Faintley Speaking

never took no parcels for you. And my foot is on the burglar alarm if so be you thought of coming it funny.’ His tone was both frightened and menacing.

‘Look,’ said Mandsell. ‘I’m not thinking of coming it funny. That is beyond my scope. Do you seriously stand there and deny that I handed in to you a small flat parcel in the name of Miss Faintley, and that you accepted it without any query?’

‘I seriously think you’re suffering from sunstroke, young feller. You go home and have a quiet lay down.’

This advice infuriated Mandsell.

‘This is Tomson’s, isn’t it?’ he demanded.

‘At your service, sir. And now,’ said the proprietor savagely, ‘get out, or I’ll call a policeman. I know your sort!’

At this, a berserk rage overcame Mandsell. Like most young men, the thing he detested chiefly was the thought that someone was trying to make a fool of him. He leaned over the counter and gripped the small proprietor by the tie. He drew him towards the counter until the little man’s head was half-way over a pile of fancy scarves stacked almost under Mandsell’s nose.

‘Come off it! ’ the young man said fiercely. ‘ Don’t you dare try to pull this stunt on me! I don’t know what was in the parcel, but I’m jolly sure —’

At this moment the shop-bell rang and in walked two middle-aged women. Mandsell, with a last despairing tug at the proprietor’s tie, turned and walked out. He walked fast. As he walked, three thoughts were in his mind. One was that there was something mysterious, not to say fishy, about the parcel; the second was that he was unlikely to get any reply, favourable or otherwise, from his publisher until Tuesday morning at the earliest; the third was that his publisher’s telephone number had always been on the letter of acceptance which he had received when he sent in his book.

He began to slacken his pace. Then a desperate idea came to him. He went back to the shop. It was empty. The two customers had gone, and the proprietor was not to be seen. Mandsell rapped imperatively on the counter and the man came shuffling out. He looked surprised and alarmed when he saw the young man, but, recovering quickly, said:

‘You hop it, or I’ll call the police!’

‘I’ve already done that. Parcel or receipt, please. They’ll be here directly.’

‘Nothing doing. You’re mistaken. I haven’t got no parcel of yourn. I may have a parcel for a lady named Faintley, but that ain’t nothing to do with you.’ The man’s tone had altered. Mandsell felt victorious.

‘All right. There’s the clerk at Hagford Station who handed me the parcel, you know. I’ve got a witness.’

‘What’ll you take to forget him?’

‘Take? I’ll take a receipt.’

‘Oh, come, now, mister! I’m not putting my name to nothing. What will you take? That’s what I ask you. Five quid any good?’

‘Since you ask me… yes.’ (It would satisfy Mrs Deaks for the moment.) The man opened the till. He took out four one-pound and two ten-shilling notes and thrust them across the counter.

‘Get out of here! ’ he said thickly. ‘And, remember, that’s blackmail money, that is! I’ve got you where I want you when I want you if you pick up them notes. What about it?’

Mandsell picked up the notes.

‘There’s one thing… you can hardly demand a receipt,’ he said, as he put them into an inside pocket. ‘ Thanks a lot. I’ll repay you when my ship comes home. I regard this as temporary accommodation only. Meanwhile I must admit that it comes in handy. So long. I’ll be seeing you! The police won’t – this time!’

He went straight back to his lodgings and gave Mrs Deaks four pounds, the result of a bluff which had worked.

‘Well, I must say, sir!’ she observed, immensely surprised.

‘I know it isn’t much,’ said Mandsell, ‘but if you wouldn’t mind trusting me a bit longer…’ He was immensely pleased with himself, the man of action, and went up to his room to complete and polish the short story for which his recent experiences had given him the idea. He intended to spend the whole evening on the job. Mrs Deaks was bringing him tea and supper. But between him and his work came niggling, unanswerable questions.

What was in the parcel, that the man Tomson had been prepared to pay him five pounds blackmail money? (For blackmail, surely, was what it must amount to, as the shopkeeper himself had pointed out.)

Why could not the woman who called herself Miss Faintley have accomplished her own errand?

Who was the man who should have been her correspondent and who had walked out of the telephone booth just before she rang him up, and why had this man not waited any longer? Ringing people up on a public telephone was always a chancy sort of business. Of course, they had chosen a box which was not likely to be used much during the evening, but the woman could have had no guarantee that somebody else would not have been in the box at the time she had arranged to speak.

If the parcel was required so urgently at Tomson’s it must be important. If so, why had she been in such a hurry to give her instructions that she had not even troubled to verify whether or not she was talking to the right man? Was she in desperate straits about the parcel? (That seemed likely, judging by the shopkeeper’s reactions.) Was she also unaccustomed to talking on the telephone, so that all voices (particularly men’s voices) were exactly alike to her?

Answer came there none, and Mandsell, secure in his lodgings for another week or two, shrugged, and continued with his work. Nevertheless, his mind was far from easy. The five pounds were all very well… in fact, undeniably useful… but what, he,wondered, did the acceptance of them entail? Had he become an accessory to crime? Did the parcel contain pornographic postcards or ‘curious’ literature? Did it contain atomic secrets, or even a new kind of time-bomb which could not be safely left at the station beyond a certain limit of hours?