A Voice Like Velvet

by Donald Henderson

  Mr Ernest Bisham was sitting on the window-sill of the little cloakroom. The catch had given no trouble. He was dressed as he had been for the little night visit to Mount Street. It was dark and he carefully flashed his torch with the blue light. It was a little after nine. Lady Sudbury had been good enough to inform him of a dinner engagement to which she and her husband were committed elsewhere, and so far as he had been able to discover she only employed the maid who had taken him to the cloakroom telephone. There was, of course, Bardner. Thinking very considerably of him, he opened the cloakroom door. The hall was in pitch darkness. It was eerie and dramatic. He moved forward, thinking how often in life he had enjoyed, or wanted to enjoy, emulating the dramatic and sinister figures in fiction, moving silently up behind someone and saying softly: ‘That thing sticking into your ribs ain’t my finger, buddy!’ Was it a weakness in most of us? He thought it was, though he also thought it was left to the few to carry things out. Those who did, ran the risk of being accused mad. Starting to creep up the wide staircase in the darkness, he considered this fine point too. Was he mad? It was easy to say such and such a person was mad—but were they really mad? To be mad, or insane, meant that you had ‘a disordered mind’. To be sane therefore meant that you had an ordered mind. Your mind was disordered, or abnormal, they said, if you killed somebody—providing it was peacetime. But the moment it was wartime nobody said killing was mad. You could press buttons with your thumb and release bullets and bombs. You could have a tommy gun, or a Bren gun, and you could excitedly mow down retreating Germans and Japanese just below the knees in a sort of sawing motion so that they all sloped forward without legs, the more slowly to endure the punishment they had brought on themselves by greater cruelties to women and children in Europe and China and Russia. It wasn’t ‘mad’ of you. Your mind wasn’t disordered. The only risk you ran was the risk of getting a medal. You could finally return to your family in England and nobody would ever remember that you were a murderer fifty times over, least of all yourself. Yet, if you crept up some stairs in the darkness and chanced to shoot somebody you would be hanged, sent to prison, or sent to an asylum. Mr Bisham, feeling extraordinarily sane, was just groping his way round the bend he remembered in the stairs, when the door of the Jewel Room opened and Bardner came out. In a yellow light, Bardner was seen to go along the corridor there and come back carrying a light divan bed. There was then the shadow of him moving about the Jewel Room and making up his bed. Mr Bisham thought: ‘I mustn’t be long over this. The Sudburys will probably be back from their dinner fairly soon.’ He adjusted his mask carefully and put his hand in his pocket for his revolver. Then he moved quickly up the remaining stairs.

  Bardner put down his divan bed in the corner and proceeded to prepare it in the usual way. He thought once again about the unusual life he led, and once again fell to reflecting that it was better than being a prison warder, which he had once been, and having to cope with all that red tape, and all that constant risk of a sex-starved prisoner suddenly going crackers and creeping up behind your back to dot you one. There was that unnerving incident when a prisoner with a secreted razor blade had leapt on the back of the Chief Warder and slit his throat from ear to ear. That sort of thing made an imaginative person very touchy and nervy, and you never really got over it. You were no good for the Army. For a long time he had not got over his nerves even here, where there was never a burglary of any kind. And why should there be one? It was selling the stuff that gave them such a headache. Otherwise there would no doubt have been a few attempts. And it would be easy enough, really, providing it was properly planned, and providing they’d learned the one or two little snags an amateur wouldn’t think of. He made up his bed and yawned. Things were a bit tame, though, month after month, flattering though it was to your reputation as a ‘safe’. A human safe! And Lord Sudbury was a mean old beggar and not easily pleased. Bardner had now and then wondered what Lord Sudbury would say if he went off with some of the valuables himself. But perhaps he knew he couldn’t face the risk of being sent back as a prisoner to the place where he’d been a warder. It would be just terrible! The bathrooms down there, and having to bathe together! And those cell doors banging to, and the keys turning in the locks; hour after hour in those cells with the walls green and sweating in winter. And never seeing Gracie. Gracie was the Sudbury maid, the only one left, but to Bardner she was becoming more than just a maid. She had weakened a lot lately, in her sharp way. She was a tasty bit of work and he felt sorry she was out tonight. Where had she gone? She never said. When would she be back?

  Having made up his bed to his liking, and put his fags and matches ready on the floor beside it, he gave the jewel table a once-over and decided he would turn in. The most likely burglary hours were after midnight, in his opinion, and he always got up then and put all the lights on. He clicked off two lights now, leaving a light over the jewels, which were just as they had been with their cases still open. He would have to dust them and close the cases in the morning. It would be a job, but Gracie would help.

  He bent down by his bed to pick up his matches, resolved to shut the door after that and settle down.

  Suddenly, as he stood up, he felt a peculiarly sharp sensation in the pit of his back. It was as if something was sticking into it.

  Needless to say, he was imagining it. Gracie had slipped back and was in one of her witty moods. He started to exclaim: ‘Now, Gracie—’ when a very quiet, masculine voice told him to stop talking and to walk pretty quickly over to the opposite wall.

  Bardner felt himself turning green.

  This hadn’t happened really, not really, had it?

  The next thing that happened was that he did walk pretty quickly over to the opposite wall.

  ‘Now,’ Mr Bisham whispered sharply, ‘put your hands up and touch the wall with both palms.’ He jabbed the revolver into Bardner’s muscular back.

  Bardner felt the cold wall with two sticky palms. The blood which had rushed from his face now flooded back. He turned his face slightly to the left and managed to get a glimpse of a man in a mask. As he did so, the man in the mask pulled the handkerchief from Bardner’s breast pocket and proceeded to tie it round his eyes. ‘Doesn’t want to be seen,’ thought Bardner agitatedly. ‘Doesn’t seem to mind if I holler, then?’ But he didn’t make a sound at all; for the moment, his throat was too dry.

  Bardner tried desperately to do a bit of useful thinking. While the knot was being tied, he had a desperate wish to take a chance and swing round. But he had no wish to be shot, it was all very well. And this chap seemed on the big side.

  Then suddenly the man in the mask said something marvellous. He said:

  ‘Keep your hands on the wall and don’t move, or it will be the worse for you. I’ll just shut the door.’ ‘I’ll just shut the door!’ Bardner thought. ‘If he does shut the door he’ll regret it the rest of his life! And I shan’t get the sack after all!’ Tense, he waited.

  Surely enough, he heard the man’s footsteps move quietly to the door … And it shut. ‘Got you,’ thought Bardner, exultant. That was a self-locking door and wouldn’t open, now, until six a.m. Trembling with excitement, he waited.

  The man’s footsteps went towards the jewel table. There were the expected sounds there and they lasted quite a bit. The man was pretty cool, whistling ‘When I Think of You, I Think of An Angel’, or was it nerves? He’d get angels!

  Suddenly there was the sound of Gracie.

  And immediately there was the sound of the man’s footsteps darting to him, and the feel of the gun in his ribs. Now, that wasn’t a pleasant feeling, was it? After all, to be shot in the back for a chap like Lord Sudbury, who treated everyone, even his wife, like—

  ‘Count ten before you make any reply,’ warned Mr Bisham in a sweet whisper.

  There was a pause.

  Gracie’s voice called through:

  ‘Mr Bardner? You’re never in bed already? Mr Bardner?’ She rattled the door and said the master and mis
tress would be a full hour yet.

  Mr Bisham jabbed with the pistol.

  ‘It’s loaded,’ he whispered.

  ‘… I’m in bed,’ Bardner got out throatily. After all, the man couldn’t get out till six. And his lordship was always up at five. He never missed coming down here very soon after five of a morning. Then he’d know something was wrong—if he didn’t discover it tonight. Ten to one he’d come along to the Jewel Room before going to bed.

  Gracie called something disparaging.

  ‘Go to bed,’ called Bardner in a sleepy voice.

  To his relief, Mr Bisham heard her moving away. After a little while he heard a distant door slam. But even as he sighed his relief and prepared to make his getaway, he heard distant voices. The Sudburys were already back and the door slam had been the front door as they let themselves in.

  The wall under Bardner’s palms was now quite hot and sticky. ‘Here they come,’ he thought.

  But there was a long, long interval. He stood there with his arms aching and the gun sticking into his back. To his consternation he finally heard the usual sounds indicating that the Sudburys had retired for the night. He could hear them overhead.

  Hearing them overhead, Mr Bisham judged that his luck was in. He backed quickly to the door and without taking his eyes off Bardner he warned him, ‘Don’t move, and don’t make any noise,’ and groped for the door-handle. He guessed Bardner would raise plenty of noise the moment he got through the door. He would have to lose no time getting down the stairs and opening the front door. He had already examined the front door catch and there was no difficulty there. But there seemed to be some difficulty here. The door-handle didn’t budge.

  Bardner stood waiting. A grin spread across his face and, beneath the handkerchief round his eyes, his eyes were laughing. ‘Now,’ he thought sardonically. He’d say to Lord Sudbury: ‘That was my brains, don’t you see, my lord? I let him bandage me up with my own handkerchief—knowing he’d never be able to open the door!’ His lordship would be very pleased indeed with him and might even give him a bonus. After all, there was some money here. And Scotland Yard—that fellow Hood—would give him another for catching the Man In The Mask. He suddenly said quietly: ‘The next move’s yours, chum,’ and he sniggered. Then he stopped sniggering, because of the ensuing silence, and because of new anxieties. What if this chap lost his temper and plugged him? His face straightened.

  ‘Combination lock?’ suggested Mr Bisham thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes …!’

  ‘What time does it open?’

  ‘If you care to believe me,’ Bardner said, grinning at the wall, ‘it don’t open till six!’ There was a pause and he added: ‘His lordship always gets up at five. There’s quite a routine.’ He just couldn’t help grinning.

  CHAPTER XVI

  MR JONAS WINTLE sat up in bed and looked at his watch in the dim light.

  It was a quarter past six.

  He fell out of his bunk and pulled on his trousers. Loud snores around him were mocking reminder that a day of new crises was already upon him. Somebody was being called by a white-coated attendant. ‘It is now six-seventeen, sir. Sir? I believe you said you were on the air at seven, sir!’

  Mr Wintle threaded his way through the dark rows of bunks and fumbled in his pockets for his comb. He would have a quick wash, a quick cup of tea in the canteen and go and collect the disc. It should either be in his departmental office, or in the news room under the care of the Duty Editor. He hoped that it was in the office, for he was scared stiff of Duty Editors; they were rarely very friendly, all being tinged with touches of genius and many of them suffering from pulmonary disease of the heart—entirely due to the exacting nature of their work. Work in a newspaper office, they said, was a rest cure by comparison, for at least newspapers only went to press once in a day, or at the most twice, and on Sundays newspaper men went home and lay in bed criticizing the Sunday papers. But here the news room went to press at seven, at eight, at one, at six, at nine—and at midnight; and Sundays also. Duty Editors were, therefore, entitled to seem preoccupied, what with their staff, and their multitudinous telephones, and their maps and their cables and recorded dispatches constantly being delivered on that thin paper so difficult to hold, let alone read. Mr Wintle had once been permitted in the news room for a short time, for instructive purposes. When he came out, he felt very much older and hurried to a mirror to see if his hair had turned grey. His brain swam with shouting voices screaming about news items from Cairo, Algiers, Sicily and Corsica, and with other shouting voices telephoning the Ministries of Food, Health, and Air, not forgetting the War Office and the Admiralty. Mr Wintle therefore entered the news room rather timidly and he was relieved in a perverted sort of way to be told by the Duty Editor, ‘Of course it’s not here. Do you suppose Home News Talks would remember a little thing like that?’ Mr Wintle was too scared to reply. It was one thing to risk your life over enemy territory, anybody could do that, but to answer back a Duty Editor—that was what VCs were made of. He dashed along the passage to Home News Talks. Nobody was there and the black-out was up. There was no sign of the little Wren’s disc, and the only thing shaped at all like it was a large tin of stomach powder. Mr Wintle dashed up a few floors to his own office. The disc wasn’t there either, and the only thing there was a note in black chalk saying: ‘Mr Wintle, I hope you are going to pull your socks up today? And don’t forget the Wren disc goes out at eight as well as seven. Don’t go to breakfast by mistake; better have breakfast afterwards. Signed—D. Black, Shift Leader.’ It was six forty-two. Crisis Number One reared its ugly head, and so far from hoping to play the Wren’s talk at seven, it looked as if it wouldn’t be played at eight either. What on earth would Mr Bisham say when he arrived? And just when he wanted to have a friendly talk with Mr Bisham about becoming an announcer after all. What would Mr D. Black say, above all?

  He dashed down many floors to Annabella’s cutting room.

  There was no sign of Annabella, but there was Mr Peat in his horn-rimmed glasses. Mr Peat looked like the Aga Khan. The only difference between Mr Peat and the Aga Khan was that nobody bothered to preserve Mr Peat’s bathwater, for he had an objection to baths. His Harem girls, as he called his wartime staff, spent most of their time going to the showers instead of attending to their machines. Mr Peat spent his days, in white gym shoes, going from the showers to the cutting rooms, trying to find out where his girls were. Voices came through channels from studios saying, ‘Are you there yet? I want to give you a ten-second cue.’ And in anticipation of yet another day having to shout down a telephone, ‘Don’t give a cue yet, Miss Stead is having another bath,’ Mr Peat was already a little off colour. However, he found the disc for Mr Wintle, who started to dash off with it. ‘Here,’ shouted Mr Peat, very unlike the Aga Khan in speech, ‘you can’t go dashing off like that; you haven’t signed the forms.’ He gave Mr Wintle the five green forms to fill in. Mr Wintle signed them with one eye on his wrist-watch. The label on the disc said, amongst other things: ‘What I Think of Sergeant Majors, by A Little Wren.’ Mr Wintle seized it and rushed headlong to the news studio. He would just have time to try over his disc and set it up before Mr Bisham came in. He pinned up his pink cue sheet which said ‘Announcer—“And now to end the news here’s a talk by a little Wren who thinks that sergeant majors are different in this war”.’ Then it said: ‘End cue—“And so that is what I think of our sergeant anyway, she’s tip-top, and we all say the same”.’

  Mr Wintle put on headphones and tried the disc on the turntable. The little Wren sounded like an adenoidal thrush. He set his machine with room for an artistic pause after Mr Bisham’s cue, and he offered up a prayer of thanks that the talk didn’t run onto two or more discs, involving a change-over mid-sentence. He offered up a second in that the turntable now ran at the right speed; it had been broken yesterday, or wanted oiling.

  Then he looked at the clock. It was four minutes to seven. But there was nothing to panic about now
; Mr Bisham never entered the studio until fifty seconds to the hour. Then he sat down and waited for the red light and began.

  The news room had been looking at the clock too, but from force of habit. Crisis hour was always the hour before each news bulletin. Mr Bisham, being regular and very reliable in his technique, was always expected in the news room at a quarter past the hour, when he would sit quietly down beside the Duty Editor and work systematically through each loose page of news, checking questionable pronunciations and querying punctuations, and being entirely unmoved by the din all round him, or by the Duty Editor rearranging the order of news items up to and often beyond the last minute. The Duty Editor was surprised, however, this morning to see that it was nearly twenty-five to and there was no sign of Ernest Bisham. He reached frowningly for a telephone.