Stop Press by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

give you a job as an interpreter at a big railway station.’
    Timmy touched his hat and twirled imaginary moustaches. ‘Not a bad notion. As a matter of fact I’m thinking of something not dissimilar. The diplomatic. You know Hugo is going in.’ And Timmy smiled happily. He was always in love. At the moment, Winter understood, it was a desolatingly orthodox man at New College.
    ‘Your Hugo Toplady? I expect he was at Eton? Don’t you think you should have gone there as your father wanted if you were after diplomatic laurels?’
    ‘I believe they put up with a moderated eccentricity nowadays. As I say – it’s just a notion. And anyway, I don’t think I want to do anything learned. Daddy’s by way of being learned when the Spider stuff lets him. And so is Belinda.’
    ‘Belinda?’
    ‘My big sister. Daddy’s keen on Pope. Called his daughter after a girl who was raped in one of his poems.’
    Winter made an articulate noise reminiscent of his colleague Mummery. ‘Tell that’, he said, ‘to the Foreign Office. Just the thing to ingratiate you with a board of retired ambassadors. But at least we’re getting somewhere at last. You have a sister Belinda. Continue to tell me about the Eliots.’ He paused. ‘That is if you really want to. For I begin to suspect that you have persuaded me to this jaunt merely because you knew I could get you your confounded exeat.’
    Timmy made a childish gesture of cutting his throat. ‘Not so. By the way: was if difficult?’
    ‘Very. I had to interview Benton in his bedroom at midnight – and after having put my foot in it most resoundingly in the common-room. I had to employ tact; bribery indeed. I had to let him in on a very nice epigraphical problem I had been keeping to myself.’
    ‘Poor Mr Benton; he loves me not. That Oxford nervous tone, by the way – Benton’s not a very good advertisement for it?’
    Winter eyed his pupil thoughtfully. ‘Benton is an importation. And as nervous as could be. Why do you ask?’
    Timmy shook his head vaguely. ‘Just that he loves me not – which shows that he must have a troubled soul. And thank you for giving away your problem. And I do most sincerely want your help.’ For a moment Timmy’s eyes expressed the quintessence of sincerity. Then he added: ‘And we’ll have a good weekend anyway. Hugo’s coming down too.’
    ‘The devil he is!’
    ‘As a matter of fact, he’s on the train now. But of course travelling soft.’
    ‘Of course.’
    Timmy stretched himself and assumed an expression of deliberate, blood-chilling idiocy. ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it,’ he said, ‘to know a chap like that?’
    Winter looked about the compartment. ‘Timmy – at your boy-and-girl school – did they ever cane anybody?’
    ‘Absolutely not. I am virgin of the rod.’
    ‘I see no reason why it should be too late to begin.’
    ‘And now’, said Timmy briskly, ‘once more about the Spider.’
    The Spider – the incarnate and disturbing Spider – had made his existence known over the telephone. Of this first incident Timmy, once launched on his subject, gave a fluent and circumstantial account. He was playing piquet one evening with his father in the library when the bell rang. Mr Eliot picked up the instrument – it was within reach as he sat – and was about to speak; then he checked himself and listened for some seconds in evident annoyance. He made a motion as if to return the receiver to its place, changed his mind, listened for a few seconds more, and finally rammed the receiver down with an exclamation of anger. He turned to Timmy, remarked that it was a pity secretaries had to have holidays like human beings, and went on with his game.
    Normally all calls went to Mr Eliot’s secretary and it was only because the secretary was away on holiday that the instrument in the library was directly in contact with the outer world. Timmy conjectured from his father’s rather acid joke that the message had been of the