Butterfly-nets, he learned, were to be had from either the children’s or the sports department; fortunately both were on the same floor. He examined the lift-girl with a professional air of suspicion as she closed the gates on him, and was rewarded with an exaggeratedly indignant stare (‘’aving an eyeful,’ she confided to a friend). Thereupon he retired hastily into his paper, and as he was borne upward through the building, discovered and read the following:
ATTACK ON MUSICIAN
The police have as yet no clue to the assailant of Dr Denis Brooks, Organist of Tolnbridge Cathedral, who was attacked and rendered unconscious while on his way home the evening before last.
Geoffrey cursed the papers for their lack of detail, Fen for his exaggeration, and himself for becoming involved in the business at all. This private ritual of commination concluded, he scratched his nose ruefully; something was going on, anyway. But what had happened to the deputy organist? Presumably he had been banged on the head as well.
The lift came to a shattering stop, and Geoffrey found himself precipitated into the midst of a vast mellay of sports equipment, tenanted only by one plump, pink young assistant, who stood gazing about him with the resignation and despair of Priam amid the ruins of Troy.
‘Have you ever noticed,’ he said gloomily as Geoffrey approached, ‘the way no sports apparatus is ever a decent, symmetrical shape? You can’t pile it up neatly like boxes or books – there are always little bits sticking out on all sides. Roller-skates are the worst.’ His tone deepened, indicating his especial abhorrence of these inconvenient objects. ‘And footballs roll off the shelf as soon as you put them up, and skis you are bound to fall over, and the moment you lean a cricket-bat against the wall it slides down again.’ He looked unhappily at Geoffrey. ‘Is there anything you want? Most people,’ he went on before Geoffrey could reply, ‘have given up sports for the war. I expect they’re better off for it in the end. Muscular development only provides a foothold for fat.’ He sighed.
‘What I really wanted was a butterfly-net,’ said Geoffrey absently; his mind still dwelt on the problem of the organists.
‘A butterfly-net,’ repeated the young man sadly; he seemed to find this information particularly discouraging. ‘It’s the same with them, you see,’ he said, pointing to a row of butterfly-nets propped against a wall. ‘If you stand them on their heads, as it were, the net part sticks out and trips you up; and if you have them as they are now, they look top-heavy and disturb the eye.’ He went over and selected one.
‘Isn’t it rather long?’ said Geoffrey, gazing without enthusiasm at the six feet of bamboo which confronted him.
‘They have to be that,’ said the young man without any perceptible lightening of spirit, ‘or you’d never get near the butterflies at all. Not that you do very often, in any case,’ he added. ‘Most of it’s just blind swiping, really. Would you be wanting a collector’s box?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Ah, well. I don’t blame you. They’re inconvenient things, very heavy to carry about.’ He scrutinized the net again. ‘This will be seventeen-and-six. Ridiculous waste of money, really. I’ll just take the price off.’
The price was attached to the stem of the net with a piece of string that proved impervious to tugging.
‘Won’t it slip off?’ said Geoffrey helpfully; and then, when quite obviously it wouldn’t: ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway.’
‘It’s no bother at all. I’ve got a pair of scissors.’ The pink young man felt helplessly in his pockets: ‘I must have left them in the office. I’m always doing that; and when I do remember, they tear holes in my pockets. Just a minute.’ He had disappeared before Geoffrey could stop him.
The man in the black slouch hat rose from his rather cramped position behind a counter laden with boxing-gloves near the stairhead, and made his way with considerable speed and stealth towards Geoffrey. He carried a blackjack and had the intent expression of one trying to trap a mosquito. The pink young assistant, however, did not stay away as long as he had hoped. Emerging from the office, he took in the situation without apparent surprise, and, acting with commendable presence of mind, put the butterfly-net over the assailant’s head and pulled. The blackjack described an arc through the air and knocked over a pile of roller-skates with a horrifying crash. Geoffrey spun round just in time to see his would-be attacker overbalance backwards and collapse into the middle of a vast medley of sports equipment which stood in the middle of the floor. It expressed its unsymmetrical character by general dissolution. A number of footballs were precipitated to the top of the stairs, down which they careered with increasing momentum to the department below. The Enemy freed himself, cursing noisily, from the butterfly-net, got to his feet, and made for the stairs. The pink young man gave him a resounding crack on the back of his head with one end of a ski, and he fell down again. Geoffrey struggled with his revolver, which had become inextricably involved in the lining of his pocket.
Battle was at once engaged. The Enemy, who was showing remarkable powers of recovery, opened a frontal attack on Geoffrey. The pink young man threw a cricket-ball at him, but it missed and hit Geoffrey instead. Geoffrey fell over and upset a heap of ice-skates, over which the assailant in his turn fell. The pink young man tried to put the net over his head again, but missed his aim and overbalanced. The Enemy regained his feet and threw an ice-skate at Geoffrey, which caught him a windy blow in the stomach as he was still endeavouring to get out his revolver. The pink young man, recovering his balance, smote the Enemy with a cricket-stump. The Enemy subsided, and the pink young man banged inexpertly at his head with a hockey-stick until he became silent. Geoffrey at last succeeded in getting out his revolver, to the accompaniment of an ominous tearing of cloth, and waved it wildly about him.
‘Be careful with that,’ said the pink young man.
‘What happened?’
‘Malicious intent,’ said the other. He picked up the blackjack, tossed it in the air, and nodded sagely. ‘I’m afraid that butterfly-net’s no good now,’ he added, with a relapse into his previous melancholy. ‘Torn to bits. You’d better take another.’ He went over and got one. ‘Seventeen-and-six, I think we said.’ Mechanically Geoffrey produced the money.
A roar of mingled rage and stupefaction from below indicated that the footballs had arrived at their destination. ‘Fielding!’ a voice boomed up at them. ‘What the devil are you doing up there?’
‘I think,’ said the young man pensively, ‘that it would be better if we left – at once.’
‘But your job!’ Geoffrey gazed at him helplessly.
‘I’ve probably lost it, anyway, thanks to this. Something of this sort always seems to happen to me. The last place I was at one of the assistants went mad and took off all her clothes. I wonder if I’ve left anything?’ He buffeted his pockets, as one who searches for matches. ‘I generally do. At least three pairs of gloves a year – in trains.’
‘Come on,’ said Geoffrey urgently. He was feeling unnaturally exhilarated, and obsessed by a primitive desire to escape from the scene of the disturbance. Footsteps clattered up the steps towards them. The lift-girl apocalyptically threw open the doors of the lift, announced, as one ushering in the day of judgement: ‘Sports, children’s, books, ladies’ – shrieked out at the chaos confronting her, and closed the doors again, whence she and her passengers peered out like anxious rabbits awaiting the arrival of green-stuffs. The accidental touch of a button sent the lift shooting earthwards again; from it rapidly diminishing sounds of altercation could be heard.
Geoffrey and the pink young man ran for the stairs.
On their way down, they met a shop-walker and two assistants, pounding grimly upwards.
‘There’s a lunatic up there trying to break up the stock,’ said the young man with a sudden blood-curdling intensity which, by contrast with his normal tones, sounded horrifyingly convincing. ‘Go and see what you can do – I’m off to fetch the