piles.
Gently wended his way cautiously through this alien world. There was something shocking and amoral about so much terrible power, all naked; it touched unsuspected chords of destruction and self-destruction. He glanced curiously at the men who fed the lusting blades. They could not but be changed, he thought, they must partake of that feeling to some extent: become potential destroyers, or self-destroyers. He wished vaguely that such things were not, that timber could be produced by means other than these. But he could think of no other way, off- hand.
He came upon Leaming checking off a consignment of finished wood. Leaming grinned at him, a band-saw close by making oral communication impossible. Gently waited until he had finished checking, by which time also the band-saw had done ripping out scantlings.
‘It’s like this all day!’ bawled Leaming.
‘Doesn’t it drive anybody mad?’
‘They’re mad when they come here — or else they wouldn’t come!’
They walked on towards the comparative quiet of the planers, stopped to see the rough-sawn planks being driven over the steel bench with its wicked concealed knives. ‘Tell me,’ said Gently, ‘do you get many suicides in here?’
Leaming threw back his head in laughter. ‘No — they don’t commit suicide here. They go away somewhere quieter for that.’
‘Do you get accidents?’
‘Not so many as you might think.’
Gently winced as a flying chip went past his face. He was aware of Leaming quizzing him, a little contemptuous. ‘You soon learn to be careful when you’re working a buzz-saw — mighty careful indeed. Most accidents happen when they’re sawing up a tree with a bit of metal in it — an old spike that’s grown into it or something. Sometimes the saw goes through it, but sometimes it doesn’t.’
‘What happens then?’
‘The saw goes to pieces — and the pieces go a long way.’
Gently shuddered in spite of himself. Leaming laughed sardonically. ‘Anything can happen here, any time. The miracle is that nothing much does happen…’
They walked out of the inferno and into the yard. Gently said: ‘I suppose the old man Huysmann was rather like a buzz-saw in some ways.’
Leaming shot him a side-glance and then grinned. ‘I suppose he was, though I never thought of him like that.’
‘He buzzed and shrieked away happily enough until somebody put a spike in his log… and now nobody quite knows where the pieces will finish up.’
Leaming said: ‘But there’s one man with his neck right out to stop a lump.’ His grin faded. ‘I’d better get back to the office,’ he said, and turned away abruptly. Gently stared after him, surprised at his sudden change of mood. Then he noticed somebody standing at the entrance to the office, a tall but rather furtive figure: someone who slipped inside as he realized that Gently’s eye was on him. It was Fisher.
Two loaded transport trucks stood outside Charlie’s, both from Leicester. Inside there was an air of briskness which had been lacking the day before. Most of the tables were occupied and in addition there was a group who stood around the fireplace (in which there was no fire) arguing. Their subject was the murder, which by now was getting front-page billing in all the popular dailies. One of the standing group held a paper in his hand. ‘ SLAIN MERCHANT — YARD CALLED IN ’, ran the headline. ‘Son Still Missing…’
‘You can say what you like,’ said a transport driver, ‘when they talk like that about someone, he’s the one they want. They never do say anyone’s the murderer till they’ve got their hands on him, but you can tell, all the same.’
‘It don’t mean that necessarily,’ said a little stout man. ‘I remember somebody who was wanted like that, but he got off all the same.’
‘Well, this one won’t get off… you listen to me. I’ll have ten bob on it he hangs, once they get hold of him. You just read it again and see what they’ve got against him…’
There was a hush when Gently entered. Damnation, he thought, I must be growing more like a policeman every day. He ordered a cup of tea without sugar and added to it a cheese roll. The bar-tender’s place had been taken by a girl in a flowered overall. She banged his tea down aggressively and retired to the far corner of the bar. Gently sipped tea and reflected on the hard lot of policemen.
Halfway through the tea the bar-tender put in an appearance. He nodded to Gently, and a moment later leant over the counter. ‘Come upstairs, sir,’ he said, ‘there’s something I think you’d like to hear about.’
Gently finished his tea and roll and went up the stairs. The bar-tender was waiting for him on the landing.
‘Excuse me, sir, but you are Chief Inspector Gently of Scotland Yard, aren’t you?’ he asked.
Gently nodded, and sorted out a peppermint cream for digestive purposes.
‘I thought you was him, when I remembered the way our friend Fisher acted when you spoke to him yesterday afternoon.’
‘He was in his rights to tell me to go to hell,’ said Gently tolerantly.
‘Well yes, sir, I dare say…’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Gently.
‘I’m Alf Wheeler, sir.’
‘Charlie to your pals?’
‘Well, I do run this place, though there isn’t no Charlie really — that’s just what it’s called. And I hope you don’t think I was anyway disrespectful yesterday, sir, it’s just I didn’t know you were…’
‘A policeman?’
‘That’s right, sir… though I ought to have guessed from the way you was leading me on.’
‘Well, well!’ said Gently, pleased, ‘you’re not going to hold it against me?’
‘No, sir — not me.’
Gently sighed. ‘It makes a change… what was it you wanted to tell me?’
The bar-tender became confidential. ‘He was in here last night, sir.’
‘Who?’
‘Fisher, sir. He was a bit — you know — a bit juiced, and the girl Elsie and one or two of them was kidding him along, pretending they was scared of him — asking who he was going to do in next and that sort of thing. Quite harmless it was, sir — nothing intended at all.’
‘Go on,’ said Gently.
‘Fisher, he begin to get all of a spuffle. “I could tell you a thing or two you don’t know,” he says, “and I could tell that b-Chief Inspector Gently something, for all his cleverness.”
‘“Why don’t you tell us, then?” says the girl Elsie.
‘“Never you mind,” he says, “but you’re going to see some changes round here shortly, you mark my words.”
‘“What sort of changes?” they say, but Fisher begin to think he’s said enough. “You’ll see,” he says, “you’ll see, and maybe it won’t be so long either.”
‘“Hugh!” says the girl Elsie. “I ’spect he thinks he’ll be manager at Huysmann’s now.”
‘“Manager,” he says, “I wouldn’t be manager there for something. And another thing,” he says, “there’s people cutting a dash today who may not be cutting one tomorrow,” and after that he shut up and they couldn’t get anything else out of him.’
Gently ate another peppermint cream thoughtfully. ‘Would you say that the last remark referred to the manager?’ he enquired.
‘I thought it did, sir, and so did the others.’
‘Have you any idea what he might have meant by “changes”?’
‘Well, you know what we was saying about there being something between him and Miss Huysmann? If that’s the case, sir, then he’s probably thinking, now that the old man is dead, that she’ll take him on and make a man of him. I can’t think what else he may have had in mind.’
