From the doorway he’d thought someone was knocked down. Crowds gathered like harpies when there was a real accident. Though part of his mind was puzzled because of the unusual amount of hysteria that had resulted, which he had felt even from a distance.
But he got a shock from their story when they came to the end. He hadn’t been really listening, so he had to drag their last words out of his mind, repeat them to get them confirmed, before he could begin to think of them and their implications.
“You say a bus deliberately ran clown a lot of people including some babies, yet when the ambulances turned up there were no bodies?” Put like that it made them squirm.
“But we saw then, saw it happen.” Dickie speaking passionately, young eves holding horror, yet incredulous, bewildered. The publisher nodded heavily “It was slaughter,” Dickie shuddered. “On the crossing.”
Butty fought through his cold. There were a lot of loose ends hanging about but for the moment his thick head wouldn’t let him put hem together. All he could say was, “You don’t kill people and then not have bodies.”
Dickie said, his voice quite steady, low and positive, “I saw with my own eyes a bus wheel go right over that pram. I saw the children.…”
He went into the toilet and they heard him being sick. The publisher just sat there. Butty put his hands to his aching head. He didn’t want to think. After a while Dickie came out, drained and exhausted.
The publisher said, with real kindness, “I think you ought to go home, Armstrong.” It was the kindness that comes from comradeship in terrible circumstances. Butty thought, “That means I can’t go early.” Sod Dickie and his queasy stomach. One of them would have to stay. The publisher wouldn’t allow them both away from the office at once.
Dickie, looking shocked, said, “I might be sick again. In the street. I think I’ll stay for a while.”
Dalrymple came in from next door, smelling of the old books he sold. His catarrhal voice honked, “You’d have thought it was Hitler and his V2s again.”
It was some time before they realized that he knew nothing of the events along the road, just the big crowd that had mysteriously gathered. He’d gone back to his shop and busied himself setting up the table that had collapsed “—because of that jinx,” Dalrymple said. All this time he’d been sorting his precious books into alphabetical order again. “Damned fellow!” he ended wrathfully.
In defense of a man who liked books, even if he didn’t buy them, Butty said, “You said he was nowhere near the table when it collapsed. Why blame him?”
Dalrymple was impatient with details. “It was him. I don’t know how he does it. Wherever he goes things happen. Well, in my shop. Every time he comes in, things fall, collapse. Though he’s nowhere near. Call it coincidence if you like, but—” He brooded. A reasonable man reluctant for once to reject the unreasonable.
That scratchy fingernail on his bristly chin. A sagacious look out through the doorway. “Wouldn’t put it past him to have caused that there, whatever it was.”
Butty looked at young Dickie at that moment, and saw shock there, as if thoughts almost too great for his mind to assimilate were never the less having to be ingested. Slowly Dickie turned to look at them in turn. Dalrymple went out. He had no time in his life for anything except books. The world’s tragedies would go on, but Dalrymple wouldn’t be concerned. Only when a shelf collapsed or a table fell down, throwing his books into disorder, was he roused to normal human emotion.
The publisher seemed to sense a change in the young editorial assistant, for he said again, “I think you’d better go home. You look knocked up.”
But Dickie didn’t seem to hear him. His eyes were far distant. He said, “I didn’t think of it at the time, but he was there.”
“What?” Butty. But not really interested.
“That chap. The fellow that brings disaster.” Dickie’s eyes met Butty’s, very straight and unflinching. “I saw him. Hanging about. Laughing. Yes, I think he was laughing. Yes, I’m sure of it now.”
Butty picked up his dirty Mac off the floor where it had fallen from the hat stand. Pulled it on, unheeding collar turned in. He was tired, tired, tired. The hell with everything.
“I’m going home,” he said, and went. The publisher roused himself to a minor show of indignation, then slumped back into his dreadful thoughts.
Butty came in next day. That was all he needed, one blissful day dozing in bed. Of course another day, and even the weekend, would have been better, but in spite of his morose temper with the boss, Butty was in fear of his job. Too long away, and one never knew. So he came in, not better but, well, better.
Dickie obviously wanted to talk about the previous day’s events. He carried with him an air of suppressed excitement. But Butty didn’t want to talk. He wanted to get straight with yesterday’s mail, and see what was in today’s.
Fortunately light, this day. Only one MS. First para: “The big ship steadied, the side thrusters blasting momentarily, bringing the bow round on course. Matt’s voice was quiet, narrowed gray eyes on the scanner and the picture it provided of the alien craft a thousand miles away. “We can’t take any risks,” he told them, hanging on to the words of their intrepid commander. “Bring the ray guns to bear.” A pause. His solid jaws set, displaying nothing of the emotion that raced inside him. ‘Fire’!”
Butty said, “Crap for you, Dickie. Just your barrow.” And threw the manuscript across.
The publisher came in shortly after ten. He was in a brisk, no-nonsense mood. “We got behind yesterday,” he said, and his voice accused Butty for going. Dickie, apparently, had manfully stayed on and worked, gallantly holding on to his stomach. So he started in at Butty, wanting to know what had happened to the page proofs of Planet of Doom and The Lost Constellation. Had lettering been done for the covers for July? And that agreement with the Sutton Coldfield author, had it turned up? On and on, a peevish man this morning, without pretence of good humor, grinding down on poor Butty.
About quarter to eleven Frances came in with the morning coffee. She used a biscuit-tin lid for a tray, and as usual it was considerably awash. Frances was the typist next door. She was pregnant, complacent about it, and because she was leaving she had no fear any longer for the publisher and his ill-humors.
She said, “They’re all down the street.”
The publisher gingerly wiped the bottom of his cup on a piece of blotting paper, then set it down on another piece of paper. They didn’t run to saucers in this publishing house.
“I wish you wouldn’t slop coffee everywhere,” he said, grieved. Then followed up her statement. “Who’s down the street?”
“The fuzz.” Frances wriggled a bit, to settle more comfortably into tights that daily grew tighter. “They’re calling on all the shops, asking questions about yesterday.”
“Yes, yes,” said the boss. It was almost as if he had a hangover, the after-effects of yesterday’s excitement. Not so Dickie, who plainly would have talked if he had been encouraged. Once during the morning, in fact he had asked, “Seen the papers?” but Butty hadn’t and the boss frowned, wanting to keep hard on to Butty for missing some work the previous day.
The police came just when the morning picket went trooping by, their lollypops damning war and particularly YOG 45. They were honored with a chief superintendent of police and a detective-sergeant. Old Dalrymple next door had a mess sergeant and ordinary bobby, and they didn’t waste much time with him.