‘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 towards everyone, 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 someone’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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow.’
‘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 someone were to sell a revolver today and then read in the papers tomorrow that someone’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 should
ers and say that probably someone 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 today? 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.
4
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 Advertising 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 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 today, 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 judgement.
‘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 weakness 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 m
ule! 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 tonight, 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-about clerk into a man of extreme elasticity of thought and vigour of resolution.