Murder Must Advertise

At this, Mr. Smayle’s narrow face became as white as a sheet of paper.

“You cad!” he said, choking. “You unspeakable swine. Get out of here or I’ll kill you.”

“What the devil’s the matter with you, Smayle?” cried Mr. Tallboy, in considerable surprise.

“Get out!” said Mr. Smayle.

“Now, I’d just like a word wi’ ye, Tallboy,” interposed Mr. McAllister. He laid a large, hairy hand on Mr. Tallboy’s arm and propelled him gently from the room.

“What on airth possessed ye to say such a thing to him?” he asked, when they were safely in the passage. “Did ye not know that Smayle has but the one boy and him feeble-minded, the poor child?”

Mr. Tallboy was really aghast. He was stricken with shame, and, like many shame-stricken people, took refuge in an outburst of rage against the nearest person handy.

“No, I didn’t know. How should I be expected to know anything about Smayle’s family? Good God! I’m damned sorry and all that, but why must the fellow be such an ass? He’s got a mania about public schools. Eton, indeed! I don’t wonder the boy’s feeble-minded if he takes after his father.”

Mr. McAllister was deeply shocked. His Scottish sense of decency was outraged.

“Ye ought to be damn well ashamed o’ yersel’,” he said, severely, and releasing Tallboy’s arm, stepped back into the room he shared with Mr. Smayle and slammed the door.

Now, it is not very clear at the first glance what this disagreement between Mr. Tallboy and Mr. Smayle about a cricket match had to do with the original disagreement between the former and Mr. Copley. True, one may trace a remote co

Miss Parton, of course, was an anti-Copleyite whom nothing could move, and therefore smiled on Mr. Tallboy when he happened into the typists’ room to borrow a stamp. But Miss Rossiter, though superficially more peppery, prided herself on possessing a well-balanced mind. After all, she insisted, Mr. Copley had probably meant well over the matter of the fifty pounds and, when you came to think of it, he had got Tallboy and all the rest of the Nutrax contingent out of a very tiresome sort of mess. She thought that Mr. Tallboy thought rather a lot of himself, and he had certainly had no business to speak as he had done to poor Mr. Smayle.

“And,” said Miss Rossiter, “I don’t like his lady friends.”

“Lady friends?” said Miss Parton.

“Well, I’m not one to talk, as you know,” replied Miss Rossiter, “but when you see a married man coming out of a restaurant at past midnight with somebody who is obviously not his wife-”

“No!” exclaimed Miss Parton.

“My dear! and got up regardless… one of those little hats with an eye-veil… three-inch diamante heels… such bad taste with a semi-toilette… fish-net stockings and all…”

“Perhaps it was his sister.”

“My dear!… And his wife’s having a baby, too… He didn’t see me… Of course, I wouldn’t say a word, but I do think…”

Thus the typewriters clacked.

Mr. Hankin, though officially impartial, was a Tallboyite. Himself a precise and efficient man, he was nevertheless pere

“If you will excuse my making a suggestion, Mr. Hankin, could not a stricter control be kept…?”

“Of course, I know I am in an entirely subordinate position here, Mr. Hankin, but I have had over thirty years’ experience of advertising, and in my humble opinion…”-excellent suggestions, always, and having only the one drawback that they threatened either to a

Mr. Tallboy had a further ally in Mr. Barrow, who disliked the whole Copy Department on principle, because, as he complained, they were a conceited lot who were always trying to interfere with his artists and dictate to him about his displays. He admitted that, as a general proposition, the sketch was supposed to illustrate the copy, but he maintained (and with truth) that the displays suggested by the copy-writers were often quite impracticable and that the copy-writers took u

“Oh, but, look here!” protested Mr. Tallboy, “you simply can’t let me down like that! You’re the best bat we’ve got.”

“Can’t you leave Ingleby out?”

This was more than awkward, for in fact Mr. Barrow, though a good and reliable bat, was by no means so good a bat as Mr. Ingleby. Mr. Tallboy hesitated:

“I don’t quite see how I can do that. He made 63 last year. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll put him in fourth and leave you to open with somebody else-say Pinchley. Will you start with Pinchley?”