THE DESK STORE
Dr. Laffin lived in a large and gloomy house in Camden Town. It was
a property he had bought when he came to London, and had furnished
according to his own bizarre tastes. In this house Betty Carew had
spent most of the years of her conscious childhood. She had a dim
recollection of having been brought from Bath, and of the terror that
this establishment had inspired in her youthful heart. It was a very
home of shadows and strange apparitions. You came upon great bronze
Buddhas in unexpected alcoves; hideous masks, collected from the witch
doctors of Central Africa, hung on the walls; uncouth wooden figures
of ju-jus appeared in odd corners; whilst the furnishing of the
doctor’s own sanctum might have been the habitation of some ancient
sorcerer.
On the day appointed she called at Camden Road, and found Laffin in a
condition of cold rage. And standing with him in the centre of his
strange room was a very interested man, notebook in hand--his
attention equally divided between his queer surroundings and the
narrative that the doctor was pouring out in a stream of malignant
eloquence.
“If I had seen him, there would have been one burglar less in this
world, Sergeant. Such men should be marked that they can be
recognised. I would have them blinded as the stealers of deer were
blinded in the old days; or so maimed that they carried the proof of
their villainy through eternity. Let the thieving hands be shorn from
the body… that is justice.”
“Yes, yes, Doctor.” The detectives of the Metropolitan Police are
famous alike for their patience and politeness. “I daresay that would
be an excellent idea, though the finger-print department would kick.
When did you first discover your loss?”
“Last night--late,” snapped Laffin. “But the notes might have been
taken three nights ago--I locked them in my safe at five o’clock on
that evening.”
“But something besides the notes are missing?” suggested the
detective.
“Yes, a gold statuette of Set, the Egyptian God, a cabalistic ring
reputedly worn by Darius the Great, a silver chalice used in one of
the first Eastern churches… but the notes are important.”
“What are they about?”
Dr. Laffin’s basilisk eyes seemed to burn.
“They were just notes on four sheets of paper,” he said evenly,
“notes for my play.”
Betty smothered an exclamation. His play! Joshua Laffin, who hated the
theatre and all that pertained thereto--to whom Shakespeare’s only
merit was that he belonged to the past!
“Little is to be gained by discussing the matter,” said the doctor
coldly. “The theft of those papers was a freak which shall cost this
man dear.”
“If there was nothing of value in ’em, I’m afraid that you may
consider them as destroyed,” said the detective.
His sympathy was unconvincing, thought Betty.
She stood aloof from the discussion, for, though Laffin had seen her,
he took no notice of her presence. At last the detective made his
escape, and then the old man condescended to favour her with his
attention.
“Are you ready?” he asked harshly, and without any further
preliminary put on his hat and led the way into the street.
The store had been newly furnished and reeked with the smell of drying
varnish. With the exception of the big window, which had been
carefully furnished, as he promised, to resemble a small study, the
room behind the big window was practically empty. At the back of the
shop was a smaller apartment; into this, Dr. Laffin, who had evidently
been here before, conducted her. Opening the door, she found, to her
surprise, that it was a dressing-room, furnished with mirror and
unshaded lights, whilst over the back of a chair lay a handsome
dark-green dress.
“But I can’t possibly wear that,” she said, aghast. “It is an evening
dress.”
As usual, Dr. Laffin made no reply.
“You’ll find a string of pearls on the dressing-table. Be careful with
them; they are real,” he said, in his precise way. “There is another
matter on which I have already instructed you, Elizabeth; you will
find on the desk in the shop window a small jade vase, with one red
rose. No more than one red rose must ever appear in that vase, which
must always be on your desk. Do you understand?
It--must--always--be--on--your--desk.”
The position or permanence of the rose did not for the moment interest
her.
“But I cannot wear this dress,” she said, determinedly.
He picked up the gown, looked at it disparagingly.
“We will get you another,” he said.
And then, as he was going out of the room, she stood before the door
and blocked the way.
“I am going to know what this all means,” she said; “why you are so
insistent upon my taking this position, why this store is new, and why
I am to appear in a shop window for the amusement of a Cockney crowd.
There is something in this which you have not told me.”
“There is a fortune in it; I think I have told you that,” he said.
“Further, I can make no statement. It is my whim, perhaps----”
“Then it _is_ your store?” She took the point instantly.
“And if it is?” he asked, his black eyebrows rising.
“If it is, it is not your money,” she said quietly. “You are almost
penniless. Tradesmen who know my association with you have been to see
me at the theatre. There are sheriffs’ writs against you; one of the
tradespeople told me this.”
“Who has been talking about me?” he asked sharply, forgetting for the
moment his precision of speech. “I demand his name! I will punish
him…”
“Why pretend?” she asked bitterly. “You forget that I have been
through this before, Dr. Laffin. You haven’t forgotten one week when
we were almost starving, because you had come back from Monte Carlo
with every penny of your credit pledged?”
“You know a great deal too much, my friend,” he said.
He went out, and returned with a weedy little man, whom he introduced
as the manager of the store.
“You’ll take no orders from him,” he said, in that gentleman’s
presence. “You’re practically your own mistress. You will come on duty
at eleven and go off at four o’clock in the afternoon. If the crowd
stares at you, there is no occasion for you to stare back. I will see
that nobody speaks to you when you leave the store at night, and a car
will be waiting for you to take you home.”
The first hour of her ordeal was an agony. She had been given account
books, paper, and began to write aimless letters to nobody in
particular, trying to forget the existence of the crowd which was
gathering, and which, from time to time, was moved on by a policeman.
She tried hard to concentrate her mind upon some tremendous matter; to
make up stories, pleasant and unpleasant, which would grip her
attention and make her forget the grinning faces that stared through
the glass. About Dr. Laffin and his burglary. Who had been the unlucky
thief, she wondered, or tried to wonder. It was no use. Try as she
did, most desperately hard, she could not bring her thoughts from her
humiliation. It pleased Mr. William Holbrook that morning to make a
visit of inspection.
The store that had been taken for the New Desk Company had a thirty
foot frontage on one of the most expensive thoroughfares in the West
End of London. Yet, though it was expensive, it was not, from a
shopper’s point of view, the most desirable site. The headquarters of
those corporations and houses which would be most likely to patronise
this brand-new establishment were very remote from Duke Street; and as
he came abreast of the house agent’s office, Holbrook remembered that
he had a friend at court in this establishment, and went in.
The junior partner, a man of his own age, expressed all the surprise
that Holbrook had felt.
“Why they’ve hired that shop front, heaven only knows,” he said. “As
a matter of fact, we rented it to them, and I told them at the time
that it wasn’t the best position for a concern of that kind, but they
insisted.”
“For how long have they taken the store?” asked the interested
Holbrook. “And who are ‘they’?”
“‘They’ is Dr. Laffin,” replied the agent, “and he has taken the
place for three months certain, and the right to renew for a further
period. The store, as you may guess, was already let when they
applied, and Laffin is merely the sub-tenant. The real occupiers are
not moving to Duke Street until the beginning of next year, so that
they were quite glad to rent it to these crazy people. By the way, I’m
not so sure that they are as crazy as we think; they’ve got a most
amazing display in the window--probably you saw the crowd on the
sidewalk?”
“I saw the crowd,” said Bill, “and guessed the reason. A lady is
working in the store window?”
“They say she is a very well-known actress,” he said. “I went down
and had a peep at her, and whether she can act, or whether she’s
merely a musical comedy artiste, she is most decidedly a beauty.”
Bill Holbrook grunted. Betty Carew’s beauty did not interest him as
much as the novelty of her position, and the peculiarly unsatisfactory
nature of his own--in so far as he represented Pips.
A few minutes later he stood on the outskirts of the crowd and looked
into the shop front. In the centre of the “room,” at a small and very
ordinary-looking writing-table, sat Betty Carew, and it was not
necessary for him to make personal inquiries to see that she was
intensely distressed under the stares of a London crowd.
To Betty every moment of that day had been an agony; the clock
scarcely seemed to move. She felt as if she could die of shame, and
once she half rose, determining to run away, anywhere, rather than
submit for another moment to the humiliation which had been put upon
her. Her one fear was that Clive Lowbridge should see her, and she
found her only (and dismal) amusement in the thought of what he would
do when he made the discovery.
“Miss Carew!”
She looked round. The sham door of the study was ajar, and she saw the
concerned face of William Holbrook. It needed but this last trial to
turn her misery to madness.
“Lay off, won’t you?” he begged. “I want to talk to you.”
“Please go away.” Her voice vibrated with anger. “How dare you come
and gloat over your wretched work!”
Bill glared at her in amazement.
“Woman, you’re mad!” he said. “Me--or I, as the case may be? Come
out!”
His voice was authoritative, his gesture almost imperious. Without
knowing exactly why, she obeyed him.
“Now, what’s this stuff about this being my idea?” he demanded.
“Dr. Laffin said so.”
“Dr. Laffin is a lying crow,” said Bill calmly. “He’s a prevaricating
ghoul! He called us in to run the stunt, and then did it himself. The
only thing we’ve got to do is to send out a par to the papers--he even
wrote that.”
“What is the paragraph?” she asked quickly. “About me--oh no, not
about me?”
Bill fished out a dozen envelopes from his pocket, and tore open one.
“It doesn’t mention your name,” he said, unfolding the contents.
“Listen:
“THE RED-HAIRED GIRL.
“_Passers-by in Duke Street are afforded an unusual spectacle. A
window of one of the stores in the thoroughfare has been fitted up
like a study, and at a table-desk sits an extraordinarily pretty girl
with hair of a most amazing red. On the desk at which she sits is a
green jade vase containing one red rose. The lady is apparently
advertising the desk at which she writes, but the effect is a
singularly striking one._”
“And what good that is, except to bring a crowd, I don’t know. Not a
word about the desk. I think that doctor is--” he tapped his
forehead.
“Must this go in?” she asked, with a sinking heart.
“I hope so,” said Bill, “but the ‘must’ is a matter for a number of
city editors of divers temperamentalities. Excuse me talking like a
burglar.”
She thought that this was some catch phrase, but he went on:
“Met a regular burglar professor the other day--he talked like Roget’s
_Thesaurus_ of English Words and Phrases…”
She hoped that this hateful young man, at any rate, would go on
talking. Every second was a second’s respite from the dreadful ordeal
of the window.
“Half of ’em won’t take the par because there’s a business end to it.
Nowadays, the only way you can get free publicity about almost
anything is to kill somebody with it. But I’m going to
tell--good-morning, Doctor.”
It was Laffin, who had strode through the door, and his lips were
quivering with fury.
“Why aren’t you at your post?” he asked, quietly enough.
“Because I asked Miss Carew to come out--that’s why,” said Bill
coolly. “See here, Doctor, you’ve got me guessing.
What--is--the--grand--idea?”
“Your business--” began Laffin.
“Don’t do it, doc,” implored Bill. “I know what my business is, and
I’m attending to it; but there’s something behind this window show
that isn’t straight publicity.”
He prodded the old man’s waistcoat with an inkstained finger.
“If I wasn’t publicity, Laffin, and I was just a low-down reporter,
like I am at heart, I’d be down at Central Office at this very minute,
saying ‘Captain, I’ve got a good story--but it’s too good for
newspapers; send a sleuth, or inspector, or whatever you call your
high-class cops down to question old man Laffin, and maybe he won’t
come back alone.’”
Slowly the colour was leaving Joshua Laffin’s cheeks; from yellow to
grey, from grey to dirty white. By the time Bill had finished, the old
man’s lips were colourless.
An hour later, Bill Holbrook walked unannounced into the office of Mr.
Pawter.
“Your wish has come true, Uncle Pips,” he said.
“Are you resigning?” asked Mr. Pawter, hopefully.
Bill nodded.
“I’ve signed on with the _Dispatch-Herald_. I’m crime reporter, and
you’ll be wise not to start anything, for you’re practically at my
mercy; if it wasn’t a crime for a bald head to market Gro-Kwik
Rejuvenates Tired Follicles, I don’t know what was.”
Mr. Pawter lay back in his chair, aghast.
“Are you serious? Don’t be a fool--I’m not referring to your cheap
jest about one of the best hair preparations ever put into the hands
of the public--but about this crime reporting. Why? You’re getting a
good salary…”
“Little, but good,” corrected Bill. “No, salary doesn’t matter. Pips,
I’m on the trail of the biggest story I’ve ever smelt. And, Pips, I’m
going to do a good turn to the only policeman that has ever stepped to
the witness stand and perjured himself in a good cause.”
Mr. Pawter glanced up at the clock.
“The saloons do not open until twelve,” he said offensively. “You’ve
been drinking out of hours!”