Whifflets were upset. They demanded, with some annoyance, why Pym’s had not had this brilliant idea first. They clamoured for an aeroplane scheme of their own, with a larger plane and a hangar to keep it in. Mr. Armstrong pointed out to them that the sole result of this would be to confuse the public mind between Whifflets and Puffins, which were already quite sufficiently similar in quality and appearance to confuse anybody.
“They’re all alike,” he said to Bredon, not meaning the cigarettes, but the manufacturers. “They follow each other like sheep. If Whifflets use large heads of film-stars, Puffins want to come out with still larger heads of still more important stars. If Gasperettes give away timepieces, Puffins follow on with grandfather clocks and Whifflets with chronometers. If Whifflets announce that they don’t damage the lungs, Puffins claim that they strengthen the pulmonary system and Gasperettes quote doctors who recommend them in cases of tuberculosis. They will try to snatch each other’s thunder-and what happens? The public smoke them all in turn, just as they did before.”
“Isn’t that a good thing for trade?” asked Mr. Bredon, innocently. “If one of them got all the sales, the others would go bankrupt.”
“Oh, no, they wouldn’t,” said Mr. Armstrong. “They’d merely amalgamate. But it would be bad for us, because then they’d all use the same agency.”
“Well, what about it, then?” queried Bredon.
“We’ve got to cope. We must head them off aeroplanes. For one thing, the boom won’t last. The country isn’t ready to be cluttered up with aeroplanes, and fathers of families are beginning to complain about it. Even today, few fathers care about having private aeroplanes delivered to their daughters in quiet suburban areas. What we want is a new scheme, on similar lines but with more family appeal. But it must boost Britain. We’ve got to have the patriotic note.”
It was in that moment, and while Chief-Inspector Parker was arguing over the line with the office telephonist, that Mr. Death Bredon conceived that magnificent idea that everybody remembers and talks about today-the scheme that achieved renown as “Whiffling Round Britain”-the scheme that sent up the sales of Whifflets by five hundred per cent in three months and brought so much prosperity to British Hotel-keepers and Road and Rail Transport. It is not necessary to go into details. You have probably Whiffled yourself. You recollect how it was done. You collected coupons for everything-railway fares, charabancs, hotel-bills, theatre-tickets-every imaginable item in the holiday programme. When you had collected enough to cover the period of time you wished to spend in travelling, you took your coupons with you (no sending up to Whifflets, nothing to post or fill in) and started on your tour. At the railway station you presented coupons entitling you to so many miles of first-class travel and received your ticket to the selected town. You sought your hotel (practically all the hotels in Britain fell eagerly in with the scheme) and there presented coupons entitling you to so many nights’ board and lodging on special Whifflet terms. For your charabanc outings, your seabathing, your amusements, you paid in Whifflet coupons. It was all exceedingly simple and trouble-free. And it made for that happy gregariousness which is the joy of the travelling middle-class. When you asked for your packet of Whifflets in the bar, your next-door neighbour was almost sure to ask, “Are you Whiffling too?” Whiffling parties arranged to Whiffle together, and exchanged Whifflet coupons on the spot. The great Whifflers’ Club practically founded itself, and Whifflers who had formed attachments while Whiffling in company, secured special Whifflet coupons entitling them to a Whifflet wedding with a Whifflet cake and their photographs in the papers. When this had happened several times, arrangements were made by which Whiffler couples could collect for a Whifflet house, whose Whifflet furniture included a handsome presentation smoking cabinet, free from advertising matter and crammed with unnecessary gadgets. After this, it was only a step to a Whifflet Baby. In fact, the Whifflet Campaign is and remains the outstanding example of Thinking Big in Advertising. The only thing that you cannot get by Whiffling is a coffin; it is not admitted that any Whiffler could ever require such an article.
It is not to be supposed that the great Whiffle-Way, in all its comprehensive perfection, sprang fully armed from Mr. Bredon’s brain when Mr. Armstrong uttered the words, Family Appeal. All that then happened was a mental association with the phrase Family Hotel, coupled with a faint consciousness of inner illumination. He replied, humbly, “Yes, I see; I’ll try to work out something,” gathered up some sheets of paper on which Mr. Armstrong had scribbled a few illegible notes and a thing that looked like a hedgehog, and made his way out. He had taken six steps down the passage when the idiotic slogan: “If that’s what you want, you can Whiffle for it,” took possession of his brain; two steps further on, this repellent sentence had recast itself as: “All you Want by Whiffling,” and on the threshold of his own room, the first practical possibility of Whiffledom struck him like a sledge-hammer. Fired with excitement, he hurled himself at his desk, snatched a scribbling-block, and had written the word “WHIFFLE” in capitals an inch high, when Miss Rossiter arrived with the message that Mr. Parker urgently requested Mr. Bredon to ring him up on the Whitehall number. Lord Peter Wimsey was so intimately in the skin of Mr. Death Bredon that he said: “Damn!” loudly and heartily.
Nevertheless, he obeyed the call, presented himself with leave of absence on urgent private business, and went down to Scotland Yard, where he surveyed the clothes and effects of the man in the dress suit.
“No doubt we shall end by having to circularize the laundries,” said Parker. “Perhaps a photograph in some of the London and provincial papers would be as well. I loathe newspapers, but they do advertise one’s requirements, and some of these laundry-marks may come from outside London…”
Wimsey looked at him.
“Advertisement, my dear Charles, may be desirable in the case of laundries, but for people like ourselves it does not exist. A gentleman whose clothes are so well cut, and who yet deprives his tailor of the credit for them is, like ourselves, not of the advertising sort. This, I see, is his top-hat, mysteriously uninjured.”
“It had rolled beyond the train, on to the farther line.”
“Quite. Here again the maker’s golden imprint has been removed. How absurd, Charles! One does not-at least, you and I and this gentleman do not-consider the brand to be the guarantee of quality. For us, the quality guarantees the brand. There are two hatters in London who could have made this hat, and you have doubtless already observed that the crown is markedly dolichocephalic, while the curve of the brim is also characteristic. It is a thought behind the present fashion; yet the article is undoubtedly of recent manufacture. Send one of your sleuths to each of these two establishments and ask for the customer with the elongated head who has a fancy for this type of brim. Do not waste your time on laundry-marks, which are, at best, tedious and, at worst, deceptive.”