have fallen into the hands of the Vivisectionists. I would not have Somebody’s conscience for all the tea in China.
THE POLICE HAVE BEEN INFORMED
Now what my committee wish to be known is that we are not going to be intimidated by ANYBODY, no matter what that ‘Anybody’ may do next. The Four Foot Haven is a truly INDEPENDENT body and it refuses to be swallowed up by a big organisation using ruthless and un-English methods.
Mrs Palgrove paused and read back what she had written. She pondered a full minute before adding the final paragraph.
It may interest you to know that certain information has reached me privately concerning the disposal of funds raised not a hundred miles from here in the name of so-called ‘charity’. I am reluctant to pass this information to the authorities, but I shall not hesitate to do so if the need arises. ‘If the cap fits...etc.’ Need I say more?
Yours very sincerely,
Again she sat in thought, staring at the sheet of paper before her. Then, in sudden resolve, she released it from the machine, put aside the carbon copy and added her signature in large angular script. She addressed an envelope, affixed a stamp that she took from a supply in a flat tin box, folded the letter and sealed it within the envelope.
Three minutes later, Mrs Palgrove was walking energetically along Brompton Gardens towards the post-box at the Heston Lane corner.
The careers symposium was held in the physics lecture theatre of the Grammar School. The room was in one of the oldest parts of the building. Its loftiness, its row of narrow, pseudo-Gothic windows, its oak and cast-iron desks, radiating in rising tiers from a huge demonstration bench, all testified to mid-Victorian zeal for the propagation of science.
Some three dozen boys had distributed themselves, mainly in the four back rows. Aware that the occasion was ostensibly one of voluntary attendance, they were in a mood to extract from it such entertainment as they could. Their headmaster sensed it as soon as he entered the room and led his guests to the line of chairs that had been prepared for them on a dais behind the demonstration bench. “Watch them, Booker,” he murmured. “I fear persiflage.”
With much scuffling of feet and several extravagant sighs intended to sound symptomatic of premature ageing brought about by too many after-school obligations, the boys rose.
Mr Clay waited for silence, then told them they might sit. They did so as if they had just come in from an assault course.
The headmaster went quickly through his routine explanation of what a careers symposium was supposed to achieve and then proceeded to introduce those whom he termed “our visitors from the world of effort and accomplishment.”
He indicated first Mr Ernest Hideaway, estate agent and valuer.
Mr Hideaway, a merry-looking baldy with big, floppy lips and eyes that constantly monitored his audience as if on the watch for bids, was a familiar performer at these functions. The boys waited for him to play his joke. As soon as his name was mentioned, he produced from his pocket a gavel and rapped with it three times on the bench. “Sold to the gentleman on the back row!” cried Mr Hideaway. There was noisy applause. The headmaster smiled icily and held up his hand.
“Next I should like to welcome Inspector Purbright, of the Borough Constabulary, who has very kindly taken time off from his many pressing duties so that his advice may be available to us this evening.”
Some of the more sanguine watched for the inspector to outdo Mr Hideaway by whipping out a truncheon, but he simply smiled and continued to lean back with folded arms.
“A no less distinguished representative of the law, though in another field, is our old friend Mr Justin Scorpe.”
Mr Clay turned and nodded to a man with a long wooden face, whose chief occupation seemed to be putting on and taking off a pair of massive black-framed spectacles. The solicitor acknowledged Mr Clay’s tribute by looking gravely up at the ceiling and clearing his throat—an action which made his Adam’s apple look like a bouncing golf ball.
“From the sphere of commerce we have with us Mr Barnstaple.”
There rose to his feet a frail man with thinning, untidy hair and very bright blue eyes. He made a stooping bob to his audience, flapped his hands once or twice, and sat down after glancing apologetically at Mr Clay.
“We had hoped, as you know, to be favoured with the presence of Mr Behan” (the headmaster pronounced it Bee-hahn) “of the Flaxborough Timber Corporation, but unfortunately he was called away on important business and Mr Barnstaple kindly agreed to deputize for him. Mr Barnstaple is Mr Behan’s accountant.”
This explanation having been trotted out for what it was worth—clearly very little, in Mr Clay’s opinion—the headmaster paused, clasped his hands in front of him, and gazed into the top left-hand corner of the room.
“And now,” he said, “I should like to introduce to you boys a very special guest. He is the gentleman you see sitting next to our ever-helpful friend from the Ministry of Labour, Mr O’Toole. I refer to Mr Mortimer Hive.”
Dutiful hand-clapping almost, but not quite, drowned the contribution by a few wits of the lower sixth of a high buzzing sound, as of angry bees. Mr Booker looked up sharply towards its origin and made a pencilled note on the back of an envelope.
“Mr Hive,” the headmaster went on, “is from London.”
“Big deal!” breathed the Youth Employment Coordinator. Purbright glanced across at him and thought he looked more like a recumbent beachcomber than ever.
“And when I say he is from London, I do not think I betray any interests of, ah, national security by telling you that his work—from which he has now retired—was of a highly significant nature.” Mr Clay half turned. “I am right, am I not, Mr Hive?”
Hive grinned prodigiously and, somewhat to Mr Clay’s surprise, hooked the fingers of both hands together above his head in the manner of a triumphant prize-fighter.
The boys, too, were surprised—but pleasantly so. The gesture, like Mr Hideaway’s gavel beating, held prospect of light relief. One boy subjected Mr Hive to long and careful scrutiny and then, with all the certitude of the expert, declared to his companions: “He’s pissed.” Hopes ran very high.
