The Moving Toyshop Read Online Free PDF Page A

unmannerly as ever.”
    Fen perched on the edge of the desk, his face eloquent of pained surprise. “What an extraordinary thing to say. Have I ever said an unkind word—”
    “It was you who wrote about the first poems I ever published: ‘This is a book everyone can afford to be without.’”
    “Ha!” said Fen, pleased. “Very pithy I was in those days. Well, how are you, my dear fellow?”
    “Terrible. Of course you weren’t a professor when I saw you last. The University had more sense.”
    “I became a professor,” Fen answered firmly, “because of my tremendous scholarly abilities and my acute and powerful mind.”
    “You wrote to me at the time that it was only a matter of pulling a few moth-eaten strings.”
    “Oh, did I?” said Fen uneasily. “Well, never mind all that now. Have you had breakfast?”
    “Yes, I had it in hall.”
    “Well, have a cigarette, then.”
    “Thanks… Gervase, I’ve lost a toyshop.”
    Gervase Fen stared. As he offered his lighter, his face assumed an expression of the greatest caution. “Would you mind explaining that curious utterance?” he asked.
    Cadogan explained. He explained at great length. He explained with a sense of righteous indignation and frustration of spirit.
    “We combed the neighbourhood,” he said bitterly. “And do you know, there isn’t a toyshop anywhere there. We asked people who had lived there all their lives and they’d never heard of such a thing. And yet I’m certain I got the place right. A grocer, I ask you! We went inside, and it certainly was a grocer, and the door didn’t squeak either; but then there is such a thing as oil.” He referred to this mineral without much confidence. “And on the other hand, there was that door at the back exactly as I’d seen it. Still, I found out that all the shops in that row are built on exactly the same plan.
    “But it was the police that were so awful,” he moaned in conclusion. “It wasn’t that they were nasty or anything like that. They were just horribly kind, the way you are to people who haven’t long to live. When they thought I wasn’t listening they talked about concussion. The trouble was, you see, that everything looked so different in daylight, and I suppose I hesitated and expressed doubts and made mistakes and contradicted myself. Anyway, they drove me back to St. Aldate’s and advised me to see a doctor, so I left them and came and had breakfast here. And here I am.”
    “I suppose,” said Fen dubiously, “that you didn’t go upstairs at this grocery place?”
    “Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that. We did. There was no body, of course, and it was all quite different. That is, the stairs and passage were carpeted, and it was all clean and airy, and the furniture was covered with dust sheets, and the sitting-room was quite different from the room I’d been in. I think it was at that point that the police really became convinced I was crazy.” Cadogan brooded over a sense of insufferable wrong.
    “Well,” said Fen carefully, “assuming that this tale isnt the product of a deranged mind—”
    “I am perfectly sane.”
    “Don’t bawl at me, my dear fellow.” Fen was pained.
    “Of course, I don’t blame the police for thinking I was mad,” said Cadogan in tones of the most vicious reprehension.
    “And assuming,” Fen proceeded with aggravating calm, “that toyshops in the Iffley Road do not just take wing into the ether, leaving no gap behind: what could inspire anyone to substitute a grocery shop for a toyshop at dead of night?”
    Cadogan snorted. “Perfectly obvious. They knew I’d seen the body, and they wanted people to think I was mad when I told them about it—which they’ve succeeded in doing. The crack on the head could be produced as the reason for my delusions. And the window of the closet was left open deliberately, so that I could get out.”
    Fen gazed at him kindly. “Very nice, as far as it goes,” he said. “But it doesn’t explain