write anything for nearly a year after his second book came out. I liked the book and I was sorry for the man, so I hit on a way to get him going again. It’s a sort of joke between us by now.”
“Not true,” the Goon remarked, less pleasantly and more firmly.
That changed Howard’s mind. “No, I don’t think it is,” he said. “If it’s a joke, why did you stop all the water and electricity in our house one time when he didn’t do the words?”
“That had nothing to do with me,” Mr Mountjoy said sincerely. “It may well have been a complete coincidence. If it was my superior – and I admit I have a superior – then he told me nothing about it at all.”
“Was it Archer who did it?” asked Howard.
Mr Mountjoy shrugged and spread his plumpish hands towards Howard, to show he knew nothing about that either. “Who knows? I don’t.”
“And what does Archer do with the words?” said Howard. “Who is Archer anyway? Lord Mayor or something?”
Mr Mountjoy laughed, shook his head and began spreading his hands again, to show he really did not know anything. But before his hands were half-spread, the Goon’s enormous hand came down from behind Howard’s shoulder. It landed across Mr Mountjoy’s gesturing hands and trapped both of them down on Mr Mountjoy’s desk.
“Tell him,” said the Goon.
Mr Mountjoy pulled at his hands, but like Awful before him, he found that made no impression on the Goon at all. He became hurt and astonished. “Really! My dear sir! Please let me go.”
“Talk,” said the Goon.
“I deplore your choice of friends,” Mr Mountjoy said to Howard. “Does your father know the company you keep?”
The Goon looked bored. “Have to stay here all night,” he said to Howard. He propped himself on the fist that was holding down Mr Mountjoy’s hands and yawned.
Mr Mountjoy gave a strangled squeak and struggled a little. “Let go! You’re squashing my hands, and I’ll have you know I’m a keen pianist!” His voice was nearly a yelp. “All right. I’ll tell you the little bit I know! But you’re to let go first!”
The Goon unpropped himself. “Can always do it again,” he told Howard reassuringly.
Mr Mountjoy rubbed his hands together and felt each of his fingers, morbidly, as if he had thought one or two might be missing. “I’ve no idea what Archer wants with the blessed words!” he said peevishly. “I don’t even know if it’s Archer I send them to. All I’ve ever heard is his voice on the telephone. It could be any of them.”
“Any of who?” Howard said, mystified.
“Any of the seven people who really run this town,” said Mr Mountjoy. “Archer’s one. The others are Dillian, Venturus, Torquil, Erskine and – what are their names? Oh, yes. Hathaway and Shine. They’re all brothers.”
“How do you know?” demanded the Goon.
“I made it my business to find out,” Mr Mountjoy said. “Wouldn’t you, if one of them made you do something this peculiar for them?”
“Shouldn’t have done,” said the Goon. “Won’t like that. Know. Working for Archer.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Mr Mountjoy said. “I concede that you may not have much brain. You don’t appear to have room for one. But this is an odd place to be if I work for Archer, too.”
“Doing him a favour,” said the Goon, pointing a parsnip-sized thumb at Howard. He said to Howard, “Know I’m your friend now. Want to know any more?”
“Um – yes,” said Howard. “How does he send the words to whoever it is?”
“I address them to a post office box number and send a typist out to post them,” said Mr Mountjoy. “I really know nothing more. I have tried to find out who collects them, and I have failed.”
“So you don’t know how this last lot went missing?” said Howard.
“It never reached me,” said Mr Mountjoy. “Now do you mind taking your large friend and going away? I have work to do.”
“Pleasure,” said the Goon. He put both hands on the desk and leaned towards Mr Mountjoy. “Tell us the back way out.”
“I bear you no malice,” Mr Mountjoy said hastily. “The door at the end. Marked ‘Emergency Stairs’.” He picked up a folder labelled ‘Centre development: Polytechnic’ and pretended to be very busy reading it.
The Goon jerked his head at Howard in the way Howard was now used to and progressed out into the offices again. Heads lifted from typewriters and frozen faces watched them as they progressed right down to the end of the rooms. Here, sure enough, was a door with wire mesh set into the glass of it. ‘Fire Door,’ it said in red letters, ‘Emergency Stairs.’ The Goon slung it open, and they went out on to a long flight of concrete stairs.
The Goon raced down these stairs surprisingly quickly and quietly. Howard’s knees trembled rather as he followed. He was scared now. They kept galloping down past other wire-and-glass doors, and some of these were bumping open and shut. Howard could see the dark shapes of people milling about behind them, and at least twice he heard some of the things they said. “Walked straight through the highway board!” a woman said behind the first. Lower down, someone was calling out, “They went up that way, Officer!” Howard put his head down and bounded two stairs at a time to keep up with the Goon. Scared as he was, he was rather impressed. The Goon certainly got results.
At the bottom of the stairs a heavy swing door let them out into a back yard crowded with gigantic rubbish bins on wheels. Here Howard, as he threaded his way after the Goon, remembered to his annoyance that he had forgotten to ask Mr Mountjoy how Archer – or whichever brother it was – had first got hold of Mr Mountjoy and made him work for him. But it was clearly too late to go back and ask that now.
The yard led to a car park and the car park led to a side street. At the main road the Goon stuck his head round the corner and looked towards the front of the Town Hall, about fifty yards away. Three police cars were parked beside the steps with their lights flashing and their doors open. The Goon grinned and turned the other way. “Dillian nearly got us,” he remarked.
“Dillian?” asked Howard, trotting to keep up.
“Dillian farms law and order,” said the Goon.
“Oh,” said Howard. “Let’s go and see Archer now.”
But the Goon said, “Got to see your dad about the words,” and Howard found himself hurrying towards home instead. When the Goon decided to go anywhere, he set that way like a strong current, and there seemed nothing Howard could do about it.
Five minutes later Howard and the Goon turned right past the corner shop into Upper Park Street. Howard was rather glad to see it. He liked the rows of tall, comfortable houses and
