‘I’m ready to take your word for it.’
Fred thought that this was carrying the pose of indifference rather far. ‘It’s been a labour of love, you know,’ he said. And when they looked rather rudely incredulous, he added: ‘It may be morbid of me, but I like the company of all those thugs and assassins.’
‘You’re welcome to them,’ the man said rather grimly. ‘But the main thing is, you’ve got their dossiers.’
‘Oh yes, I have,’ Fred said. ‘But I’m sorry you don’t like them. They did things so picturesquely. “Enter executioners with coffin, cords and a bell.” The killers of to-day are . . . well . . . more prosaic’
‘I’ll say they are,’ said his guest, with a sudden lapse into Americanese. ‘I’ll say they are. Now, Wendy, we must go and make up our faces, and then we’ll take Mr. Cross on to our place. It’s not too early for you, is it, Mr. Cross? We’ve got the car outside.’
‘No, indeed,’ said Fred. He felt the meal was being terminated rather abruptly; but he was as anxious as his guests seemed to be to get down to business.
Left alone, he sat for a moment at the table, thinking. No doubt the pair, besides powdering their noses, wanted to say a word to each other in private about terms. While they were doing that he would go upstairs and fetch the book. Even his rather shabby bedroom wore a cheerful air, such was his elation, and when he took the typescript out of his suitcase, instead of greeting him with the leaden look of a child that has never managed to make good—the look that only an oft-rejected typescript can give—it seemed to say: ‘Your faith in me has been justified after all.’ I’ll wrap it up, he thought, handling it affectionately; it won’t matter if I keep them waiting, it’ll make them the more eager. How often had he done up this selfsame parcel; even the brown paper had been used before. But this would be its last outward journey until it returned to him with his proofs.
The book under his arm, he walked downstairs, scorning the lift. As he was crossing the middle lounge—always some Rubicon for a Cross to cross—he heard his name called. Not a good sign had the voice been imaginary, but this time it was real, as real at any rate as the loudspeaker’s voice, which penetrated to the very nerve-centres. ‘Mr. Whiston, please. A telephone call for Mr. Whiston, please. Mr. Fred Cross would like to speak to Mr. Whiston, Mr. Fred Cross calling Mr. Whiston, please.’
The hotel seemed to echo with it. Of all the coincidences on this evening of coincidences, this was the one that surprised Fred Cross the least. Experience had taught him that there were other Fred Crosses in the world besides himself. It was a lesson in humility which he had thoroughly learnt. Sometimes it vaguely depressed him that he had to share his name with so many other men but to-night he was proof against depression; he was morally certain that his ‘Jacobean Dramatists’ was in the bag (what bag? whose bag? A bag unknown to Brewer’s Phrase and Fable).
As the message was being repeated, the porter said to him:
‘Your guests are waiting for you in the car, sir.’
He sat on the back seat with the publisher’s wife, and didn’t notice much where they were going, so occupied was he in trying to keep up a conversation with her invisible but (he felt sure) existent smile. True to his resolution, he gave away as little as he could, and she was just as unforthcoming. Their conversation, like an iceberg, trailed unmeasured depths beneath it. Childishly, Fred found this mystification rather fun.
London spreads out a long way in all directions; when at last Fred felt he could take a rest from social effort and look about him he didn’t know where he was, but the street lamps were fewer than they had been, and the houses farther apart. A minute or two later the man said: ‘This is us,’ and drew up at the kerb.
The ‘place’ he had been taken to was much less grand than the size of the car suggested that it would be: it was in fact a bed-sitting-room in a semi-detached house. Many people lived like that nowadays, but they generally made the bed, or got it made, before the evening. As though aware of this thought the woman said:
‘Sorry the room’s in such a mess, but we had to make an early start this morning. What about some whisky, Bill?’
‘In there,’ the man said briefly, indicating a small cupboard which, when opened, was seen to house a surprising number of objects meant for a variety of uses: but drinking was one of them.
When the gas-fire had been lit the room seemed more habitable, as well as warmer. Fred and his hostess occupied the armchairs on each side of it; the man cleared a space among the bedclothes and sat down on the bed.
‘Joe’s not here,’ he said.
‘He may be on some job,’ said Wendy.
‘Well, good luck to him and good luck to the book,’ he said.
‘To the book!’ he said, and raised his glass. They all drank to it and Fred was suddenly aware of the parcel under his arm. Self-consciously but proudly he began to fumble with the string. This was his moment.
‘Some book!’ the man said, watching him.
Fred agreed. ‘It took me——’ he broke off, remembering he had told them before how long the book had taken him to write—remembering, too, that publishers are not necessarily impressed by the extent of an author’s industry. ‘Well, you know how long it took me,’ he substituted. ‘Time wasn’t an object: accuracy was what I aimed at.’
They both nodded, and out the typescript came. It had at once, for his eyes, the too bulky, too ponderous look of a literary work, however slender, that has always missed its market. Printed in the middle was the title, its worn, faded ink almost indecipherable against the pale blue of the folder, and in the bottom right-hand corner Fred’s name, and his address, which seemed at the moment very far away.
The man took the book from him. ‘I wasn’t expecting a big book like this,’ he said, ‘I must put on my glasses.’ The horn-rimmed spectacles transformed his face and for the first time he looked like a man who might be interested in books. He turned the pages. ‘Middleton, Marston, haven’t heard of them. Oh, here’s Ben Jonson. Where’s the list you spoke of?’
‘You’ll find it at the end,’ said Fred.
The man began to read the names out, and then stopped. ‘Strikes me there’s some mistake here,’ he said. ‘Somebody’s been having a game, he repeated giving the innocent phrase an unpleasant sound. ‘A game with us, it looks like. Somebody has. What do you make of it, Wendy?
He handed his wife, if wife she was, the book: the pages turned rapidly under her reddened nails.
‘I can’t make head or tail of it,’ she said. ‘It might be somebody’s idea of a joke. . . . Perhaps this gentleman will explain.’
Fred cleared his throat.
‘It’s my book,’ he said, with such dignity as he could muster, but with a fluttering at his midriff. ‘My book on the Jacobean Dramatists. I thought you were interested in it. . . . I was told you were.’
‘Who told you?’ the man asked.
It was only when he couldn’t remember his informant’s name—a name he knew as well as his own—that Fred realized he was frightened.
‘But you are publishers, aren’t you?’ he asked.
For a moment it seemed just rude that neither of them answered; then it seemed strange, with the strangeness of their faces, the strangeness of the room, and the strangeness of his being there at all.
‘I thought——’ he began.
‘You thought a good deal, didn’t you?’ said die man. ‘It’s our turn to think now. Someone, as the poet said, has blundered. Someone will be for it, I suppose.’
The repetition of the word ‘someone’ began to get on Fred Cross’s nerves.
‘If you’re not interested,’ he said, half-rising, ‘I’ll take the book away.’
‘Sit down, sit down,’ the man said, patting the air above Fred’s head. ‘We are interested, and we don’t want you to go away, not yet. We haven’t quite done with you, as the saying is. Now as for this book——’