Читать книгу The Hand of Power - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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IN the bright lexicon of Pawter, President, Chairman and Treasurer of the Pawter Intensive Publicity Services (familiarly called Pips) there was no such word as modesty.

"What most people call modesty is merely the wish that the authorship of anything nice which may be said about them in the Press, shall not be traced to them. Modesty is only a fear of ridicule. The very term, used in a newspaper interview, is evidence of blatant conceit. When a man says: 'I would rather not talk about myself' he just means that he'd rather somebody else did it; all the same, he'd like to have the proofs to correct so that, if the reporter wrote how he killed five lions, he could make it six. Modesty...!"

"Is this one of those extension lectures I read about, or merely an exposition of your philosophy?" asked the patient young man who was Pawter's solitary audience. "If it is a lecture, I am bored; if it is a mere acriomatic..."

"A which?" Pawter was startled.

"Acriomatic. Work that into the Memory ads you're doing. Drag in Aristotle—what right has he to be left out anyway? As I was saying, if you are practising for a Rotarian dinner speech, go to it. I'm your assistant, underpaid and overworked, but loyal despite. This argument started about Miss Betty Carew's association with this yer agency. I remind you in case you have forgotten."

Mr. Pawter spun round in his chair and looked over his glasses. So doing, he lowered and exposed the crown of a very bald head.

"Are you mad?" he asked gently—so gently that it might be supposed that he rather thought it likely, and that it would be best not to arouse such homicidal tendencies as lay dormant in the bosom of his hearer.

"I'm not mad, but I'm getting mighty close to the borderline," said Bill Holbrook. "What's all this to do with modesty? And by the way, how can you bring yourself to write copy for Gro-Kwik—Nature's Natural Hair Restorer, with a nut like that? Rejuvenates Tired Follicles! And you're a churchman!"

"Never in my life," said Pawter tremulously, "has a subordinate dared to speak to me as you have spoken to-day! I would be well within my rights if I fired you into the street! Why I refrain I don't know."

Bill Holbrook took a chair, fished from his pockets a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, and adjusting them to his face, looked owlishly at his employer. Bill was twenty-three and pleasantly featured, except for a nose that was slightly bent. He played football, and once a great international had used his features as a jumping-off place.

"I'm going to tell you, Father Pips," he said solemnly. "I feel you ought to know. Yesterday you fired me, to-day you fire me—you have been firing me every day for months. But I do not go. Why? Because I'm the only man in England who understands publicity. Yes, sir. The only man. You think you do, but you don't. In me you have a genius, a man who Thinks Forward. I'm the only member of the staff who is related to you, therefore I'm the only member of the staff that has the true interest of the business at heart. When you die I shall await the reading of the last will with equanimity. You can't leave me out of a controlling interest."

Pawter sighed again and swung back to his original position. Bill was his first cousin, and there were times when he wished that his aunt had never married.

"Anyway, Betty Carew is not a business proposition. I've been sitting on her doorstep waiting for a chance to speak to her, but so far she has given me the genial reception that is offered to a case of mumps in a ladies' college. When I tried to speak to her, she looked round for a policeman. Where does she come into this stunt?"

Mr. Pawter looked unutterable weariness.

"You'll discover in course of time," he said. "I can only assure you that the lady will come in."

Holbrook went back to his little office, and in his mind was a great perplexity. What had induced the girl to take this extraordinary decision? Advertising schemes and the inducements which brought well-known actresses into the advertisement columns were no mysteries to him; but this girl was not being asked to put her name to a testimonial of some excellent remedy or popular article of furniture: if she fell in with the idea, she was deliberately going out to make herself cheap.

He sat, staring with unseeing eyes at the litter on his desk, his busy mind occupied with the problem which Betty Carew's strange conduct had raised. Holbrook had no illusions about the theatrical profession; he knew something of their lives, knew something of the terrific struggle for existence which went on all the time, except among a few favourites of the public; he knew, too, how permissible it was to obtain publicity at almost any cost, but he was well aware that there was a line over which no self-respecting actor or actress would pass, and that line was far behind the place that Betty had decided to overstep in this new undertaking of hers.

And underneath and behind the grotesqueness of the scheme was a something which filled him with a vague sense of uneasiness. Somewhere, he had heard a theory expounded that life runs backward, from the end to the beginning of things; he had the sense of remembering to-morrow, and it was not a pleasant memory.

Twice before he had had the queer experience of recalling events that had not occurred. Once, when he was a reporter, he had been sent to a little Welsh village to interview a Cabinet Minister whose estate was near by. And on the Sunday morning he had gone to church to fill the dreary hours of waiting for the one train that could take him back to London. The service was over and he was strolling through the churchyard, when he stopped suddenly by the grave of a murdered woman whose husband, a lawyer, had been hanged for the crime... He knew this, though the husband was pointed out to him later in the day as a man of great respectability, whose wife had died a natural death. A year later the lawyer was arrested and died the death in Gloucester jail.

And the desk and the red-haired actress suggested something—something terrible.

"Darn my crazy brain!" muttered Bill.

He had an appointment with Laffin that evening—he hated Saturday evening appointments, but was anxious to keep this. He wanted his Sunday free, for he had planned a trip to Thames head—Bill was something of an explorer.

Clearing up some urgent work that awaited him, he was surprised by the arrival of his chief, Mr. Pawter's weakness being a hatred of all physical exercise, and Holbrook wondered why he had made the perilous journey from his palatial office to the mean abode of genius.

"I was going to tell you, Holbrook, that I wanted you to call on Mr. Lambert Stone, the lumber millionaire, on Monday before you come to the office. Stone arrives in London to-day, and I've got the rough draft of a scheme which I think might attract him. Will you fix up an appointment?"

"Lumber?" Bill Holbrook looked dubious. "I don't see there's a selling value in that."

"There's a selling value in anything, you poor, slow-witted oaf," said Pawter, mildly offensive. "Get the appointment, and then come back to me for the scheme. You're seeing the doctor, aren't you?"

Bill nodded.

"And I wish you'd find out to-night what's behind this desk stunt," said Pawter, staring out of the window and scratching his head irritably. "The desk is nothing—I think I've said that before—and I can't imagine people spending money on the proposition in the hope of getting it back. I hate to knock a client's goods, but this old desk has all the disadvantages of most and none of the attractions of some. Get Miss Carew's views on the subject."

Bill Holbrook sneered.

"Show me an actress with real views on anything, and I'll show you a professional misfit," he said cryptically, and then: "Pips, I'll tell you what is behind that desk. Murder! I smell blood! Wilful murder... maybe the crime of the century!"

Mr. Pawter's round eyes were wide open.

"It is curious that you should say that," he said. "That desk was invented by a butler who was hanged in Oxford jail for killing his wife—Laffin told me so."