Fear to Tread

by Michael Gilbert

  “I should perhaps explain,” said Mr. Wetherall. “This isn’t a matter of school business, and I hadn’t thought to mention it before, but I am, in my spare time, a writer.”

  “Plenty of material here for your first novel,” said Mrs. Griller loudly and unexpectedly.

  “I am happy to say that my first novel has not only been written – it has been accepted. It was this, coupled with the newspaper offer, that made me bold enough to think that I might be able to make a living with the pen.”

  “What are the articles about,” enquired Mr. Fawcus, feeling it was time he said something. “Educational, I suppose.”

  Mr. Wetherall toyed with the idea of saying: “Folly and corruption on committees,” but disciplined himself. “Just general articles on current topics,” he said.

  “You spoke about writing in your spare time,” said Miss Toup venomously. “I wasn’t aware that headmasters had much spare time. Unless they make it at the expense of the school.”

  Now Mr. Wetherall had meant to be good.

  He had intended to confine himself to announcing his departure and parting on the best terms possible with his committee.

  It was at this point that he lost his temper.

  “I will willingly pay my royalties into school funds,” he said, turning directly on Miss Toup, “if you will yourself contribute any money you have received, directly or indirectly, for attacking my character.”

  Miss Toup gave a squeak.

  “Who put you up to enquiring about my so-called Communism? You can’t really expect us to believe that you care a brass farthing whether I’m a Communist or a Fascist or a nudist. It was the purest brand of nosey-parkering and trouble making. And another thing. Miss Donovan tells me you were snooping round the school a few nights ago. After we’d all gone home. What were you looking for? Hammers and sickles or rude words on lavatory walls.”

  “Really, Wetherall,” said Colonel Bond faintly.

  “And you,” said Mr. Wetherall. “You’re meant to run this committee, aren’t you? If it’s the way you ran your regiment I’m more surprised than ever that we won the war. Your job is to keep Miss Toup in order, not to let her bully me – or you. If you can’t manage it, I suggest you hand over to someone who can. And whilst you’re at it,” he added, with an unkind glance at Mr. Fawcus, “I suggest you stop co-opting alleged outside experts and get a few schoolmasters on this committee, and people who really know how schools are run.”

  Miss Toup had got her breath back.

  “If you think,” she said, “that by making vague threats and allegations—”

  “Let me tell you something,” said Mr. Wetherall, over-riding her with effortless ease. “You may not know all that’s been going on behind the scenes in the last few weeks. I’m not sure exactly how you got brought into this, and I’m certainly not going to waste time trying to find out. There’s a limit to muck-raking. But I must give you a serious warning. This little melodrama that you’ve been meddling in is nearly over. We’re in the last act. The small characters have all been seen for the last time. Do you understand that?”

  Miss Toup tried to say something, but failed.

  “I see you do. Then one thing more. The sort of people I’ve been contending with have got rather drastic and unpleasant ways of sweeping up minor characters when their spell of usefulness is over. You may not know about Mr. Crowdy. His death didn’t feature in the sort of papers you read. But you mustn’t overlook what happened to Mr. Pride—”

  Her face the colour of old parchment, Miss Toup got up and walked from the room.

  When the committee had dispersed, Mr. Hazel sought a word with Mr. Wetherall.

  “Don’t take them too seriously,” he said. “Have your holiday and enjoy it. I think it’s been well-earned. When you get back you may find some changes on the committee.”

  “It’s very good of you, but—”

  “I didn’t understand a quarter of what you said, but I gather you’ve been engaged in a sort of private war. What has Miss Toup been doing? Helping the enemy?”

  “I think she was tricked into it.”

  “She’s got about as much common sense as a hen, less really. Is that the only reason you’re getting out?”

  “It’s one of them,” said Mr. Wetherall. “But I really did mean what I said. I just don’t know if I shall come back. To school-mastering I mean. I’ve long wondered if I was fitted for it. I’m not a patient or scholarly person. And I’m not half energetic enough for a headmaster. I like boys. But I like them for themselves. I’m not mad to improve them.”

  “You may be right,” said Mr. Hazel with a smile. “All I’m suggesting is that you don’t make your mind up now.”

  The news seemed to have leaked out.

  Peggy arrived with a face of fire, and said: “What’s this I hear about them chucking you out?”

  “Shut the door,” said Mr. Wetherall, “and stop looking like a tigress robbed of her young. No one’s chucked me out. I’ve resigned.”

  “Really, or are you just saying that?”

  “You must know me well enough,” said Mr. Wetherall primly, “to know that I am not in the habit of just saying things. I am going to Canada almost at once and I shall be away for at least six months.”

  Peggy looked at him straightly.

  “Are you coming back?”

  “The matter is undecided.”

  “I suppose old Edgecumb will be running things?”

  “I imagine Mr. Edgecumb may be given temporary control.”

  “Not over me he won’t. I shall get another job.”

  “As a matter of fact I have the offer of one for you. On the Kite.”

  “Newspapers, huh?”

  Big men. Smooth types. Take a note, Miss Donovan. If the foreign secretary calls—

  “You’re not kidding?”

  “Certainly not. There’s a job for Sammy as well. When you go along – that is, if you like the idea – ask for Mrs. Bolton. She’ll look after you. For a start, she’ll find you somewhere to put up.”

  “And you’re really getting out? No fooling?”

  “No fooling,” said Air. Wetherall. “I’ve almost gone. You can go along to see the Kite this morning, if you like.”

  “I’d better straighten things up here first,” said Peggy. “I’ve still got last week’s milk returns to make out. I’d better get them fudged up—”

  “Adjusted,” said Mr. Wetherall mechanically.

  “—adjusted, before I go.”

  She whisked out quickly and shut the door.

  Mr. Wetherall sat staring after her.

  18

  FINALE IN HAMPSTEAD

  The big car in which Mr. Wetherall was travelling turned north off the Finchley Road and the noise of the traffic died behind them as they climbed the long straight street, which rises gently towards the heath.

  The driver slowed, and then turned again.

  If the previous street had been a tributary, this was no more than a backwater.

  The car nosed along, its engine running silently, until the road came to a dead end in a circular run-around of asphalt and turf. Then it turned about and drifted down the other side, the driver watching the numbers.

  All the houses were big, all modern, and all expensive, in the style of the ‘thirties, in hand-baked brick and rustic tile. Some of them had wrought iron porch-lanterns and others had little shutters beside the upstairs windows, which were plainly not intended to shut but looked very attractive all the same. They all had their ration of garden in front, defined by side path, front path and garage run-in.

  The car drew up in front of No. 8 and the driver switched off. The stillness and the peace became absolute. In the distance, cut off as it were by a wind break, the noise of the traffic came up from the foot of the hill, like the murmur of a distant brook which enhances the stillness of a forest glade. Secure behind the buttress of pounds, shillings and pence, the houses slept out the massive peace of an English Sunday
afternoon.

  “Quite a dump,” said the driver. “We’ll wait here for you.”

  “I may be a little time.”

  As he spoke Mr. Wetherall glanced at the occupants of the back seat and the largest of the three men sitting there nodded reassuringly.

  “Be sure to shout if you want any help,” he said. “We shall hear you.”

  “It’s quiet enough to hear a bomb go off,” agreed his companion.

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s going to be that sort of party,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  The little man who was sitting in the middle of the back seat like a prisoner between two large warders, looked up and blinked unhappily, but said nothing.

  “Good luck,” said the driver.

  Mr. Wetherall walked up the neat, flagged path to the cream- coloured front door and applied his finger to a fat chromium bell-push. After a longish pause the door was opened by a maid.

  “Mr. Harbart?”

  “I’m not certain if he’s in,” said the maid. “Would you mind waiting in here.”

  She opened a door and showed Mr. Wetherall into a morning-room.

  It was everything that such a room should be, from the wood block floor to the built-in white wood bookcases. There was not much furniture but any bit of it looked worth a year of Mr. Wetherall’s work.

  Five minutes later a boy looked in. He was about sixteen, with a lanky body and a pleasant, half-grown face.

  “I’m sorry you’ve had to wait, Mr. Wetherall,” he said. “I know father’s somewhere about. They’re searching for him now.”

  “That’s all right,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  “He put off his Sunday afternoon golf when he heard you were coming. I shouldn’t think he’s done that for anyone else this year.”

  “I’m sorry to have put him out,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  He made a grab at his morale, which was slipping fast.

  “I don’t think he minded, actually,” said the boy. “He was down to play a man who always beats him. Dad hates being beaten.”

  Just then the door opened and Mr. Harbart came in.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said.

  He was in his early fifties and looked, Mr. Wetherall thought, like a retired soldier. A soldier turned business-man. There was none of the weakness, none of the spiritual fatness that he had secretly expected. It was the face of a man used to command himself and others. Of a man neither stupidly kind nor stupidly cruel. It was the face of a man who was very sure of himself.

  “I hope Tom has been entertaining you,” he said.

  Mr. Wetherall agreed that Tom had been entertaining him.

  “All right. You’ve done your stuff. You can vamoose.”

  The boy grinned and disappeared.

  “It’s his long leave from school,” said Mr. Harbart, “and much as we both look forward to it, it’s sometimes difficult to find things to fill up the forty-eight hours. Now what can I do for you?”

  Mr. Wetherall had never felt himself in greater difficulty.

  He realised that he was being cleverly manoeuvred into a position of disadvantage, but it was hard to say exactly how it was being done.

  It was not as if he had come out expecting to meet a subhuman character wearing a mask.

  On the other hand, he had not anticipated that the man would be wearing an old Etonian tie.

  Meanwhile Mr. Harbart was waiting.

  Mr. Wetherall drew a deep breath.

  “Why did you give up your golf for me?” he asked.

  For a second Mr. Harbart looked surprised.

  “My message,” persisted Mr. Wetherall, “was that I wanted to discuss matters connected with P.S.D. Frankly, I should have expected your answer to be that you only talked business in business hours. Your son informs me, too, that you don’t lightly give up your Sunday golf. That’s why I was surprised.”

  “Put it down to the approach of Christmas,” said Mr. Harbart genially, but his eyes were wary.

  Mr. Wetherall sank back slightly in his chair. He knew now that his hunch had been right. However amiable, however correct, however imposing, the man in front of him was a crook.

  “I can explain my business best,” he said, “by starting with a story. It’s the story of a man who founded and built up, between the wars, a very large and profitable wholesale food business. It was a business which sold direct to restaurants and hotels and clubs of all sorts, mostly in London.”

  “Sounds like P.S.D. to me,” said Mr. Harbart. “Do you smoke?”

  “Thank you, no. The man who actually built this business up never appeared directly as head of the enterprise. Partly, I think, because he had an old-fashioned idea that the food trade was the hall mark of the lower middle classes.”

  “Touché,” agreed Mr. Harbart, lighting his own cigarette.

  “Also because he had other interests. He was, I think, a whisky broker in the City. And he was concerned in large scale tobacco purchase.”

  “Quite an all-round man.”

  “As you can imagine, the profits and, of course, the commitments of such a man would have rocketed during the recent war. Equally, he felt the draught very sharply in the years that followed the Armistice. No more of the easy money of the war years. Instead, increased food rationing, whisky almost unobtainable, tobacco taxed to the limit.”

  “I weep for him,” said Mr. Harbart. “What did he do?”

  “He took to crime,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  The words fell into a deep pool of silence, broken only by the brisk ticking of the French gilt clock in its glass case on the mantleshelf.

  Mr. Wetherall’s heart matched the beat of the pendulum. (Well, what was it going to be? Flat denial, boisterous laughter, threats?)

  “Do go on,” said Mr. Harbart. “I’m sure you haven’t come to the end of your story yet.”

  “If you wish. As I say, he decided to take to crime. But he determined to do so in such a way that his connection with it would defy suspicion. A number of people have had that idea before, but I should think that very few have taken the trouble to work it out quite so cleverly or so thoroughly. What he needed first was a reliable ally. And he had just the man for the job – a Mr. Holloman.”

  “Holloman. The name sounds familiar.”

  “I expect it must be, seeing that you are the majority shareholder in Holloman’s company.”

  “That’s it, of course. The man who runs it calls himself Holloman, doesn’t he. It’s not his real name, I believe—”

  “His real name is Michaels. There’s still a record of a court martial of a Sergeant Michaels, in Germany, in 1919, in connection with a defalcation of company accounts. Incidentally he was acquitted, after an outstandingly brilliant defence. The defending officer was a Captain Harbart.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Harbart. “Yes.” The way he said it, it was quite without emphasis, yet it sounded, somehow, like a qualified admission.

  “When this gentleman decided to turn to crime, he thought of Holloman, who, I might add, had not been idle since his lucky escape in 1919. In that time he had served one stiff sentence for blackmail and one for embezzlement and had founded and dissolved no less than three patent medicine businesses. Two had failed for economic reasons, one through police interference following complaints from purchasers who had bought an embrocation which contained an unfortunately high element of pure caustic. Despite these failures he was still convinced – and I should hesitate to say that he was wrong – that all you need to succeed handsomely in that line is experience and sufficient capital. The experience he had. The capital was lacking. The gentleman I mentioned was therefore well-placed to do a deal with Holloman, who possessed every possible qualification for a crook’s middle man. He could be counted on for loyalty. He knew all the necessary small fry in the criminal world. His wife, a considerable character in her own right, kept a public house in Soho which served as an admirable meeting ground between Holloman and the rank and file. In short, he was the perfect ins
trument. All he needed was intelligent handling.”

  “And the intelligence,” said Mr. Harbart with a smile, “was supplied by—your hero.”

  “Certainly. Figure it out for yourself. In his own way he was even better placed than Holloman. The field, in which they were pioneering, was the organised distribution of stolen food and drink. This man had all the proper contacts. In a legitimate way of business – and his own business, remember, continued on strictly legitimate fines – he knew every restaurateur, hotel keeper and club caterer in London. He knew what was plentiful and what was scarce. What they could obtain legitimately and what they had to fiddle for. He had a shrewd idea, too, as to which of them would be likely to fiddle.”

  “It sounds like money for jam,” said Mr. Harbart. “And just the sort of thing to appeal to a man who had money already. It’s only the rich man who has any incentive to crime these days. If he makes ten pounds honestly he has to give away nine to the state. On the other hand, every penny he fiddles he keeps for himself. Yes. Highly profitable, I should imagine. And very difficult to bring home to—your hero. Unless Holloman chose to talk. He doesn’t sound to me to be the talking type.”

  “I agree,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  “And even more difficult to prove in court.”

  “Possibly so. However, you will remember the saying that there are two things which can never remain entirely secret – the spilling of blood and the payment of money.”

  “Hmp!” said Mr. Harbart judgmatically.

  “Arrange the matter how they would, there was still this difficulty to surmount. At some time and in some way, Holloman had to pay over to his employer his share of the profits. His employer was living in a style”—Mr. Wetherall allowed his gaze to wander for a moment round the room—”a style which called for frequent and sizable injections of ready money. He had an expensive household and a wife to maintain and a son and daughter at well-known schools.”

  “Shall we,” said Mr. Harbart, in a voice from which all trace of affability had vanished, “leave our families out of this?”

  “No,” said Mr. Wetherall, “we shall not.”

  Mr. Harbart half rose in his seat. “I presume you want to finish this conversation.”