The crowd was thinner now. David had noticed the white-faced girl standing at the end of the bar. She had been talking to a group of men, but they seemed to have abandoned her. He caught her eye and made a very slight gesture of invitation. She came slowly over. David shifted the empty chair towards her, and she sat herself in it. She said, “Your friend left you?”
Her voice was exactly what David had expected.
He said, “That’s right. Left me all alone and sorrowing. I shall be crying in a moment.”
“Like me to lend you a hankie?”
David looked at her closely and said, “I’ve got a better idea than that. Let’s find somewhere to eat.”
“Let’s do that thing.”
They found a Wimpy Bar that was open. The girl crammed food into herself as though she had eaten nothing for a week. When she had finished a second helping and a third cup of coffee she started to talk. Just as he had known what her voice would be like, he knew what her story would be. Born and bred in Liverpool. Parents in the awkward no-man’s-land between lower class and lower middle class. Job in a mill. No prospects. Bored stiff. Came to London. Couldn’t land a job. Hanging round ever since.
David seemed hardly to be listening to what she was saying. He gave her a cigarette and noticed the look in her eye. He said, “Keep the packet.”
She smoked nervously and quickly, one eye on her watch. When she had finished the cigarette she said, “We’d better be getting along. I’ve got an arrangement with the girl I share my room with. We get there at nine o’clock— we shall have an hour.”
“And what would we need an hour for?” said David innocently. “It can’t be another cup of coffee, surely to goodness. You’ve had three already.”
They found a taxi, and it took them ten minutes to reach the girl’s place. It was a house in the egg box of streets behind Liverpool Street Station, which seemed, from the long line of names and numbers in the dark hallway, to be divided into about thirty privately owned apartments.
Forty minutes later they were lying beside each other on the divan bed which almost filled the tiny room. They were both smoking.
The girl said, “You’re an odd person, David. First, you haven’t even asked me my name.”
“What is your name?”
“Marlene.”
“I don’t believe it.”
The girl giggled. She said, “You’re quite a performer. I mean, you were good. But you didn’t seem to be giving more’n half your mind to it.”
“When you’ve got a mind like mine,” said David, “half of it is enough for most jobs.”
“I believe the truth is your own girl’s turned you down, and you’re just doing this so you can forget about her for a bit.”
The tinkle of the electric bell behind the door saved David the trouble of answering.
“Deuxième
service,
” he said. “I’d better get my trousers on.”
Susan was early at the office next day. She wanted an undisturbed hour to sort out her thoughts on the future of the printing ink industry. She had a little room to herself on the other side of the passage from Toby Harmond’s office. She swept all unnecessary papers off her desk, selected a new pad of paper and a sharp pencil and started to write.
Every now and then she referred to a sheaf of notes which she had brought with her. She was disturbed twice. Once when the old-age pensioner who looked after the post room pottered in with the morning mail and said, “Hard at it, miss. That’s the stuff.” Once when the office cat came in and tried to scratch a hole in her stockings.
She had covered three pages in her neat, unfussy handwriting and was starting on the fourth when the telephone rang. It was the outside line, with the unlisted number, and she hesitated before answering it. Normally all calls on that line were switched straight through, on his extension, to Toby. She looked at the clock. Nine fifty. The telephone continued to ring. She picked up the receiver. A bland voice at the other end said, “Splendid. Someone is awake. Would you put me through to Mr Harmond.”
At that moment Susan heard Toby’s step in the hall. Without losing hold of the receiver, which fortunately had a long flex, she slid out from behind her desk, opened the door of her room and said, “Who shall I say wants him?”
Toby said, “What’s all this?”
The man at the other end of the line said, “Am I talking to Mr Harmond’s secretary?”
“That’s right.”
“How many people use this number?”
“Three, I believe.”
“Then you should know all their voices by now.”
“Would you be Mr Blackett?”
“I would.”
She was unable to tell whether the voice was angry or amused. Toby had bolted into his office.
She said, “I’ll put you straight through, Mr Blackett.”
Ten minutes later her bell rang. She gathered up the pages she had written and went into Toby’s office. He seemed to be still sweating. He said, “That was a narrow shave. What would you have done if I hadn’t turned up?”
“I should have said you were at the dentist.”
“The dentist?”
“It always sounds more convincing than saying you’re at a meeting. It invokes a little sympathy, too.”
“You’re a remarkable girl.”
“Did Mr Blackett want anything in particular?”
“He wanted to know how my half-yearly report was getting on. Apparently it’s the only one he hasn’t had yet.”
“He gets them from
all
his companies?”
“Every one. And reads them.”
“Would you like to cast an eye over this? It’s only a draft. But you might get some ideas out of it.”
Toby looked at the four pages of neat script as a shipwrecked mariner might view a sail on the horizon.
He said, “Gosh, you are a girl, Susan.”
She said, “Read them before you thank me.”
“Don’t go away.”
She sat down and watched him as he read. He was good-looking, clean and easy. He had everything except brains and drive. He was a born subordinate. Randall Blackett supplied the brains and drive. She was still unable to make up her mind whether she liked his voice or not.
When Toby had finished reading he said, “Gosh,” again. And then, “Where on earth did you get all this stuff about Japanese manufacturing methods?”
“From a book in the library.”
“Well, type it out, and we’ll bung it in.”
Susan said, doubtfully, “It was meant to be just a basis for your report.”
“I think it’s absolutely marvellous,” said Toby. “I’ll stand you the best lunch London can buy.”
“Not today,” said Susan. “I’m having lunch with my uncle.”
“You’re late again, Mr Morgan.”
“I fear so, Miss Crawley.”
“Another holdup on the Central Line?”
“Between Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road this time.”
“It’s a funny thing that I have been travelling by that line for the last five years and have never been held up once.”
“Some people are born lucky, Miss Crawley. Others are born beautiful. But we mustn’t stand here gossiping all day. I have work to do.”
Miss Crawley snorted. Gerald Hopkirk, arriving at this moment, said, “Good morning, Miss Crawley,” and got a second snort in reply.
He said, “What have you been doing to her now?”
“Miss Crawley and I are like oil and water,” said David. “Try as we will, we don’t mix.”
“You want to watch it,” said Gerald. “I’ve told you. She’s a dangerous woman.”
Mr Raymond Perronet-Condé was a large, untidy man who bought expensive suits and shoes and ruined them with great speed. He lost an umbrella every fortnight, was apt to leave his briefcase in trains and sometimes arrived at his office in the Stock Exchange Building wearing odd socks. None of these habits seemed to prevent him from being a successful bill broker.
He had a secretary who loved him and organised his life for him. She had procured him a table in one of the three City Lunch Clubs to which he belonged and had dispatched him to it, with a fresh rose in his buttonhole, in plenty of time to be there when Susan arrived.
He was fond enough of his niece to take some care in ordering the meal. During it, he entertained her with a number of scandalous stories about his clients. When they arrived at the sorbet, he cocked his head on one side and said, “What are you up to?”
“Up to, Raymond?”
“You didn’t invite yourself to lunch with me to listen to City gossip.”
“Not entirely,” said Susan with a smile.
“Out with it, minx. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know about companies.”
Mr Perronet-Condé said, “It’s a large subject.” He signalled to the waiter and ordered coffee, a glass of kümmel for his niece and a large vintage port for himself. “Any companies in particular, or a lecture on company law?”
“What I wanted to know was, if a man has half the shares in a company, but he isn’t a director, can he boss the company? I mean, can he tell the directors what to do and sack them if they don’t do it?”
“Half the shares?”
“A fraction over half. Say, fifty-one per cent.”
“Ah! It’s that last one per cent that makes all the difference. If your chap has got over half—even one share over half—he can remove all the existing directors of the company and put himself and his nominees on the Board. So the answer is Yes. He can,
if
he chooses, boss the company.”
“But suppose he was just acting as an adviser to the company. Until he did what you just said—sacked the directors and took over—he wouldn’t actually be in command.”
“Correct.”
Susan thought about it. Her uncle said, “Is this a ‘Mr A, Mr B’ problem, or am I to be allowed to know who we’re talking about?”
The arrival of the coffee gave Susan time to think about this. Although her uncle gave a general impression of being a disorganised teddy bear, he was, in fact, both shrewd and discreet. She said, “The company’s the one I’m working for now. You wouldn’t have heard of it. It’s a tiny affair called M. N. Harmond. It makes all sorts of inks. It’s been in the same family for four generations.”
“And this man who controls the company, but doesn’t actually run it?”
“Randall Blackett.”
Mr Perronet-Condé said, “I see. It’s one of his group, is it?”
“Has he got a lot of companies?”
“Fifty or sixty. The same arrangement with each of them, so I understand. He has a controlling shareholding and acts as consultant, for a fee. They do a lot of intertrading. There’s some tax wangle in it. It’s no good asking me about that. Tax is mumbo-jumbo as far as I’m concerned. A crazy system run by crazy people. If you try to understand it, all you succeed in doing is driving yourself crazy as well.”
“Then how do you deal with your own tax?”
Mr Perronet-Condé said, with a grin, “I pay a very good accountant to do it for me. I’d no more fill out my own tax return than I’d cut my own hair.” As they were finishing their coffee he said, “You’re not getting out of your depth, by any chance?”
“Not me personally, no. Why?”
“Blackett’s big league.”
“He’s not a crook, is he?”
Mr Perronet-Condé took his time over this one. In the end he said, “I shouldn’t think so. I don’t think he could afford to be. I’d rate him as a very clever operator, who sails within five points of the wind, but knows too much about the game to get pooped.”
By seven o’clock that evening the last of the staff had left the offices of Martindale, Mantegna and Lyon. By eight the cleaners had performed their ritual functions. By half past nine the City, so crowded and clamorous by day, was peaceful and empty and the cul-de-sac of St. Martin-at-Hill was a badly lighted ravine between the cliffs of silent buildings.
A patter of feet on the pavement announced the arrival of a newcomer. Miss Crawley was not moving furtively. Why should she? Was she not a law-abiding citizen, going about her business? As a long-serving employee she had been entrusted with a key to the office door. Had she not a perfect right to return there, to recover some papers which she had left behind?
Nevertheless, when, as she was coming out of Cannon Street Underground, she had spotted a patrolling policeman, she had drawn back into the station entrance to allow him to get clear before she proceeded on her way.
The old rectory had a semibasement, two main floors and an attic. The basement was occupied by cashiers, telephonists and other creatures of the subworld. The plum offices were on the ground floor. Miss Crawley’s den was on the first floor, immediately at the top of the stairs. She opened the front door, walked along the entrance hall and started up the stairs. She hadn’t imagined that the office could be so different by night. It was full of noises which she had never consciously heard before. The muttering of the old-fashioned water-heating apparatus in the basement; the ticking of the clock in the general office. Somewhere a tap was dripping.
When she reached the top of the stairs she seemed to be short of breath and had to stop to steady herself and consider what to do next.
First she must go into her own room and recover the papers which were the excuse for her visit. The electric light had been turned off at the main by the cleaners when they left, but she had provided herself with a torch.
She found the papers, crammed them into her large handbag and went out again into the passage.
David Morgan’s place of work was at the other side of the stair head—a tiny room, in the original arrangement of the house probably a maid’s bedroom.
The door had no lock. Miss Crawley went in and shone her torch on the old-fashioned desk that took up most of the floor space. One of the larger drawers at the bottom would be the most likely. Feeling remarkably like a burglar, she dropped on to her knees and tugged at the right-hand drawer.
It was not locked and held nothing but old files. She tried the left-hand drawer. This contained a pullover, a set of hairbrushes, a towel and—yes—surely this was what she had come to find. She could feel it, tucked away under the towel. Its shape was unmistakable.
Not wanting to disturb anything unnecessarily, she lifted one corner of the towel and shone the torch down into the drawer. Its light was reflected back from the glass bottle. Lifting the towel a little farther she could read the label. The bottle was half full.