Archer’s Goon

The Goon said, “Extension six-oh-nine. Where’s that?”

“Over in the housing department,” said the lady. “But—”

“Where’s that?” said the Goon.

“But I’m not telling you,” finished the lady.

The Goon jerked his head at Howard. “Go and look for it,” he said.

“You can’t do that!” the lady said, scandalised.

The Goon took no notice. He just marched out of the room and across the marble hall to the marble stairs, and Howard hurried behind. The lady shouted after them. When that did no good, she came to the door of her office and shrieked, “Come back!”

Howard very much wanted to come back by then. When the Goon stopped a few stairs up, he hoped they could go away now, before they got arrested. But the Goon simply called across the empty space to her, “Mountjoy?”

“I’m not telling you!” shrieked the lady. “Come back!”

The Goon jerked his head to Howard again, and they went on up the stairs. The next twenty minutes were the most harrowing ones Howard had ever spent. The Goon, smiling his daft smile, simply walked calmly into every room they came to. They went into offices, filing rooms, planning rooms, committee rooms, reference rooms, private rooms and public rooms.

Howard kept thinking: We’ll be arrested soon! We can’t do this! And certainly from time to time, agitated people no bigger than Howard did seem to try to bar the Goon’s way; but either the Goon smiled his daft smile at them and put them aside, or he said, “Mountjoy?” and when they shook their heads, he went on. Most people melted away before the Goon got that near.

Like a Centurion tank through butter! Howard thought, hazy with embarrassment. The Goon went, and Howard followed. One room with a large table and a carpet actually had a committee meeting in it, twelve or so people sitting at the table. As the Goon marched in, a man in a dark suit said angrily, “This is the highway board, not a public thoroughfare!” The Goon smiled his daft grin at the man, spotted a door across the room, and homed in on it in great strides over the carpet. The angry man picked up a telephone and started to talk indignantly into it. This time, Howard thought as he pattered after the Goon, we shall be arrested! He was so embarrassed by then that he hoped it would be soon.

But the Goon seemed unstoppable. He took Howard up some more stairs and then strode down a long corridor with frosted windows, which evidently led to another wing of the Town Hall. He tore open the door at the end. Inside there was a chain of offices, where people were typing at desks or walking about, consulting plans of buildings. The Goon turned his grin on Howard. “Getting warm.” He marched down the chain of rooms, and Howard followed, past the usual small people trying to stop them and the usual indignant faces, and made for a door at the end. A notice on it read M. J. MOUNTJOY. The Goon’s huge hand tore this door open, too. The man inside looked up with a jump.

“Here you are,” the Goon said to Howard. “Mountjoy.” He beamed proudly at Mountjoy, as if Mountjoy were treasure and the Goon had dug him up.

“That is my name,” Mr Mountjoy said. He looked uncertainly from the Goon to Howard in his school blazer, with his bag of books hung from his shoulder. His eyes went to the tape with which Howard had mended the rip the Goon had made in the bag and then back to the Goon. It was clear he thought they made an odd pair. Mr Mountjoy himself wore a neat dark suit. He was largish and plumpish, with smooth hair and large, shrewd eyes. He was exactly the kind of man Howard had imagined to go with the smooth, rumbling voice on the telephone.

“Talk to him,” the Goon said to Howard.

“Er—” said Howard. “My father’s Quentin Sykes—”

Before he got any further, the open door behind them was crammed with anxious people who all wanted to know if Mr Mountjoy was all right. They liked Mr Mountjoy, and they wanted him safe. Howard felt more embarrassed than ever. Several of the men wanted to know if they should turn the Goon out. The Goon turned and looked at them as if this were a very surprising notion. Not so much surprising as impossible, Howard thought.

Mr Mountjoy straightened his sober tie uneasily. “I’m quite all right, thank you,” he said in a soothing rumble. “Please shut the door. Everything is under control.” But as the people crowded out of the room, Howard distinctly heard Mr Mountjoy add, “I hope!” When the door shut, he eased his tie looser and his eyes went to the Goon, fascinated. “You were saying, young man?” he said to Howard.

“Why do you really make my father send you two thousand words every three months?” said Howard.

Mr Mountjoy smiled. “I don’t make him do it, young man. It’s just a friendly device I thought of to keep him from drying up again.”

The smile was sincere, and the voice such a friendly, soothing rumble that Howard felt thoroughly ashamed of asking. He turned to go away.

“Not true,” the Goon remarked pleasantly.

Mr Mountjoy gave the Goon an alarmed, fleeting look. “But it is. Quentin Sykes hadn’t been able to write anything for nearly a year after his second book came out. I liked the book and I was sorry for the man, so I hit on a way to get him going again. It’s a sort of joke between us by now.”

“Not true,” the Goon remarked, less pleasantly and more firmly.

That changed Howard’s mind. “No, I don’t think it is,” he said. “If it’s a joke, why did you stop all the water and electricity in our house one time when he didn’t do the words?”

“That had nothing to do with me,” Mr Mountjoy said sincerely. “It may well have been a complete coincidence. If it was my superior – and I admit I have a superior – then he told me nothing about it at all.”

“Was it Archer who did it?” asked Howard.

Mr Mountjoy shrugged and spread his plumpish hands towards Howard, to show he knew nothing about that either. “Who knows? I don’t.”

“And what does Archer do with the words?” said Howard. “Who is Archer anyway? Lord Mayor or something?”

Mr Mountjoy laughed, shook his head and began spreading his hands again, to show he really did not know anything. But before his hands were half-spread, the Goon’s enormous hand came down from behind Howard’s shoulder. It landed across Mr Mountjoy’s gesturing hands and trapped both of them down on Mr Mountjoy’s desk.

“Tell him,” said the Goon.

Mr Mountjoy pulled at his hands, but like Awful before him, he found that made no impression on the Goon at all. He became hurt and astonished. “Really! My dear sir! Please let me go.”

“Talk,” said the Goon.

“I deplore your choice of friends,” Mr Mountjoy said to Howard. “Does your father know the company you keep?”

The Goon looked bored. “Have to stay here all night,” he said to Howard. He propped himself on the fist that was holding down Mr Mountjoy’s hands and yawned.

Mr Mountjoy gave a strangled squeak and struggled a little. “Let go! You’re squashing my hands, and I’ll have you know I’m a keen pianist!” His voice was nearly a yelp. “All right. I’ll tell you the little bit I know! But you’re to let go first!”

The Goon unpropped himself. “Can always do it again,” he told Howard reassuringly.

Mr Mountjoy rubbed his hands together and felt each of his fingers, morbidly, as if he had thought one or two might be missing. “I’ve no idea what Archer wants with the blessed words!” he said peevishly. “I don’t even know if it’s Archer I send them to. All I’ve ever heard is his voice on the telephone. It could be any of them.”

“Any of who?” Howard said, mystified.

“Any of the seven people who really run this town,” said Mr Mountjoy. “Archer’s one. The others are Dillian, Venturus, Torquil, Erskine and – what are their names? Oh, yes. Hathaway and Shine. They’re all brothers.”

“How do you know?” demanded the Goon.

“I made it my business to find out,” Mr Mountjoy said. “Wouldn’t you, if one of them made you do something this peculiar for them?”

“Shouldn’t have done,” said the Goon. “Won’t like that. Know. Working for Archer.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Mr Mountjoy said. “I concede that you may not have much brain. You don’t appear to have room for one. But this is an odd place to be if I work for Archer, too.”

“Doing him a favour,” said the Goon, pointing a parsnip-sized thumb at Howard. He said to Howard, “Know I’m your friend now. Want to know any more?”

“Um – yes,” said Howard. “How does he send the words to whoever it is?”

“I address them to a post office box number and send a typist out to post them,” said Mr Mountjoy. “I really know nothing more. I have tried to find out who collects them, and I have failed.”

“So you don’t know how this last lot went missing?” said Howard.

“It never reached me,” said Mr Mountjoy. “Now do you mind taking your large friend and going away? I have work to do.”