Trial and Error by Anthony Berkeley Read Free Book Online Page B

journal’s tradition.
    The staff was upset. But their disapproval was as nothing compared with the perturbation which overtook the whole building during the next three months; a perturbation verging in some cases on panic. For dismissals became as common as primroses in Devon. A storm had struck Fleet Street and the staff of Consolidated Periodicals Ltd. were scattered before it as cigarette ash before an electric fan.
    The whole trouble, opined young Wilson, still trying to be fair but becoming more and more red every minute, the whole trouble was due to the fact that Fischmann was the wrong sort of man for the job. Young Wilson quite admitted that a slight gingering up of the London Review’ s staff would have been a perfectly sound thing; while a change to a rather more definite policy need not have incurred any real risk of stunting, which had been the Old Gang’s bogey. But Fischmann had lost his head completely.
    Crazy with power, he was sacking people now throughout the whole building, not on any question of efficiency or lack of value, but on nothing more nor less now than an attitude of independence to himself. Things had reached such a pitch that the most useless fellow could obtain the editorship of one of the minor periodicals in the firm’s control so long as he was prepared to join the band of Fischmann’s toadies; sooner or later the best man must go if he kept up his attitude of independence. Even hostility was not required; a mere reluctance to touch his hat to Fischmann in the corridor was almost enough now to earn the dismissal, at twelve hours notice, of the best man in Fleet Street.
    â€œBut I can’t believe that anything like that can be happening here,” protested Mr Todhunter. “One hears of these absurd affairs in the popular newspapers, but surely not in the London Review.”
    â€œAsk Ferrers, ask Ogilvie himself, ask anyone,” countered Wilson.
    â€œI did ask Ferrers,” admitted Mr Todhunter, “and he refused to tell me.”
    â€œOh well.” Wilson smiled rather engagingly. “Ferrers thinks it’s best to keep these things to ourselves. Besides, Byle was there, wasn’t he? He’s a bit inclined to go up in the air over any question of what he calls ‘abstract justice,’” said Wilson with tolerance, having just been very much up in the air himself over this question of thoroughly practical injustice.
    Some such thought occurred to Mr Todhunter as he wondered vaguely what justice might be when not abstract; but of course justice can be perfectly practical, and injustice usually is.
    Mr Todhunter liked Wilson. It was one of his chief joys on Wednesday afternoons to stand and laugh guiltily in a corner when Wilson, lacking his chief’s gift of suave authority, was cornered by an irate Byle wanting to know why his choicest denuciations had been blue-pencilled or accusing the staff of walking off with the books in their pockets that he particularly wanted to review. Wilson’s wriggling, “Oh, come now, I say—draw it mild!” gave him much malicious pleasure; for the young man had so obviously not yet learned the necessary art of prevaricating convincingly.
    What Wilson said therefore upon the present state of affairs Mr Todhunter found himself compelled to accept, and the knowledge distressed him. The thing seemed so alien to the whole spirit of the London Review. For Mr Todhunter, like everyone else connected with it, took a peculiar pride in the dignity and traditions of the paper and was proud to work for it.
    â€œDear me, dear me,” he murmured, his small bony face showing his concern. “But doesn’t Lord Felixbourne know what is going on?”
    â€œHe does—and yet he won’t. He’s given this chap a free hand, you see, and he just dam’ well won’t go back on it.”.
    â€œBut apart from the injustice, if things are really as bad as you say a great deal of