As soon as he got to his desk he took an internal memorandum form and boldly addressed it to the Chairman of the company. In it he suggested that a good advertising campaign might be run on the lines of We cater for everybody from A to Z and that the names of the agents who at present headed and ended their whole roll might be quoted.
He waited, patiently as he could, for a reply. That night he did not dream again that he was at the computer console. But he took this as a good sign. He had been told all that he needed to know and he was doing what he had been instructed to do. All was well.
It was, too. Next day he received an internal memorandum initialled by the Chairman himself. It warmly welcomed his suggestion. Thomas felt that, if he had still been concerned about a seat on the board, he would have taken a big step forward. Of course, the Chairman said, it would be necessary to obtain the permission of Mrs. Veronica Absolam and of Mr. Joseph Zzaman, “a new recruit, I find,” to use their names, but this doubtless would be a formality.
So delighted was Thomas with this neat confirmation of how in the race to the end of the alphabet he had been, as it were, pipped at the post that immediately another bright idea came to him. One that could be put to the test at once.
He marched over to the corner of the main office where the London telephone directories were kept and turned to their very last page. And, yes, there was a name even later than Zzaman. It was Zzitz.
Well, Mr. Zzitz was going to acquire a brother. Who would open a sales-commission account with Maggesson’s Mail Order this very day, and a bank account too. Mr. John Zzitz, was he that? No. No, he would be Mr. Adam Zzitz. The old Adam would rise up, and bring him luck.
He left the directories, put Mr. Adam Zzitz into the computer and then went to Mr. Watson’s office and told him that he feared another of his “attacks” was coming on and he thought he had better go home. At the tube station he bought a ticket for the first remote suburb that came into his head and there opened the Zzitz bank account.
To avoid awkward questions from Mousie he spent the rest of the day in a cinema near the bank, seeing the film nearly twice over and not taking in a word of it. When he got back he gave Mousie his customary peck on her somewhat leathery cheek and told her without much preliminary that he had been talking on the phone to one of their Scottish agents and had managed to turn the conversation to the subject of house purchase. He had heard, he said, some rather good news.
“Places in Scotland in the days when our house was put up were built to last, you know. They’re solid. Good foundations. Won’t fall down like a house of cards.”
He was rewarded with one of Mousie’s granite-gleaming smiles.
At the office next morning he told Mr. Watson that he was quite recovered. “Never felt fitter really,” he said cheerfully. “Never fitter in my life. And, you know, I think that’s a good reason to take my retirement early. While I can still enjoy things. So I shall be going, not perhaps at the end of next year, but by the following midsummer. Yes, certainly by then.”
Mr. Watson raised his eyebrows.
“Indeed? And — ahem — your pension, will it be adequate for all your needs, somewhat reduced as it will be?”
“I have some investments. In fact, I’ve been rather lucky with them, if I may say so.”
Mr. Watson sighed.
Thomas, ending the conversation, went straight to the computer console. He sat down at it and began tapping the keys, if anything more businesslike and deliberate than usual.
Tap, tap, tap... The small balance in the new third-from-last Zygo account was transferred to the very end slot in the series and duly showed up there on request, three hundred and twenty-four pounds, twenty pence. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap... And the Zzitz account was ready to receive all the little unnoticed tail-ends from the accounts of every Maggesson agent and customer, sums that would amount to more or less a hundred and fifty pounds a day. By perhaps the following April they would total enough to cover the deposit on the Deeside house, a sum he had told Mousie, lying to her directly for almost the first time in all the years of their marriage, that had been paid already, but which the accommodating estate agent in Aberdeen had told him could be safely delayed for several months more. Then, quietly gobbling its little daily bites, the Adam Zzitz account would by the time his slightly postponed early retirement date came round have accumulated the whole purchase price of the place where Mousie’s Highland heart could find rest at last.
His ten minutes’ work at the console over, Thomas went back to his duties. He performed them with all his customary quiet efficiency.
And so he continued to do, past Christmas, noisily celebrated in the office, quietly celebrated at home, past the New Year — he first-footed the house carrying in his traditional Scots piece of shining black coal at two minutes past midnight, as he had always done — and into the Spring.
He decided towards the end of March that April the first would be a suitable day on which to complete the preliminary stage of the business. All Fools Day. He experienced at that moment a flowing jet of contempt for the whole hierarchy of Maggesson’s Mail Order which simultaneously shocked and exhilarated him.
And on April the first just before noon, he went to the computer console and requested the total in the Zzitz account. He was not in the least surprised when this time, it amounted to a sum quite large enough to cover the deposit on the house. He tapped out certain further instructions, hardly having to think about what he was doing so embedded in his mind were the necessary sequences. Then, glancing round to make sure no other member of staff was within easy sight of his desk, he took from his briefcase his so far unused Adam Zzitz cheque book and made out a cheque payable to Thomas Henniker for the exact amount of the deposit on the house, safe in the checked and re-checked knowledge that already, thanks to the swiftness of electronic instruction, the credit would have gone from Maggesson’s Mail Order to the imaginary Mr. Zzitz. Next from the briefcase he extracted two already stamped and addressed envelopes, one first-class directed to his bank, one second-class directed to the Aberdeen estate agents. He put the cheque for himself in the former, a cheque from himself in the latter and carefully sealed each one.
Then, although his lunch-hour was not for another fifty minutes, he got up from his desk and walked out of the building and round the corner to a post-box. He slipped the letters one by one into the appropriate slots.
It was done.
He turned and walked back towards the office, his steps a little slower now than their usual brisk trot.
Yes, he thought, finally I have gone past the place where there was any turning back. Yes, I am a criminal now. A criminal.
But he felt no shame.
Instead a feeling of high pride possessed him.
I am Man the hunter, he thought. I have provided for my mate. I have gone out and seized my prey. Yes.
At the entrance to the office young Mr. Francis, the firm’s newest employee, was waiting for him. Hair appallingly long, of course, but nowadays what else could you expect?
“Telephone for you, Mr. Henniker. I believe it’s Mrs. Henniker.”
The boy wore a hint of an impudent smile. No doubt they had been gossiping to him already about Mousie’s habit of phoning with little reminders.