The Dust and the Heat

by Michael Gilbert

  “Over the last three or four months?”

  “That’s what he said, sir.”

  “I see,” said Oliver. “Neat.” He swirled the brandy round in his glass. “But not neat enough. Tell me, Sergeant, are charges like this usually investigated at divisional level?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Because I understood that all charges of persistent soliciting by males were now referred to one department at Scotland Yard. Superintendent Glasgow, isn’t it?”

  “That is the arrangement, sir, but they can’t always deal with all the cases that come along, so we sometimes have to investigate them too.”

  “But you report them to the Yard, don’t you?”

  “We shall report this one all right.”

  “I can save you the trouble. I’ve reported it to George Glasgow already.”

  “Do I gather you know Superintendent Glasgow, sir?”

  “I met him when he came out to Austria on a War Crimes job,” said Oliver. “I handed him over some choice SS specimens that I’d been put in charge of. I’ve kept up with him since, and I knew the job he was doing at the Yard. So when this young hopeful tried to pick me up this evening, I gave him a ring.”

  Sergeant Warriner looked at him for a long moment, then he relaxed. His big body seemed to settle down in the chair. It was as though, without a word spoken, he had gone off duty. He said, “That was sensible of you, sir. Fortunate too.”

  “There’s one thing that puzzles me, though,” said Oliver. “Why should he trouble to lie about me? I haven’t done him any harm that I know of.”

  “Spitefulness. They’re like that. If they can get anyone else into trouble they’ll tell any sort of lie to do it.”

  “Then he ought to have worked his lies out more carefully,” said Oliver. “I’ve only had this flat for two weeks. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”

  “Not nearly as sure as I was,” said Sergeant Warriner.

  5

  “Every effort will be made to comply with these specifications,” said Oliver, “and the Company are very grateful for your continued confidence in them.”

  “Is very grateful,” said Miss Doughty. “Confidence in it.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “The word ‘Company’ is neuter singular.”

  “It’ll bloody well be feminine plural if I bloody well want it that way.”

  “Certainly. I was only pointing out the accepted usage.”

  “I don’t give a damn for the accepted usage. It’s my letter and it goes to Major-General Miller, DSO, Contracts Department, War Office, Hobart House.”

  “You’re quite sure?”

  Oliver looked at his secretary suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

  “I was asking whether you really wanted the letter addressed to Major-General Miller. If you do, I’ll send it that way. As you said a moment ago, it’s your letter.”

  “Since this letter concerns an army contract, and since Major-General Miller happens to be in charge of army contracts, and a personal friend into the bargain, can you think of any conceivable reason why it should not be addressed to him–?”

  “Only that he’s been promoted to Lieutenant-General. It’s in The Times this morning.”

  Oliver said to Challen as they were walking round the works, “Do you think there might conceivably be such a thing as being too efficient?”

  “Oh, I’m sure of it.”

  “You can pay too high a price–”

  “I had an orderly room clerk once who was so efficient he could have run the whole regiment single-handed. He could have done it in his spare time, actually. Every time I gave him something to type out it came back different – you know what I mean.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” said Oliver.

  “Full of semicolons. He was nuts on semicolons.”

  “What did you do about him?”

  “I had him posted as sanitary orderly.”

  Oliver said, “In the case I have in mind, although it would be an eminently satisfactory solution, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be practicable.”

  They were walking round the factory. It was a very different place from the ramshackle outfit Oliver had found there twelve years before.

  Built over the double site, backing on the canal and fronting on the High Street, it was a roomy, single-storey building, largely constructed of steel and glass with a two-storey brick annexe at the east end sticking up like the bridge and upper-works of an aircraft carrier. This annexe housed all the office and executive staff, had a private entrance into the side road, and a car park behind it, filling the space between it and the canal.

  The main entrance, a wide bay with a one-way traffic circuit, opened directly on to the High Street. Following the logical progression of incoming materials, Oliver and Challen had gone through the left-hand entrance into a reception section where goods were checked, sorted, stored and issued. (“Quartermaster’s Stores”, said Challen.) Behind this, and running almost the full length at the rear of the building, were the make-up departments. This was where the various processes of grinding, pulping, slicing, mixing, distilling, boiling, cooling off and moulding went on. Old hands still referred to it as the kitchen.

  A short corridor then took them across to the packing department; but before reaching it they had to pass on their left the heavy teak door which led down a couple of steps to the experimental laboratory. Here Bernard Lewin, the Company’s head chemist, worked at his brews.

  “‘Eye of newt’,” said Oliver, “‘and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog.’”

  “It’s an odd sort of outfit,” agreed Challen, “and he’s an odd sort of bloke. Tell you the truth, I don’t understand one word in ten he says, but he’s clever. You can tell that.”

  “He’s not clever,” said Oliver. “He’s a genius.”

  Bernard was not everyone’s cup of tea, but Oliver had been taught, by no less an authority than Field Marshal Montgomery, that idiosyncracies of dress and manner might be overlooked if, and so far as, they were compensated for by brainpower.

  “How’s he getting on? He looked a bit off-colour last time I saw him.”

  Challen paused to consider this. It was a serious question and one which it was his job to deal with seriously.

  He said, “I thought he was settling down all right. It was a bit difficult to start with. Those shirts. And that hair-do. The men used to whistle at him, and, of course, that made the girls laugh, but it was all quite friendly, if you follow me. But just lately there’s been something on his mind. No doubt about that.”

  “I can’t have him worried. The job he’s doing is the most important thing in the Company at this moment. You could almost say it’s going to make the difference between success and failure. For the next few years anyway.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Challen. It occurred to him that there was very little difference between a Works Manager and a sergeant major.

  They strolled on into Packing, which occupied the whole of the north-east corner of the building. Through this department flowed the unending stream of three-colour wrappers, pictorial labels, special displays, instruction leaflets and advertising material, designed by the artists at Bargulders and specially printed for them by Sandberg & Freyer. Here were machines which would turn a roll of cardboard into five hundred cartons in the twinkling of an eye, machines that would fill bottles with three different liquids in the right proportions without spilling a drop in the process, machines which would count out tablets and dispense them into a container, seal the container and label it.

  “If I had to look after one of those machines,” said Oliver, “it’d drive me mad in a day.”

  “They get used to it,” said Challen. “What they like is not having to think.”

  “By the way, how’s your daughter getting along?”

  “She’s getting above herself,” said Challen. “When she was just a typist it wasn’t so bad. Now that she’s a secretary
– she’ll hardly talk to her own family.”

  They moved out, through the invoicing room and by a communicating door into the office annexe.

  Oliver said, “I’ve got a Board meeting in five minutes’ time which will drag on most of the morning. Could you see Jim Bolus and ask him to have a word with me before lunch?”

  There were five small square bottles on the boardroom table, each labelled and numbered; and five glass dishes each no larger than a half-crown.

  “Take your choice, gentlemen,” said Oliver. “They’re all subtly distinct, or so Mr Lewin tells me, but it needs a more educated nose than mine to be certain of the differences.”

  Brigadier Blackett unscrewed the cap of one of the bottles. There was a glass dipper inside the cap which he inserted, drawing out a drop of the liquid and spreading it on the glass saucer. Then he lifted the saucer to his long brown nose and sniffed.

  “Can’t smell a damned thing,” he said.

  “If you actually sniff at it, you won’t. Hold it in front of your nose and let it assail your nostrils.”

  The Brigadier allowed it to assail his nostrils, and said, “Ah, I got it then. Rather nice. Reminds me of something too. Can’t think what.” He screwed up his eyes in an effort of memory. The others watched him anxiously. “Reminds me of my wife,” he said at last.

  Dumbo tried them next. He said, “If you want a personal opinion, I should say the order was number 5 first, number 2 second, the rest also ran.”

  “Fine,” said Oliver. He turned each of the little dishes over, told Dumbo to turn his back, and put a drop of scent on each of them.

  “Now try again,” he said.

  Dumbo tried again. He said, “The one at the end’s number 5. The one in the middle is number 2 – I think. I’m not sure about the rest. And I still prefer number 5. What’s the joke?”

  “Those were all out of bottle number 3,” said Oliver, “and I didn’t do it just to pull your leg, Dumbo. I wanted to demonstrate what I’ve always thought – that there isn’t one man in a hundred who can really tell two scents apart.”

  “When I was in South America,” said Harrap, “I proved conclusively that I hadn’t any sense of smell at all. It was an advantage in some ways.”

  “Let me try,” said Wibberley.

  He held each bottle briefly up to his nose, then said, “Cover up the labels and change the order round.” He then tried them again, more slowly this time, and said, “This one’s number 4 – it’s definitely sweeter than the others, more ambergris, I should say. This one’s either number 1 or number 3 and this is the twin. They’re not very easy to distinguish but I think I’ve got number 1 in my right hand and number 3 in my left. This is definitely number 2. It’s got that smell of wet fern which is very popular nowadays. And this is certainly number 5. I agree with Mr Nicholson, it’s the best of the bunch.”

  There was a round of applause from the Board.

  “How do you do it?” said Harrap. Technique of any sort interested him.

  “It’s practice,” said Wibberley. “You have to associate something physical with each smell. It isn’t always a flower or a tree. There’s one skin lotion that smells of hospitals and another one of scrambled egg.”

  “Fascinating,” said Harrap. “What does our number 5 remind you of?”

  “It’s got a strong, distinctive smell,” said Wibberley. “I was trying to locate it.”

  They tried in turn.

  “An old-fashioned conservatory,” said Dumbo. “Lilies, musk roses and passion flowers.”

  “Call it Maud,” said the Brigadier. His fellow directors looked blankly at him. He said, “I can see you weren’t brought up on Tennyson like I was. ‘Come into the garden, Maud, for the black bat, night, has flown.’ There’s a bit there about something which still gives you a kick even if you’ve been dead for a hundred years. Come to think of it, Wibbers, it might make a good advertising line.”

  Wibberley promised to look it up.

  Harrap said, “Christmas morning, around twelve o’clock, with a nice pine-log fire crackling in the grate and the first pre-lunch gins being poured out.”

  “A brand new pack of cards,” said Oliver. “It’s that very faint pear-drop smell you get when the cellophane’s taken off.”

  “Girls,” said the Brigadier. “Young, and slightly silly girls who are just beginning to realize what it’s all about.”

  “A psychologist would have a field day with our reactions,” said Oliver. “What about you, Wibbers?”

  Derek Wibberley recognized the compliment. It wasn’t every day that he was called in at Board level, particularly at such a climactic moment in the history of a Company.

  He said, “It’s feminine, and that’s something to be thankful for. A lot of perfumes which are being turned out nowadays are about as feminine as the elephant house at the Zoo. It’s young and tender, like a flower that hasn’t quite reached maturity. Yet it’s got quite a distinctive smell. Most of the stuff the French are exporting is labelled ‘Subtle’ or ‘Elusive’. It’s so damned elusive, it’s got no smell left.”

  “Young and tender,” said Harrap. “Feminine, distinctive, and Tennysonian. What price Princess?”

  “On the right lines,” said Oliver.

  “Junior Miss?”

  “Much too hearty.”

  Wibberley said, “Wait a moment. What about Tendresse?”

  A pause, as they turned it over.

  “By God,” said Oliver, “that’s it. Tendresse.”

  After the meeting he had a word with ex-Squadron Leader Bolus. Bolus had one eye, one and a half ears and two fingers only on his right hand. The balance had been lost in an encounter with a Messerschmidt over the Western Desert in 1943. He was Security Officer to the group and was disliked by almost everyone in it except Oliver.

  Oliver said, “I’ve got a bit of a problem on my hands. The way I look at it there are two ends to it, and the thing is to find out where they meet in the middle. One end is a temporary motor mechanic, thought to be of German extraction, employed by Snyder’s Garage about seven years ago.”

  “That’s the outfit that went bust, isn’t it? We use it as a transport section now.”

  “Correct. We took some of their people over too. Palmer was one of them. He’ll remember this chap. It was the time when I had my smash.”

  “And you think this Kraut mechanic was responsible for it?”

  “I thought so at the time and I still think so now. The other end of the trail’s a bit fresher.” He handed Bolus Maurice Merrivale’s card.

  “You think this is the same chap?”

  “No. I don’t think that,” said Oliver “but I think they might have the same employer.”

  “One club,” said Oliver.

  Victor Mallinson was sorting his cards out. He continued to do so, deliberately prolonging the process, as if he enjoyed the feel of the slippery pieces of pasteboard. It was one o’clock in the morning and they were alone in the card room at Brett’s. Finally he said, “One no trump.”

  Jacob Naumann stared glumly at his hand. It contained nothing to encourage him. Five small spades, four hearts headed by the knave – the only honour in the whole deplorable collection – a singleton diamond, and three of his partner’s declared suit of clubs.

  It looked like the end of the evening. A pity. Until that moment they had not been doing too badly. They had been a few hundred points up at the end of the last rubber and he would very much have liked to have called it a day and gone to bed, but the others had been keen to go on.

  He recognized that the game had developed into a private duel; a trial of strength between Nugent and Mallinson, and he regretted it. He liked to keep his private feelings out of games, in the same way that he kept them out of business. Now the opposition was a game up and it looked very much as though they had the rubber in their pockets. Unless, of course, Nugent was going out on a limb to sacrifice, which would be expensive.

  He said, in what he hoped wa
s a strictly expressionless tone, “No bid.”

  Victor Mallinson’s partner thought hard before saying anything. Monsieur Sermoulin was not in the least tired. In Egypt, where he had learned his bridge, and later in small private parties in France and Italy, where it had earned him a steady income, he had often played right through the night. What made him hesitate was the current of private hostility which he, too, had sensed between Mallinson and Nugent. Once two players at the bridge table really started gunning for each other, it was apt to colour every bid that they made. (He recollected a night’s play near Annecy which had proceeded on the same lines. It had ended at six o’clock in the morning on the dew-soaked lawn behind the Château with the sun peeping over the Dents de Lanfon. Fortunately both men had been rotten shots.)

  Also, there was something wrong with the bidding.

  Nugent had opened “One club”. Since he wasn’t playing any artificial system, this surely meant that he had at least five clubs, maybe more. His own partner had then bid a confident “No trump”. This surely meant at least a guard in clubs. Three or four of them, at least. And there was he, staring at five clubs in his own hand, headed by the king and ten. He also, incidentally, held the ace, knave of spades and the king of hearts. Quite enough, opposite his partner’s strong no trump, for a raise to three no trumps and game; which would conclude a comfortably lucrative rubber.

  Nevertheless, he hesitated.

  Instinct told him that Oliver Nugent was going to bid again, and to keep on bidding. He had the look of a man who did not give up lightly. Very well. If they pushed him high enough, a double could be lucrative.

  So he too said, “No bid.”

  Before the words were spoken, Oliver had snapped out, “Two clubs.”

  Victor Mallinson, without looking at his cards again, said, “Two no trumps.” Naumann passed quickly and Monsieur Sermoulin, feeling that the time had come to conclude the farce, said, “Three no trumps.”

  Now, if Oliver dared to mention his paltry club suit once more, he was booked for the most expensive double of the year.

  Oliver said, “And I double that.”