“Granted,” said Mr. Harris, “fascinating young fellows like you are privileged to carry all before them. Ha, ha, ha! I saw you doing the polite to Miss Rossiter–getting on like a house afire, eh?”
Mr. Smayle smirked deprecatingly.
“Wouldn't you like three guesses at our conversation?” he suggested. “One milk and no sugar and one milk and sugar, Mrs. J., please.”
“Three's two too many,” replied Mr. Harris. “I can tell you. You were talking about Miss Rossiter and Mr. Smayle, hey? Finest subjects of conversation in the world–to Mr. Smayle and Miss Rossiter, hey?”
“Well, you're wrong,” said Mr. Smayle, triumphantly. “We were discussing another member of this community. The new copy-writer, in fact. Miss Rossiter was saying he was potty.”
“They're all potty in that department, if you ask me,” said Mr. Harris, waggling his chins. “Children. Arrested development.”
“It looks like it,” agreed Mr. Smayle. “Crosswords I am not surprised at, for everybody does them, nor drawing nursery pictures, but playing with catapults on the roof is really childish. Though what with Miss Meteyard bringing her Yo-Yo to the office with her–”
“I'll tell you what it is, Smayle,” pronounced Mr. Harris, taking his colleague by the lapel and prodding him with his forefinger, “it's all this University education. What does it do? It takes a boy, or a young woman for that matter, and keeps him in leading-strings in the playground when he ought to be ploughing his own furrow in the face of reality–Hullo, Mr. Bredon! Was that your toe? Beg pardon, I'm sure. This room's too small for these social gatherings. I hear you are accustomed to seek the wide, open spaces on the roof.”
“Oh, yes. Fresh air and all that, you know. Exercise. Do you know, I've been taking pot-shots at the sparrows with a catapult. Frightfully good training for the eye and that sort of thing. Come up one day and we'll have a competition.”
“Not for me, thanks,” replied Mr. Harris. “Getting too old for that kind of thing. Though when I was a boy I remember putting a pebble through my old aunt's cucumber-frame. Lord! how she did scold, to be sure!”
Mr. Harris suddenly looked rather wistful.
“I haven't had a catapult in my hand for thirty years, I don't suppose,” he added.
“Then it's time you took it up again.” Mr. Bredon half pulled a tangle of stick and rubber from his side-pocket and pushed it back again, with a wink and a grimace at the back of Mr. Pym, who now came into view, talking condescendingly to a lately-joined junior. “Between you and me, Harris, don't you find this place a bit wearisome at times?”
“Wearisome?” put in Mr. Tallboy, extricating himself from the crowd at the table, and nearly upsetting Mr. Smayle's two cups of tea, now at length achieved, “wearisome? You people don't know the meaning of the word. Nobody but a lay-out man knows what a lay-out man's feelings is.”
“You should frivol with us,” said Mr. Bredon. “If the lay-out lays you out, rejuvenate your soul in Roof Revels with Copy-writers. I bagged a starling this morning.”
“What do you mean, bagged a starling?”
“Father, I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little catapult. But if it's found,” added Mr. Bredon earnestly, “I expect they will lay the blame on the canteen cat.”
“–apult,” said Mr. Harris. He looked at Mr. Tallboy to see if this play upon words had been appreciated, and seeing that that gentleman looked more than ordinarily blank and unreceptive, he proceeded to rub it in.
“Like the old joke, eh? 'O take a pill! O take a pill! O take a pilgrim home!'”
“What do you say?” asked Mr. Tallboy, frowning in the effort to concentrate.
“O blame the cat, don't you see,” persisted Mr. Harris, “O blame the cat! O blame the catapult! Got me?”
“Ha, ha! very good!” said Mr. Tallboy.
“There was another,” Mr. Harris went on, “O for a man! O for a–”
“Are you a good hand with a catapult, Tallboy?” inquired Mr. Bredon, rather hastily, as though he feared something might explode unless he caused a diversion.
“I haven't the eye for it.” Mr. Tallboy shook his head, regretfully.
“Eye for what?” demanded Miss Rossiter.
“For a catapult.”
“Oh, go on, Mr. Tallboy! And you such a tennis champion!”
“It's not quite the same thing,” explained Mr. Tallboy.
“A games' eye is a games' eye, surely!”
“An eye's an eye for a' that,” said Mr. Harris, rather vaguely. “Ever done anything at darts, Mr. Bredon?”
“I won the pewter pot three years running at the Cow and Pump,” replied that gentleman, proudly. “With right of free warren–I mean free beer every Friday night for a twelvemonth. It came rather expensive, though, because every time I had my free pot of beer I had to stand about fifteen to the pals who came to see me drink it. So I withdrew myself from the competition and confined myself to giving exhibition displays.”
“What's that about darts?”
Mr. Daniels had roamed into view. “Have you ever seen young Binns throw darts? Really quite remarkable.”
“I haven't yet the pleasure of Mr. Binns' acquaintance,” acknowledged Mr. Bredon. “I am ashamed to say that there are still members of this great staff unknown to me except by sight. Which, of all the merry faces I see flitting about the passages, is the youthful Mr. Binns?”
“You wouldn't have seen him, I don't expect,” said Miss Rossiter. “He helps Mr. Spender in the Vouchers. Go along there one day and ask for a back number of some obscure periodical, and Mr. Binns will be sent to fetch it. He's a terrific dab at any sort of game.”
“Except bridge,” said Mr. Daniels, with a groan. “I drew him one night at a tournament–you remember, Miss Rossiter, the last Christmas party but two, and he went three no trumps on the ace of spades singleton, five hearts to the king, queen and–”
“What a memory you have, Mr. Daniels! You'll never forget or forgive those three no trumps. Poor Mr. Binns! He must miss Mr. Dean–they often lunched together.”
Mr. Bredon seemed to pay more attention to this remark than it deserved, for he looked at Miss Rossiter as though he were about to ask her a question, but the conclave was broken up by the arrival of Mrs. Johnson, who, having served out the tea and handed the teapot over to the canteen cook felt that the time had come for her to join in the social side of the event. She was a large, personable widow, with a surprising quantity of auburn hair and a high complexion, and being built on those majestic lines was, inevitably and unrelentingly, arch.
“Well, well,” she said, brightly. “And how is Mr. Daniels today?”
Mr. Daniels, having suffered this method of address for nearly twelve years, bore up tolerably well under it, and merely replied that he was quite well.
“This is the first time you have been at one of our monthly gatherings, Mr. Bredon,” pursued the widow. “You're supposed to make the acquaintance of the rest of the staff, you know, but I see you haven't strayed far from your own department. Ah, well, when we're fat and forty”–here Mrs. Johnson giggled–“we can't expect the same attention from the gentlemen that these young things get.”
“I assure you,” said Mr. Bredon, “that nothing but an extreme awe of your authority has hitherto prevented me from forcing my impertinent attentions upon you. To tell you the truth, I've been misbehaving myself, and I expect you would give me a rap over the knuckles if you knew what I'd been doing.”
“Not unless you've been upsetting my boys,” returned Mrs. Johnson, “the young scamps! Take your eye off them a minute and they're up to their games. Would you believe it, that little wretch they call Ginger brought a Yo-Yo to the office with him and broke the window in the boys' room practising 'Round the World' in his lunch-hour. That'll come out of young Ginger's wages.”
“I'll pay up when I break a window,” promised Mr. Bredon, handsomely. “I shall say: I did it with my little catapult–”
“Catapult!
” cried Mrs. Johnson, “I've had quite enough of catapults. There was that Ginger, not a month ago–Let me catch you at it once again, I said.”
Mr. Bredon, with raised and twisted eyebrows, exhibited his toy.
“You've been at my desk, Mr. Bredon!”
“Indeed I have not; I shouldn't dare,” protested the accused. “I'm far too pure-minded to burgle a lady's desk.”
“I should hope so,” said Mr. Daniels. “Mrs. Johnson keeps all her letters from her admirers in that desk.”
“That's quite enough of that, Mr. Daniels. But I really did think for a moment that was Ginger's catapult, but I see now it's a bit different.”
“Have you still got that poor child's catapult? You are a hard-hearted woman.”
“I have to be.”
“That's bad luck on all of us,” said Mr. Bredon. “Look here, let the kid have it back. I like that boy. He says 'Morning, sir,' in a tone that fills me with a pleasant conceit of myself. And I like red hair. To oblige me, Mrs. Johnson, let the child have his lethal weapon.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Johnson, yielding, “I'll hand it over to you, Mr. Bredon, and if any more windows are broken it's you will be responsible. Come along to me when the tea-party's over. Now I must go and talk to that other new member.”
She bustled away, no doubt to tell Mr. Newbolt, Mr. Hamperley, Mr. Sidebotham, Miss Griggs and Mr. Woodhurst about the childish proclivities of copy-writers. The tea-party dwindled to its hour's end, when Mr. Pym, glancing at the Greenwich-controlled electric clock-face on the wall, bustled to the door, casting vague smiles at all and sundry as he went. The chosen twenty, released from durance, surged after him into the corridor. Mrs. Johnson found Mr. Bredon's slim form drooping deprecatingly beside her.
“Shall I come for the catapult before we both forget about it?”
“Certainly, if you like; you are in a hurry,” said Mrs. Johnson.
“It promises me a few more minutes in your company,” said Mr. Bredon.
“You are a flatterer,” said Mrs. Johnson, not altogether ill-pleased. After all, she was not very much older than Mr. Bredon, and a plump widowhood has its appeal. She led the way upstairs to the Dispatching department, took a bunch of keys from her handbag and opened a drawer.
“You're careful with your keys, I see. Secrets in the drawer and all that, I suppose?”
“Stamp-money, that's all,” said Mrs. Johnson, “and any odds and ends I have to confiscate. Not but what anybody might get at my keys if they wanted to, because I often leave my bag on the desk for a few moments. But we've got a very honest set of boys here.”
She lifted out a sheet of blotting-paper and a cash-box, and began to rummage at the back of the drawer. Mr. Bredon detained her by laying his left hand on hers.
“What a pretty ring you're wearing.”
“Do you like it? It belonged to my mother. Garnets, you know. Old-fashioned, but quaint, don't you think?”
“A pretty ring, and it suits the hand,” said Mr. Bredon, gallantly. He held the hand pensively in his. “Allow me.” He slipped his right hand into the drawer and brought out the catapult. “This appears to be the engine of destruction–a good, strong one, from the look of it.”
“Have you cut your finger, Mr. Bredon?”
“It's nothing; my penknife slipped and it's opened up again. But I think it has stopped bleeding.”
Mr. Bredon unwound his handkerchief from his right hand, wrapped it carelessly round the catapult, and dropped both together into his pocket. Mrs. Johnson inspected the finger he held out to her.
“You'd better have a bit of sticking-plaster for that,” she pronounced. “Wait a moment, and I'll get you some from the first-aid cupboard.” She took up her keys and departed. Mr. Bredon, whistling thoughtfully to himself, looked round. On a bench at the end of the room sat four messenger-boys, waiting to be sent upon any errand that might present itself. Conspicuous among them was Ginger Joe, his red head bent over the pages of the latest Sexton Blake.
“Ginger!”
“Yessir.”
The boy ran up and stood expectantly by the desk.
“When do you get off duty tonight?”
“'Bout a quarter to six, sir, when I've taken the letters down and cleared up here.”
“Come along then and find me in my room. I've got a small job for you. You need not say anything about it. Just a private matter.”
“Yessir.” Ginger grinned confidentially. A message to a young lady, his experience told him. Mr. Bredon waved him back to his bench as Mrs. Johnson's footsteps approached.
The sticking-plaster was fixed in its place.
“And now,” said Mrs. Johnson, playfully, “you must run away, Mr. Bredon. I see Mr. Tallboy's got a little spot of trouble for me, and I've got fifty stereos to pack and dispatch.”
“I want this got down to the printer urgently,” said Mr. Tallboy, approaching with a large envelope.
“Cedric!” cried Mrs. Johnson.
A boy ran up. Another lad, arriving from the staircase, dumped a large tray full of stereo-blocks on the desk. The interlude was over. Mrs. Johnson addressed herself briskly to the important task of seeing that the right block went to the right newspaper, and that all were safely packed in corrugated cardboard and correctly stamped.
Punctually at a quarter to six, Ginger Joe presented himself at Mr. Bredon's door. The office was almost empty; the cleaners had begun their rounds, and the chink of pails, the slosh of soap and water and the whirr of the vacuum-cleaner resounded through the deserted corridors.
“Come in, Ginger; is this your catapult?”
“Yessir.”
“It's a good one. Made it yourself?”
“Yessir.”
“Good shot with it?”
“Pretty fair, sir.”
“Like to have it back?”
“Yes, please, sir.”
“Well, don't touch it for the moment. I want to see whether you're the sort of fellow to be trusted with a catapult.”
Ginger grinned a little sheepishly.
“Why did Mrs. Johnson take it away from you?”
“We ain't supposed to carry them sort of things in our uniform pockets, sir. Mrs. Johnson caught me a-showin' it to the other fellows, sir, and constickated it.”
“Confiscated.”
“Confiscated it, sir.”
“I see. Had you been shooting with it in the office, Ginger?”
“No, sir.”
“H'm. You're the bright lad who's broken a window, aren't you?”
“Yessir. But that wasn't with a catapult. It was a Yo-Yo, sir.”
“Quite so. You're sure you've never used a catapult in the office?”
“Oh, no, sir, never, sir.”
“What made you bring this thing to the office at all?”
“Well, sir–” Ginger stood on one leg. “I'd been telling the other chaps about me shooting me Aunt Emily's tom-cat, sir, and they wanted to see it, sir.”
“You're a dangerous man, Ginger. Nothing is safe from you. Tom-cats and windows and maiden aunts–they're all your victims, aren't they?”
“Yessir.” Understanding this to be in the nature of a jest, Joe sniggered happily.
“How long ago did this bereavement take place, Ginger?”
“Bereavement, sir? Did you mean Auntie's cat?”
“No, I meant, how long ago was your catapult confiscated?”
“Bit over a month ago, it would be, sir.”
“About the middle of May?”
“That's right, sir.”
“And you've never laid hands on it since?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you any other catapult?”
“No, sir.”
“Has any of the other boys got a catapult?”
“No, sir.”
“Or a sling, or any other infernal machine for projecting stones?”
“No, sir; leastways, not here, sir. Tom Faggott has a pea-shooter at home, sir.”
“I said stones, not peas. Did you ever shoot with this, or any other catapult, on the roof?”
“On the roof of the office, sir?”
“Yes.”
“No, sir.”
“Or anybody else that you know of?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Nobody that I know of, sir.”
“Now, look here, son; I've got an idea that you're a straight sort of fellow, that mightn't like to split on a pal. You're quite sure there isn't anything at all about this catapult that you know and don't like to tell me? Because, if there is, I shall quite understand, and I'll explain to you exactly why it would be better that you should tell me.”
Ginger's eyes opened very wide in bewilderment.
“Honest injun, sir,” he said, with earnest sincerity, “I don't know nothing at all about no catapult, bar Mrs. Johnson taking that one and putting it away in her desk. Cross me heart and wish I may die, sir.”
“All right. What was that book I saw you reading just now?”
Ginger, accustomed to the curious habit grown-up people have of interrogating their youngers and betters on any unrelated subjects that happen to strike a roving fancy, replied without hesitation or surprise:
“The Clue of the Crimson Star, sir. About Sexton Blake; he's a detective, you know, sir. It's a top-hole yarn.”
“Like detective-stories, Ginger?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I reads a lot of them. I'm going to be a detective one day, sir. My eldest brother's in the police, sir.”
“Is he? Splendid fellow. Well, the first thing a detective has to learn to do is to keep his mouth shut. You know that?”
“Yessir.”
“If I show you something now, can you keep quiet about it?”
“Yessir.”
“Very well. Here's a ten-bob note. Hop out to the nearest chemist and get me some grey powder and an insufflator.”
“What sort of powder, sir?”
“Grey powder–mercury powder–the man will know. And an insufflator; it's a little rubber bulb with a nozzle to it.”
“Yessir.”
Ginger Joe hopped with speed.
“An ally,” said Mr. Bredon to himself, “an ally–indispensable, I fear, and I fancy I've picked the right one.”