Yours faithfully,
ROBERT JORDAN,
Director, Henry Smith & Co. Ltd.
Mr Mead sent for the files and for Pike, the chief draughtsman. Then he did some telephoning. After which he summoned Charley.
“Read this, Summers,” he said.
Charley had realized there was trouble when they came for the files. Nevertheless, when he went through the letter, word by word, it dazed him. After he had finished, he just sat on. Corker waited. At last Charley said,
“I can’t believe my eyes, sir.”
“I can. I have to.”
There was a pause.
“So do you,” Mr Mead went on. “Of course you do.”
“Not from Smiths,” Charley objected. He handed the letter back. His fingers were trembling. “It’s not true,” he added.
“Truth or lies, it’s written here, Summers.”
“Can’t believe that of Smiths,” Charley said. He felt betrayed on every side. “Not after what they promised.”
“Take a good look,” Mr Mead continued, passing the correspondence in its folder. “Turn up your letter of six weeks ago to the foundry.”
“Yes sir,” Charley said, when he had found the place.
“They couldn’t get those castings right. Had a lot of wasters.”
“What d’you want us to do? Kiss ’em?”
But, when this was suggested, such a look of distress passed over Charley’s face that Mr Mead tried another approach.
“Listen to me, lad,” he started. “After five years of war, and all the S.E. this and thats which the Ministry have created to their own ends, everyone in this game is case hardened, punch drunk if you prefer it.”
“That fourth paragraph of Smiths doesn’t seem to make sense, sir,” Charley broke in, misunderstanding the drift.
“What’s that got to do with it? I’ve known Rob Jordan all my life, haven’t I? We served our apprenticeship together. He thinks we don’t want this job, that’s all. And I must say, if I was in his shoes, I’d come to the same conclusion. What’s happened here? He’s got his own men chasing castings through the various foundries. And they’re doing it right, they’re going down themselves, not writing letters. One of ’em was shown this wet thing of yours. Rob told me so, I’ve just phoned him. Because it was wet what you wrote, sloppy. You don’t want to encourage people to turn out wasters. You have to threaten ’em, when we’ve the priorities we’ve got at the back of us. What firm’s supplying these castings?”
“Blundells.”
“Then they showed one of his snoopers your letter. Look, don’t worry too much,” Mr Mead said. “I fixed it with Rob just now. I gave him a ring. But do something for me, will you? Get back to your own room and write Blundells such a letter that will burn the fingers of whoever takes hold on it. Threaten them with the Minister in person if Smiths don’t receive the balance, and in a month. Then go down, for God’s sake see them. We shan’t be too late yet. And Charley?”
“Yes sir?”
“Don’t be in too much of a hurry to take things at face value. You were wrong about Jordan’s letter. He was only covering himself in case he got the blame. There’s just one other point. Keep lively. Don’t think that everything’s a try on because of this single instance.”
Summers collected the files and the letter, and went back to his room.
“Read this,” he said to Dot.
She skimmed through.
“Well, that’s that,” she said when she had finished.
“It’s not, then,” he replied, more violent than she had known him.
“If S.O.M.F. say so, I should think it was. We came up against them when I was on penicillin.”
“Nothing but a try on,” he announced.
“O.K.,” she said, pert.
“Turn me up the cards.”
On these cards were recorded actual deliveries of the parts from Blundells to Henry Smith and Co., together with brief particulars of the letters that had passed. He did not check the detail.
“I don’t know,” he muttered.
She stood there.
“Everything seems to come at once,” he added, riding his feelings on a loose rein.
She said, brightly, that it never rained but it poured.
“The lying bastard,” he cried, once more reading Mr Jordan’s letter, as if it had been a note from Mr Grant.
“Well we can’t expect the impossible, can we?” she asked.
“Look, Miss,” he said, and he had recently been calling her Dot, “this letter’s a try on, doesn’t mean what it says. I saw that the minute I set eyes on it. I’ve had some lately. There was a time I believed everything I had under my bloody nose, like you seem to, but I don’t now. Excuse me, of course.”
“This has got you upset, hasn’t it?” she said.
Then, without warning, he surprised himself by coming out with his own story.
“Well what would you say if a woman you’d known most of your days told you she wasn’t herself? Not sick or ill I mean, but another person all at once.” Because he had never before discussed anything outside the office, she was intensely curious.
“What?” she asked.
“No one will ever believe that,” he said.
“Well I believed this letter, didn’t I, which you saw through at once, or so you said.”
“Which letter?” he wanted to know.
“Why the one from Smiths, of course, to do with those blessed castings. But you’ve had something on your mind, lately. You’ve been different.”
This drew no reply.
“I’ll say you have,” she went on. “My mum always tells the world, ‘If there’s anyone to understand a person it’s Dot.’ Of course we have rather a wonderful relationship really, mum and me. Not like mother and daughter at all.” There was a long pause.
“Back from Germany,” he started, as though thinking aloud, then stopped, looking very queer, so she thought.
“Yes then?” she encouraged.
“A girl I used to know says she’s not that girl,” he brought out, with difficulty.
“The self-same girl?” Miss Pitter did not know if she mightn’t laugh out loud.
“Dyed her hair,” he explained.
“Well what about her handwriting? Has she changed that when she sends you a line?” Dot asked him, with what is known as a woman’s intuition.
“Oh dear,” he said. He had never considered this. “Oh dear,” he said, in anguish.
Then the telephone went. For a time they were very busy. It brought him back to office life. As soon as there was a lull he carried Smiths letter, and the files, out to Mr Pike.
“Can you spare a minute?” he asked this man.
“Read this, Mr Pike,” he offered the correspondence over. Mr Pike perused it, without in any way letting on that he had looked into the whole matter only an hour or so ago.
“There’s two points I don’t like, Summers,” Mr Pike began, then halted. He was like an owl in daylight.
Charley waited.
“This mention of parabolam, here, for one,” Mr Pike started, slow again, “and then his quoting your reference.”
“Yes, Mr Pike.” A pause.
“Of course it’s a try on.”
“That’s so.” A long pause, while Charley waited.
“Which stands out a mile,” the chief draughtsman continued at last. “Another thing. This is a secret process, Summers. We don’t want any special metal associated with parabolam.”
“No, Mr Pike.”
“And, you know, I don’t care for their quoting your reference. That’s nasty, that is. Right oh,” he ended. “Thanks for showing me.”
But Charley’s feelings got the better of him. “You don’t consider someone may have forged it?” he asked, on impulse.