“You don’t say, old chap?” Mr Kebble’s eyes widened as gratifyingly as if the agency of Haroun al Raschid himself had been claimed.
“Films,” said Grail, airily.
“Ah.” Mr Kebble nodded.
Suddenly, his expression changed to one of anxious solicitude. He leaned closer. “They tell me old Charlie Hockley has quite flown off the handle. He’s the mayor here, you know.”
Birdie gave an inward gasp of admiration for the little editor’s bland duplicity. He was, she knew, and Grail knew, the only possible candidate for the authorship of that morning’s account in the national press of Mayor Hockley’s foray into chivalric fantasy. It was even likely that Kebble it was who had telephoned Grail the previous day for a quote.
“Mind you, old chap,” Kebble went on, kindly, “you mustn’t let Charlie’s antics worry you too much. His bark is probably worse than his bite. We must hope so, anyway.”
“Quite a comedian, I gather,” said Clive, having caught something, perhaps, of Mr Kebble’s habitual accrediting of information to unnamed sources.
The editor gave a chuckle. It implied that Alderman Hockley’s eccentricities had a long and well known history. Birdie found herself searching Grail’s face for signs of renewed nervousness.
“I imagine the police are more than capable of dealing with your mayor if he persists in making a fool of himself,” said Grail. Birdie looked away, her guess confirmed. So unimaginative and pompous a retort was not Clive’s style. He clearly was rattled.
They heard the thump of one of the outer doors swinging shut. Mr Kebble looked across to the already opening inner door. “Talk of the devil,” he said softly.
“Hockley?” whispered Birdie, following his glance.
Kebble shook his head. “Man called Hoole,” he breathed. “He’s Charlie’s second.” And he rose to greet the new arrival with an ear-to-ear grin and an arm as eagerly extended as if he had not seen Mr Barrington Hoole in ten long years.
Chapter Seven
“What does he mean, ‘Second’?” Grail murmured to Birdie. The expansive Mr Kebble sheltered them at that instant from the view of the new arrival and Birdie just had time to pose furtively but very expressively in a representation of taking aim with a pistol before introductions were being made.
Grail’s smile for Mr Hoole was as affable as fly-spray. The girl, on the other hand, greeted the optician like a favourite uncle. She hugged his arm and turned to Clive with “I told you he was a duckikins, didn’t I?”
Grail acknowledged this felicitous remark with a slight rise of the lip.
“Mmm...ah,” hummed Hoole. “A fortunate call. For me, at all events. I was not at all sure where to find you, Mr Grail.”
“And why should you wish to find me?” Clive had sufficiently recovered himself to produce his expression of vacant sanctity.
Hoole rubbed his plump little hands and jutted his head forward. He nodded in the friendliest way at Grail and said: “I have the mmm...privilege, sir, of bearing the mayoral commission, as it were. His cartel, as we say in duelling circles. In vulgar speech, challenge. Mr Hockley wants to shoot you. Mmm...yes, he does.”
Mr Kebble heard this little address with every appearance of wishing to congratulate both parties. He glanced at each in turn, his face positively pulsating with good humour.
“There now, Clive,” said Birdie. “You could go further and meet with no nicer invitation.”
Very slowly and deliberately, Grail looked about him, selected a chair, and settled himself into it. He waited some seconds, then said quietly: “I am not going to spoil an elaborate joke by saying how silly I find all this. Nor shall I insult your intelligence, gentlemen, by pointing out the obvious—namely, that any attempt to carry the joke further would automatically bring those taking part to the notice of the police.”
He gave Hoole, then Kebble, a slow, sad smile, and went on: “I do not know who you are, Mr Hoole, but you look too old and respectable a tradesman to be mixed up with a...a jape of this kind. As for you, Joss—may I call you Joss?—I should like to call upon your journalistic services in a matter much more worthwhile in every sense than this dubious nonsense that somebody has prevailed upon you to promote. Come now—what do you say?”
Only twice during his quarter century of professional practice had Mr Hoole heard himself termed a tradesman. For the rest of that day and during much of the ensuing week he was in a rigor of ice-cold outrage—a condition of which the only detectable symptoms were a persistent small nervous laugh and a white patch in the centre of each of his rosy, tight-skinned cheeks.
Kebble hid his glee behind the frown of earnest interest with which he addressed Grail. “Anything I can do to help, old chap. Glad to. What exactly had you in mind?”
Grail hitched his chair a little nearer the editor. “Let me put you in the picture, Joss. I don’t think I am betraying any confidences (his glance flicked aside to the optician and back) if I tell you that some film has come into my possession—the Herald’s possession, that is. Portrayed in that film are certain people who are residents of this town. It is most important that these people be clearly and accurately identified.”
Grail paused. A drumming noise that had begun quietly with his opening words was now irritatingly obtrusive. Mr Hoole’s finger ends were beating upon a resonant desk panel. Grail glared at the offending hand.
“Mmmm...if I might just interpose an observation?” said Hoole. He smiled icily. “As I mmm...intimated before, I do have certain propositions to put to Mr Grail. If he accedes to them, as I hope he will, there will no longer be any need for him to pursue his researches in this area, in which case his requirement of your assistance, Joss, would cease to exist.”
Hoole looked at Birdie, as if in confidence that her common-sense grasp of realities would induce her there and then to declare her alliance with him.
“All right, what does His Worship want?” Birdie asked.
“We know that,” said Grail promptly. “He wants to shoot me. Right, Mr Hoole?”
“Mmm...regrettably, yes. But there exist what I believe are termed, in current cant, ‘options’. Perhaps you will permit me to outline them?”
Grail spread a hand in limitless invitation. “My dear fellow...”
“In the first place,” began Mr Hoole, “my principal—Alderman Hockley—feels that although mmm . . . much damage has been done to the good name of the town by what has already appeared in the mmm...the Sunday Herald—the Sunday Herald? (Yes, said Birdie, that was indeed the name of the paper in question.) Ah, yes ... he would be prepared to consider honour satisfied if the projected articles were cancelled and a brief apology printed.”
Grail did his best to simulate high amusement. “Oh, yes? And in the second place?”
“You would undertake to destroy or return to the proper, mmm...proper owners, such material in your possession as might be used to discredit the town or its citizens.”