My dear Madge:
It’s done, and now I’m wishing like hell it weren’t. I’ve just told Gloria—asked her to wait behind after the others had gone—and I was afraid she was going to faint or be sick or go for my throat. I’ve never seen anyone in such a state—getting that part meant absolutely everything to her. I warned her she’d find herself facing a slander action if she said anything about being tricked into breaking her contract, and for reasons you know, Jedd won’t talk. But it’s a devil of a risk. If anything comes out I’m finished in films—and I don’t mind saying I’ll see to it that you are, too. For God’s sake burn this letter and never breathe a word about it to a living soul.
She certainly won’t wait for the studios to sue her for breach of contract—couldn’t possibly afford to fight the action. I said I’d do what I could for her in the future, but of course she didn’t believe that for a single moment—thinks she’s completely washed up in films. She knows damn well you’re at the back of it all, too, with your ridiculous jealousy. I should watch out for yourself. She hardly seemed sane when she left here.
I feel very bad about it all. As you know, I like the kid—not in Maurice’s way, either. Don’t try to talk about it when we meet on Saturday morning.
Nicholas
Mr. Snerd did some quick thinking. An enterprising Press had nosed out the fact that there was an element of mystery in Gloria Scott’s suicide, and the Sunday papers had reported it at length, touching discreetly on Nicholas Crane’s party and stating that the police had been unable so far to uncover any motive for the act. Mr. Snerd was therefore familiar with the general outlines of the affair: he had, he realised, chanced on a particularly revealing document connected with it—and one, moreover, which disgracefully implicated two notabilities of the film world; and as he sat there, grotesquely arrayed and clutching the letter in his gloved hand, he asked himself, with as much detachment as he could muster, what would be the most profitable thing to do about it.
And presently, after much strenuous cerebral effort, Mr. Snerd determined to take the letter and purvey it to The Evening Mercury.
Now in this decision, that softening of the intellect in which Mr. Snerd’s ever-growing confidence had resulted is very clearly exemplified. He realised, of course, that once the letter was published there would no longer be any discretionary bar to Miss Crane’s reporting its theft to the police; he realised that Felicity would know him for the culprit. But he was foolish enough to suppose that for fear of losing her job Felicity would not denounce him; and even if she did, he fondly imagined that providing he never saw her again his pseudonym would protect him. With the money obtained—which should be a very tolerable sum—he would shut up his office and go away on a holiday; and by the time he returned the whole business would have blown over.
Thus did Mr. Snerd plot and plan, while unobtrusively his guardian angel abandoned ship. As we shall see, he badly underestimated both Felicity and the resources of the Metropolitan Constabulary. But for the time being his scheming seemed to him good, and he proceeded immediately to put it into action.
In the bedroom Felicity slept on. Mr. Snerd gathered up his garments and donned them elsewhere. Nicholas Crane’s letter he enclosed in the pages of A Whip for Veronica, and A Whip for Veronica he placed in the pocket of his raincoat. Subsequently, having closed and relocked the rifled drawer, he prowled about the flat, wiping his finger-prints off everything he could remember having touched. If by some mischance any remained, that could not be helped; his prints were not in the police files, and any that were found would therefore remain inexplicable. He considered forcing a window, so as to make it appear that the flat had been broken into, but decided, on further reflection, that it would be difficult to make this look at all plausible; moreover, it would involve noise, and noise would waken Felicity. For her he scribbled a note, explaining that his work called him away early and arranging to meet her at “The Queen’s Head” that evening—a rendezvous at which, needless to say, he had no intention of turning up. And having deposited this on the dressing-table, he waved a regretful but determined last farewell at her unconscious form and let himself quietly out of the flat.
It was a grey morning, promising rain. Out on the pavement with his spoils in his pocket, Mr. Snerd at first hesitated as to what direction to take. But presently, his mind made up, he boarded an 88 bus, which took him up Whitehall to Charing Cross. Alighting there, he headed for St. Martin’s Lane. And the clocks were striking eight-thirty when he pushed open the ornate bar door of “The Scissors”.
Being in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, where they work all night and require a drink early in the morning, “The Scissors” was enabled by special dispensation of the Licensing Laws to trade at this hour; and consequently, confirmed alcoholics, as well as the market porters, were regularly to be found there. It was for a person of this former class that Mr. Snerd was looking—a person named Rouncey who reported for the Mercury. Mr. Rouncey and Mr. Snerd were old cronies; in this and other bars they had over a period of several years cemented that companionship in shadiness which served them for friendship; and so far as either of them was capable of trusting anyone, they trusted one another. It was by the agency of Mr. Rouncey, then, that Mr. Snerd proposed to convey Nicholas Crane’s letter to the Mercury—and he had little doubt that the Mercury would pay well for it. For the Mercury, almost alone among English newspapers, was a scandal-sheet of the worst and most unscrupulous sort. Its sales were founded on vilification and near-pornography, the latter type of pabulum being justified by the adoption of hypocritical moral attitudes (“Such a state of affairs, we believe, will not be tolerated by the British people…” “It is our view that we are performing a public service in revealing the practices of this depraved and vicious section of the community…” and so forth); its myrmidons paraded monotonously in and out of the civil and criminal courts and were frequently gaoled; and yearly it disbursed huge sums by way of damages for libel, regarding these, apparently, as no different in kind from any other overhead expenses. Its policy earned it very large dividends and the execration of all who were intelligent enough to see through its pretensions to high-mindedness; and since it professed an unwavering abhorrence of the rich (“Whatever happens, it will not be Lord X who will suffer; it will be the decent, ordinary folk—the miners and railwaymen and steel-workers and their wives and children…“), the Mercury was a very popular paper indeed.
Mr. Snerd soon saw that he had come to the right tavern, for Mr. Rouncey was established in his usual corner of the bar, with whisky in his hand, a Woodbine in his mouth and a battered felt hat on the back of his head. He was an elderly, shifty man, whose peculiarity it was that alcohol invariably made him cry. This reaction was wholly physical and not related in any way to his mood, which though commonly gloomy was hardly ever lachrymose, and on strangers it was apt to have a disconcerting effect. Mr. Snerd, however, was accustomed to it and had long since ceased to think of it as out of the way. Undeterred by Mr. Rouncey’s smeared cheeks and overflowing eyes, Mr. Snerd advanced on him with affability.
“Morning, old man,” he said. “What’s yours?”
Without replying, or even looking up, Mr. Rouncey emptied his glass, pushed it across the bar and waited in silence while it was replenished at Mr. Snerd’s expense. Such demonstrations of incivility, which were habitual with him, had persuaded Mr. Snerd that he was a ‘character’, and so Mr. Snerd was not offended by his lack of response, but settled down at his side, drank manfully, fought off a sudden attack of queasiness and presently tapped his companion confidentially on the knee.
“Got something for you,” said Mr. Snerd. “Something hot.”
Mr. Rouncey turned a welling eye on him and removed the sodden cigarette from his mouth.
“And what’d that be?” he said without perceptible interest.
“Soon show you.” After glancing round to make sure that they were not overlooked, Mr. Snerd produced Nicholas Crane’s lett
er. “Just you take a gander at that.”
Having wiped his eyes and wearily adjusted in front of them a pair of bifocal steel-rimmed spectacles, Mr. Rouncey obeyed. When he had read the letter, without any change of expression, he handed it back and swallowed his drink at a gulp.
“How about another?” he said.
“Your round, old man.”
“Is it?”
“You know bloody well it is.” Mr. Snerd spoke without rancour; attempts to avoid paying for rounds were part of his conception of Mr. Rouncey as a ‘character’. “I’ll have the same again.”
Mr. Rouncey resignedly gave the order.
“Well?” said Mr. Snerd.
“Yes, it’s hot stuff all right,” said Mr. Rouncey. “Too bloody hot, if you ask me.”
“Don’t tell me that. You can use it.”
“How do I know it isn’t a fake?”
“You’ve got my word for it,” said Mr. Snerd with dignity.
“Oh, yes. Sure I have. But my News Editor doesn’t know you, Bart boy, not like I do. It’s him that’s got to be persuaded.”
“Get a sample of Crane’s writing. Have ‘em compared.”
“Where the hell do you think I can… Wait, though.” Mr. Rouncey, in a formidable burst of energy, contrived to snap his fingers. “He wrote a letter to the paper, not more than a week ago, and I’ve an idea it was written, not typed. There’s a chance there.”
“Go for it, old man.”
“It’ll have to be carefully written up,” said Mr. Rouncey meditatively. “Full of allegeds and we make no comment. Whatever happens it’ll mean a libel action, but we might get away with that on the Public Interest tack… Where’d you get the letter?”
Mr. Snerd winked. “Blew out of a window. So of course I had to look at it to see whose it was, and there weren’t any surnames or addresses, so I brought it along to you thinking you might be able to help, and—”
“Stow all that, Bart boy,” said Mr. Rouncey amiably. “It won’t do for the paper. I think our line’ll be that it came anonymously through the post, from someone who wanted to See Justice Done. Of course, we don’t like anonymous letters, not when we’re holding forth to the ruddy public anyway, but we thought it was our duty as citizens to get the handwriting experts on to it and then turn it over to the police… Yes, that’s our line, I’d say: just reporting what we’ve done. We Make No Comment And Shall Be More Delighted Than Anyone If The Name of These Fine Artists Can Be Cleared.” Exhausted by his performance, Mr. Rouncey paused and groped for his drink. “Here, let’s have another look at the thing.”
Mr. Snerd handed the letter over, and Mr. Rouncey, shaking away the tears which blurred his vision, read it again.
“Jedd,” he murmured. “We’ll have to rout him out before we print anything.”
“Who is Jedd, anyway?”
“Theatrical manager. Lover’s Luck, at the Curtain.” Mr. Rouncey’s eyes widened suddenly “That’d be it, Bart boy.”
“What’d be what?”
“This Scott girl stood in for Marcia Bloom at Tuesday’s performances. I remember hearing Sark—that’s our theatre stooge—talking about it.”
“So what, old man?”
“Easy. When you sign up with the films you guarantee not to appear in any shows without permission. So it looks as if Crane tricked the Scott girl into thinking she’d got the studios’ permission to play in Lover’s Luck when actually she hadn’t. And that meant Crane could blackmail her into cancelling the contract by threatening a suit for breach.”
Mr. Snerd was genuinely indignant at this disclosure. “Dirty trick,” he said.
“Show business, that’s all.” Mr. Rouncey, Mr. Snerd felt, was sneering at his ingenuousness. “Well, we’ll have to see what can be done.” He got unsteadily to his feet. “How much do you want?”
“A clear one-fifty.”
“You won’t get that much, Bart boy.”
“That’s my price,” said Mr. Snerd easily. “It’s up to you to get it. I’ll collect in ‘The Feathers’ at opening time tonight.” He caught Mr. Rouncey by the elbow as he turned to go. “And you won’t forget I know about that business at Brighton, will you, old man? I shouldn’t like you to get into any trouble over that.”
“Ruddy blackmailer,” said Mr. Rouncey.
“Now, that’s no way to talk,” said Mr. Snerd eupeptically. “We’re good pals, aren’t we? You do your best for me, and I’ll do my best for you. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?”
Mr. Rouncey was pocketing the letter.
“Bart boy, I can’t promise anything,” he said earnestly. “This ruddy letter’s dynamite, see? If I can sell it ‘em at all, you’ll get your money. And that’s the most I can say.” He moved towards the door. “Remember, boy, it’s ten to one they just won’t touch it at all, scoop or no.”
But Mr. Rouncey’s prognosis was altogether too flattering to his employers’ sense of decency. They touched it all right.
Chapter Three
As its custom was, the four o’clock edition of The Evening Mercury appeared on the streets of London at about three.
It was not a paper which Humbleby read, except when his business compelled him to or when, for masochistic or argumentative reasons, he felt the need to convince himself of the imminent collapse of all moral and cultural values. But on this fateful Monday it was on his desk by five past three, carried there by a sergeant with the air of those heralds in Greek tragedy who convey calamitous and often barely credible news to choruses of aghast and wondering citizens.
Humbleby had twice refused promotion, since he was not anxious for the increase in purely administrative work which it would certainly involve; but in spite of this (or perhaps even because of it) he was a person of some consequence at Scotland Yard, and his rage—the more impressive because it was so rare—spread through that elaborate hierarchy like an etheric wave. Indeed, the oily young man from the Mercury who brought him the original of Nicholas Crane’s letter received from him such summary and shattering treatment that on emerging from the building he had to go to the park and sit down in order to recover himself.
The story had been written up very much on the lines contemplated by Mr. Rouncey. Its insinuations disported themselves beneath banner headlines, and the letter itself was reproduced in facsimile. Humbleby gazed upon it and fluently cursed; in spite of what he had said over the telephone, he was keeping Fen’s theory of the case well in mind, and if that theory were correct, the Mercury had gratuitously performed a valuable service for the murderer in telling him where next to direct his energies.
As to the genuineness of the letter Humbleby was not in much doubt, but he passed it on to the Yard handwriting experts for their opinion. And having done that he set off, compassed about with a cloud of subordinates, to investigate its history.
The editor of The Evening Mercury received him with ill-concealed apprehension: Humbleby’s mood made him appear disconcertingly like an agent of the Eumenides. Yes, said the editor, the letter had been sent anonymously through the post. To him personally? Well, no; actually to one of his reporters…
Mr. Rouncey, far advanced in liquor and weeping copiously, was produced. With Mr. Snerd’s knowledge of the Brighton affair vivid in his mind, he corroborated with unshakable obstinacy his editor’s account of the letter’s provenance. In the end Humbleby was obliged to leave them, unenlightened; but he thought it in the highest degree unlikely that Madge Crane would have left the letter lying about for anyone to pick up, and that must mean that it had been stolen. He drove on, accordingly, to her flat, where he found Felicity, a regular reader of the Mercury, in a very shaken and pensive frame of mind.
Judge’s Rules went overboard in the interview that followed; Humbleby thought it improbable that Felicity had stolen the letter herself, since its publication was bound to bring her instantly under suspicion, but his examination was none the less completely ruthless. And Felicity, perceiving that her future as an employee of Miss C
rane was now in any event dubious to a degree, did not fence with him for very long. She, too, saw that the letter must have been feloniously taken, and she had no doubt in her mind as to who had taken it. Thus it was that the whole story came out.
Long ago, she told Humbleby, she had suspected that “Peter Williams” was not what he represented himself to be. She had not specially resented his attempt at camouflage, but she had felt it necessary in her own interests to find out who he really was, and had therefore, one midday after they had said good-bye, followed him unobtrusively back to his office in Long Acre, and there acquainted herself with his true identity. He had spent the night with her at the flat, she said, and had left before she was awake. She was sure it was him as had done the thieving, the rotten dirty sneak, and left her to take the blame.
Where would Miss Crane have been likely to hide the letter? Well, there was a locked drawer in the desk in the sitting-room…
Humbleby, finding the desk suspiciously innocent of all finger-prints, was much inclined to concur in Felicity’s view of the matter. He haled her away with him to Long Acre in his car.
And there, sure enough, they came upon Mr. Snerd in his office, humming tunefully to himself and tidying up in readiness for his projected vacation. Confronted simultaneously by Felicity and the police, he was at first all injured innocence. But Humbleby had a shrewd notion that Mr. Snerd had handed the letter direct to Mr. Rouncey, and he stated, simply and firmly, that Mr. Rouncey had admitted this.
Thereupon Mr. Snerd lost his head, and fell to regaling them alternately with admissions of his own guilt and denunciations of Mr. Rouncey’s supposititious treachery. Mr. Snerd was determined that if he were going to sink, Mr. Rouncey should sink with him, and he waxed orotund over the details of the Brighton affair. It concerned, apparently, the deliberate suppression for a bribe’s sake of evidence important to the elucidation of a race-course affray two years previously—but this was not Humbleby’s business and he did not pay any very earnest attention to it. Leaving it to the cloud of subordinates to see to the arrests of both Mr. Snerd and Mr. Rouncey, he drove back alone to New Scotland Yard, conscious of having done a very satisfactory two hours’ work.
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