed. I believe you wangle the draw.”

“Indeed we don't, Miss Meteyard, or we shouldn't let all the horses go to those people in the Printing. Wouldn't you like to come and draw for us this time? Miss Parton's just typing out the names.”

“All right.” Miss Meteyard scrambled down leggily and followed Miss Rossiter to the typists' room.

This was a small, inconvenient cubicle, crowded at the moment to bursting-point. A plump girl in glasses, with head tilted back and brows twisted to keep the smoke of a cigarette out of her eyes, was rattling off the names of Derby runners on her type-writer, assisted by a bosom-friend who dictated the list from the columns of the Morning Star. A languid youth in shirt-sleeves was cutting the names of sweep-subscribers from a typed sheet, and twisting the papers into secretive little screws. A thin, eager young man, squatting on an upturned waste-paper basket, was turning over the flimsies in Miss Rossiter's tray and making sarcastic comments upon the copy to a bulky, dark youth in spectacles, immersed in a novel by P. G. Wodehouse and filching biscuits from a large tin. Draped against the door-posts and blocking the entrance to all comers, a girl and another young man, who seemed to be visitors from another department, were smoking gaspers and discussing lawn-tennis.

“Hullo, angels!” said Miss Rossiter, brightly. “Miss Meteyard's going to draw for us. And there's a new copy-writer coming.”

The bulky young man glanced up to say “Poor devil!” and retreated again into his book.

“Bob for the wreath and sixpence for the sweep,” went on Miss Rossiter, scrabbling in a tin cash-box. “Has anybody got two shillings for a florin? Where's your list, Parton? Scratch Miss Meteyard off, will you? Have I had your money, Mr. Garrett?”

“No money till Saturday,” said the Wodehouse-reader.

“Hark at him!” cried Miss Parton, indignantly. “You'd think we were millionaires, the way we have to finance this department.”

“Pick me a winner,” replied Mr. Garrett, “and you can knock it off the prize-money. Hasn't that coffee come yet?”

“Have a look, Mr. Jones,” suggested Miss Parton, addressing the gentleman on the door-post, “and see if you can see the boy. Just check these runners over with me, duckie. Meteor Bright, Tooralooral, Pheidippides II, Roundabout—”

“Roundabout's scratched,” said Mr. Jones. “Here's the boy just coming.”

“Scratched? No, when? What a shame! I put him down in the Morning Star competition. Who says so?”

“Evening Banner lunch special. Slip in the stable.”

“Damn!” said Miss Rossiter, briefly. “There goes my thousand quid! Oh, well, that's life. Thank you, sonnie. Put it on the table. Did you remember the cucumber? Good boy. How much? One-and-five? Lend me a penny, Parton. There you are. Mind out a minute, Mr. Willis, do you mind? I want a pencil and rubber for the new bloke.”

“What's his name?”

“Bredon.”

“Where's he come from?”

“Hankie doesn't know. But Miss Meteyard's seen him. She says he's like Bertie Wooster in horn-rims.”

“Older, though,” said Miss Meteyard. “A well-preserved forty.”

“Oh, gosh! When's he coming?”

“'Smorning. If I'd been him I'd have put it off till tomorrow and gone to the Derby. Oh, here's Mr. Ingleby. He'll know. Coffee, Mr. Ingleby? Have you heard anything?”

“Star of Asia, Twinkletoes, Sainte-Nitouche, Duke Humphrey....”

“Forty-two,” said Mr. Ingleby. “No sugar, thanks. Never been in advertising before. Balliol.”

“Golly!” said Miss Meteyard.

“As you say. If there is one thing more repulsive than another it is Balliolity,” agreed Mr. Ingleby, who was a Trinity man.

“Bredon went to Balliol And sat at the feet of Gamaliel,”

chanted Mr. Garrett, closing his book.

“And just as he ought He cared for nought”

added Miss Meteyard. “I defy you to find another rhyme for Balliol.”

“Flittermouse, Tom Pinch, Fly-by-Night....”

“And his language was sesquipedalial.”

“It isn't sesquipedalial, it's sesquipedalian.”

“Bother!”

“Twist those papers up tight, duckie. Put them in the lid of the biscuit-tin. Damn! that's Mr. Armstrong's buzzer. Stick a saucer over my coffee. Where's my note-book?”

“....two double-faults running, so I said....”

“....I can't find the carbon of that Magnolia whole-treble....”

“....started at fifty to one....”

“Who's bagged my scissors?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Armstrong wants his Nutrax carbons....”

“....and shake 'em up well....”

“....hail you all, impale you all, jail you all....”

“Mr. Ingleby, can you spare me a moment?”

At Mr. Hankin's mildly sarcastic accents, the scene dislimned as by magic. The door-post drapers and Miss Parton's bosom-friend melted out into the passage, Mr. Willis, rising hurriedly with the tray of carbons in his hand, picked a paper out at random and frowned furiously at it, Miss Parton's cigarette dropped unostentatiously to the floor, Mr. Garrett, unable to get rid of his coffee-cup, smiled vaguely and tried to look as though he had picked it up by accident and didn't know it was there, Miss Meteyard, with great presence of mind, put the sweep counterfoils on a chair and sat on them, Miss Rossiter, clutching Mr. Armstrong's carbons in her hand, was able to look businesslike, and did so. Mr. Ingleby alone, disdaining pretence, set down his cup with a slightly impudent smile and advanced to obey his chief's command.

“This,” said Mr. Hankin, tactfully blind to all evidences of disturbance, “is Mr. Bredon. You will—er—show him what he has to do. I have had the Dairyfields guard-books sent along to his room. You might start him on margarine. Er—I don't think Mr. Ingleby was up in your time, Mr. Bredon—he was at Trinity. Your Trinity, I mean, not ours.” (Mr. Hankin was a Cambridge man.)

Mr. Bredon extended a well-kept hand.

“How do you do?”

“How do you do?” echoed Mr. Ingleby. They gazed at one another with the faint resentment of two cats at their first meeting. Mr. Hankin smiled kindly at them both.

“And when you've produced some ideas on margarine, Mr. Bredon, bring them along to my room and we'll go over them.”

“Right-ho!” said Mr. Bredon, simply.

Mr. Hankin smiled again and padded gently away.

“Well, you'd better know everybody,” said Mr. Ingleby, rapidly. “Miss Rossiter and Miss Parton are our guardian angels—type our copy, correct our grammar, provide us with pencils and paper and feed us on coffee and cake. Miss Parton is the blonde and Miss Rossiter the brunette. Gentlemen prefer blondes but personally I find them both equally seraphic.”

Mr. Bredon bowed.

“Miss Meteyard—of Somerville. One of the brighter ornaments of our department. She makes the vulgarest limericks ever recited within these chaste walls.”

“Then we shall be friends,” said Mr. Bredon cordially.

“Mr. Willis on your right, Mr. Garrett on your left—both comrades in affliction. That is the whole department, except Mr. Hankin and Mr. Armstrong who are directors, and Mr. Copley, who is a man of weight and experience and does not come and frivol in the typists' room. He goes out for his elevenses, and assumes seniority though he hath it not.”

Mr. Bredon grasped the hands extended to him and murmured politely.

“Would you like to be in on the Derby sweep?” inquired Miss Rossiter, with an eye to the cash-box. “You're just in time for the draw.”

“Oh, rather,” said Mr. Bredon. “How much?”

“Sixpence.”

“Oh, yes, rather. I mean, it's jolly good of you. Of course, absolutely—must be in on the jolly old sweep, what?”

“That brings the first prize up to a pound precisely,” said Miss Rossiter, with a grateful sigh. “I was afraid I should have to take two tickets myself. Type Mr. Bredon's for him, Parton. B,R,E,D,O,N—like summer-time on Bredon?”

“That's right.”

Miss Parton obligingly typed the name and added another blank ticket to the collection in the biscuit-box.

“Well, I suppose I'd better take you along to your dog-kennel,” said Mr. Ingleby, with gloom.

“Right-ho!” said Mr. Bredon. “Oh, rather. Yes.”

“We're all along this corridor,” added Mr. Ingleby, leading the way. “You'll find your way about in time. That's Garrett's room and that's Willis's, and this is yours, between Miss Meteyard and me. That iron staircase opposite me goes down to the floor below; mostly group managers and conference rooms. Don't fall down it, by the way. The man whose room you've got tumbled down it last week and killed himself.”

“No, did he?” said Mr. Bredon, startled.

“Bust his neck and cracked his skull,” said Mr. Ingleby. “On one of those knobs.”

“Why do they put knobs on staircases?” expostulated Mr. Bredon. “Cracking fellows' skulls for them? It's not right.”

“No, it isn't,” said Miss Rossiter, arriving with her hands full of scribbling-blocks and blotting-paper. “They're supposed to prevent the boys from sliding down the hand-rail, but it's the stairs themselves that are so—oh, I say, push on. There's Mr. Armstrong coming up. They don't like too much being said about the iron staircase.”

“Well, here you are,” said Mr. Ingleby, adopting this advice. “Much the same as the rest, except that the radiator doesn't work very well. Still, that won't worry you just at present. This was Dean's room.”

“Chap who fell downstairs?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Bredon gazed round the small apartment, which contained a table, two chairs, a rickety desk and a bookshelf, and said:

“Oh!”

“It was awful,” said Miss Rossiter.

“It must have been,” agreed Mr. Bredon, fervently.

“Mr. Armstrong was just giving me dictation when we heard the most frightful crash. He said, 'Good God, what's that?' I thought it must be one of the boys, because one of them fell down last year carrying an Elliot-Fisher type-writer and it sounded exactly like it, only worse. And I said, 'I think one of the boys must have fallen downstairs, Mr. Armstrong,' and he said, 'Careless little devil,' and went on dictating and my hand was so shaky I could hardly make my outlines and then Mr. Ingleby ran past and Mr. Daniels' door opened and then we heard the most terrific shriek, and Mr. Armstrong said, 'Better go and see what's happened,' so I went out and looked down and I couldn't see anything because there was such a bunch of people standing round and then Mr. Ingleby came tearing up, with such a look on his face—you were as white as a sheet, Mr. Ingleby, you really were.”

“Possibly,” said Mr. Ingleby, a little put out. “Three years in this soul-searing profession have not yet robbed me of all human feeling. But that will come in time.”

“Mr. Ingleby said, 'He's killed himself!' And I said, 'Who?' and he said, 'Mr. Dean,' and I said, 'You don't mean that,' and he said, 'I'm afraid so,' and I went back to Mr. Armstrong and said, 'Mr. Dean's killed himself,' and he said, 'What do you mean, killed himself?' and then Mr. Ingleby came in and Mr. Armstrong gave one look at him and went out and I went down by the other staircase and saw them carrying Mr. Dean along to the board-room and his head was all hanging sideways.”

“Does this kind of thing happen often?” inquired Mr. Bredon.

“Not with such catastrophic results,” replied Mr. Ingleby, “but that staircase is definitely a death-trap.”

“I fell down it myself one day,” said Miss Rossiter, “and tore the heels off both my shoes. It was awfully awkward, because I hadn't another pair in the place and—”

“I've drawn a horse, darlings!” announced Miss Meteyard, arriving without ceremony. “No luck for you, Mr. Bredon, I'm afraid.”

“I always was unlucky.”

“You'll feel unluckier still after a day with Dairyfields Margarine,” said Mr. Ingleby, gloomily. “Nothing for me, I suppose?”

“Nothing, I'm afraid. Of course Miss Rawlings has drawn the favourite—she always does.”

“I hope it breaks its beastly leg,” said Mr. Ingleby. “Come in, Tallboy, come in. Do you want me? Don't mind butting in on Mr. Bredon. He will soon become used to the idea that his room is a public place within the meaning of the act. This is Mr. Tallboy, group-manager for Nutrax and a few other wearisome commodities. Mr. Bredon, our new copy-writer.”

“How do you do?” said Mr. Tallboy, briefly. “Look here, about this Nutrax 11-inch double. Can you possibly cut out about thirty words?”

“No, I can't,” said Mr. Ingleby. “I've cut it to the bone already.”

“Well, I'm afraid you'll have to. There isn't room for all this guff with a two-line sub-head.”

“There's plenty of room for it.”

“No, there isn't. We've got to get in the panel about the Fifty-six Free Chiming Clocks.”

“Damn the clocks and the panel! How do they expect to display all that in a half-double?”

“Dunno, but they do. Look here, can't we take out this bit about 'When your nerves begin to play tricks on you,' and start off with 'Nerves need Nutrax'?”

“Armstrong liked that bit about playing tricks. Human appeal and all that. No, take out that rot about the patent spring-cap bottle.”

“They won't stand for dropping that,” said Miss Meteyard. “That's their pet invention.”

“Do they think people buy nerve-food for the sake of the bottle? Oh, well! I can't do it straight away. Hand it over.”

“The printer wants it by two o'clock,” said Mr. Tallboy, dubiously.

Mr. Ingleby damned the printer, seized the proof and began cutting the copy, uttering offensive ejaculations between his teeth.

“Of all beastly days of the week,” he observed, “Tuesday is the foulest. There's no peace till we get this damned 11-inch double off our chests. There! I've cut out twenty-two words, and you'll have to make it do. You can take that 'with' up into the line above and save a whole line, and that gives you the other eight words.”

“All right, I'll try,” agreed Mr. Tallboy. “Anything for a quiet life. It'll look a bit tight, though.”

“Wish I was tight,” said Mr. Ingleby. “Take it away, for God's sake, before I murder anybody.”

“I'm going, I'm going,” said Mr. Tallboy, and vanished hastily. Miss Rossiter had departed during the controversy, and Miss Meteyard now took herself out of the way, remarking, “If Pheidippides wins, you shall have a cake for tea.”

“Now we'd better start you off,” observed Mr. Ingleby. “Here's the guard-book. You'd better have a look through it to see the kind of thing, and then think up some headlines. Your story is, of course, that Dairyfields' 'Green Pastures' Margarine is everything that the best butter ought to be and only costs ninepence a pound. And they like a cow in the picture.”

“Why? Is it made of cow-fat?”

“Well, I daresay it is, but you mustn't say so. People wouldn't like the idea. The picture of the cow suggests the taste of butter, that's all. And the name—Green Pastures—suggests cows, you see.”

“It suggests niggers to me,” said Mr. Bredon. “The play, you know.”

“You mustn't put niggers in the copy,” retorted Mr. Ingleby. “Nor, of course, religion. Keep Psalm 23 out of it. Blasphemous.”

“I see. Just something about 'Better than Butter and half the price.' Simple appeal to the pocket.”

“Yes, but you mustn't knock butter. They sell butter as well.”

“Oh!”

“You can say it's as good as butter.”

“But in that case,” objected Mr. Bredon, “what does one find to say in favour of butter? I mean, if the other stuff's as good and doesn't cost so much, what's the argument for buying butter?”

“You don't need an argument for buying butter. It's a natural, human instinct.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Anyway, don't bother about butter. Just concentrate on Green Pastures Margarine. When you've got a bit done, you take it along and get it typed, and then you buzz off to Mr. Hankin with the result. See? Are you all right now?”

“Yes, thanks,” said Mr. Bredon, looking thoroughly bewildered.

“And I'll push along about 1 o'clock and show you the decentest place for lunch.”

“Thanks frightfully.”

“Well, cheerio!” Mr. Ingleby returned to his own room.

“He won't stay the course,” he said to himself. “Goes to a damned good tailor, though. I wonder—”

He shrugged his shoulders and sat down to concoct a small, high-class folder about Slider's Steel Office Tables.

Mr. Bredon, left alone, did not immediately attack the subject of margarine. Like a cat, which, in his soft-footed inquisitiveness, he rather resembled, he proceeded to make himself acquainted with his new home. There was not very much to see in it. He opened the drawer in his writing-table and found a notched and inky ruler, some bitten-looking pieces of india-rubber, a number of bright thoughts on tea and margarine scribbled on scraps of paper, and a broken fountain-pen. The bookcase contained a dictionary, a repellent volume entitled Directory of Directors, a novel by Edgar Wallace, a pleasingly got-up booklet called All about Cocoa, Alice in Wonderland, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, the Globe edition of the Works of Wm. Shakespeare, and five odd numbers of the Children's Encyclopædia. The interior of the sloping desk offered more scope for inquiry; it was filled with ancient and dusty papers, including a Government Report on the Preservatives in Food (Restrictions) Act of 1926, a quantity of rather (in every sense) rude sketches by an amateur hand, a bundle of pulls of advertisements for Dairyfields commodities, some private correspondence and some old bills. Mr. Bredon, dusting fastidious fingers, turned from this receptacle, inventoried a hook and a coat-hanger on the wall and a battered paper-file in a corner, and sat down in the revolving-chair before the table. Here, after a brief glance at a paste-pot, a pair of scissors, a new pencil and a blotting-pad, two scribbling-blocks and a grubby cardboard box-lid full of oddments, he propped up the Dairyfields guard-book before him, and fell to studying his predecessor's masterpieces on the subject of Green Pastures Margarine.

An hour later, Mr. Hankin pushed open the door and looked in upon him.

“How are you getting on?” he inquired kindly. Mr. Bredon sprang to his feet.

“Not frightfully well, I'm afraid. I don't seem to get the atmosphere altogether, if you follow me.”

“It will come,” said Mr. Hankin. He was a helpfully-minded man, who believed that new copy-writers throve on encouragement. “Let me see what you are doing. You are starting with the headlines? Quite right. The headline is more than half the battle, IF YOU WERE A COW—no, no, I'm afraid we mustn't call the customer a cow. Besides, we had practically the same headline in—let me see—about 1923, I think. Mr. Wardle put it up, you'll find it in the last guard-book but three. It went 'IF YOU KEPT A COW IN THE KITCHEN you could get no better bread-spread than G. P. Margarine'—and so on. That was a good one. Caught the eye, made a good picture, and told the whole story in a sentence.”

Mr. Bredon bowed his head, as one who hears the Law and the Prophets. The copy-chief ran a thoughtful pencil over the scribbled list of headlines, and ticked one of them.

“I like that.

BIGGER AND BUTTER

VALUE FOR MONEY

That has the right feel about it. You might write copy for that, and perhaps for this one,

YOU'D BE READY TO BET

IT WAS BUTTER—

though I'm not quite sure about it. These Dairyfields people are rather strait-laced about betting.”

“Oh, are they? What a pity! I'd done several about that. 'HAVE A BIT ON—' Don't you like that one?”

Mr. Hankin shook his head regretfully.

“I'm afraid that's too direct. Encouraging the working classes to waste their money.”

“But they all do it—why, all these women like a little flutter.”

“I know, I know. But I'm sure the client wouldn't stand for it. You'll soon find that the biggest obstacle to good advertising is the client. They all have their fads. That headline would do for Darling's, but it won't do for Dairyfields. We did very well with a sporting headline in '26—'PUT YOUR SHIRT ON Darling's Non-collapsible Towel-Horse'—sold 80,000 in Ascot week. Though that was partly accident, because we mentioned a real horse in the copy and it came in at 50 to 1, and all the women who'd won money on it rushed out and bought Non-collapsible Towel-Horses out of sheer gratitude. The public's very odd.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Bredon. “They must be. There seems to be more in advertising than, so to speak, meets the eye.”

“There is,” said Mr. Hankin, a little grimly. “Well, get some copy written and bring it along to me. You know where to find my room?”

“Oh, yes—at the end of the corridor, near the iron staircase.”

“No, no, that's Mr. Armstrong. At the other end of the corridor, near the other staircase—not the iron staircase. By the way—”

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Mr. Hankin, vaguely. “That is to say—no, nothing.”

Mr. Bredon gazed after his retreating figure, and shook his fair head in a meditative manner. Then, applying himself to his task, he wrote out, rather quickly, a couple of paragraphs in praise of margarine and wandered out with them. Turning to the right, he paused opposite the door of Ingleby's room and stared irresolutely at the iron staircase. As he stood there, the glass door of a room on the opposite side of the corridor opened and a middle-aged man shot out. Seeing Bredon, he paused in his rush for the stairhead and inquired:

“Do you want to know how to get anywhere or anything?”

“Oh! thanks awfully. No—I mean, yes. I'm the new copy-writer. I'm looking for the typists' room.”

“Other end of the passage.”

“Oh, I see, thanks frightfully. This place is rather confusing. Where does this staircase go to?”

“Down to a whole lot of departments—mostly group-managers' rooms and board-rooms and Mr. Pym's room and several of the Directors' rooms and the Printing.”

“Oh, I see. Thanks ever so. Where does one wash?”

“That's downstairs too. I'll show you if you like.”

“Oh, thanks—thanks most awfully.”

The other man plunged down the steep and rattling spiral as though released by a spring. Bredon followed more gingerly.

“A bit precipitous, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is. You'd better be careful. One fellow out of your department smashed himself up here the other day.”

“No, really?”

“Broke his neck. Dead when we picked him up.”

“No, did he? was he? How on earth did he come to do that? Couldn't he see where he was going?”

“Slipped, I expect. Must have been going too fast. There's nothing really wrong with the staircase. I've never had an accident. It's very well-lit.”

“Well-lit?” Mr. Bredon gaped vaguely at the skylight and up and down the passage, surrounded, like the one on the floor above, with glass partitions. “Oh, yes, to be sure. It's very well-lit. Of course he must have slipped. Dashed easy thing to slip on a staircase. Did he have nails in his shoes?”

“I don't know. I wasn't noticing his shoes. I was thinking about picking up the pieces.”

“Did you pick him up?”

“Well, I heard the racket when he went down, and rushed out and got there one of the first. My name's Daniels, by the way.”

“Oh, is it? Daniels, oh, yes. But didn't it come out at the inquest about his shoes?”

“I don't remember anything about it.”

“Oh! then I suppose he didn't have nails. I mean, if he had, somebody would have mentioned it. I mean, it would be a sort of excuse, wouldn't it?”

“Excuse for whom?” demanded Daniels.

“For the firm; I mean, when people put up staircases and other people come tumbling down them, the insurance people generally want to know why. At least, I'm told so. I've never fallen down any staircases myself—touch wood.”

“You'd better not try,” retorted Daniels, evading the question of insurance. “You'll find the wash-place through that door and down the passage on the left.”

“Oh, thanks frightfully.”

“Not at all.”

Mr. Daniels darted away into a room full of desks, leaving Mr. Bredon to entangle himself in a heavy swing door.

In the lavatory, Bredon encountered Ingleby.

“Oh!” said the latter. “You've found your way. I was told off to show you, but I forgot.”

“Mr. Daniels showed me. Who's he?”

“Daniels? He's a group-manager. Looks after a bunch of clients—Sliders and Harrogate Bros, and a few more. Sees to the lay-outs and sends the stereos down to the papers and all that. Not a bad chap.”

“He seems a bit touchy about the iron staircase. I mean, he was quite matey till I suggested that the insurance people would want to look into that fellow's accident—and then he kind of froze on me.”

“He's been a long time in the firm and doesn't like any nasturtiums cast at it. Certainly not by a new bloke. As a matter of fact, it's better not to throw one's weight about here till one's been ten years or so in the place. It's not encouraged.”

“Oh? Oh, thanks awfully for telling me.”

“This place is run like a Government office,” went on Ingleby. “Hustle's not wanted and initiative and curiosity are politely shown the door.”

“That's right,” put in a pugnacious-looking red-headed man, who was scrubbing his fingers with pumice-stone as though he meant to take the skin off. “I asked them for £50 for a new lens—and what was the answer? Economy, please, in all departments—the Whitehall touch, eh?—and yet they pay you fellows to write more-you-spend-more-you-save copy! However, I shan't be here long, that's one comfort.”

“This is Mr. Prout, our photographer,” said Ingleby. “He has been on the point of leaving us for the last five years, but when it comes to the point he realizes that we couldn't do without him and yields to our tears and entreaties.”

“Tcha!” said Mr. Prout.

“The management think Mr. Prout so precious,” went on Ingleby, “that they have set his feet in a large room—”

“That you couldn't swing a kitten in,” said Mr. Prout, “and no ventilation. Murder, that's what they do here. Black holes of Calcutta and staircases that break people's heads open. What we want in this country is a Mussolini to organize trade conditions. But what's the good of talking? All the same, one of these days, you'll see.”

“Mr. Prout is our tame firebrand,” observed Ingleby, indulgently. “You coming up, Bredon?”

“Yes. I've got to take this stuff to be typed.”

“Right-ho! Here you are. Round this way and up this staircase by the lift, through the Dispatching and here you are—right opposite the home of British Beauty. Children, here's Mr. Bredon with a nice bit of copy for you.”

“Hand it here,” said Miss Rossiter, “and oh! Mr. Bredon, do you mind putting down your full name and address on this card—they want it downstairs for the file.”

Bredon took the card obediently.

“Block letters please,” added Miss Rossiter, glancing with some dismay at the sheets of copy she had just received.

“Oh, do you think my handwriting's awful? I always think it's rather neat, myself. Neat, but not gaudy. However, if you say so—”

“Block letters,” repeated Miss Rossiter, firmly. “Hullo! here's Mr. Tallboy. I expect he wants you, Mr. Ingleby.”

“What, again?”

“Nutrax have cancelled that half-double,” announced Mr. Tallboy with gloomy triumph. “They've just sent up from the conference to say that they want something special to put up against the new Slumbermalt campaign, and Mr. Hankin says will you get something out and let him have it in half an hour.”

Ingleby uttered a loud yell, and Bredon, laying down the index-card, gazed at him open-mouthed.

“Damn and blast Nutrax,” said Ingleby. “May all its directors get elephantiasis, locomotor ataxy and ingrowing toe-nails!”

“Oh, quite,” said Tallboy. “You'll let us have something, won't you? If I can get it passed before 3 o'clock the printer—Hullo!”

Mr. Tallboy's eye, roving negligently round, had fallen on Bredon's index-card. Miss Rossiter's glance followed his. Neatly printed on the card stood the one word