gaze the whole front page of that morning’s Ack-Emma.
Cold with shock, Robert stared at it.
Stanley, turning to take the papers he was holding from his grasp, noticed his absorption and approved it.
“Nice little number, that,” he said. “Reminds me of a bint I had in Egypt. Same far-apart eyes. Nice kid she was. Told the most original lies.”
He went back to his paper-arranging, and Robert went on staring.
said the paper in enormous black letters across the top of the page; and below it, occupying two-thirds of the page, was the girl’s photograph. And then, in smaller but still obtrusive type, below:
and below it a photograph of The Franchise.
Across the bottom of the page was the legend:
He put out his hand and turned over the page.
Yes; it was all there, except for the Sharpes’ name.
He dropped the page, and looked again at that shocking frontispiece. Yesterday The Franchise was a house protected by four high walls; so unobtrusive, so sufficient unto itself, that even Milford did not know what it looked like. Now it was there to be stared at on every bookstall; on every newsagent’s counter from Penzance to Pentland. Its flat, forbidding front a foil for the innocence of the face above it.
The girl’s photograph was a head-and-shoulders affair, and appeared to be a studio portrait. Her hair had an arranged-for-an-occasion look, and she was wearing what looked like a party frock. Without her school coat she looked – not less innocent, nor older; no. He sought for the word that would express it. She looked less – tabu, was it? The school coat had stopped one thinking of her as a woman, just as a nun’s habit would. A whole treatise could probably be written, now he came to think of it, on the protective quality of school coats. Protective in both senses: armour and camouflage. Now that the coat was no longer there, she was feminine instead of merely female.
But it was still a pathetically young face, immature and appealing. The candid brow, the wide-set eyes, the bee-stung lip that gave her mouth the expression of a disappointed child – it made a formidable whole. It would not be only the Bishop of Larborough who would believe a story told by that face.
“May I borrow this paper?” he asked Stanley.
“Take it,” Stanley said. “We had it for our elevenses. There’s nothing in it.”
Robert was surprised. “Didn’t you find this interesting?” he asked, indicating the front page.
Stanley cast a glance at the pictured face. “Not except that she reminded me of that bint in Egypt, lies and all.”
“So you didn’t believe that story she told?”
“What do you think!” Stanley said, contemptuous.
“Where do you think the girl was, then, all that time?”
“If I remember what I think I remember about the Red Sea sadie, I’d say very definitely – oh, but definitely – on the tiles,” Stanley said, and went out to attend to a customer.
Robert picked up the paper and went soberly away. At least one man-in-the-street had not believed the story; but that seemed to be due as much to an old memory as to present cynicism.
And although Stanley had quite obviously read the story without reading the names of the characters concerned, or even the place-names, only ten per cent of readers did that (according to the best Mass Observation); the other ninety per cent would have read every word, and would now be discussing the affair with varying degrees of relish.
At his own office he found that Hallam had been trying to reach him by telephone.
“Shut the door and come in, will you,” he said to old Mr. Heseltine, who had caught him with the news on his arrival and was now standing in the door of his room. “And have a look at that.”
He reached for the receiver with one hand, and laid the paper under Mr. Heseltine’s nose with the other.
The old man touched it with his small-boned fastidious hand, as one seeing a strange exhibit for the first time. “This is the publication one hears so much about,” he said. And gave his attention to it, as he would to any strange document.
“We are both in a spot, aren’t we!” Hallam said, when they were connected. And raked his vocabulary for some epithets suitable to the Ack-Emma. “As if the police hadn’t enough to do without having that rag on their tails!” he finished, being naturally absorbed in the police point of view.
“Have you heard from the Yard?”
“Grant was burning the wires at nine this morning. But there’s nothing they can do. Just grin and bear it. The police are always fair game. Nothing you can do, either, if it comes to that.”
“Not a thing,” Robert said. “We have a fine free press.”
Hallam said a few more things about the press. “Do your people know?” he asked.
“I shouldn’t think so. I’m quite sure they would never normally see the Ack-Emma, and there hasn’t been time for some kind soul to send it to them. But they are due here in about ten minutes, and I’ll show it to them then.”
“If it was ever possible for me to be sorry for that old battle-axe,” Hallam said, “it would be at this minute.”
“How did the Ack-Emma get the story? I thought the parents – the girl’s guardians, I mean – were very strongly against that kind of publicity.”
“Grant says the girl’s brother went off the deep end about the police taking no action and went to the Ack-Emma off his own bat. They are strong on the champion act. ‘The Ack-Emma will see right done!’ I once knew one of their crusades run into a third day.”
When he hung up Robert thought that if it was a bad break for both sides, it was at least an even break. The police would without doubt redouble their efforts to find corroborative evidence; on the other hand the publication of the girl’s photograph meant for the Sharpes a faint hope that somebody, somewhere, would recognise it and say: “This girl could not have been in The Franchise on the date in question because she was at such-and-such a place.”
“A shocking story, Mr. Robert,” Mr. Heseltine said. “And if I may say so a quite shocking publication. Most offensive.”
“That house,” Robert said, “is The Franchise, where old Mrs. Sharpe and her daughter live; and where I went the other day, if you remember, to give them some legal advice.”
“You mean that these people are our clients?”
“Yes.”
“But, Mr. Robert, that is not at all in our line.” Robert winced at the dismay in his voice. “That is quite outside our usual – indeed quite beyond our normal – we are not competent—”
“We are competent, I hope, to defend any client against a publication like the Ack-Emma,”
