now what it was that had awakened him. It was the ferrule of an ebony walking-stick. He looked down this stick. The ferrule was now hovering barely half an inch from the end of his nose. Peering round the stick, he saw a strange unusual sight; a pair of dark goggling, blank eyes set in a face which, he told some of those boys the next night, was just like Old Nick looking at you …
Mr Musgrove drew back with a start. His chair tilted underneath him and he narrowly escaped a fall.
The walking-stick was withdrawn. The window now was filled with this devil’s head under the strange, pointed black hat; there were dark glasses; a little grey block of beard; a white, twisted, inimical smile.
‘Er …’ said Mr Musgrove, ‘er … er … I beg … er …’
The stranger said a word. And then: ‘Any stalls tomorrow night?’
‘No. No,’ said Mr Musgrove, ‘no, no, no!’
‘I heard,’ said the stranger, ‘what you said the first time.’
Mr Musgrove strove to collect his scattered wits. ‘No, sir. No. We are entirely full for both the matinee and the evening performance today.’
The face seemed to come nearer. It was almost through the pigeon-hole. Mr Musgrove recoiled; once more felt his chair rock beneath him.
‘I didn’t,’ said the harsh voice, which seemed to find trouble with English r’s, though none with English idiom, ‘I didn’t ask for today’s performance. I asked about tomorrow!’
‘Oh! Er … I’m sorry!’ Mr Musgrove babbled. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I didn’t catch what—’
‘Cut it out! Have you or have you not three stalls for tomorrow night’s performance?’
‘Tomorrow, sir, tomorrow?’ said Mr Musgrove. ‘Three stalls, sir, three stalls. Would you like them in the middle, sir, at the back, or in the front at the side … I have a nice trio in H—’
‘I don’t care,’ said the voice, ‘in the least where the hell the damn seats are! All I want is three stalls. Give ’em to me and tell me how much they are so that I can get away from your face. It’s not a pleasant face, I should say, at the best of times. This morning it’s an indecency.’
Mr Musgrove flushed to the top of his maculate forehead. The tips of his ears became a dark purple colour. As he said to the boys that evening: ‘D’you know, you chaps, if it had been any other sort of man, well, I’d have been out of that office and set about him in half a second. You know me! But as it was, well, believe me or believe me not, I just couldn’t move. I was rooted! All I could do was to give him his three seats and take his money. You see some odd customers in my job, but I’ve never seen such an odd one as that before and I don’t want to see another one like it. Horrible old bloke! Sort of nasty, sinister way to him, and what with that beard and those dark glasses and that limp—he sort of seemed to drag his left leg after him and yet go pretty fast—he was a horrible sort of chap! I’m going to look out for him tomorrow night and see what sort of company he’s got … Thanks, Ted; mine’s a port and lemon. Cheerioski!’
COMMENT THE FIRST
NOT a pleasant person, Mr Marsh. Little Ockleton—where he has had a weekending cottage for the past six months—cannot abide him. Nor can any one, it seems, with whom he comes into contact. And how he dislikes having to pay excess postage—or was that outburst more by reason of his feelings towards the sender of that particular letter?
Thursday, March 28th, 193— 12.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m.
THE offices of RYNOX (Unlimited) are in New Bond Street. A piece of unnecessary information this, since all the world knows it, but it serves to get this Sequence started.
Up the white marble steps of Rynox House—RYNOX themselves use only one floor in the tall, narrow, rather beautiful building—there walked, at 12.30 in the early afternoon of this Thursday, Francis Xavier Benedik—‘F. X.’ to his many friends and few but virulent enemies.
The door-keeper, a thin, embittered person with the name of Butterflute, smiled. The effort seemed—as F. X. had once indeed remarked—to sprain the poor man’s face. But smile he did. Everybody smiled at F. X.—except those few but very bitter enemies. F. X. paused upon the top step.
‘’Morning, Sam,’ he said.
‘Good-morning, sir,’ said Butterflute.
‘How’s the sciatica?’
‘Something chronic, sir.’
‘That’s a bad job. How’s the family?’
‘Not too well, sir,’ said Butterflute. ‘Wife’s confined again; I dunno ’ow she does it! Me boy got three weeks yesterday, for D. and D. in charge of a motor car, and me daughter—well, sir—’
F. X. was grave and sympathetic, also determined. ‘Damned hard luck, Butterflute. Damned hard! Anything you want, just let me know, will you?’
Butterflute touched his cap. ‘Yes, sir. I will that, sir. Thank you, sir.’
F. X. went on and through the main doors and so along the corridor to the lift; a tall, burly but trim, free-striding figure which might have been from the back that of an athletic man of thirty. It was only when you saw his face that you realised that F. X. was a hard-living, hard-working, hard case of fifty-five. You realised that, and you were quite wrong. Wrong about the age, anyhow, for this day was the sixty-seventh birthday of Francis Xavier Benedik. But whatever your guess, whoever you were—unless indeed you were one of those few but very violent enemies—you loved F.X. on sight. He was so very much the man that all the other men who looked at him would have liked to have been. He had obviously so much behind him of all those things of which, to be a man, a man must have had experience.
‘’Morning, sir!’ said Fred. Fred was the liftboy. In direct contrast to Butterflute Fred did not smile. You see, Fred otherwise always smiled, but Fred felt, as every one, that one must do something different for F.X. So instead of smiling, Fred looked grave and important.
‘’Morning, Frederick! Lovely day!’
‘It is that, Mr Benedik, sir. Beautiful day.’
The lift purred softly and swiftly upwards. Frantic would-be passengers on the first, second and third floors were passed with a cool contempt. Had not Fred got RYNOX in his lift!
The lift stopped. For other passengers Fred was wont to jerk the lift, being the possessor of rather a misguided sense of humour, but for F. X. Fred stopped the lift as a lift should be stopped; so smoothly, so gently, so rightly that for an appreciable instant the passenger was not aware of the stopping.
At the gates F. X. paused. He said over his shoulder:
‘You look out for that girl, Frederick.’
From between Fred’s stiffly upstanding cherry-coloured collar and Fred’s black-peaked cherry-coloured cap, Fred’s face shone like a four o’clock winter sun.
‘Beg pardon, sir?’ said Fred. ‘Which girl was you meanin’, sir?’
‘You can’t tell me, Fred! That little dark one; works on the first floor. Between you and me, you might tell her that their Enquiries door wants a coat of paint, will you? … She’s all right, Fred, but you want to look out for that sort with black eyes and gold hair.’
The winter sun took on an even deeper shade.
‘Oh, Fred!’ said F.X.
The lift shot downwards at the maximum of its speed.
Past the big main doors upon this top floor—the big doors with their cunningly blazoned sign: