been robbed,” Terry added. “My wallet was pinched while I was at the racecourse.”
“Was it now?” George Naylor shrugged his heavy shoulders. “You should be more careful, shouldn’t you? I’m surprised at you, the fly boy!”
“I’m trying to tell you, George, that I can’t pay up at the moment.”
Naylor knocked the ash from his cigarette and then leaned flabby forearms on the desk. He peered up at Terry intently.
“Look, Terry, business is business. I don’t know what crackpot notion prompted you to put two hundred on that nag—and to win too! But when you come here without the two hundred to settle up you’re playing with dynamite. Fact remains, I want the money! I’m not insisting on it right now: two hundred takes a bit of getting, I know. We’ll have to come to some sort of arrangement. Instalments, eh?”
“Even that’s going to be difficult.”
“I’m being as fair as I can afford to be. I’ve my own interests to think of. If you can’t stand the loss of two hundred quid you shouldn’t have bet that much, that’s all. That’s commonsense.”
“I tell you it was a genuine bet! I had the money then. It was stolen from me afterwards.”
George Naylor heaved out of his chair and drew hard at his cigarette.
“It’s up to you, Terry. Instalments are the only way out. Let’s say four instalments of fifty pounds each—and I’m being generous at that. Let’s see now—today’s Tuesday. I’ll give you ’til a week next Saturday to get the first instalment. That’s fair enough, isn’t it? Sixteen whole days in which you can turn round.”
“And suppose I don’t succeed?” Terry asked. “I can plead the Gaming Act, you know, by which all contracts ‘whether by parole or in writing, by way of gaming or wagering, shall be null and void’.”
“Gaming Act 1845, replaced by a tougher one in 1892.” Naylor gave a grim look. “Don’t try the Smart Alec routine with me, Terry!”
“You can’t make me pay! That’s the main point!”
“I can make you smart, though, and by God I will if it becomes necessary. And I don’t think you’d publicly declare anything about being nixed up with the Gaming Act, either. If I don’t get that money I’ll do other things.”
“Such as?” Terry demanded.
“Well, for one thing you have a manager who’d cut your throat if he knew you’d been gambling—which is one reason why I don’t think you’ll plead the Gaming Act. I know Turner: he doesn’t even like me as a paying patron because he knows I’m a bookie.... One gentle, well-placed hint would rock the boat for you nicely, Terry, wouldn’t it? It’s so easy to prevent, too. Just get the instalments, and we’ll remain good friends.”
Terry did not say any more. He turned and left the office, mooching up the cul-de-sac to the main road once more....
* * * * * * *
When Terry arrived at the Cosy Cinema at quarter to nine the following morning he was in a black mood. Nor was it lightened any by the greeting of the doorman, busy in the wide foyer with the long, snaking tube of the vacuum cleaner.
“By heck, Terry, Sid hasn’t ’arf got it in for you! Some time since I’ve seen him so riled.”
Terry came to a stop and frowned. “Sid has? What the blazes is the matter with him, anyway?”
“I’m not quite sure, but he’s in a rare tear. Seems to think the time’s come to smear you on the walls!”
“Oh, he does, does he?” Terry smiled bitterly. “For a second to set about his chief is nearly as bad as striking a superior officer.... Where is he at the moment?”
The doorman looked about him and then seemed to remember. He snapped his fingers.
“Last I saw of him he was in the stalls, larking about with the girls. Not that I blame ’im for that. I like a bit of fun myself sometimes. Helps to cheer up this lousy ’ole we ’ave to work in.”
Larking with the girls was not a pastime of which Terry approved—not from any personal distaste but because his position as chief projectionist made it essential for him to keep his own particular staff in order, or explain to the manager. He murmured something inaudible to the doorman and then finished his walk across the wide foyer and pushed aside the glass doors to enter the cinema’s lower floor. It was wide and barren and smelled of stale tobacco smoke. There was only one naked 750-watt lamp high in the ceiling, casting its pallid light on chair backs and the scarf-wrapped heads of the usherettes as they moved about and dusted.
Terry paused by the back row, gazing over the expanse. His eye caught Vera Holdsworth’s as she rose from cleaning a seat. She gave him an icy stare.
“Where’s Sid?” Terry demanded suddenly.
Low down on the right hand side of the proscenium a figure appeared in a doorway. He had a mop and empty bucket in his hands. Not that there was anything unusual about this. All the cleaning tackle was kept in the storeroom back stage, where once an orchestra pit had been.
“I’m coming,” Sid Elbridge called, in a surly voice. “Give me a chance, can’t you?”
He moved up the right-hand gangway deliberately. He was big, ungainly, with sandy hair and turned-up nose. His main virtue was that he was a clever electrician and could be relied on to run a show by himself in a crisis. The only thing he did not like was having to work in the evenings. He was twenty-five, five years younger than Terry.
“What’s all this rot about wanting to smear the wall with me?” Terry snapped, as Sid came up. “Harry’s full of it. I’ve just been talking to him.”
“And Harry’s right.” With a clatter Sid tossed down the bucket and flung the mop into it. “I want a word with you, Terry—and right here is as good a place as any.”
Terry glanced about him. Heads had popped up behind seat backs in various directions, each head with a coloured duster or scarf wound round it.
“This is going to be good,” commented Kathleen Gatty, who liked nothing better than a quarrel, providing she was not mixed up in it.
“What’s the matter, Sid?” called Helen Prescott. “What are you getting so tough about?”
“That’s what I’m wondering,” Terry said, and to Sid he added, “If you’ve something on your mind let’s go up to the box and talk it over—”
“To blazes with the box! We’ll do it right here, Terry. I want to know what you mean by slapping Vera across the face as you did.”
Terry did not answer immediately. He could smell danger. Sid Elbridge was a slow mover as a rule, but when he did get excited he did it properly. Just at this moment he was obviously having a hard struggle to remain calm.
“I shouldn’t try and deny it, Terry, if I were you.” Vera came up the gangway, tossing a duster from one hand to the other. “You didn’t think I was going to take a wallop like that without telling everybody what a rotten
