A Gun for Sale Read Online Free PDF Page B

man said. He had an Oxford accent; that was why they had made him crime reporter; it was the news-editor’s joke.
    ‘Go home and read Gibbon.’
    The earnest young man caught hold of someone’s sleeve. ‘What’s the matter? Are you all crazy? Isn’t there going to be any paper or what?’
    ‘War in forty-eight hours,’ somebody bellowed at him.
    ‘But this is a wonderful story I’ve got. He held up a girl and an old man, climbed out of a window …’
    ‘Go home. There won’t be any room for it.’
    ‘They’ve killed the annual report of the Kensington Kitten Club.’
    ‘No Round the Shops.’
    ‘They’ve made the Limehouse Fire a News in Brief.’
    ‘Go home and read Gibbon.’
    ‘He got clean away with a policeman watching the front door. The Flying Squad’s out. He’s armed. The police are taking revolvers. It’s a lovely story.’
    The chief reporter said, ‘Armed! Go away and put your head in a glass of milk. We’ll all be armed in a day or two. They’ve published their evidence. It’s clear as daylight a Serb shot him. Italy’s supporting the ultimatum. They’ve got forty-eight hours to climb down. If you want to buy armament shares hurry and make your fortune.’
    ‘You’ll be in the army this day week,’ somebody said.
    ‘Oh no,’ the young man said, ‘no, I won’t be that. You see I’m a pacifist.’
    The man who was sick in the telephone-box said, ‘I’m going home. There wouldn’t be any room in the paper if the Bank of England was blown up.’
    A little thin piping voice said, ‘
My
copy’s going in.’
    ‘I tell you there isn’t any room.’
    ‘There’ll be room for mine. Gas Masks for All. Special Air Raid Practices for Civilians in every town of more than fifty thousand inhabitants.’ He giggled.
    ‘The funny thing is – it’s – it’s –’ but nobody ever heard what it was: a boy opened the door and flung them in a pull of the middle page: damp letters on a damp grey sheet; the headlines came off on the hands: ‘Yugoslavia Asks for Time. Adriatic Fleet at War Stations. Paris Rioters Break into Italian Embassy.’ Everyone was suddenly quite quiet as an aeroplane went by; driving low overhead through the dark, heading south, a scarlet tail-lamp, pale transparent wings in the moonlight. They watched it through the great glass ceiling, and suddenly nobody wanted to have another drink.
    The chief reporter said, ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’
    ‘Shall I follow up this story?’ the crime reporter asked.
    ‘If it’ll make you happy, but
That’s
the only news from now on.’
    They stared up at the glass ceiling, the moon, the empty sky.
    6
    The station clock marked three minutes to midnight. The ticket collector at the barrier said, ‘There’s room in the front.’
    ‘A friend’s seeing me off,’ Anne Crowder said. ‘Can’t I get in at this end and go up front when we start?’
    ‘They’ve locked the doors.’
    She looked desperately past him. They were turning out the lights in the buffet; no more trains from that platform.
    ‘You’ll have to hurry, miss.’
    The poster of an evening paper caught her eye and as she ran down the train, looking back as often as she was able, she couldn’t help remembering that war might be declared before they met again. He would go to it; he always did what other people did, she told herself with irritation, although she knew it was his reliability she loved. She wouldn’t have loved him if he’d been eccentric, had his own opinions about things; she lived too closely to thwarted genius, to second touring company actresses who thought they ought to be Cochran stars, to admire difference. She wanted her man to be ordinary, she wanted to be able to know what he’d say next.
    A line of lamp-struck faces went by her; the train was full, so full that in the first-class carriages you saw strange shy awkward people who were not at ease in the deep seats, who feared the ticket-collector would turn them out. She