The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [42]
“It’s fantastic!” I said.
“It is, rather.”
We were both silent for a moment.
I said incredulously: “She told you quite openly? She didn’t seem—scared?”
Ginger said impatiently: “You don’t understand. Telling me didn’t count. And after all, Mark, if what we think is true the business has to be more or less advertised, hasn’t it? I mean they must want new ‘clients’ all the time.”
“We’re mad to believe anything of the kind.”
“All right. We’re mad. Are you going to Birmingham to see Mr. Bradley?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to see Mr. Bradley. If he exists.”
I hardly believed that he did. But I was wrong. Mr. Bradley did exist.
Municipal Square Buildings was an enormous honeycomb of offices. Seventy-eight was on the third floor. On the ground glass door was neatly printed in black: C. R. Bradley, COMMISSION AGENT. And below, in smaller letters: Please enter.
I entered.
There was a small outer office, empty, and a door marked PRIVATE, half ajar. A voice from behind it said:
“Come in, please.”
The inner office was larger. It had a desk, one or two comfortable chairs, a telephone, a stack of box files, and Mr. Bradley sitting behind the desk.
He was a small dark man, with shrewd dark eyes. He wore a dark business suit and looked the acme of respectability.
“Just shut the door, will you?” he said pleasantly. “And sit down. That chair’s quite comfortable. Cigarette? No? Well now, what can I do for you?”
I looked at him. I didn’t know how to begin. I hadn’t the least idea what to say. It was, I think, sheer desperation that led me to attack with the phrase I did. Or it may have been the small beady eyes.
“How much?” I said.
It startled him a little, I was glad to note, but not in the way that he ought to have been startled. He did not assume, as I would have assumed in his place, that someone not quite right in the head had come into his office.
His eyebrows rose.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “You don’t waste much time, do you?”
I held to my line.
“What’s the answer?”
He shook his head gently in a slightly reproving manner.
“That’s not the way to go about things. We must proceed in the proper manner.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“As you like. What’s the proper manner?”
“We haven’t introduced ourselves yet, have we? I don’t know your name.”
“At the moment,” I said, “I don’t really think I feel inclined to tell it to you.”
“Cautious.”
“Cautious.”
“An admirable quality—though not always practicable. Now who sent you to me? Who’s our mutual friend?”
“Again I can’t tell you. A friend of mine has a friend who knows a friend of yours.”
Mr. Bradley nodded his head.
“That’s the way a lot of my clients come,” he said. “Some of the problems are rather—delicate. You know my profession, I presume?”
He had no intention of waiting for my reply. He hastened to give me the answer.
“Turf Commission Agent,” he said. “You’re interested, perhaps, in—horses?”
There was just the faintest pause before the last word.
“I’m not a racing man,” I said noncommittally.
“There are many aspects of the horse. Racing, hunting, hacking. It’s the sporting aspect that interests me. Betting.” He paused for a moment and then asked casually—almost too casually:
“Any particular horse you had in mind?”
I shrugged my shoulders and burnt my boats.
“A pale horse….”
“Ah, very good, excellent. You yourself, if I may say so, seem to be rather a dark horse. Ha ha! You mustn’t be nervous. There really is no need to be nervous.”
“That’s what you say,” I said rather rudely.
Mr. Bradley’s manner became more bland and soothing.
“I can quite understand your feelings. But I can assure you that you needn’t have any anxiety. I’m a lawyer myself—disbarred, of course,” he added parenthetically, in what was really almost an