Fear to Tread

by Michael Gilbert

  “No.”

  “Good. Do you remember the name of the third shareholder in Hollomans Limited?”

  “I can’t say I do.”

  “I wrote to you about it. His name is Harbart. Mr. Arthur Harbart.”

  “I think I do remember something now. Mr. Holloman had one share and his wife had another. And there was an outsider, Mr. Harbart who had about three. That was it, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. I don’t suppose above half a dozen people know this – it’s done through nominees of course – but you can take it from me that Mr. Harbart controls P.S.D.”

  Again the name struck a chord.

  Someone had mentioned P.S.D. to him recently.

  “Who—” he began; then realised that he was talking to a dead telephone. Mr. Bertram had gone.

  “Exit first rat,” thought Mr. Wetherall uncharitably.

  The kettle came to the boil and he made the coffee. It was, as he had imagined, quite easy. He wondered why women always made such a mystery of it.

  Whether it was the coffee, or the early hour or the lack of sleep, his brain, always a useful piece of mechanism, seemed suddenly to be working with exceptional clarity.

  The piece of information that Mr. Bertram had given him fell into place.

  There was a game he had watched boys playing. He had never been able to make out the rules. One boy stood apart, in a corner, and the others ran off, as far as they could, and brought things back to him.

  He was the boy in the corner. It was an impression he had had before. In this game, if he stood still long enough, everything would be brought to him. Just what he was to do with it all when he got it was another thing.

  The telephone rang again.

  He lifted up the receiver and a strange voice at the other end said: “Mr. Wetherall?” He said: “Yes,” and the voice said: “Go ahead,” and another voice started talking.

  Twice Mr. Wetherall tried to break in.

  “Where?” he said at last. “Where did it happen?”

  “Chancery Lane Station.”

  “Where is he now? If I came round now could I see him?”

  The voice sounded doubtful.

  But without waiting for any more Mr. Wetherall snatched up his hat and coat. At the top of the stairs he paused for a moment. There was no sound of anyone stirring.

  He went down, shut his outer door quietly, and bolted down the rest of the stairs. In the lower hall he pulled up sharply. A man in a raincoat, who had been sitting on a chair beside the door, got up to meet him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Wetherall.”

  Mr. Wetherall had to look twice before he recognised a very young detective-constable from Mace Street station.

  “Good morning, Lloyd,” he said. “Am I under house arrest?”

  “Not yet, Mr. Wetherall. I’m just here to keep an eye on things. I can’t stop you going out if you want to.”

  “Well, I do. I’m going to Barts. Tell them upstairs if they start worrying. I hope to be back for breakfast.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Lloyd. He had a pleasant, soft Welsh voice.

  Outside it was raw. The fog was now no more than a light mist.

  Mr. Wetherall dived down into the curious, early-morning hush of the underground. A few workmen and office-cleaners were standing about the platform, unspeaking. In spite of the fact that none of them came near him, or showed any interest in him, he caught himself edging towards the back of the platform.

  His early-morning mood was all drained out of him.

  He changed trains at Tottenham Court Road, where the crowd was a little larger, and again he kept himself carefully out of the way. At St. Paul’s station he got out and climbed back into the open air.

  In that short space of time the mist had blown away and the sky was full of low, hurrying grey clouds.

  He walked past the Old Bailey, crossed carefully, and came by back ways to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Here he gave his name and waited in a bleak room, and gave his name again and was shown into another bleak room where a man rose to greet him.

  At the back of his mind he had expected some last-year medical student, or young, newly qualified doctor, but it was a grey-haired man with a pinched, ruthless Scots face, whom even Mr. Wetherall had no difficulty in recognising. It was a face that had been a good deal in the papers recently, during its owner’s attendance on royalty.

  “Mr. Wetherall? Todd mentioned your name.”

  “How is he?”

  “It’s too early to be definite. But in my opinion he’ll live.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “As an agnostic,” said the surgeon, “I should say, thank his constitution. When you’re dealing with shock, a healthy life and a balanced mind are your strongest allies.”

  “Can I see him?”

  The surgeon looked at him curiously.

  “You realise,” he said, “that we’ve had to take the right arm off. He won’t see anyone but his nurses for a day or two and I doubt if he’ll see them very clearly.”

  “Of course, I only knew there’d been a bad accident. I’d no idea—can you tell me how it happened?”

  “I can tell you what he said. A journalist isn’t he? I imagine he was on his way home. There’s an early train from Chancery Lane. I sometimes get it myself. There wasn’t anyone on the platform except him and two other men. As the train came in they moved up on him, picked him up and threw him on to the line.”

  Mr. Wetherall said nothing.

  “Luckily he missed the live rail and fell into the trough. Must have thrown his arm up as he fell. The train went over it.”

  With fingers that trembled, Mr. Wetherall felt in his inside pocket and found a letter which had arrived the day before. He scribbled his telephone number on the back of the envelope, removed the letter, and handed the envelope to the surgeon.

  “That’s my address, and I’ve written down my telephone number. Ask someone to let me know how he comes along.”

  Then he was gone.

  The surgeon, who had learned enough about the minds of men not to be dogmatic, watched him without surprise.

  Mr. Wetherall walked quickly out of the hospital, crossed Holborn, went down the lane that leads into Ludgate Hill, and turned right at the bottom into Fleet Street. He walked with his body thrown forward. His breath was coming in short, dry gasps.

  The night commissionaire at the Kite was a man who reckoned he had seen everything, but Mr. Wetherall added a new sub-heading.

  He did not look mad, and the commissionaire was an expert on madmen. In spite of a night’s beard, he did not look particularly unkempt. He was just a medium-sized, ordinary, sober citizen in a raging temper.

  “I want to see the editor.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “My name’s Wetherall. Will you tell him I’m here?”

  “Would he be expecting you?”

  “I can only suggest,” said Mr. Wetherall, in his most icily pedantic manner, “that a simple way of ascertaining that would be to ask him.”

  The commissionaire was not paid his considerable salary for nothing. He took a very deep breath and said: “I’ll ring his secretary.”

  “All right, you do that,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  The man retired into his sanctum, dialled a number and said: “I’m very sorry Mrs. Bolton. Do you know anything about a Mr. Wetherall?”

  Mrs. Bolton appeared to cogitate. Then she said: “Yes, I think so. In fact, he might be important. Send him up.”

  The commissionaire was so pleased with his own perception that he actually smiled at Mr. Wetherall and conducted him to the lift.

  Mrs. Bolton was Duncan Robarts’ personal secretary. She slept, according to the private tradition of the Kite, from Friday evening to Sunday morning inclusive, but at no other time at all. However, she was certainly awake, composed and affable when Mr. Wetherall was shown in.

  “Mr. Robarts is coming along,” she said.

  “I haven’t got him out of bed, I
hope,” said Mr. Wetherall with massive indifference.

  “Well, no. He was up. He got up when he heard about Alastair, poor boy. We had things to fix.”

  “I see.” Mr. Wetherall had not had time to wonder how quite such an eminent surgeon had been conjured on to the spot quite so quickly.

  “You look all in,” said Mrs. Bolton. “Sit down by the fire. Have you had any breakfast?”

  “Thank you. I couldn’t—”

  “When did you eat last?”

  “I really don’t remember.”

  Mrs. Bolton must have pressed a bell, and to the man who appeared she said: “Get us some coffee and toast and boiled eggs. Can you eat boiled eggs?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall meekly.

  He was in the middle of his second boiled egg and of a long reminiscence by Mrs. Bolton about her family when Duncan Robarts stalked in. Small as he was, the room seemed to shrink.

  “Don’t get up,” said Robarts. “We can talk as you eat. How was Todd when you saw him?”

  “They’ve taken his arm off. They say he’s going to be all right.”

  Robarts perched on the edge of the table. It was obvious that he was in a towering temper.

  “Once,” he said, “I had this thing put up to me – by Todd. I refused to go on. And I still think I was right. As it stood, it was a matter for the police. Now things are different. If we can’t look after our own people, we might as well shut up shop. You’ve been in this from the start?”

  Mr. Wetherall nodded.

  “There’s no need to tell me the story. I know most of it. Todd sent me copies of his reports. Very good reporting too, but of course I couldn’t use them. Now it’s different. I want to hurt those chaps. I want to hurt them till they squeak.”

  Mr. Wetherall gulped his coffee and started to say something, but was headed off.

  “I don’t mean we’re going to run crossways to the police. But they can hoe their own row. There are things we can do that they can’t. Anyway, we can work up public opinion on our side. Now let’s have your ideas.”

  “Three days ago,” said Mr. Wetherall slowly, “I sat in Scotland Yard and listened to Superintendent Hazlerigg. He said that the way to attack these people was from the bottom. He had it all mapped out. You worked from A to B, and from B to C and so on up until you reached Mr. X at the top. It sounded sense at the time. Now I’m not so sure. To start with, all the little A’s and B’s and C’s in this equation were wiped off last night.”

  Robarts looked at Mrs. Bolton, who said: “Factory fire at King’s Cross. We didn’t know it was connected.”

  “In any case,” went on Mr. Wetherall, “I don’t think it would have worked. These people change their subordinates too fast for the little man to find out much. It’s no good cutting off the hundred arms of this monster. You’ve got to go for the head. At least, that’s what I think.”

  “Certainly,” said Robarts. “Certainly. An excellent idea. Always supposing you happen to know who the head is.”

  “I do know.”

  Robarts ruffled like a little angry eagle. “Let’s hear about him.”

  “There’s no proof at all. That’s the way it’s been arranged. But to my mind it’s as certain as anything that depends on probabilities.”

  “Tell us who he is,” said Robarts. “We’ll work up the evidence later.”

  “His name is Arthur Harbart. He’s head of the wholesale food firm, P.S.D. The only direct connection between him and this racket is that he holds three shares in Holloman’s company.”

  “Let’s take your word for it for a moment – you might turn up anything we have on him, Mrs. Bolton. I seem to remember the name in some other connection. Company merger or something – if you’re right, how do you suggest we set about him. It’s apt to be risky in this country, attacking a man with a good reputation. Expensive too.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I’d thought of that.”

  He talked for nearly fifteen minutes. Mrs. Bolton noted the fact as another record. She had never heard anyone, not even a film star, talk to Robarts for fifteen straight minutes.

  “All right,” said Robarts at the end. “Let’s try it out. It doesn’t commit us right away. And I’ll get people working on that other little man. You think young Donovan will be able to recognise him?”

  “He had a good look at him through the fanlight.”

  “Get Donovan round here straight away. He can come quite openly. The more people who see him the better. I’ll have his statement taken on oath. That’s the quickest way of making him safe. And the girl. If we like the look of them we’ll take them both on the strength. Would that suit them?”

  “It would suit Sammy,” said Mr. Wetherall. “He’d be an asset to any newspaper. Peggy too, I should think. She’s a good secretary, typing and filing and shorthand and all that sort of thing – and as nice a girl as you could find in the length and breadth of England.”

  He spoke with such unconscious feeling that Robarts glanced at him for a moment.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll see they’re looked after. They’ll be quite safe here. The boy will have to live in a hostel anyway. Mrs. Bolton will fix up Peggy.”

  That was the way, thought Mr. Wetherall. The Press; the only real dictator left in a shrinking world. Pull down that king. Set up that president. Dissolve the empire. Disestablish the church. Take a note, Mrs. Bolton—

  “And now for you,” went on Robarts. “First, how long is it going to take you to do your stuff?”

  “I’ll get it off my chest today, whilst it’s fresh”I’ll pay you half in advance and half on delivery,” said Robarts, and mentioned a figure that set Mr. Wetherall’s tired brain spinning. “That should help you to tidy up your affairs. I take it you will be all right. Yourself, I mean.”

  “I shall be all right,” said Mr. Wetherall bitterly. “After all, I’m not doing anything difficult. All I’m doing is running away.”

  He used one of the Kite telephones to ring up his flat, where he spoke to Peggy.

  “Listen carefully,” he said, “because we don’t want any slipups this morning. First tell Sammy to come along to the Kite—that’s it, the newspaper. It’s in Fleet Street. He’s to ask for Mr. Andrews, that’s the staff manager here. He must be careful how he goes, but as long as he keeps his eyes open and keeps away from the edges of platforms and kerbs and that sort of thing, I don’t think they can do much to him in broad daylight. Then I want you to go to the school. Take a taxi. Mrs. Wetherall will give you the money. When you get there ring up the committee – you’ve got all the numbers – suggest twelve o’clock. Some of them may be away, being a Saturday, but get as many as you can. All right? Then one thing more. If you go downstairs you’ll find a policeman in the hall. He’s a nice young man and his name is Lloyd. Oh, you know him. A friend of Patsy’s. So much the better. I don’t know what orders he’s been given, but ask him to see that he, or someone else, stays on duty till I get back this afternoon. And tonight, if possible. After that it won’t matter. We shan’t be there. What? No, I can’t explain now—”

  He rang off quickly.

  II

  Peggy had done her stuff. They were all there.

  Colonel Bond, looking faintly offended. Miss Toup, belligerent. Mr. Fawcus, important (it was his first full committee). Mr. Hazel, neutral. Mrs. Griller, baffled.

  Mr. Wetherall found himself inspecting them with unusual tolerance. He supposed that there was something to be said for the way public education was run in England. Not a great deal, but something. Better than Soviet Russia? Possibly. Worse than America? Probably. He did not know. It no longer bothered him.

  “I must apologise,” he said, “for calling you together at such short notice. But what I’ve got to tell you is, I think, important and it’s certainly urgent. Monday would have been too late. The fact is”—he took a deep breath—”that I have had an invitation to visit Canada. My wife and myself. It’s from a man we knew during the war
. I regard it in the nature of a—ah—cultural tour. It seemed to be the chance of a lifetime and, in short I accepted.”

  Colonel Bond said: “How long are you going to be away?”

  Miss Toup said: “When were you proposing to start?”

  It was almost a dead heat.

  “I am actually leaving my present flat tomorrow,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I am not certain of my date of sailing, but it should be sometime at the end of this coming week. In the interval I shall be—er—staying with friends.”

  “Impossible,” announced Miss Toup.

  “You must have no end of pull,” said Mr. Hazel. “Last year it took me six weeks to book a passage to America – and I believe that’s easier than Canada.”

  “One of the large newspapers is interested,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I am engaged on a series of articles for them which will defray – in fact, will considerably more than defray – the expense.”

  “Quite impossible,” repeated Miss Toup. “If you must go off on a jaunt, why can’t you wait until the end of term?”

  “I’m afraid that the sort of trip I had in mind wouldn’t fit into a school holiday. It will be at least six months. The earliest I could be back could be the beginning of next summer term.”

  “It by no means follows,” said Miss Toup, “I speak, of course, for myself and without the authority of the chairman, but it by no means follows that you will still find the vacancy open. Perhaps Colonel Bond will let us know what he thinks.”

  “Oh, well,” said the colonel. “Really, I couldn’t say.”

  “Don’t let it worry you unduly,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I’m not sure that I want to come back.”

  A moment of absolute silence.

  “That’s taken the wind out of their sails,” thought Mr. Hazel. “Isn’t it just like these damned committees. When they get hold of a good man they badger him and chivvy him until he walks out on them. Curse that Toup bitch. The colonel’s a fool but she’s pure poison. Well, we shall see. She’s not indispensable herself. I might be able to pull a string—”

  He made a note on his pad.