Fear to Tread (12 page)

Todd broke off, then added in an unexpectedly serious voice: “You know, the thing I find really unpleasant about that bit is that although a lot of drivers who are robbed are innocent and unsuspecting victims, in other cases the lorry
may
have stopped at that particular time and place because a little envelope reached the driver at an accommodation address that morning with ten crisp pound notes and a few simple instructions inside. However that may be, the result is the same. Instead of coming into the shops, the bacon is sold at its
real
price to half a dozen restaurant and club owners, who may themselves be essentially honest men, but have got their customers to satisfy and can’t afford to have bacon off their menu if the next-door chap has got it on his. Then you and your wife and other citizens go in and have a jolly good plateful of bacon at three or four shillings a helping and glad to get it. See?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall.

“Multiply that instance by a few thousand, and you see how redistribution works.”

Todd helped himself to another cup of tea, long since cold.

“There’s nothing particularly novel about it. The only new tiling is that the idea is getting around in informed circles that the old business has come under some sort of central management. Just after the war it was fairly haphazard. That’s why I called it a growth. In those days, if you were lucky enough to steal a dozen sides of bacon and get away with them, your troubles were only beginning. You had to find somewhere to store them – you couldn’t keep them under the bed; and you had to look round for people to sell them to, with the risk that one of your customers might be a fool with more conscience than sense who would go to the police; and you had to get the right price for the stuff, and see that the money was really paid to you, as promised. Well, redistribution deals with all that. Guaranteed markets, guaranteed prices. You sell to them. They deal with the Luigis of this world.”

“They deal with the Luigis all right,” said Mr. Wetherall absently.

“This isn’t only generalisation,” said Todd. “It’s got a moral as far as you’re concerned.”

“I’m glad it’s got a moral.” As long as he sat quite still his aches were just bearable.

“I can explain it most easily by asking you a question. Why did what happened to you tonight have to happen at all?”

“It seemed perfectly simple to me,” said Mr. Wetherall.

“That’s because you’ve got a simple mind. It isn’t really straightforward. If you were bothering this crowd at the circumference, I refuse to believe that their methods would have been so direct or so drastic. They get lots of that sort of bother. Restaurant proprietor A complains that ditto B is getting stuff off the ration. A goes to the nearest policeman or food official and screams ‘Black Market’. The authorities, if they take A seriously, have B watched. Maybe they can’t prove anything.
Then A notices that his own custom is mysteriously beginning to fall off.
If he’s a wise man he takes the hint and drops his complaints against B. Or perhaps there’s a retailer, C, who gets caught handling stolen food. That’s easier still. C is cut out of the system altogether. He’s no good to them. He’s been found out. He can whistle for the stuff. But – and here’s the point – A, B and C don’t get beaten up in backstreets. That sort of treatment is reserved for people who get rather nearer the centre.”

“Then I must have been right on the hub,” said Mr. Wetherall.

“Don’t you believe it,” said Todd cheerfully. “If they’d really wanted to see you off you wouldn’t be sitting in front of this fire drinking whisky. You’d be in the casualty ward of the Middlesex Hospital with screens round you. All the same – you may have hit on something. It might be something to do with that boy – Crowdy. They seem to have slipped up over that. I suppose they’ll be down at Woking watching him like hawks from now on—”

“They might,” said Mr. Wetherall. “Always supposing they knew where he was.”

“But I thought—”

“I told them the first thing that came into my head. I don’t suppose there
is
a St. Christopher’s Home at Woking. I made it all up.”

Todd whistled softly. “The de’il you did.” He said: “Well, that’s quite a point, isn’t it. You had them on the wrong foot there, all right.” He got up, picked up the ruler from the desk, and with it shaped a very delicate back-hand drop-shot up the left-hand wall of the room.

“But then again – supposing that Crowdy business was just a blind. Something they said to take your mind off the real object of the exercise. Supposing you went somewhere or saw someone or heard something tonight that you weren’t ever intended to. Supposing you got behind the scenes and saw the strings moving—”

“Do you think it could have been that Scotsman?”

“Might have been. I should have thought it was more likely someone in that pub. After all, that was the name you were working on. Or that club. Or just one of the basement doors you happened to knock on. You seem to have thrashed around a good deal.”

As well as he was able to for an aching head Mr. Wetherall reflected.

“I don’t think I was actually followed to Soho. I don’t know. It’s difficult to be sure—”

“There’s no certainty about it. You’ll have to wait until the police pull in those two toughs. That may tell us something.”

“Until—”

“If you give the police as good a description as you’ve just given me,” said Todd, “it shouldn’t be too difficult. There are only a limited number of professional bullies in London and most of them are on the books.”

“You think I ought to go the police?”

“Not tonight,” agreed Todd. “But very first thing tomorrow morning, of course you must. You’ll be putting yourself hopelessly in the wrong if you don’t. You’ve got nothing to hide, have you? You’re a law-abiding citizen. You’ve been assaulted. You inform the police, and sit back and wait for your assailants to be lined up for you to identify.”

“All right. But if by ‘sit back’ you mean that I’m to stay out of this thing from now on, I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong. I certainly couldn’t drop it now. To start with I don’t approve of physical violence—”

“You don’t—” Todd looked at his friend, and suppressed a desire to smile. Mr. Wetherall was peering earnestly over his broken glasses, apparently unconscious of the fact that one side of his face was red and blue from forehead to chin; that his lip was split, that both hands were heavily bandaged, and that his suit was an unspeakable travesty of its once respectable self. “You don’t,” he said, “approve of violence?”

“I’ve always been against bullying, too. It’s a thing I’ve been very strict about in any school I’ve taught in.”

“Quite so,” said Todd. “Well, all I’m suggesting is that just at the moment you ought to keep in the background a bit. You’re a marked man now and if there is any secret to be discovered in the Soho area it won’t be you who’ll turn it up.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I thought, just for a start, that perhaps I might hang round that pub in Soho. They can’t assault
all
their customers.”

“You’re sure you won’t get into trouble,” said Mr. Wetherall earnestly.

“That’s all right,” said Todd. “I’m not rugged, but I’m supple. I used to be reckoned one of the best dodgers in London. You’re about all in,” he added suddenly, “I’ll get you a taxi. Or better still, Hoggarty lives in your part of the world. I’ll ask him to run you home. The sooner you’re in bed the better.”

“I expect you’re right,” said Mr. Wetherall.

An hour later, as Todd was preparing to pack up for what was left of the night, the house-telephone rang. He listened for a few moments and said: “Have you any idea what the old boy wants?”

The voice at the other end had no idea.

Todd went out into the corridor, took the lift up three floors, and went through a swing door marked “Private”. A stepping up of the chromium, pressed rubber, and indirect lighting indicated that he was approaching a higher authority.

He went through another door, and a middle-aged woman who was sitting at a desk said: “Straight in, Mr. Todd, he’s expecting you.”

“Did you realise, Aurelia,” said Todd – “I only mention it in case no one has ever broken it to you before – that you sound exactly like the compère at a Roman circus, saying: ‘This way for the lions’.”

“That’s your conscience,” said the woman. “As a matter of fact he’s in rather good form.”

Duncan Robarts was the greatest editor that the
Kite
had ever had; at that time the brightest star in the night sky of Fleet Street. Yet “star” was hardly the word. Of heavenly bodies he most resembled a planet. There was no twinkle about him. He shone, with a steady, lowering power and lesser bodies moved in their orbits under his influence. His private intelligence system was remarkable, and he knew every last member of his staff, and liked them all. The moment he ceased to like them, they ceased to belong to his staff. It was as simple as that.

“Come in, Alastair,” he said. “Sit down. Tell me, now, who was that man you salvaged?”

Todd told him, as succinctly as he could.

“You were friends before, were you? What sort of man is he?”

Todd considered carefully before he answered.

“He’s a likeable person,” he said, “and remarkably adult for a schoolmaster. In ninety-nine situations out of a hundred I should say he would behave in the decent, woolly way that his class always do behave.”

Robarts was small and thick and he sat so hunched over his desk that he looked almost deformed.

“In the hundredth case,” Todd went on, “if his blessed principles happened to be involved, and if he saw what he conceived to be a duty ahead of him, and if he got the bit between his teeth – well, I don’t know of anyone with wrists strong enough to hold him.”

Robarts swung his chair round suddenly, hopped out of it, and moved across to the fire.

“It’s not quite our usual line, is it? What are you planning about it?”

“I don’t know, sir. I thought of spending a little time on it myself, but I don’t—”

“You think it’s too big to tackle?”

“I certainly think it’s too big for Wetherall to tackle.”

“Don’t you be too sure of that,” said Robarts. He had his hands behind his back and he flirted his coat-tail up and down like a sparrow in the spring. “The Liverpool race gang got broken up before the war – but I don’t need to tell you about that.”

“No indeed,” said Todd, fingering a white scar on the side of his jaw.

“Because one stupid, obstinate, frightened little cockney bookmaker refused to play ball and got himself kicked to death behind the grandstand at Aintree. And the biggest racket in organised prostitution that this country has ever seen came to grief when one girl – one absolutely innocent girl – was arrested in Regent Street for soliciting and refused to back out by the easy exit that was offered to her – plead guilty and pay ten shillings – and stuck her toes in, in the face of every filthy threat that was made until – well, you know that story too.”

“Yes,” said Todd. “I know that story too.”

Outside, a long way down, they could hear London coming to life. The lights were going out and the wheels of day were beginning to turn.

Robarts walked back to his desk and sat down. “Don’t get us officially involved unless I tell you,” he said.

When Mr. Wetherall crawled back to consciousness next morning he found that most of his resolution had drained away. His right hand was an aching lump. His head was opening and shutting in hellish rhythm, and the first thing he did on leaving his bed was to be sick. After this he felt a little better and put some coffee on, using his left hand. Then he shaved and (very slowly), dressed.

The only grain of comfort was that, since it was a Tuesday, he need not be at the school until after lunch. Apart from this, the difficulties loomed in successive and aspiring crests.

First, he must have his hand dressed and set at the hospital. Then he must see the police. Then he must get hold of some money. And send his suit to the cleaners. And think out what to say to his wife when she came back that evening.

On the hall mat he found a further letter from Mr. Bullfyne.

“I have had no luck so far,” said Mr. Bullfyne, “in placing your short story
The Chimes at Midnight.
I myself enjoyed it, and it was well written, but you might like to see the comments of the editor of
Home Detective,
which I enclose.”

Mr. Wetherall said something uncharitable about the editor of
Home Detective,
but he had never yet had the strength of mind to throw away such an enclosure unopened.

“It seems to us,” said the editor, “that although Rupert Fraser (the name under which Mr. Wetherall wrote) has talent, he seeks to describe scenes of which he can have no first-hand knowledge. If he would abandon his attempts to describe night-life, gangs and physical violence and would devote himself to those sides of life—”

“Tcha!” said Mr. Wetherall.

Divisional Detective-Inspector Clark inspected Mr. Wetherall with distaste.

“Where did this happen?” he asked.

“In a street off Dean Street, in Soho.”

“When?”

“At about eleven o’clock last night.”

“Then why wasn’t it reported before?”

“I was in no condition to report it,” said Mr. Wetherall, indicating his hand which, plastered and strapped at the hospital, lay like a whitewashed football on his lap.

“May I ask what you were doing in Soho at eleven o’clock last night?”

“It doesn’t seem to me to be entirely relevant, but if you must know, I’d been having a few drinks – at a public house.”

“I see.”

Inspector Clark managed to vest these simple words with such bottomless depth of innuendo that Mr. Wetherall wriggled on his chair afresh.

“Were you alone?”

“I started the evening alone. I finished it in the company of a man who stated that he was a Scotsman. I understand that his name is actually Higgins, and he earns his living by entertaining queues in Leicester Square.”