PAWTER’S SERVICES
In the bright lexicon of Pawter, President, Chairman and Treasurer
of the Pawter Intensive Publicity Service (familiarly called Pips),
there was no such word as modesty.
“What most people call modesty is merely the wish that the authorship
of anything nice which may be said about them in the Press, shall not
be traced to them. Modesty is only a fear of ridicule. The very term,
used in a newspaper interview, is evidence of blatant conceit. When a
man says: ‘I would rather not talk about myself,’ he just means that
he’d rather somebody else did it; all the same, he’d like to have the
proofs to correct so that, if the reporters wrote how he killed five
lions, he could make it six. Modesty…!”
“Is this one of those extension lectures I read about, or merely an
exposition of your philosophy?” asked the patient young man who was
Pawter’s solitary audience. “If it is a lecture, I am bored; if it is
a mere acriomatic…”
“A which?” Pawter was startled.
“Acriomatic. Work that into the Memory ads. you’re doing. Drag in
Aristotle--what right has he to be left out anyway? As I was saying,
if you are practising for a Rotarian dinner speech, go to it. I’m your
assistant, underpaid and overworked, but loyal despite. This argument
started about Miss Betty Carew’s association with this agency. I
remind you in case you’ve forgotten.”
Mr. Pawter spun round in his chair and looked over his glasses. So
doing, he lowered and exposed the crown of a very bald head.
“Are you mad?” he asked gently--so gently that it might be supposed
that he rather thought it likely, and that it would be best not to
arouse such homicidal tendencies as lay dormant in the bosom of his
hearer.
“I’m not mad, but I’m getting mighty close to the borderline,” said
Bill Holbrook. “What’s all this to do with modesty? And by the way,
how can you bring yourself to write copy for Gro-Kwik--Nature’s
Natural Hair Restorer, with a nut like that? Rejuvenates Tired
Follicles! And you’re a churchman!”
“Never in my life,” said Pawter tremulously, “has a subordinate dared
to speak to me as you have spoken to-day! I would be well within my
rights if I fired you into the street! Why I refrain I don’t know.”
Bill Holbrook took a chair, fished from his pockets a pair of
horn-rimmed spectacles, and adjusting them to his face, looked
owlishly at his employer. Bill was twenty-three and pleasantly
featured, except for a nose that was slightly bent. He played
football, and once a great international had used his features as a
jumping-off place.
“I’m going to tell you, Father Pips,” he said solemnly. “I feel you
ought to know. Yesterday you fired me, to-day you fire me--you have
been firing me every day for months. But I do not go. Why? Because I’m
the only man in England who understands publicity. Yes, sir. The only
man. You think you do, but you don’t. In me you have a genius, a man
who Thinks Forward. I’m the only member of the staff who is related to
you, therefore I’m the only member of the staff that has the true
interest of the business at heart. When you die I shall await the
reading of the last will with equanimity. You _can’t_ leave me out of
a controlling interest.”
Pawter sighed again and swung back to his original position. Bill was
his first cousin, and there were times when he wished that his aunt
had never married.
“Anyway, Betty Carew is not a business proposition. I’ve been sitting
on her doorstep waiting for a chance to speak to her, but so far she
has given me the genial reception that is offered to a case of mumps
in a ladies’ college. When I tried to speak to her, she looked round
for a policeman. Where does she come into this stunt?”
“You’ll discover in course of time,” he said. “I can only assure you
that the lady will come in.”
Holbrook went back to his little office, and in his mind was a great
perplexity. What had induced the girl to take this extraordinary
decision? Advertising schemes and the inducements which brought
well-known actresses into the advertisement columns were no mysteries
to him; but this girl was not being asked to put her name to a
testimonial of some excellent remedy or popular article of furniture:
if she fell in with the idea, she was deliberately going out to make
herself cheap.
He sat, staring with unseeing eyes at the litter on his desk, his busy
mind occupied with the problem which Betty Carew’s strange conduct had
raised. Holbrook had no illusions about the theatrical profession; he
knew something of their lives, knew something of the terrific struggle
for existence which went on all the time, except among a few
favourites of the public; he knew, too, how permissible it was to
obtain publicity at almost any cost, but he was well aware that there
was a line over which no self-respecting actor or actress would pass,
and that line was far behind the place that Betty had decided to
overstep in this new undertaking of hers.
And underneath and behind the grotesqueness of the scheme was a
something which filled him with a vague sense of uneasiness.
Somewhere, he had heard a theory expounded that life runs backward,
from the end to the beginning of things; he had the sense of
remembering to-morrow, and it was not a pleasant memory.
Twice before he had had the queer experience of recalling events that
had not occurred. Once, when he was a reporter, he had been sent to a
little Welsh village to interview a Cabinet Minister whose estate was
near by. And on the Sunday morning he had gone to church to fill the
dreary hours of waiting for the one train that could take him back to
London. The service was over and he was strolling through the
churchyard, when he stopped suddenly by the grave of a murdered woman
whose husband, a lawyer, had been hanged for the crime.… He knew this,
though the husband was pointed out to him later in the day as a man of
great respectability, whose wife had died a natural death. A year
later the lawyer was arrested and died the death in Gloucester jail.
And the desk and the red-haired actress suggested something--something
terrible.
“Darn my crazy brain!” muttered Bill.
He had an appointment with Laffin that evening--he hated Saturday
evening appointments, but was anxious to keep this. He wanted his
Sunday free, for he had planned a trip to Thames head--Bill was
something of an explorer.
Clearing up some urgent work that awaited him, he was surprised by the
arrival of his chief, Mr. Pawter’s weakness being a hatred of all
physical exercise, and Holbrook wondered why he had made the perilous
journey from his palatial office to the mean abode of genius.
“I was going to tell you, Holbrook, that I wanted you to call on Mr.
Lambert Stone, the lumber millionaire, on Monday before you come to
the office. Stone arrives in London to-day, and I’ve got the rough
draft of a scheme which I think might attract him. Will you fix up an
appointment?”
“Lumber?” Bill Holbrook looked dubious. “I don’t see there’s a
selling value in that.”
“There’s a selling value in anything, you poor, slow-witted oaf,”
said Pawter, mildly offensive. “Get the appointment, and then come
back to me for the scheme. You’re seeing the doctor, aren’t you?”
Bill nodded.
“And I wish you’d find out to-night what’s behind this desk stunt,”
said Pawter, staring out of the window and scratching his head
irritably. “The desk is nothing--I think I’ve said that before--and I
can’t imagine people spending money on the proposition in the hope of
getting it back. I hate to knock a client’s goods, but this old desk
has all the disadvantages of most and none of the attractions of some.
Get Miss Carew’s views on the subject.”
Bill Holbrook sneered.
“Show me an actress with real views on anything, and I’ll show you a
professional misfit,” he said cryptically, and then: “Pips, I’ll tell
you what is behind that desk. Murder! I smell blood! Wilful murder…
maybe the crime of the century!”
Mr. Pawter’s round eyes were wide open.
“It is curious that you should say that,” he said. “That desk was
invented by a butler who was hanged in Oxford jail for killing his
wife--Laffin told me so.”