“That was the time when everybody knew all about everything. You remember: Hitler, Goering and Co. were drug fiends and drunkards and lunatics; and there weren’t any real generals in the German Army because Hitler had shot them all and put cocaine addicts and perverts in their places; and how the German Army was mostly propaganda—Goebbels had one crack company of infantry march past a camera and ran the same reel six times over. Even my charwoman used to wake me up in the morning with the impregnability of the Maginot Line and gallant little Belgium. . . . Of course old Bohemund Raymond was a thousand times worse than anybody else, especially since old Lovejoy had put him onto writing that famous series of editorials that always ended: What Are You Going To Do About It?—like Cato’s: Carthage Must Be Destroyed! He was having the time of his life, old Bohemund, prophesying to his heart’s content. We had to cut the juiciest bits; but even what was left took a gloomy, frightening turn. Lord Lovejoy was able to say, ‘I told you so’ later on; but those editorials didn’t make us very popular at the time.
“And all the while Bohemund was drinking like a drain. He went on steadily till three o’clock in the Pig’s Head; knocked off for a quick sandwich, and was at it again in the Press Club until about an hour before his deadline. He’d just about manage to get to the office and flop into his chair. Then it was marvelous to watch him: he got steady as a rock—couldn’t see an inch in front of him, he was so pickled, but he didn’t have to; he’d snap in a sheet of copy paper and rattle off a thousand words of perfect prose, touch-typing like a conjurer, and staring into space with those big shiny eyes so as to give you the creeps. It would be all over in forty-five minutes. The boy would pick up the copy and Bohemund would fall into a taxi and go home. Well, one day Lord Lovejoy sent him to France to look at the Maginot Line. He locked up his old typewriter Rataplan as usual and gave me the key of the cupboard to hold; and when he was gone, I got this wicked idea of mine. . . .
“I went to a typewriter mechanic, a pal of mine, and I said to him, ‘Alf, there’s a little job I want you to do for me, just for a lark. Take all the letters off the type-bars on this machine, and put them back all jumbled up. Leave the keys as they are, only mix me up all the letters; so that, for instance, if somebody hits an A, he’ll get a question-mark, and so forth. Only you’ve got to be ready to put that type back exactly as it was before, overnight, at an hour’s notice. There’s a fiver in it for you,’ I said. And so he did. I locked old Rataplan back in her cupboard and waited. Couple of days later Bohemund turns up again in the Pig’s Head, full to the gills with armagnac, and went straight onto gin. He took his key, and when we asked him, ‘What news, Bohemund? What do you know?’ he simply turned round and said, ‘You wait and see!’—nothing more. But his eyes were full of something more dangerous than brandy; I thought: Either he’s drunk himself off his rocker at last or he’s in a bad fever.
“Now I had to go out of town for the afternoon. I kept thinking about the trick I’d played, and at last I phoned the Press Club to warn him to use some other machine. But he’d left already, having told a few fellows that he was going to astound the world with the greatest prophecy of all time. I buzzed the office: Bohemund had staggered in, got out Rataplan, touch-typed his piece as usual and reeled out, shouting, ‘It is achieved! I’ve done it!’ As soon as I got back to town late that night, I went straight to the office, where there was some little excitement about Bohemund’s copy. . . . When the Editor saw the piece he yelled blue murder for Bohemund, but he was nowhere to be found. It appears that instead of going home he’d gone to the Turkish bath in Jermyn Street, where they had to call the police; seems he wrapped himself in towels and made a veil of a check-loincloth, and stood in the hot room screaming gibberish. When they hauled him out, finally, he said he was the Princess Ayesha, prophesying. They recognized him at the station and didn’t charge him, so he went and slept it off. Meantime I got Alf to fix up the machine again, having, of course, had a duplicate key made for the cupboard; and put it back as Bohemund left it.
“First thing in the morning Lord Lovejoy phoned him and told him to come around to the office, immediately if not sooner; which he did. Now what was said at that interview I never quite knew, but knowing old Lovejoy I can pretty well guess. So I didn’t feel easy in my mind when I went to the Pig’s Head for a pie at noon; but when Bohemund came in I was absolutely appalled by his face—it was always pale in a creamy kind of way; now it was like curds and whey. The barmaid reached automatically for the gin, but Bohemund said, ‘A ginger-ale, if you please, Miss Broom.’ She nearly dropped the bottle, she was so surprised. He said to me, ‘Morris, I’m on the wagon—I’m on the wagon for life. Look at this.’ And he fished out of his pocket some copy paper, crumpled into a ball. ‘Lovejoy chucked it in my face,’ he said. ‘He threatened to fire me, as usual, but when I saw this stuff, for the first time in my life I could only apologize. I said something must have gone wrong with my typewriter. Then Lovejoy asked me, well, what was this famous leader I had been shouting about? And for the life of me I couldn’t remember a word of it! I went back to look at old Rataplan. Morris—there is nothing wrong with my typewriter! I must have gone out of my mind. Chuck this stuff away, Morris, and promise me you’ll never breathe a word of this to a soul.’
“I promised, and I kept my word. But Alf squealed in the end and, as Bohemund had prophesied, I was responsible for making a bigger hissing and mockery of him than anyone else in the Street. But before he found out, he didn’t touch a drink for close on a year; so perhaps he was the better for it, after all.”
“Swindle-sheet” Morris opened a drawer and rummaged in a litter of souvenirs—racing cards, autographed menus, and what not—and took out some crumpled yellow flimsy copy paper. He said, “I didn’t chuck it away; I kept it. I’m funny about mementos. Can you imagine old Lovejoy’s face when he saw this?”
I took the copy and read:
Waf iakh er aaumqa Ibala ssad tunsabal mash naqatal ruma niyaa andzu hooralhi lalalga deed.
O ulanya squtay uhuma. Hak azac at taraal qadar.
Way a tazauag alhila lwal sa leebta khtb urgad dubzee al alf rigl waya temzali kfeea amda mual ginse eal ass faree.
Way a tazauag assal eebalkhu ttafmaa ssal eebalma akcof feel nari waldami khennayal tahermua lkhamlual assad takhtal qadeebwa ifas wassal eebal maksoor.
Way a ssaadual assa dubaadi zali kmaalni srwatu alaq alduf daamin aqda miha.
Waf eehazi hialsa na alsa natalkham soonmin kharbal alfazya assoo duassala amqem mamana alatwar tafa at fau qaalkhar abiwa alaanqa adialar dalmah rooka.
“I can just imagine,” I said. “Mind if I take a copy?”
“If you like, Gerald,” “Swindle-sheet” Morris said gloomily. “Only if you write the yarn and sell it to a magazine, you might remember to give me a twenty-five per cent cut, old man?”
I might never have written it if my old friend, Dr. Marengo, had not come to my house to wish me bon voyage when I was leaving for America in April, 1955. Dr. Marengo is best known, of course, as Kem, the cartoonist; but he is also famous as a political scientist, an expert on international law and a linguist: he speaks and writes seventeen European and Oriental languages with perfect fluency and accuracy. While we chatted as old friends will, I was turning over an old box-file full of unconsidered scraps of paper. And there, among hieroglyphic notes which had lost their meaning and newspaper clippings the significance of which I had forgotten, I found my copy of Bohemund Raymond’s leader.