Fear to Tread Read online

  After a short pause Mr. Pride said: “Oh, yes. Scandalous. Perfectly scandalous. What can I tell you about it?”

  “Well, now. Perhaps you could give me some of the background. For instance, how did you find out about it?”

  “My sources of information—”

  “I take it you weren’t an eye witness.”

  “Good gracious me, no.”

  “Then someone must have told you about it.”

  “As I was about to say, I fear I cannot divulge my sources of information. Being a newspaper man yourself, I’m sure you will understand.”

  Todd let that one go.

  “I must admit,” he said, “that it wasn’t exactly the source of the information that interested me. Speaking as—er—one newspaper man to another, it was the speed, of your information that I found intriguing.”

  Silence fell in the small card-room.

  “I’m not sure that I follow you,” said Mr. Pride at last.

  “I’m a newspaper man,” murmured Todd. “It was a mechanics of the thing that interested me. The particular weekly paper you wrote to comes out on Tuesday. Its day for distribution to newsagents is Monday and it is ‘put to bed,’ as we say, on Sunday night. In the normal way nothing could be included which was received after tea-time on Sunday. Even that would be cutting it fine.”

  “What about it?”

  “Nothing, really. Except that the outrage of which your letter complained took place on Saturday night – about twelve hours before you wrote the letter.”

  “If you think,” said Mr. Pride a little breathlessly, “that by making observations of this sort you are going to bamboozle me into revealing my sources of information—”

  “Of course not,” said Todd. “By the way, when did you post your letter?”

  “I—I walked round with it.”

  “Very public spirited of you.” Todd made a note in his book.

  “The sooner these matters are given publicity the better.”

  “I quite agree with you. You write a good many letters to the papers?”

  “Not a great many. The difference between me and other writers to the papers is that my letters are always published.”

  Mr. Pride gave a slight smile as he pulled this one off, and it stung Todd into an indiscretion.

  “There are other ways in which you are unique,” he said.

  “Several, I expect. Which had you in mind?”

  “Other writers to the papers write solely for the pleasure of seeing their views in print. At least, I had always supposed they obtained no more—er—no more material reward.”

  There was a further silence. Mr. Pride seemed to be seeking for speech.

  “Perhaps you would explain what you mean.”

  “I think my meaning was quite clear.”

  “And I understand your not caring to repeat it. There is a law of defamation in this country.”

  “There are other laws too,” said Todd. “Simpler and older laws. I seem to remember, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour’ and also ‘Thou shalt not steal.’”

  Without waiting for a reply he turned on his heel and left the room. As he went he retained an impression of a very white face and a pair of blazing eyes.

  “He was angry all right,” reported Todd on the telephone to Mr. Wetherall. “But, if you see what I mean, angry in the wrong way. There was a lot of fright mixed up with it. I’m going to keep on at the little beast. If I’m right, he’s a loose end that the other side have left hanging out, and the harder we tug him the better.”

  At about the time that Todd left the Augean, Mr. Bertram rang the bell for his assistant.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I’ll go down to Bush House myself.”

  “If it’s only stamping and a company search I can do it,” said the youth resentfully. A trip to Bush House meant a nice break, and possibly a cup of coffee too.

  “No,” said Mr. Bertram. “There may be more to it than that. I’ll go.”

  He reached for his bowler hat and tittupped thoughtfully down the stairs and out into Fleet Street. Around him the traffic roared. So far as Mr. Bertram was concerned, it roared unheard. His thoughts were elsewhere.

  Principally, he was thinking about Mr. Wetherall; about the facts which he had mentioned and, even more, about the facts which he had plainly suppressed.

  Mr. Bertram was nobody’s fool. Anyone who has prospered as a one-man solicitor’s firm in the heart of London must have his wits about him and his ear pretty close to the ground. Names meant a lot to him. The knowledge of who was who and who did what was his stock in trade.

  Quite often, on the way home to his house in Kingston, he would pick out some small item of news in his evening paper and would wonder, as he looked round the crowded carriage, if there was anyone else, reading the same news, who knew what it meant. Why Sir Archibald Hearty had resigned as managing director of the Mucillage Galleries or the reason for the youngest Gaiter boy joining the board of Imperial Glue; or even why Captain Corrigan had sold all his race-horses and gone to live in Ireland. Probably not, and Mr. Bertram, being a solicitor, would have been the last person to have enlightened them.

  Musing thus he arrived at Aldwych and turned into the uninspiring south-west wing at Bush House. He paid his shilling, filled in a form, and sat down at a table. He had not long to wait, and presently he was opening a thin blue folder headed “Hollomans Cures Limited.”

  He produced a piece of paper and a pencil and jotted down a few notes, his tongue flickering between his lips as he wrote.

  Formed in 1947. Authorised capital of one hundred pounds. Issued capital five pounds. Registered office at 5, Strudwick Road, N.7. The usual memorandum – which generously permitted a company with three pounds capital (and ninety-seven more in reserve) to do anything from promoting a luxury hotel to running a liner. Normal articles. Nothing in the charges register. No accounts.

  One of the issued shares was held by Mr. Henry Holloman, one by Mrs. Anita Holloman, three by Mr. Arthur Harbart. The directors were Mr. and Mrs. Holloman. The secretary was Mr. Holloman.

  Mr. Bertram’s pencil paused for a moment in its scribbling. Far down in the distant, undusted recesses of his mind a memory had stirred. He was unable to pin it down. Such a memory was like quicksilver. If you tried to grasp it, it was gone. He pursued it with a growing sense of frustration. A futile attempt. Perhaps he would remember it later, when he had stopped thinking about it.

  His pencil resumed its scribbling.

  IV

  It was Todd who got the news, in the young hours of Monday morning, as he was beginning to think of going home to bed. The “Sub” who brought it up was worried. “You knew the man, didn’t you?” he said. “Then perhaps you can suggest what we’re going to call him.”

  “You couldn’t print anything I should call him,” said Todd savagely.

  “We thought of ‘Clubman’ but that’s a bit dated.”

  “Call him a journalist,” said Todd. “That covers almost everything.”

  So that was how Mr. Wetherall (and a lot of other people) read about it over their Monday morning breakfasts.

  “Tragedy at Pinner,” it said. “Journalist killed.”

  “A heavy transport lorry, drawing a 3-ton trailer, on long distance haulage ran out of control at Pinner yesterday evening when the steering locked. Fortunately the streets were not crowded at the time. The lorry mounted the pavement and hit and killed Mr. Marshall Pride, who was a well-known figure in journalistic and literary circles. The lorry passed right over him and death must have been instantaneous. The breakdown gang were still at work an hour later trying to lift the wreckage.”

  11

  NORTH OF THE RIVER- SAMMY AT HOLLOMANS

  Mr. pride’s death was announced on the Monday morning; on Monday afternoon Sammy started work at Hollomans; on Tuesday evening he wrote a letter to his sister Peggy.

  “This is a queer sort of place and no mistake,” he wr
ote, in his well-formed cursive hand, “if I had known the job meant staying nights I might have thought twice about it Mr. Holloman is a case he looks like Boris Carloff only worse Mrs. Cameroni she is the woman who does for us here is deaf but not a bad old girl I think everyone else is round the bend except me I get off Saturday p.m. and will be with you for tea Dont eat all the sanwich spread before I get there your loving brother Sammy.”

  Sammy sealed this with several loving kisses and determined to slip out and put it in the box at the corner of the road as soon as Mr. Holloman had departed up West on business. So far as he could gather he usually went out in the evenings and was not expected back before eight.

  Precise information was hard to come by. First there was Mrs. Cameroni, who acted as housekeeper to the establishment, got the meals, tidied up and fussed round generally. She seemed a decent enough person and for some time, under the impression that she was his employer’s wife, Sammy had addressed her as Mrs. Holloman. Nor had she corrected him;, simply because, as he had discovered by accident that afternoon, she never heard him, being not only deaf but, like many deaf people, defiant of her infirmity.

  Then there were the girls.

  Sammy had had great hopes of the girls. There were two of them, a floppy blonde and a thinner girl with mouse-coloured hair and a band round her teeth. They formed the packing-room staff.

  Sammy was fond of girls in a general sort of way. He liked them better in quantities than singly. He enjoyed the chi-hying and the repartee and the general give and take.

  Accordingly, during the lunch interval, he had made his way into the packingroom. The girls had suspended their packing of Mother Mankeltows Mucillage of Mollasses and were sitting on a bench eating sandwiches out of a bag.

  At first all had gone well; indeed, from the beginning almost too well. Sammy’s opening remarks had been received with smiles. Even his ordinary conversation was smiled at. Everything was smiled at. Neither girl seemed to have a great deal of conversation in return. The blonde girl did nothing but smile. The mouse-coloured girl squeaked and said something which sounded like “Ham for lunch” but she mouthed her words so that it was difficult to establish anything beyond the fact that it was an effort at goodwill.

  After a few minutes of this Sammy withdrew.

  “Just my luck,” he said to himself. “Two girls, and both of them barmy.” In fairness he added: “They seem to get through their work all right.” He had never seen such workers.

  He had restored his spirits by standing himself an expensive lunch, which he could not afford, at the Corner Dining Rooms.

  The morning had been spent copying addresses into a book. When he got back after lunch he had been summoned to the presence and introduced to the more important branches of his work.

  “There are certain basic mixtures,” explained Mr. Holloman, “that we use in most of our preparations.”

  He was a tall man, thin but with obvious strength in his long bones. He had the mottled, peach-veined face of an old country clergyman, white tufts in each nostril, and the shadow of an imperial in the unshaven patch under his full lower lip. His least prepossessing characteristic was his head of hair. If it had been a wig, thought Sammy, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But since it clearly wasn’t a wig, it looked somehow abnormal and horrible, a wolf’s pelt of thick, black and grey hair. He had black hairs on the back of his hands, too. His eyes were hot brown, and his voice was like treacle. It reminded Sammy of the voice of a minister whose services had once attracted large congregations in the New Cut, until he had disappeared as a result of over-enthusiasm in training female members of the choir.

  “I shan’t bother you with all our little technical secrets,” went on Mr. Holloman. “But I can see you’re a smart boy, so I might as well tell you at once that you will find that most people are fools where their own health is concerned.”

  Sammy nodded. He felt interested in spite of himself. Such a diagnosis agreed very well with his own observations. He had had an aunt who had spent all her money on an Elixir of Life. It had done her no visible harm, but at ten shillings the bottle it had consumed a great deal of money which, in Sammy’s view, she might more profitably have saved and left to her nephews and nieces.

  “There’s one born every minute,” he agreed.

  “We have just finished the diarrhoea and prickly heat and are preparing for the coughs and colds. In the profession we refer to them as catarrhal afflictions.” Mr. Holloman smiled genially. “We use nothing but simple wholesale ingredients. Phenol”—he indicated a large stoppered jar full of a pinkish disinfectant—”and sodium chloride.” This was in a cardboard box.

  “Looks just like salt,” said Sammy.

  “I shouldn’t wonder if you were right,” said Mr. Holloman. “Our standard gargle and throat spray, two shillings and sixpence the bottle, contains one measure of dilute phenol – measure it out in that little glass jar – to four measures of sodium chloride. You can use a tablespoon for that. The rest is aqua pura.”

  “Where do I get that?”

  “Out of the tap.”

  “Do you mean you can sell that stuff for half a dollar a bottle?”

  “It is often difficult to meet the demand for it.”

  “Cor!” said Sammy. His respect for Mr. Holloman increased.

  “There are, of course, certain overhead expenses, connected with advertising and the like, which you would not appreciate. There is the bottle itself – a scandalous price these days, though we usually succeed in getting them back by offering a small rebate. One of your jobs will be to clean the returned bottles. See that you do it thoroughly. Our clients are not of the highest class, and we had a bottle returned the other day nearly one-third full of gin, which I can assure you was not in it when it was dispatched. Finally, and possibly of more importance than anything else, there is the label. One to each bottle.” Mr. Holloman extracted a gummed label from a cardboard box. It was quite an imposing and well-printed affair. It had “Hollomans’ Special Gargle Mouthwash and Throatwash” in old-fashioned lettering and a portrait of a man with a long beard, an eyeglass and a high collar. On the left of the portrait was a list, in small print, setting out the honours and awards which had fallen to the gargle in its long life (First prize, Palace of Health, Chicago 1888. Grand Prix. Exposition de Sante, Bruxelles 1893, etc.). On the right in larger print, was a summary of the conditions which it was guaranteed to cure or alleviate (Catarrh, Hay Fever, Tonsilitis, La Grippe, Pleurisy, Asthma, Biliousness, Constipation and Consumption).

  “The label is most important,” said Mr. Holloman. “I should say of paramount importance. And you must be particularly careful to place the right label on the right bottle. Your predecessor had to be asked to leave after an unfortunate incident in which he sent out a dozen of Embrocation for the Legs and Thighs labelled as Blood Tonic. Strictly, and between you and me, the difference in the ingredients was not large, but there was a principle at stake.”

  Sammy had spent an interesting afternoon. He was no ball of fire at mathematics but it didn’t need an accountant’s brain to see the margin of profit in selling salt and water at two and sixpence a bottle. A certain amount of outlay would be needed for printing and advertising, but as soon as that was paid for—

  Sammy swam away into a happy daydream and inadvertently doubled the dosage of phenol in a whole box-full of gargle, which, as Mr. Holloman sharply pointed out, halved the profit, since phenol was virtually the only ingredient which cost anything.

  After tea he was introduced to another branch of the trade.

  “Ointments, or unguents, as you must learn to call them, are in a way an even better line than medicine. Certain of the more tiresome and restrictive of the various Acts of Parliament that hamper the druggist, do not apply to ointments, and there are other considerations with which I will not weary you.”

  “I’m not tired at all,” said Sammy, and he meant it.

  “Splendid,” said Mr. Holloman, with a smile which lift
ed the lip and revealed a row of small, shark-like, side teeth. “Youth is the time to learn. The trouble about unguents is that it is more difficult to persuade people that they stand in need of them. With medicines it is different. With a little effort anyone can believe anything about their own insides. Omne ignotum pro magnifico. With the external parts it is more difficult. I therefore devised what has turned out to be one of my most successful dual remedies. It is to cure harshness, roughness, staleness or irritation of the skin. It is also effective against eczema, ringworm, corpulence and baldness, but these are only by the way. Its main purpose is that you should at once apply it if you feel any uneasiness of any sort about your skin. We send it out in two caskets, at half a crown each, with full directions for use. You apply a little from the brown casket, and that brings out the latent condition. In other words, if you had itched a little before, you will now begin to itch like anything. This is not surprising when you consider that the ointment in the first casket contains a high proportion of powdered rosa canina, known to the ignorant as itching powder. Five minutes later, when you can bear it no longer, you apply some ointment from the green casket, and the itching stops at once. You are absolutely cured. This line has been so successful that I fear our rivals have paid us the compliment of imitation. Some people have no idea of commercial morality.”

  Later, when Sammy was thinking of packing up for the day, Mrs. Cameroni blew in. She was a large, cheerful, untidy woman and to Sammy she represented the only homely touch in the place. If she hadn’t been deaf, he decided, she’d have been quite good value.

  In self-defence she had acquired a certain facility for lip reading, but principally she followed a system of guessing what you would be likely to be saying. Conversation was a lottery.

  “Lovely evening,” she said.