The End Game Read Online Free PDF Page B

dull. But terribly interesting, too, if you know what I mean.”
    As the assistant was putting the books away, she examined the titles. They seemed to be mostly concerned with the printing trade.
    She said to the supervisor, “You’d think a girl with her looks would have something better to do in the evenings than bury herself in this stuff.”
    The supervisor, who was an amateur psychologist and a student of the columns in the papers which prescribe for other people’s troubles, said, “I expect she’s had a tiff with her boyfriend and is striving to forget.”
     
    “Singles tonight,” said Fred Rowley. “And no hanging about.”
    “You’re not feeling well?”
    “I’m feeling fine. But I’m saving up to buy a new car.”
    “I could introduce you to a man who’d sell you any new car you name for three-quarters of the list price.”
    “Uninsured, unlicensed and stolen the week before.”
    “That’s unworthy of you, Fred,” said David. “Just because you’ve a devious mind you mustn’t suppose that everyone else is on the fiddle.”
    They were in the saloon bar of the Green Man, a much larger house than the Coat and Badge, with a mixed clientele. The bar was crowded, but by a bit of elbow work they had got themselves a table.
    Rowley said, “What did Uncle Sambo want to see you about?”
    “Our Miss Crawley reported that I had made an assault on her virgin fortress.”
    “If you were brave enough to climb the wall, you’d find the garrison anxious to surrender, I guess.”
    “Exactly what I told Sam. Repressed spinster. Vivid imagination.”
    “You want to be careful, all the same. It was Crawley who got one of your predecessors the boot.”
    “Which one?”
    “Chap called Dennis Moule. Five or six years ago.”
    “ He didn’t make a pass at her, surely.”
    “No. This was drink. Took to drink when his fiancée was killed.”
    “On Highgate Hill in a rain storm.”
    “Right. How come—?”
    “I read it. In a newspaper cutting inside an old file I was looking at. I happened to notice his initials on it. D.R.M. Same as mine. I didn’t know you were here when that happened.”
    “Was I not? It was the sort of day you don’t forget in a hurry. February fourteenth, St. Valentine’s Day. It started raining at nine in the morning and it never bloody stopped. Low black clouds, like the end of the world was coming and not just raining. Pouring, solid, like someone up there had pulled the plug and was emptying a bath over you. I’d seen something like it in Burma before. Never in England.”
    “Keep my seat and I’ll get another drink. Thinking about all that water—very depressing—you need something to cheer you up.”
    He fought his way to the bar and returned, managing to carry two glasses of whisky in one hand and two pints of beer in the other. Some of the beer failed to survive the journey.
    “Go on,” he said. “What happened next?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The St. Valentine’s Day massacre.”
    “Oh, ah, that.” Fred lowered half his beer and said, “There was a lot of fuss going on all day. Something to do with one of our spot customers. Mr Mantegna looked after him. A man called Blackett.”
    “Randall Blackett?”
    “That’s right. You can’t hardly open a paper nowadays without seeing he’s bought up some other outfit. Seems to collect ‘em like cigarette cards. Not that he was much then, but I’m talking about some years ago. Well, like I was saying, there was some panic on. Mr Mantegna said we must get hold of him. Had all of us telephoning round. I tried his partner, in the property business, Harry Woolf. He was away ill. Died a few months later, I seem to remember. Then Miss Blaney, his secretary, got through to another director, Colonel Paterson. Found him at his club. He said he thought Blackett was up in North London, visiting different people. If it was all that urgent, he said, he’d bring his car round and pick up Mr Mantegna, and