“Yes, yes, I remember. That was the @panic-stricken
[email protected] story. No one else?”
“No, Mr. Jakes.”
“Well go find Hitchcock.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jakes turned his attention to his treatise. The dominant member of the new cabinet, he typed, was colorful Kingsley-Wood…
*
Nobody knew exactly at what time or through what channels word went round the Hotel Liberty that Shumble had got a story. William heard it from Corker who heard it from Pigge. Pigge had guessed it from something odd in Shumble’s manner during dinner—something abstracted, something of high excitement painfully restrained. He confided in Whelper. “He’s been distinctly rummy ever since he came back from the station. Have you noticed it?”
“Yes,” said Whelper. “It sticks out a mile. If you ask me he’s got something under his hat.”
“Just what I thought,” said Pigge gloomily.
And before bedtime everyone in the hotel knew it.
The French were furious. They went in a body to their Legation. “It is too much,” they said. “Shumble is receiving secret information from the Government. Hitchcock of course is pro-British and now, at a moment like this, when as Chairman of the Foreign Press Association he should forward our protest officially to the proper quarter, he has disappeared.”
“Gentlemen,” said the Minister. “Gentlemen. It is Saturday night. No Ishmaelite official will be available until noon on Monday.”
“The Press Bureau is draconic, arbitrary and venal; it is in the hands of a clique; we appeal for justice.”
“Certainly, without fail, on Monday afternoon”…
*
“We’ll stay awake in shifts,” said Whelper, “and listen. He may talk in his sleep.”
“I suppose you’ve searched his papers?”
“Useless. He never takes a note”…
*
Paleologue threw up his hands hopelessly.
“Have his boy bring you his message on the way to the wireless station.”
“Mr. Shumble always take it himself.”
“Well go find out what it is. I’m busy”…
*
Shumble sat in the lounge radiating importance. Throughout the evening everyone in turn sat by his side, offered him whisky and casually reminded him of past acts of generosity. He kept his own counsel. Even the Swede got wind of what was going on and left home to visit the hotel.
“Schombol,” he said, “I think you have some good news, no?”
“Me?” said Shumble. “Wish I had.”
“But forgive me please, everyone say you have some good news. Now I have to telegraph to my newspapers in Scandinavia. Will you please tell me what your news is?”
“I don’t know anything, Erik.”
“What a pity. It is so long since I sent my paper any good news.”
And he mounted his motor-cycle and drove sadly away into the rain.
*
At a banquet given in his honor Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock once modestly attributed his great success in life to the habit of “getting up earlier than the other fellow.” But this was partly metaphorical, partly false and in any case wholly relative, for journalists are as a rule late risers. It was seldom that in England, in those night-refuges they called their homes, Shumble, Whelper, Pigge or Corker reached the bathroom before ten o’clock. Nor did they in Jacksonburg, for there was no bath in the Hotel Liberty; but they and their fellows had all been awake since dawn.
This was due to many causes—the racing heart, nausea, dry mouth and smarting eyes, the false hangover produced by the vacuous mountain air; to the same symptoms of genuine hangover for, with different emotions, they had been drinking deeply the evening before in the anxiety over Shumble’s scoop; but more especially to the structural defects of the building. The rain came on sharp at sunrise and every bedroom had a leak somewhere in its iron ceiling. And with the rain and the drips came the rattle of Wenlock Jakes’s typewriter, as he hammered away at another chapter of Under the Ermine. Soon the bleak passages resounded with cries of “Boy!” “Water!” “Coffee!”
As early arrivals Shumble, Whelper and Pigge might, like the Frenchmen, have had separate rooms, but they preferred to live at close quarters and watch one another’s movements. The cinema men had had little choice. There were two rooms left; the Contacts and Relations Pioneer Coordinating Director occupied one; the rest of the outfit had the other.
“Boy!” cried Corker, standing barefoot in a dry spot at the top of the stairs. “Boy!”
“Boy!” cried Whelper.
“Boy!” cried the Frenchmen. “It is formidable. The types attend to no one except the Americans and the English.”
“They have been bribed. I saw Shumble giving money to one of the boys yesterday.”
“We must protest.”
“I have protested.”
“We must protest again. We must demonstrate.”
“Boy! Boy! Boy!” shouted everyone in that hotel, but nobody came.
In the annex, Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock slipped a raincoat over his pajamas and crept like a cat into the bushes.
*
Presently Paleologue arrived to make his morning report to his master. He met Corker at the top of the stairs. “You got to have boy for yourself in this country,” he said.
“Yes,” said Corker. “It seems I ought.”
“I fix him. I find you very good boy from Adventist Mission, read, write, speak English, sing hymns, everything.”
“Sounds like hell to me.”
“Please?”
“Oh, all right, it doesn’t matter. Send him along.”
In this way Paleologue was able to supply servants for all the newcomers. Later the passages were clustered with moon-faced mission-taught Ishmaelites. These boys had many responsibilities. They had to report their masters’ doings, morning and evening, to the secret police; they had to steal copies of their masters’ cables for Wenlock Jakes. The normal wage for domestic service was a dollar a week; the journalists paid five, but Paleologue pocketed the difference. In the meantime they formulated new and ingenious requests for cash in advance—for new clothes, funerals, weddings, fines, and entirely imaginary municipal taxes: whatever they exacted, Paleologue came to know about it and levied his share.
*
Inside the bedroom it was sunless, draughty and damp; all round there was rattling and shouting and tramping and the monotonous splash and patter and gurgle of rain. Corker’s clothing lay scattered about the room. Corker sat on his bed stirring condensed milk into his tea. “Time you were showing a leg, brother,” he said.
“Yes.”
“If you ask me we were all a bit tight last night.”
“Yes.”
“Feeling lousy?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll soon pass off when you get on your feet. Are my things in your way?”
“Yes.”
Corker lit his pipe and a frightful stench filled the room. “Don’t think much of this tobacco,” he said. “Home grown. I bought it off a nigger on the way up. Care to try some?”
“No, thanks,” said William and rose queasily from his bed.
While they dressed Corker spoke in a vein of unaccustomed pessimism. “This isn’t the kind of story I’m used to,” he said. “We aren’t getting anywhere. We’ve got to work out a routine, make contacts, dig up some news sources, jolly up the locals a bit. I don’t feel settled.”
“Is that my toothbrush you’re using?”
“Hope not. Has it got a white handle?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am. Silly mistake to make; mine’s green… but, as I was saying, we’ve got to make friends in this town. Funny thing, I don’t get that sense of popularity I expect.” He looked at himself searchingly in the single glass. “Suffer much from dandruff?”
“Not particularly.”
“I do. They say it comes from acidity. It’s a nuisance. Gets all over one’s coll
ar and one has to look smart in our job. Good appearance is half the battle.”
“D’you mind if I have my brushes?”
“Not a bit, brother, just finished with them… Between ourselves that’s always been Shumble’s trouble—bad appearance. But of course a journalist is welcome everywhere, even Shumble. That’s what’s so peculiar about this town. As a rule there is one thing you can always count on in our job—popularity. There are plenty of disadvantages I grant you, but you are liked and respected. Ring people up any hour of the day or night, butt into their houses uninvited, make them answer a string of damn fool questions when they want to do something else—they like it. Always a smile and the best of everything for the gentlemen of the Press. But I don’t feel it here. I damn well feel the exact opposite. I ask myself are we known, loved and trusted and the answer comes back @No, Corker, you are
[email protected]’
There was a knock on the door, barely audible above the general hubbub, and Pigge entered.
“Morning, chaps. Cable for Corker. It came last night. Sorry it’s been opened. They gave it to me and I didn’t notice the address.”
“Oh, no?” said Corker.
“Well, there’s nothing in it. Shumble had that query yesterday.”
Corker read: INTERNATIONAL GENDARMERIE PROPOSED PREVENT CLASH TEST REACTIONS UNNATURAL. “Crumbs they must be short of news in London. What’s Gendarmerie?”
“A sissy word for cops,” said Pigge.
“Well it’s a routine job. I suppose I must do something about it. Come round with me… We may make some contacts,” he added not very hopefully.
Mrs. Earl Russell Jackson was in the lounge. “Good morning, madam,” said Corker, “and how are you today?”
“I aches,” said Mrs. Jackson with simple dignity. “I aches terrible all round the sit-upon. It’s the damp.”
“The Press are anxious for your opinion upon a certain question, Mrs. Jackson.”
“Aw, go ask somebody else. They be coming to mend that roof just as quick as they can and they can’t come no quicker than that not for the Press nor nobody.”
“See what I mean, brother—not popular.” Then turning again to Mrs. Jackson with his most elaborate manner he said, “Mrs. Jackson you misunderstand me. This is a matter of public importance. What do the women of Ishmaelia think of the proposal to introduce a force of international police?”
Mrs. Jackson took the question badly. “I will not stand for being called a woman in my own house,” she said. “And I’ve never had the police here but once and that was when I called them myself for to take out a customer that went lunatic and hanged himself.” And she swept wrathfully away to her office and her rocking chair.
“Staunchly anti-interventionist,” said Corker. “Doyen of Jacksonburg hostesses pans police project as unwarrantable interference with sanctity of Ishmaelite home… but it’s not the way I’m used to being treated.”
They went to the front door to call a taxi. Half a dozen were waiting in the courtyard; their drivers, completely enveloped in sodden blankets, dozed on the front seats. The hotel guard prodded one of them with the muzzle of his gun. The bundle stirred; a black face appeared, then a brilliant smile. The car lurched forward through the mud.
“The morning round,” said Corker. “Where to first?”
“Why not the station to ask about the luggage?”
“Why not? Station,” he roared at the chauffeur. “Understand—station? Puff-puff.”
“All right,” said the chauffeur, and drove off at break-neck speed through the rain.
“I don’t believe this is the way,” said William.
They were bowling up the main street of Jacksonburg. A strip of tarmac ran down the middle; on either side were rough tracks for mules, men, cattle and camels; beyond these the irregular outline of the commercial quarter; a bank in shoddy concrete, a Greek provisions store in timber and tin, the Café de La Bourse, the Carnegie Library, the Ciné-Parlant, and numerous gutted sites, relics of an epidemic of arson some years back when an Insurance Company had imprudently set up shop in the city.
“I’m damn well sure it’s not,” said Corker. “Hi, you, Station, you black booby.”
The coon turned round in his seat and smiled. “All right,” he said.
The car swerved off the motor road and bounced perilously among the caravans. The chauffeur turned back, shouted opprobriously at a camel driver and regained the tarmac.
Armenian liquor, Goanese tailoring, French stationery, Italian hardware, Swiss plumbing, Indian haberdashery, the statue of the first President Jackson, the statue of the second President Jackson, the American Welfare Center, the latest and most successful innovation in Ishmaelite life—Popotakis’s Ping-Pong Parlor—sped past in the rain. The mule trains plodded by, laden with rock salt and cartridges and paraffin for the villages of the interior.
“Kidnapped,” said Corker cheerfully. “That’s what’s happened to us. What a story.”
But at last they came to a stop.
“This isn’t the station, you baboon.”
“Yes, all right.”
They were at the Swedish Consulate, Surgery, Bible and Tea Shop. Erik Olafsen came out to greet them.
“Good morning. Please to come in.”
“We told this ape to drive us to the station.”
“Yes, it is a custom here. When they have a white man they do not understand, they always drive him to me. Then I can explain. But please to come in. We are just to start our Sunday hymn singing.”
“Sorry, brother. Have to wait till next Sunday. We’ve got work to do.”
“They say Schombol has some news.”
“Not really?”
“No, not really. I asked him… but you can do no work here on Sunday. Everything is closed.”
So they found. They visited a dozen barred doors and returned disconsolately to luncheon. One native whom they questioned fled precipitately at the word “police.” That was all they could learn about local reactions.
“We’ve got to give it up for the day,” said Corker. “Reactions are easy anyway. I’ll just say that the Government will co-operate with the democracies of the world in any measures calculated to promote peace and justice, but are confident in their ability to maintain order without foreign intervention. This is going to be a day of rest for Corker.”
Shumble kept his story under his hat and furtively filed a long message—having waited for a moment when the wireless station was empty of his colleagues.
So the rain fell and the afternoon and evening were succeeded by another night and another morning.
*
William and Corker went to the Press Bureau. Doctor Benito, the director, was away but his clerk entered their names in his ledger and gave them cards of identity. They were small orange documents, originally printed for the registration of prostitutes. The space for thumb-print was now filled with a passport photograph and at the head the word “journalist” substituted in neat Ishmaelite characters.
“What sort of bloke is this Benito?” Corker asked.
“Creepy,” said Pigge.
*
They visited their Consulate, five miles out of town in the Legation compound. Here, too, they had to register and, in addition, buy a guinea stamp. The Vice-Consul was a young man with untidy ginger hair. When he took William’s passport he stared and said, “By God, you’re Beastly.”
William said, “Moke.”
These two had known each other at their private school. Corker was nonplussed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” said the Vice-Consul.
“I’m supposed to be a journalist.”
“God, how funny. Come to dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Grand.”
Outside the door Corker said, “He might have asked me too. Just the kind of contact I can do with.”
*
At lunch-time that day Shumble’s story broke.
/> Telegrams in Jacksonburg were delivered irregularly and rather capriciously, for none of the messengers could read. The usual method was to wait until half a dozen had accumulated and then send a messenger to hawk them about the most probable places until they were claimed. On precisely such an errand a bowed old warrior arrived in the dining-room of the Liberty and offered William and Corker a handful of envelopes. “Righto, old boy,” said Corker, “I’ll take charge of these.” He handed the man a tip, was kissed on the knee in return, and proceeded to glance through the bag. “One for you, one for me, one for everyone in the bunch.”
William opened his. It read: BADLY LEFT DISGUISED SOVIET AMBASSADOR RUSH FOLLOW BEAST. “Will you please translate?”
“Bad news, brother. Look at mine. ECHO SPLASHING SECRET ARRIVAL RED AGENT FLASH INTERVIEW UNNATURAL. Let’s see some more.”
He opened six before he was caught. All dealt with the same topic. The Twopence said: KINDLY INVESTIGATE AUTHENTICITY ALLEGED SPECIAL SOVIET DELEGATION STOP. CABLE DEFERRED RATE. Jakes’s was the fullest: LONDON ECHO REPORTS RUSSIAN ENVOY ARRIVED SATURDAY DISGUISED RAILWAY OFFICIAL STOP MOSCOW DENIES STOP DENY OR CONFIRM WITH DETAILS. Shumble’s said: WORLD SCOOP CONGRATULATIONS CONTINUE ECHO.
“D’you see now?” said Corker.
“I think so.”
“It’s that nasty bit of work with the beard. I knew he was going to give us trouble.”
“But he is a railway employee. I saw him in the ticket office today when I went to ask about my luggage.”
“Of course he is. But what good does that do us? Shumble’s put the story across. Now we’ve got to find a red agent or boil.”
“Or explain the mistake.”
“Risky, old boy, and unprofessional. It’s the kind of thing you can do once or twice in a real emergency but it doesn’t pay. They don’t like printing denials—naturally. Shakes public confidence in the Press. Besides it looks as if we weren’t doing our job properly. It would be too easy if every time a chap got a scoop the rest of the bunch denied it. And I will hand it to Shumble, it was a pretty idea… the beard helped of course… might have thought of it myself if I hadn’t been so angry about the luggage.”