“It’s Vavasour-Miss Ethel Vavasour. Who’re you? Are you Mr. Pym?”
Bredon laughed.
“Good lord, no. I’m a very unimportant person-one of the junior copy-writers, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see. You a pal of Jim’s?”
“Of Tallboy’s? Not specially. I just happened to be there, so I came along, don’t you know. They told me there was a very beautiful young lady asking for Tallboy, and I thought, What-ho! Why not buzz along and cheer her weary hours of waiting?”
“I’m sure it’s frightfully good of you,” said Miss Vavasour, laughing rather shrilly. “I expect what you mean is, that Jim’s sent you along to see if you can talk me round. That’s just like Jim. I suppose he’s sneaked off the back way.”
“I assure you, my dear young lady, that I haven’t seen or spoken to Tallboy this afternoon. And I expect, when he hears that I’ve been along to have a chat with you, he’ll be very fed-up with me. And no wonder. If you’d come to see me, I should loathe any other blighter who came and barged in.”
“You can can that stuff,” retorted Miss Vavasour. “I know your sort. You’d talk the hind leg off a donkey. But I can tell you this: if Jim Tallboy thinks he’s going to get round me by sending his flash friends to shoot off a lot of hot air, he’s mistaken.”
“My dear Miss Vavasour, will nothing rid you of this misapprehension? In other words, you got me all wrong. I’m not here to forward Tallboy’s interests in any way-except, perhaps, by offering the suggestion that this office is possibly not the most suitable spot for interviews of a personal and confidential kind. If I might presume to advise you, would not an appointment for some other place and time-?”
“Ah!” said Miss Vavasour. “I dare say. But if a fellow won’t answer your letters or come and see you, and you don’t even know where he lives, what is a girl to do? I’m sure I don’t want to make trouble.”
Here Miss Vavasour sniffed and applied a small handkerchief carefully to her made-up eye-lashes.
“Good heavens!” said Bredon. “How unkind and abominable!”
“You may well say so,” said Miss Vavasour. “It’s not what anybody would expect of a gentleman, is it? But there! When a fellow’s telling the tale to a girl it’s one thing, and when he’s got her into trouble it’s another. A girl doesn’t hear so much about him marrying her then. Well, you tell him he’s got to do it, see? Or I’ll scream my way into old Pym’s office and make him. A girl’s got to look after herself these days. I’m sure I only wish I had somebody to do it for me, and now poor Auntie’s dead, I haven’t got a soul to stick up for me.”
The handkerchief came into play again.
“But, my dear girl,” said Bredon, “even Mr. Pym, great autocrat as he is, couldn’t make Tallboy marry you. He’s married already.”
“Married?” Miss Vavasour took away the handkerchief revealing a pair of perfectly dry and very angry eyes, “the dirty beast! So that’s why he never asked me to his home. Talking a lot of eye-wash about only one room and his landlady being very particular. I don’t care, though. He’s got to do it. His wife can divorce him. Goodness knows she’s got cause. I’ve got his letters.”
Her eyes turned, irresistibly, to her large and ornate handbag. It was a false move and she realized it instantly and gazed appealingly at Bredon, but he knew where he was now.
“So you’ve got them there with you. That was very farsighted of you. See here, Miss Vavasour, what’s the use of talking like this? You may just as well be frank with me. Your idea was to threaten to show those letters to Mr. Pym if Tallboy didn’t pay up, wasn’t it?”
“No, of course it wasn’t.”
“You’re so devoted to Tallboy that you always carry his correspondence about with you?”
“Yes-no. I never said I’d got the letters with me.”
“No? But you’ve admitted it now, you know. Now, you take the advice of a man double your age.” (This was a generous estimate, for Miss Vavasour was an easy twenty-eight.) “If you make a disturbance here, nothing will happen, except that Tallboy will possibly lose his job and have no money at all for you or anybody. And if you try to sell him those letters-there’s a name for that, and it’s not a pretty one.”
“That’s all very well,” said Miss Vavasour, sullenly, “but how about this trouble he’s got me into? I’m a mannequin, see? And if a girl’s got to chuck her job, and her figure ruined for life-”
“Are you sure you’re not mistaken about that?”
“’Course I’m sure. What do you take me for? An innocent?”
“Surely not,” said Bredon. “No doubt Tallboy will be ready to come to a suitable arrangement. But-if I may presume to advise you-no threats and no disturbance. And-forgive me-there are other people in the world.”
“Yes, there are,” said Miss Vavasour, frankly, “but they’re not so keen to take over a girl with encumbrances, if you know what I mean. You wouldn’t yourself now, would you?”
“Oh, me? I’m not in the running,” said Bredon, with perhaps more promptness and emphasis than was quite complimentary. “But, speaking generally, I’m sure you’ll find it better not to make an explosion-not here, at any rate. I mean to say, you know, that’s the point. Because this is one of those old-fashioned firms that don’t like anything unpleasant or-er-undesirable to happen on their premises.”
“You bet they don’t,” said Miss Vavasour, shrewdly, “that’s why I’m here.”
“Yes, but take it from me, you’ll do no good by making a fuss. Really not. And-ah! here is the missing gentleman. I’ll be pushing along. Hullo, Tallboy-I’ve just been entertaining the lady in your absence.”
Tallboy, his eyes burning in a very white face and his lips twitching, looked at Bredon for a moment or two in silence. Then:
“Thanks very much,” he said, in a stifled tone.
“No, don’t thank me,” said Bredon. “The gratification is entirely on my side.”
He went out and shut the door upon the pair of them.
“Now, I wonder,” said Mr. Bredon, reverting to his own detective personality as he went slowly upstairs to his room, “I wonder if it’s possible that I’m all wrong about our friend Victor Dean. Can it be that he was merely a common or garden blackmailer, intent on turning his colleague’s human weaknesses to his own advantage? Would that be worth cracking a fellow’s skull for him and hurling him down a staircase, iron, one, murderers for the use of? The chap who could probably tell me is Willis, but somehow the good Willis is deaf as an adder to my well-known charm of speech. Is it any use sounding him again? If only I could be sure that he was not the gentleman who sandbagged my poor brother-in-law Charles and that he was not still harbouring designs upon my unworthy carcase. Not that I mind having designs harboured on me, but I don’t want to make a confidant of the fellow I’m after, like the fat-headed hero in one of those detective stories where the detective turns out to be the villain. If only I had ever seen Willis engaged in any game or sport, I should know better where I stood, but he seems to despise the open-air life-and that in itself, if you come to think of it, is sinister.”
After a little more thought, he went along to Willis’ room.
“Oh, I say, Willis,” he said, “am I disturbing you?”
“No. Come in.”
Willis looked up from a sheet of paper which bore the engaging headlines: “MAGNOLIA-WHITE, MAGNOLIA-SOFT-that’s what they’ll say of your hands.” He looked depressed and ill.
“See here, Willis,” said Bredon, “I want your advice. I know we don’t seem to hit it off very well-”
“No-it’s my fault,” said Willis. He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, and then brought his words out with a rush, as though they had been violently forced from him: “I fancy I owe you some sort of apology. I appear to have been mistaken.”