Chapter OneāTHE PRELUDE
The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.
A few moments later there was. Lionel Rackstraw, strolling back from lunch, heard in the corridor the sound of the bell in his room, and, entering at a run, took up the receiver. He remarked, as he did so, the boots and trousered legs sticking out from the large knee-hole table at which he worked, but the telephone had established the first claim on his attention.
āYes,ā he said, āyes....No, not before the 17th....No, who cares what he wants?...No, who wants to know?...Oh, Mr. Persimmons. Oh, tell him the 17th....Yes....Yes, Iāll send a set down.ā
He put the receiver down and looked back at the boots. It occurred to him that someone was probably doing something to the telephone; people did, he knew, at various times drift in on him for such purposes. But they usually looked round or said something; and this fellow must have heard him talking. He bent down towards the boots.
āShall you be long?ā he said into the space between the legs and the central top drawer; and then, as there was no answer, he walked away, dropped hat and gloves and book on to their shelf, strolled back to his desk, picked up some papers and read them, put them back, and, peering again into the dark hole, said more impatiently, āShall you be long?ā
No voice replied; not even when, touching the extended foot with his own, he repeated the question. Rather reluctantly he went round to the other side of the table, which was still darker, and, trying to make out the head of the intruder, said almost loudly: āHallo! hallo! Whatās the idea?ā Then, as nothing happened, he stood up and went on to himself: āDamn it all, is he dead?ā and thought at once that he might be.
That dead bodies did not usually lie round in one of the rooms of a publisherās offices in London about half-past two in the afternoon was a certainty that formed now an enormous and cynical background to the fantastic possibility. He half looked at the door which he had closed behind him, and then attempted the same sort of interior recovery with which he had often thrown off the knowledge that at any moment during his absence his wife might be involved in some street accident, some skidding bus or swerving lorry. These things happenedāa small and unpleasant, if invisible, deity who lived in a corner of his top shelves had reminded himāthese things happened, and even now perhaps....People had been crushed against their own front doors; there had been a doctor in Gower Street. Of course, it was all untrue. But this time, as he moved to touch the protruding feet, he wondered if it were.
The foot he touched apparently conveyed no information to the strangerās mind, and Lionel gave up the attempt. He went out and crossed the corridor to another office, whose occupant, spread over a table, was marking sentences in newspaper cuttings.
āMornington,ā Lionel said, āthereās a man in my room under the table, and I canāt get him to take any notice. Will you come across? He looks,ā he added in a rush of realism, āfor all the world as if he was dead.ā
āHow fortunate!ā Mornington said, gathering himself off the table. āIf he were alive and had got under your table and wouldnāt take any notice I should be afraid youād annoyed him somehow. I think thatās rather a pleasant notion,ā he went on as they crossed the corridor, āa sort of modern Kingās Thresholdāget under the table of the man whoās insulted you and simply sulk there. Not, I think, starveāthatās for more romantic ages than oursābut take a case filled with sandwiches and a thermos....Whatās the plural of thermos?...ā He stared at the feet, and then, going up to the desk, went down on one knee and put a hand over the disappearing leg. Then he looked up at Lionel.
āSomething wrong,ā he said sharply. āGo and ask Dalling to come here.ā He dropped to both knees and peered under the table.
Lionel ran down the corridor in the other direction, and returned in a few minutes with a short man of about forty-five, whose face showed more curiosity than anxiety. Mornington was already making efforts to get the body from under the table.
āHe must be dead,ā he said abruptly to the others as they came in. āWhat an incredible business! Go round the other side, Dalling; the buttons have caught in the table or something; see if you can get them loose.ā
āHadnāt we better leave it for the police?ā Dalling asked. āI thought you werenāt supposed to move bodies.ā
āHow the devil do I know whether it is a body?ā Mornington asked. āNot but what you may be right.ā He made investigations between the trouser-leg and the boot, and then stood up rather suddenly. āItās a body right enough,ā he said. āIs Persimmons in?ā
āNo,ā said Dalling; āhe wonāt be back till four.ā
āWell, we shall have to get busy ourselves, then. Will you get on to the police-station? And, Rackstraw, youād better drift about in the corridor and stop people coming in, or Plumpton will be earning half a guinea by telling the Evening News.ā
Plumpton, however, had no opportunity of learning what was concealed behind the door against which Lionel for the next quarter of an hour or so leant, his eyes fixed on a long letter which he had caught up from his desk as a pretext for silence if anyone passed him. Dalling went downstairs and out to the front door, a complicated glass arrangement which reflected every part of itself so many times that many arrivals were necessary before visitors could discover which panels swung back to the retail sales-room, which to a waiting-room for authors and others desiring interviews with the remoter staff, and which to a corridor leading direct to the stairs. It was here that he welcomed the police and the doctor, who arrived simultaneously, and going up the stairs to the first floor he explained the situation.
At the top of these stairs was a broad and deep landing, from which another flight ran backwards on the left-hand to the second floor. Opposite the stairs, across the landing, was the private room of Mr. Stephen Persimmons, the head of the business since his fatherās retirement some seven years before. On either side the landing narrowed to a corridor which ran for some distance left and right and gave access to various rooms occupied by Rackstraw, Mornington, Dalling, and others. On the right this corridor ended in a door which gave entrance to Plumptonās room. On the left the other section, in which Lionelās room was the last on the right hand, led to a staircase to the basement. On its way, however, this staircase passed and issued on a side door through which the visitor came out into a short, covered court, having a blank wall opposite, which connected the streets at the front and the back of the building. It would therefore have been easy for anyone to obtain access to Lionelās room in order, as the inspector in charge remarked pleasantly to Mornington, āto be strangled.ā
For the dead man had, as was evident when the police got the body clear, been murdered so. Lionel, in obedience to the official request to see if he could recognize the corpse, took one glance at the purple face and starting eyes, and with a choked negative retreated. Mornington, with a more contemplative, and Dalling with a more curious, interest, both in turn considered and denied any knowledge of the stranger. He was a little man, in the usual not very fresh clothes of the lower middle class; his bowler hat had been crushed in under the desk; his pockets contained nothing but a cheap watch, a few coppers, and some silverāpapers he appeared to have none. Around his neck was a piece of stout cord, deeply embedded in the flesh.
So much the clerks heard before the police with their proceedings retired into cloud and drove the civilians into other rooms. Almost as soon, either by the telephone or some other means, news of the discovery reached Fleet Street, and reporters came pushing through the crowd that began to gather immediately the police were seen to enter the building. The news of the discovered corpse was communicated to them officially, and for the rest they were left to choose as they would among the rumours flying through the crowd, which varied from vivid accounts of the actual murder and several different descriptions of the murderer to a report that the whole of the staff were under arrest and the police had had to wade ankle-deep through the blood in the basement.
To such a distraction Mr. Persimmons himself returned from a meeting of the Publishersā Association about four oāclock, and was immediately annexed by Inspector Colquhoun, who had taken the investigation in charge. Stephen Persimmons was rather a small man, with a mild face apt to take on a harassed and anxious appearance on slight cause. With much more reason he looked anxious now, as he sat opposite the inspector in his own room. He had recognized the body as little as any of his staff had, and it was about them rather than it that the inspector was anxious to gain particulars.
āThis Rackstraw, now,ā Colquhoun was saying: āit was his room the body was found in. Has he been with you long?ā
āOh, years,ā Mr. Persimmons answered; āmost of them have. All the people on this floorāand nearly all the rest. Theyāve been here longer than me, most of them. You see, I came in just three years before my father retiredāthatās seven years ago, and threeās ten.ā
āAnd Rackstraw was here before that?ā
āOh, yes, certainly.ā
āDo you know anything of him?ā the inspector pressed. āHis address, now?ā
āDalling has all that,ā the unhappy Persimmons said. āHe has all the particulars about the staff. I remember Rackstraw being married a few years ago.ā
āAnd what does he do here?ā Colquhoun went on.
āOh, he does a good deal of putting books through, paper and type and binding, and so on. He rather looks after the fiction side. Iāve taken up fiction a good deal since my father went; thatās why the business has expanded so. Weāve got two of the bestselling people todayāMrs. Clyde and John Bastable.ā
āMrs. Clyde,ā the inspector brooded. āDidnāt she write The Comet and the Star?ā
āThatās the woman. We sold ninety thousand,ā Persimmons answered.
āAnd what are your other lines?ā
āWell, my father used to do, in fact he began with, what you might call occult stuff. Mesmerism and astrology and histories of great sorcerers, and that sort of thing. It didnāt really pay very well.ā
āAnd does Mr. Rackstraw look after that too?ā asked Colquhoun.
āWell, some of it,ā the publisher answered. āBut of course, in a place like this things arenāt exactly divided justājust exactly. Mornington, now, Mornington looks after some books. Under me, of course,ā he added hastily. āAnd then he does a good deal of the publicity, the advertisements, you know. And he does the reviews.ā
āWhat, writes them?ā the inspector asked.
āCertainly not,ā said the publisher, shocked. āReads them and chooses passages to quote. Writes them! Really, inspector!ā
āAnd how long has Mr. Mornington been here?ā Colquhoun went on.
āOh, years and years. I tell you they all came before I did.ā
āI understand Mr. Rackstraw was out a long time at lunch today, with one of your authors. Would that be all right?ā
āI daresay he was,ā Persimmons said, āif he said so.ā
āYou donāt know that he was?ā asked Colquhoun. āHe didnāt tell you?ā
āReally, inspector,ā the worried Persimmons said again, ādo you think my staff ask me for an hour off when they want to see an author? I give them their work and they do it.ā
āSir Giles Tumulty,ā the inspector said. āYou know him?ā
āWeāre publishing his last book, Historical Vestiges of Sacred Vessels in Folklore. The explorer and antiquarian, you know. Rackstrawās had a lot of trouble with his illustrations, but he told me yesterday he thought heād got them through. Yes, I can quite believe he went up to see him. But you can find out from Sir Giles, canāt you?ā
āWhat Iām getting at,ā the inspector said, āis this. If any o...