“Very good, my lord… I can observe nobody, but I retain a distinct impression that, when I opened the door to Mr. Tallboy, I overheard a footstep on the floor below.”
“Very likely. Well, it can’t be helped. Show him in.”
“Very good, my lord.”
The young man came in and Wimsey rose to greet him.
“Good evening, Mr. Tallboy.”
“I have come,” began Tallboy, and then broke off. “Lord Peter-Bredon-for God’s sake, which are you?”
“Both,” said Wimsey, gravely. “Won’t you sit down?”
“Thanks, I’d rather… I don’t want… I came…”
“You’re looking rather rotten. I really think you’d better sit down, and have a spot of something.”
Tallboy’s legs seemed to give way under him, and he sat down without further protest.
“And how,” inquired Wimsey, pouring him out a stiff whisky, “is the Whifflets campaign getting on without me?”
“Whifflets?”
“It doesn’t matter. I only asked to show you that I really was Bredon. Put that straight down. Is that better?”
“Yes. I’m sorry to have made a fool of myself. I came to you-”
“You came to find out how much I knew?”
“Yes-no. I came because I couldn’t stick it out any longer. I came to tell you all about it.”
“Wait a minute. There’s something I must tell you first. It’s all out of my hands now. You understand? As a matter of fact, I don’t think there’s very much you can tell me. The game’s up, old man. I’m sorry-I’m really sorry, because I think you’ve been having a perfectly bloody time. But there it is.”
Tallboy had gone very white. He accepted another drink without protest, and then said:
“Well, I’m rather glad in a way. If it wasn’t for my wife and the kid-oh, God!” He hid his face in his hands, and Wimsey walked over to the window and glanced at the lights of Piccadilly, pale in the summer dusk. “I’ve been a bloody fool,” said Tallboy.
“Most of us are,” said Wimsey. “I’m damned sorry, old chap.”
He came back and stood looking down at him.
“Look here,” he said, “You need not tell me a thing, if you don’t want to. But if you do, I want you to understand that it won’t really make any difference. I mean, if you feel like getting it off your chest, I don’t think it will prejudice matters for you at all.”
“I’d like to tell you,” said Tallboy. “I think you might understand. I realize that it’s all up, anyhow.” He paused. “I say, what put you on to this?”
“That letter of Victor Dean’s. You remember it? The one he threatened to write to Pym. He showed it to you, I fancy.”
“The little swine. Yes, he did. Didn’t he destroy it?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“I see. Well, I’d better begin at the beginning. It all started about two years ago. I was rather hard up and I wanted to get married. I’d been losing money on horses, as well, and things were not too good. I met a man in a restaurant.”
“What restaurant?”
Tallboy gave the name. “He was a middle-aged, ordinary sort of person. I’ve never seen him since. But we got talking about one thing and another, and how tight money was and so on, and I happened to mention where I was working. He seemed to be thinking a bit after that, and asked a good many questions about how advertisements were put together and sent to the papers, and so on, and whether I was in a position to know beforehand what the headlines were going to be. So I said, of course, that there were some accounts I knew all about, such as Nutrax, and others I didn’t. So then he mentioned the Morning Star half-double, and asked when I knew about the headlines of that, and I said, on Tuesday afternoon. Then he suddenly asked me if I could do with an extra thousand a year, and I said, ‘Couldn’t I? Lead me to it.’ So then he came out with his proposal. It sounded pretty innocent. At least, it was quite obviously a dirty trick, but it wasn’t criminal, the way he put it. He said, if I would let him know, every Tuesday, the initial letter of the headline for the following Friday, I should be well paid for it. Of course, I made a fuss about breach of confidence and so on and he raised his terms to twelve hundred. It sounded damned tempting, and I couldn’t see, for the life of me, how it was going to harm the firm in any way. So I said I’d do it, and we fixed up a code-”
“I know all about that,” said Wimsey. “It was very ingenious and simple. I suppose he told you that the address was simply an accommodation address.”
“Yes. Wasn’t it? I went to see the place once; it was a tobacconist’s.”
Wimsey nodded. “I’ve been there. It’s not exactly an accommodation address, in the sense you mean. Didn’t this man give you any reason for this rather remarkable request?”
“Yes, he did, and of course I oughtn’t to have had anything to do with him after that. He said he was fond of having a bit of a bet with some friends of his about one thing and another, and his idea was to bet on the initial letter of each week’s headline-”
“Oh, I see. And he would be betting on a certainty as often as he liked. Plausible; not criminal, but just dirty enough to explain the insistence on secrecy. Was that it?”
“Yes. I fell for it… I was damned hard up… I guessed that there was more to it than that. But I didn’t want to guess. Besides, at first I thought it was all a leg-pull, but I wasn’t risking anything, so I buzzed off the first two code-letters, and at the end of the fortnight I got my fifty pounds. I was heavily in debt, and I used it. After that-well, I hadn’t the courage to chuck it.”
“No, it would be rather hard, I should think.”
“Hard? You don’t know, Bredon-Wimsey-you don’t know what it means to be stuck for money. They don’t pay any too well at Pym’s, and there are heaps of fellows who want to get out and find something better, but they daren’t. Pym’s is safe-they’re kind and decent, and they don’t sack you if they can help it-but you live up to your income and you simply daren’t cut loose. The competition is so keen, and you marry and start paying for your house and furniture, and you must keep up the instalments, and you can’t collect the capital to sit round for a month or two while you look for a new job. You’ve got to keep going, and it breaks your heart and takes all the stuffing out of you. So I went on. Of course, I kept hoping that I might be able to save money and get out of it, but my wife fell ill and one thing and another, and I was spending every penny of my salary and Smith’s money on top of it. And then, somehow, that little devil Dean got hold of it; God knows how!”
“I can tell you that,” said Wimsey, and told him.
“I see. Well, he started to put the screw on. First of all he wanted to go fifty-fifty, and then he demanded more. The devil of it was, that if he split on me, I should lose my job as well as Smith’s money, and things were getting pretty awful. My wife was going to have a baby, and I was behind with the income-tax, and I think it was just because everything seemed too utterly hopeless that I got mixed up with the Vavasour girl. Naturally, that only made things worse in the long run. And then, one day I felt I couldn’t stand it any longer and told Dean I was chucking the whole show and he could do as he damn well pleased. And it wasn’t till then that he told me what it was all about, and pointed out that I might easily get twelve years’ penal servitude for helping run the dope-traffic.”
“Dirty,” said Wimsey, “very dirty. It never occurred to you, I suppose, to turn King’s Evidence and expose the whole system.”
“No; not at first. I was terrified and couldn’t think properly. And even if I’d done that, there’d have been awful trouble. Still, I did think of it after a bit, and told Dean that that was what I would do. And then he informed me that he was going to get his shot in first, and showed me that letter he was sending to Pym. That finished me, and I begged him to hold off for a week or two, while I thought things over. What happened about that letter exactly?”