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In accordance with the first item on this onerous programme, Mr. Bredon was summoned to the Presence within ten days of his first appearance at Pym’s.

“Well, Mr. Bredon,” said Mr. Pym, switching on an automatic smile and switching it off again with nervous abruptness, “and how are you getting on?”

“Oh, pretty well, thank you, sir.”

“Find the work hard?”

“It is a little difficult,” admitted Bredon, “till you get the hang of it, so to speak. A bit bewildering, if you know what I mean.”

“Quite so, quite so,” said Mr. Pym. “Do you get on all right with Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Hankin?”

Mr. Bredon said he found them very kind and helpful.

“They give me very good accounts of you,” said Mr. Pym. “They seem to think you will make a good copy-writer.” He smiled again and Bredon grinned back impudently.

“That’s just as well, under the circumstances, isn’t it?”

Mr. Pym rose suddenly to his feet and threw open the door which separated his room from his secretary’s cubicle.

“Miss Hartley, do you mind going along to Mr. Vickers and asking him to look up the detailed appropriation for Darling’s and let me have it? You might wait and bring it back with you.”

Miss Hartley, realizing that she was to be deprived of hearing Mr. Pym’s discourse on Service in Advertising, which-owing to the thinness of the wooden partition and the resonant quality of Mr. Pym’s voice-was exceedingly familiar to her, rose and departed obediently. This meant that she would be able to have a nice chat with Miss Rossiter and Miss Parton while Mr. Vickers was getting his papers together. And she would not hurry herself, either. Miss Rossiter had hinted that Mr. Willis had hinted all kinds of frightful possibilities about Mr. Bredon, and she wanted to know what was up.

“Now,” said Mr. Pym, passing his tongue rapidly across his lips and seeming to pull himself together to face a disagreeable interview. “What have you got to tell me?”

Mr. Bredon, very much at his ease, leaned across with his elbows on the Managing Director’s desk, and spoke for some considerable time in a low tone, while Mr. Pym’s cheek grew paler and paler.

Chapter IV. Remarkable Acrobatics of a Harlequin

It has already been hinted that Tuesday was a day of general mortification in Pym’s copy-department. The trouble was caused by Messrs. Toule & Jollop, proprietors of Nutrax, Maltogene, and Jollop’s Concentrated Lactobeef Tablets for Travellers. Unlike the majority of clients who, though all tiresome in their degree, exercised their tiresomeness by post from a reasonable distance and at reasonable intervals, Messrs. Toule & Jollop descended upon Pym’s every Tuesday for a weekly conference. While there, they reviewed the advertising for the coming week, rescinding the decisions taken at the previous week’s conference, springing new schemes unexpectedly upon Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong, keeping those two important men shut up in the Conference Room for hours on end, to the interruption of office-business, and generally making nuisances of themselves. One of the items discussed at this weekly séance was the Nutrax 11-inch double for Friday’s Morning Star, which occupied an important position in that leading news-organ on the top right-hand corner of the Home page, next to the special Friday feature. It subsequently occupied other positions in other journals, of course, but Friday’s Morning Star was the real matter of importance.

The usual procedure in respect of this exasperating advertisement was as follows. Every three months or so, Mr. Hankin sent out an S O S to the copy-department to the effect that more Nutrax copy was urgently required. By the united ingenuity of the department, about twenty pieces of copy were forthwith produced and submitted to Mr. Hankin. Under his severely critical blue-pencil, these were reduced to twelve or so, which went to the Studio to be laid out and furnished with illustrative sketches. They were then sent or handed to Messrs. Toule & Jollop, who fretfully rejected all but half-a-dozen, and weakened and ruined the remainder by foolish alterations and additions. The copy-department was then scourged into producing another twenty efforts, of which after a similar process of elimination and amendment, a further half-dozen contrived to survive criticism, thus furnishing the necessary twelve half-doubles for the ensuing three months. The department breathed again, momentarily, and the dozen lay-outs were stamped in purple ink “Passed by Client,” and a note was made of the proposed order of their appearance.

On Monday of each week, Mr. Tallboy, group-manager for Nutrax, squared his shoulders and settled down to the task of getting Friday’s half-double safely into the Morning Star. He looked out the copy for the week and sent round to collect the finished sketch from the Studio. If the finished sketch was really finished (which seldom happened), he sent it down to the block-makers, together with the copy and a carefully drawn lay-out. The block-makers, grumbling that they never were allowed proper time for the job, made a line-block of the sketch. The thing then passed to the printers, who set up the headlines and copy in type, added a name-block of the wrong size, locked the result up in a forme, pulled a proof and returned the result to Mr. Tallboy, pointing out in a querulous note that it came out half an inch too long. Mr. Tallboy corrected the misprints, damned their eyes for using the wrong name-block, made it clear to them that they had set the headlines in the wrong fount, cut the proof to pieces, pasted it up again into the correct size and returned it. By this time it was usually 11 o’clock on Tuesday morning, and Mr. Toule or Mr. Jollop, or both of them, were closeted in the Conference Room with Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong, calling loudly and repeatedly for their 11-inch double. As soon as the new proof arrived from the printer’s, Mr. Tallboy sent it down to the Conference Room by a boy, and escaped, if he could, for his elevenses. Mr. Toule or Mr. Jollop then pointed out to Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong a great number of weaknesses in both sketch and copy. Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong, sycophantically concurring in everything the client said, confessed themselves at a loss and invited suggestions from Mr. Toule (or Mr. Jollop). The latter, being, as most clients are, better at destructive than constructive criticism, cudgelled his brains into stupor, and this reduced himself to a condition of utter blankness, upon which the persuasiveness of Mr. Pym and Mr. Armstrong could work with hypnotic effect. After half an hour of skilled treatment, Mr. Jollop (or Mr. Toule) found himself returning with a sense of relief and refreshment to the rejected lay-out. He then discovered that it was really almost exactly what he required. It only needed the alteration of a sentence and the introduction of a panel about gift-coupons. Mr. Armstrong then sent the lay-out up again to Mr. Tallboy, with a request that he would effect these necessary alterations. Mr. Tallboy, realizing with delight that these involved nothing more drastic than the making of a new lay-out and the complete re-writing of the copy, sought out the copywriter whose initials appeared on the original type-script, instructing him to cut out three lines and incorporate the client’s improvements, while he himself laid the advertisement out afresh.

When all this had been done, the copy was returned to the printer to be re-set, the forme was sent to the block-makers, a complete block was made of the whole advertisement, and a fresh proof was returned. If, by any lucky chance, there turned out to be no defects in the block, the stereotypers got to work and made a sufficient number of stereos to be sent out to the other papers carrying the Nutrax advertising, with a proof to accompany each. On Thursday afternoon, the stereos were distributed by the dispatching department to the London papers by hand, and to the provincial papers by post and train, and if nothing went wrong with these arrangements, the advertisement duly appeared in Friday’s Morning Star and in other papers on the dates provided for. So long and arduous a history it is, that lies behind those exhortations to “Nourish your Nerves with Nutrax,” which smite the reader in the eye as he opens his Morning Star in the train between Gidea Park and Liverpool Street.