The Refuge Read Free Page B

white glass, the air was as stale and vitiated as that of an empty theatre after a show. It felt warm, in spite of the bleak May night outside in the streets; I knew that once again the air-conditioning system was out of order on our floor, and the general room, windowless, set in the middle of the building and surrounded by corridors, became at such times almost uninhabitable, and smelt of lavatories. My mind in a sort of frenzy underlined the physical discomfort; I felt I must go out and breathe the cold air of the emptying streets which by comparison would seem sweet. Only when I had typed out my notes taken from Hubble, and was about to carry the copy to the sub-editors and go on down the imposing lower staircase to the street door, did I realize that I was still waiting—I could not yet leave that telephone lying silent as if in exhausted sleep on its rest, not for more than a minute or two. When I did leave—probably at about midnight, perhaps later, if the call I must hear had not yet come—Hubble could briefly be let know I was to be found at home within half an hour; within fifteen minutes . . . A taxi would do it.
    The subs had their heads down above the broad table which ran like a great brown polished horseshoe from one door to the other in the inner wall of their room. Unlike the general reporting staff, they could seldom leave their seats at that table during the eight long hours of duty. It was safe to put them into a room with windows overlooking the street—safe and healthy, I suppose. Now for the most part they were absorbed, for it was a busy time, with the cables still coming in from daytime Europe. In the corner annexe which also overlooked the street, the overseas teletype machine kept up a continuous solid rattle and ring, working away on its own as though moved by a human conscience inside its heavy metal case. I left the door open into the passage so that I could hear my telephone if it rang, and took my copy to the basket in front of Blake, the chief sub-editor, who was reading a page-proof. I did not wish now to talk to anyone, but Blake did; he had got the main body of the so-called final edition away, and as usual at this time of night he was bored, and boredom made his thin, sharp, white face with the ginger-red Chaplin moustache and penetrating green eyes look to be consumed with anger. However, as I knew by now, he merely wished for a cup of coffee upstairs in the staff dining-room, and a break away from that table where he must spend more than half the night, five nights out of seven.
    Until I put my copy into it, the wire basket was empty. The chief cable-sub was getting paper direct from the teletype machine at the hands of a gum-chewing boy whose face in the harsh light was almost as white, though by no means as thin, as Blake’s. Blake snatched the few sheets out of the basket, glanced at them, called out ‘
Bill!
’ in a sharp tenor voice that perfectly matched his own red-and-white colour, and sank back in his wooden armchair to look at me at last.
    ‘Nothing big, Lloyd?’ he said. ‘We’re short of crime. No, seriously. How about going out and committing a nice juicy murder? A man with your experience, you ought to be able to get away with it.’
    Such is the untrustworthy state of a mind battling with strong emotion that for the flashing part of a second I was impelled to answer by saying, ‘I have done that once since sunset, and once is enough for a lifetime.’ Instead, I laughed, though I had not meant to, nor to laugh so loudly. The room seemed to echo with it, but no head was raised, no face turned. Only Blake looked slightly surprised, and his thin mouth relaxed into a smile of sudden, complete charm.
    ‘Oh come,’ he said, ‘it’s not as funny as that. In fact, it’s not funny at all, I know. I did once see a film—or maybe it was in a book I read—where the ace crime reporter goes out and commits the perfect crime, just to make news. Hollywood and the Johnson