Feeling suddenly elated and hopeful, he strode towards the telephone box. Just before he reached it, a man, with his collar turned up to his ears and his hat pulled down against the rain, came out of the box and walked rapidly away from Mandsell down the otherwise deserted road.
‘Must have needed to phone pretty urgently to come out in weather like this,’ thought Mandsell, pulling open the door and entering the box. Just as the door closed behind him the telephone began to buzz. Acting on instinct he picked up the receiver and said, ‘Hallo?’
‘Oh, there you are! I’m sorry to be so late, but the last one has only just gone out!’ It was a woman’s voice he heard.
‘I think there’s some mistake,’ he began.
‘No, there isn’t. This is Faintley speaking.’
‘It isn’t faint. It’s quite clear. But, you see —’
‘Miss Faintley, idiot! Don’t waste time making stupid jokes. Somebody may come in again at any minute, and you know what they are for minding other people’s business! Why, it would be all over the place in no time if one of them overheard me! Now, you do understand, don’t you?’
‘Not a thing. You see —’
‘Oh, no, do listen, please. You said you’d help me, and I’ve nobody else I can trust. The parcel is at Hagford Station, and all you’ve got to do is to ask for it in my name, and take it along to Tomson. Don’t forget to ask for a receipt. It’s awfully good of you. I don’t know what I should have done if… Oh, dear! Good-bye. I can hear them in the vestibule. It was an awfully good idea to ring you up on a public phone. Much better than settling things here, with all these busybodies about!’
‘What number are you speaking from?’ he demanded; but there was no reply.
Mandsell hung up. What a silly woman! Surely she could hear the difference between his voice and that of the man she had arranged to ring up! He opened the telephone directory, found the number he wanted, copied it into his notebook – fortunately the electric light in the little box was functioning! – and went out again into the rain. The more he thought about the telephone conversation… if conversation was the word for it… he had not been able to get a word in edgeways!… the more it intrigued him. He was inclined, in fact, to execute the commission he had been given. Hagford was the next station up the line, a five-mile walk. It would be something definite to do, and that was always fun. He found that he was grateful for the small adventure, and, in any case, all was grist that came to an author’s mill. With a bit of luck, the incident might make a short story for the evening paper, now that he came to think of it.
Tomson? Mandsell was certain he had seen the name up somewhere. A shop, of course. Oh, yes, one of a mean little terrace of shops in Fish Street. Tomson’s was the one in the middle, a small, dingy, drapery establishment. Mandsell had often wondered how such places even made enough to pay the rent, let alone feed and clothe the proprietor. It was said that such shops usually had a second string to their bow, and that, behind the giant red herring of their ostensible business, all kinds of semi-legal and sometimes downright criminal practices were carried on… thieves’ kitchens, abortions, proscribed forms of gambling, brothels, shady little night-clubs, black-market deals, and white-slave exchanges went through Mandsell’s imaginative mind… and that the police were powerless to interfere without such definite evidence as it was almost impossible to procure.
What Tomson’s particular racket might be there was no means of guessing by merely looking at the jaded collection of cheap underclothes and second-hand shoes in the window, but, armed with the parcel and with the name of Miss Faintley to conjure with, there might be a chance of obtaining a peep behind the scenes. Mandsell began to see himself as the writer of a scandalous but highly successful novel of low life, one that was banned in Spain and Eire, preached against in the Welsh chapels and smuggled out of sight of their teen-age children by people who would have been horrified to find it in a public library.
Sunk in this blissful dream of best-selling authorship, it did not take him long to reach his lodgings. He no longer felt like a wet stray dog seeking a home. For one thing, he felt certain that his publisher would advance him that small, convenient loan… after all, the book was there – it was accepted!… and for another he was now in a position to inform Deaks that a woman had given him a job. It would be unnecessary to explain that it was an unpaid one! Besides, it would not be unpaid in the long run if he got a short story and possibly a best-seller of a novel out of it.
Considerably cheered, he beat on the front door of the quiet little house and his landlord opened it. He grunted when he saw who it was, but did not hesitate to let Mandsell in. He was not a hard-hearted man; besides, he had had to listen for the past hour to his wife’s accusations of having driven that poor young fellow away in weather which was not fit for a dog, let alone a gentleman as had been to Oxford College.
He pointed with the stem of his pipe.
‘Better go straight through and take off them sopping wet clo’es in the scullery, sir, else Mother ’ull be on my tail again. There’s my overcoat behind the kitchen door. Take it in as you go. It’ll do to slip on while you haves a warm at the kitchen fire.’
Next day Mandsell spent the morning working out his short story, and in the afternoon set off to collect Miss Faintley’s parcel. He felt and looked a very different young man from the soaked and despairing adventurer who had gone into the telephone box on the previous night. Nothing more had been said about his leaving his lodgings; his trousers had been dried and nicely pressed, his shoes cleaned and his socks laundered, and Mrs Deaks had even salved her conscience by giving him lunch – cod with parsley sauce and new potatoes.
He walked jauntily. The afternoon was bright and pleasant without being hot, and, once he was clear of Kindleford, the walk was invitingly rural, the flattish country intersected by streams, the great trees shady, the fields filled with buttercups or poppies and corn, the hedges still bearing wild roses and here and there the first flowers of Traveller’s Joy.
All too soon came the dingy outskirts of Hagford, at no time a prepossessing town, and, after the open country, of unspeakable dreariness. A long stretch of council houses, not even relieved by shops, led at last to the centre of the town and to the railway station. Before he went on to collect the parcel, Mandsell saw a post office and decided to telephone his publisher from there, but he realized, before he lifted the receiver, that he had not sufficient money for the trunk call which would be necessary, and he felt he could scarcely ask for the charges to be reversed!
He came out to the counter, asked for a letter-card, wrote it (thankful that he had his own pen on him, and so had no need to use the abominable instrument provided by the Government), posted it, and reviewed his diminished assets. The sooner his publisher answered, the better, he thought grimly.
He soon found the station, went to the Left Luggage office and asked for a parcel addressed to Miss Faintley. He thought that the clerk gave him a sharp glance, but he did not ask for any evidence that Mandsell had the right to collect the parcel. He handed over a flat package neatly secured with sealing-wax and string, remarked that it was a nice day, and retired to an inside office.