He was spared the decision. As the two came abreast of them, Bredon, suddenly popping his head over the Lunch Edition of the Evening Banner, observed cheerfully:
“Hullo, Willis! enjoyed your lunch? Excellent saddle, what? But you should have tried the peas. Can I give you a lift back to the tread-mill?”
“No, thanks,” growled Willis; and then realized that if he had said, “Yes, please,” he would at least have made an ardent tête-à-tête in the taxi impossible. But ride in the same taxi with Pamela Dean and Bredon he could not.
“Miss Dean, unhappily, has to leave us,” went on Bredon. “You might come and console me by holding my hand.”
Pamela was already half-way out of the room. Willis could not decide whether she knew to whom her escort was speaking and had studied to avoid him, or whether she supposed him to be some friend of Bredon's unknown to her. Quite suddenly he made up his mind.
“Well,” he said, “it is getting a bit late. If you're having a taxi, I'll share it with you.”
“That's the stuff,” said Bredon. Willis rose and joined him and they moved on to where Pamela was waiting.
“I think you know our Mr. Willis?”
“Oh, yes,” Pamela smiled a small, frozen smile. “Victor and he were great friends at one time.”
The door. The stairs. The entrance. They were outside at last.
“I must be getting along now. Thank you so much for my lunch, Mr. Bredon. And you won't forget?”
“I certainly will not. 'Tisn't likely, is it?”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Willis.”
“Good afternoon.”
She was gone, walking briskly in her little, high-heeled shoes. The roaring Strand engulfed her. A taxi purred up to them.
Bredon gave the address and waved Willis in before him.
“Pretty kid, young Dean's sister,” he remarked, cheerfully.
“See here, Bredon; I don't know quite what your game is, but you'd better be careful. I told Dean and I tell you–if you get Miss Dean mixed up with that dirty business of yours–”
“What dirty business?”
“You know well enough what I mean.”
“Perhaps I do. And what then? Do I get my neck broken, like Victor Dean?”
Bredon slewed round as he spoke and looked Willis hard in the eye.
“You'll get–” Willis checked himself. “Never mind,” he said, darkly, “you'll get what's coming to you. I'll see to that.”
“I've no doubt you'll do it very competently, what?” replied Bredon. “But do you mind telling me exactly where you come into it? From what I can see, Miss Dean does not seem to welcome your championship with any great enthusiasm.”
Willis flushed a dusky red.
“It's no business of mine, of course,” went on Bredon, airily, while their taxi chugged impatiently in a hold-up at Holborn Tube Station, “but then, on the other hand, it doesn't really seem to be any business of yours, does it?”
“It is my business,” retorted Willis. “It's every decent man's business. I heard Miss Dean making an appointment with you,” he went on, angrily.
“What a detective you would make,” said Bredon, admiringly. “But you really ought to take care, when you are shadowing anybody, that they are not sitting opposite a mirror, or anything that will serve as a mirror. There is a picture in front of the table where we were sitting, that reflects half the room. Elementary, my dear Watson. No doubt you will do better with practice. However, there is no secret about the appointment. We are going to a fancy dress affair on Friday. I am meeting Miss Dean for dinner at Boulestin's at 8 o'clock and we are going on from there. Perhaps you would care to accompany us?”
The policeman dropped his arm, and the taxi lurched forward into Southampton Row.
“You'd better be careful,” growled Willis, “I might take you at your word.”
“I should be charmed, personally,” replied Bredon. “You will decide for yourself whether Miss Dean would or would not be put in an embarrassing position if you joined the party. Well, well, here we are at our little home from home. We must put aside this light badinage and devote ourselves to Sopo and Pompayne and Peabody's Piper Parritch. A delightful occupation, though somewhat lacking in incident. But let us not complain. We can't expect battle, murder and sudden death more than once a week or so. By the way, where were you when Victor Dean fell downstairs?”
“In the lavatory,” said Willis, shortly.
“Were you, indeed?” Bredon looked at him once more attentively. “In the lavatory? You interest me strangely.”
The atmosphere of the copy-department was much less strained by tea-time. Messrs. Brotherhood had been and gone, having seen nothing to shock their sense of propriety; Mr. Jollop, mellowed by his lunch, had passed three large poster designs with almost reckless readiness and was now with Mr. Pym, being almost persuaded to increase his appropriation for the autumn campaign. The suffering Mr. Armstrong, released from attendance on Mr. Jollop, had taken himself away to visit his dentist. Mr. Tallboy, coming in to purchase a stamp from Miss Rossiter for his private correspondence, announced with delight that the Nutrax half-double had gone to the printer's.
“Is that 'KITTLE CATTLE'?” asked Ingleby. “You surprise me. I thought we should have trouble with it.”
“I believe we did,” said Tallboy. “Was it Scotch, and would people know what it meant? Would it suggest that we were calling women cows? And wasn't the sketch a little modernistic? But Armstrong got it shoved through somehow. May I drop this in your 'Out' basket, Miss Rossiter?”
“Serpently,” replied the lady, with gracious humour, presenting the basket to receive the latter. “All billy-doos receive our prompt attention and are immediately forwarded to their destination by the quickest and surest route.”
“Let's see,” said Garrett. “I bet it's to a lady, and him a married man, too! No, you don't, Tallboy, you old devil–stand still, will you? Tell us who it is, Miss Rossiter.”
“K. Smith, Esq.,” said Miss Rossiter. “You lose your bet.”
“What a swizz! But I expect it's all camouflage. I suspect Tallboy of keeping a harem somewhere. You can't trust these handsome blue-eyed men.”
“Shut up, Garrett. I never,” said Mr. Tallboy, extricating himself from Garrett's grasp and giving him a playful punch in the wind, “in my life, met with such a bunch of buttinskis as you are in this department. Nothing is sacred to you, not even a man's business correspondence.”
“How should anything be sacred to an advertiser?” demanded Ingleby, helping himself to four lumps of sugar. “We spend our whole time asking intimate questions of perfect strangers and it naturally blunts our finer feelings. 'Mother! has your Child Learnt Regular Habits?' 'Are you Troubled with Fullness after Eating?' 'Are you satisfied about your Drains?' 'Are you Sure that your Toilet-Paper is Germ-free?' 'Your most Intimate Friends dare not Ask you this question.' 'Do you Suffer from Superfluous Hair?' 'Do you Like them to Look at your Hands?' 'Do you ever ask yourself about Body-Odour?' 'If anything Happened to You, would your Loved Ones be Safe?' 'Why Spend so much Time in the Kitchen?' 'You think that Carpet is Clean–but is it?' 'Are you a Martyr to Dandruff?' Upon my soul, I sometimes wonder why the long-suffering public doesn't rise up and slay us.”
“They don't know of our existence,” said Garrett. “They all think advertisements write themselves. When I tell people I'm in advertising, they always ask whether I design posters–they never think about the copy.”
“They think the manufacturer does it himself,” said Ingleby.
“They ought to see some of the suggestions the manufacturer does put up when he tries his hand at it.”
“I wish they could.” Ingleby grinned. “That reminds me. You know that idiotic thing Darling's put out the other day–the air-cushion for travellers with a doll that fits into the middle and sits up holding an 'ENGAGED' label?”
“What for?” asked Bredon.
“Well, the idea is, that you plank the cushion dow
n in the railway carriage and the doll proclaims that the place is taken.”
“But the cushion would do that without the doll.”
“Of course it would, but you know how silly people are. They like superfluities. Well, anyway, they–Darling's, I mean–got out an ad. for the rubbish all by their little selves, and were fearfully pleased with it. Wanted us to put it through for them, till Armstrong burst into one of his juicy laughs and made them blush.”
“What was it?”
“Picture of a nice girl bending down to put the cushion in the corner of a carriage. And the headline? 'DON'T LET THEM PINCH YOUR SEAT.'”
“Attaboy!” said Mr. Bredon.
The new copy-writer was surprisingly industrious that day. He was still in his room, toiling over Sanfect (“Wherever there's Dirt there's Danger!” “The Skeleton in the Water-closet,” “Assassins Lurk in your Scullery!” “Deadlier than Shell-Fire–GERMS!!!”) when Mrs. Crump led in her female army to attack the day's accumulated dirt–armed, one regrets to say, not with Sanfect, but with plain yellow soap and water.
“Come in, come in!” cried Mr. Bredon, genially, as the good lady paused reverently at his door. “Come and sweep me and my works away with the rest of the rubbish.”
“Well, I'm sure, sir,” said Mrs. Crump, “I've no need to be disturbing you.”
“I've finished, really,” said Bredon. “I suppose there's an awful lot of stuff to clear out here every day.”
“That there is, sir–you'd hardly believe. Paper–well, I'm sure paper must be cheap, the amount they waste. Sackfuls and sackfuls every evening goes out. Of course, it's disposed of to the mills, but all the same it must be a dreadful expense. And there's boxes and boards and odds and ends–you'd be surprised, the things we picks up. I sometimes think the ladies and gentlemen brings up all their cast-offs on purpose to throw 'em away here.”
“I shouldn't wonder.”
“And mostly chucked on the floor,” resumed Mrs. Crump, warming to her theme, “hardly ever in the paper-baskets, though goodness knows they makes 'em big enough.”
“It must give you a lot of trouble.”
“Lor', sir, we don't think nothing of it. We just sweeps the lot up and sends the sacks down by the lift. Though sometimes we has a good laugh over the queer things we finds. I usually just give the stuff a look through to make sure there's nothing valuable got dropped by mistake. Once I found two pound-notes on Mr. Ingleby's floor. He's a careless one and no mistake. And not so long ago–the very day poor Mr. Dean had his sad accident, I found a kind of carved stone lying round in the passage–looked as though it might be a charm or a trinket or something of that. But I think it must have tumbled out of the poor gentleman's pocket as he fell, because Mrs. Doolittle said she'd seen it in his room, so I brought it in here, sir, and put it in that there little box.”
“Is this it?” Bredon fished in his waistcoat pocket and produced the onyx scarab, which he had unaccountably neglected to return to Pamela Dean.
“That's it, sir. A comical-looking thing, ain't it? Like it might be a beedle or such. It was lying in a dark corner under the iron staircase and at first I thought it was just a pebble like the other one.”
“What other one?”
“Well, sir, I found a little round pebble in the very same place only a few days before. I said at the time, 'Well, I said, 'that's a funny thing to find there.' But I reckon that one must have come from Mr. Atkins's room, him having taken his seaside holiday early this year on account of having been ill, and you know how people do fill up their pockets with sea-shells and pebbles and such.”
Bredon hunted in his pocket again.
“Something like that, was it?” He held out a smooth, water-rounded pebble, about the size of his thumb-nail.
“Very like it, sir. Did that come out of the passage, sir, might I ask?”
“No–I found that up on the roof.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Crump. “It'll be them boys up to their games. When the Sergeant's eye is off them you never know what they're after.”
“They do their drill up there, don't they? Great stuff. Hardens the muscles and develops the figure. When do they perform? In the lunch-hour?”
“Oh, no, sir. Mr. Pym won't have them running about after their dinners. He says it spoils their digestions and gives them the colic. Very particular, is Mr. Pym. Half-past eight regular they has to be on duty, sir, in their pants and singlets. Twenty minutes they has of it and then changed and ready for their dooties. After dinner they sets a bit in the boys' room and has a read or plays somethink quiet, as it might be, shove ha'penny or tiddley-winks or such. But in their room they must stay, sir; Mr. Pym won't have nobody about the office in the dinner-hour, sir, not without, of course, it's the boy that goes round with the disinfectant, sir.”
“Ah, of course! Spray with Sanfect and you're safe.”
“That's right, sir, except that they uses Jeyes' Fluid.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Mr. Bredon, struck afresh by the curious reluctance of advertising firms to use the commodities they extol for a living. “Well, we're very well looked after here, Mrs. Crump, what?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Mr. Pym pays great attention to 'ealth. A very kind gentleman, is Mr. Pym. Next week, sir, we has the Charwomen's Tea, down in the canteen, with an egg-and-spoon race and a bran-tub, and bring the kiddies. My daughter's little girls always look forward to the tea, sir.”
“I'm sure they must,” said Mr. Bredon, “and I expect they'd like some new hair-ribbons or something of that sort–”
“It's very kind of you, sir,” said Mrs. Crump, much gratified.
“Not at all.” A couple of coins clinked. “Well, I'll push off now and leave you to it.”
A very nice gentleman, in Mrs. Crump's opinion, and not at all proud.
It turned out precisely as Mr. Willis had expected. He had tracked his prey from Boulestin's, and this time he felt quite certain he had not been spotted. His costume–that of a member of the Vehmgericht, with its black cassock and black, eyeleted hood covering the whole head and shoulders–was easily slipped on over his every-day suit. Muffled in an old burberry, he had kept watch behind a convenient van in Covent Garden until Bredon and Pamela Dean came out; his taxi had been in waiting just round the corner. His task was made the easier by the fact that the others were driving, not in a taxi, but in an enormous limousine, and that Bredon had taken the wheel himself. The theatre rush was well over before the chase started, so that there was no need to keep suspiciously close to the saloon. The trail had led westward through Richmond and still west, until it had ended at a large house, standing in its own grounds on the bank of the river. Towards the end of the journey they were joined by other cars and taxis making in the same direction; and on arrival they found the drive a parking-place for innumerable vehicles. Bredon and Miss Dean had gone straight in, without a glance behind them.
Willis, who had put on his costume in the taxi, anticipated some difficulty about getting in, but there was none. A servant had met him at the door and asked if he was a member. Willis had replied boldly that he was and given the name of William Brown, which seemed to him an ingenious and plausible invention. Apparently the club was full of William Browns, for the servant raised no difficulty, and he was ushered straight in to a handsomely furnished hall. Immediately in front of him, on the skirts of a crowd of people drinking cocktails, was Bredon, in the harlequin black and white which had been conspicuous as he stepped into his car after dinner. Pamela Dean, in an exiguous swan's-down costume representing a powder-puff, stood beside him. From a room beyond resounded the strains of a saxophone.
“The place,” said Mr. Willis to himself, “is a den of iniquity.” And for once, Mr. Willis was not far wrong.
He was amazed by the slackness of the organization. Without question or hesitation, every door was opened to him. There was gambling. There was drink in oceans. There was dancing. There were what Mr. Willis had heard described as orgies. And at the back of it
all, he sensed something else, something that he did not quite understand; something that he was not precisely kept out of, but to which he simply had not the key.
He was, of course, partnerless, but he soon found himself absorbed into a party of exceedingly bright young people, and watching the evolutions of a danseuse whose essential nakedness was enhanced and emphasized by the wearing of a top hat, a monocle and a pair of patent-leather boots. He was supplied with drinks–some of which he paid for, but the majority of which were thrust upon him, and he suddenly became aware that he would have made a better detective had he been more hardened to mixed liquors. His head began to throb, and he had lost sight of Bredon and Pamela. He became obsessed with the idea that they had departed into one of the sinister little cubicles he had seen–each heavily curtained and furnished with a couch and a mirror. He broke away from the group surrounding him and began a hurried search through the house. His costume was hot and heavy, and the sweat poured down his face beneath the stifling black folds of his hood. He found a conservatory full of amorous drunken couples, but the pair he was looking for was not among them. He pushed open a door and found himself in the garden. Cries and splashes attracted him. He plunged down a rose-scented alley beneath a pergola and came out upon an open space with a round fountain-pool in the centre.
A man with a girl in his arms came reeling past him, flushed and hiccuping with laughter, his leopard-skin tunic half torn from his shoulders and the vine-leaves scattering from his hair as he ran. The girl was shrieking like a steam-engine. He was a broad-shouldered man, and the muscles of his back gleamed in the moonlight as he swung his protesting burden from him and tossed her, costume and all, into the pool. Yells of laughter greeted this performance, renewed as the girl, draggled and dripping, crawled back over the edge of the basin and burst into a stream of abuse. Then Willis saw the black-and-white harlequin.
He was climbing the statue-group in the centre of the pool–an elaborate affair of twined mermaids and dolphins, supporting a basin in which crouched an amorino, blowing from a conch-shell a high spout of dancing water. Up and up went the slim chequered figure, dripping and glittering like a fantastic water-creature. He caught the edge of the upper basin with his hands, swung for a moment and lifted. Even in that moment, Willis felt a pang of reluctant admiration. It was the easy, unfretted motion of the athlete, a display of muscular strength without jerk or effort. Then his knee was on the basin. He was up and climbing upon the bronze cupid. Yet another moment and he was kneeling upon the figure's stooped shoulders–standing upright upon them, the spray of the fountain blowing about him.