Yesterday morning, I slogged out there again. They’re just setting up. Where’s the manager? In the countryside. Plastering cow-villages with posters. As if the farmers were in any mood for a circus just now. Expected back at one. One o’clock is when he likes to have his lunch. So I hang around for an hour. The manager, one of those nasty yellow gypsies, needs to talk to his boss. I’m to come back at six. I’m back at six. He hasn’t been able to see his boss yet, why don’t I come back this morning?’

‘Kudos, and all the way out to the playground each time.’

‘That’s what I think. So this morning I get to meet the big shot, overlord of one and a half apes, a spavined nag and a moth-eaten camel. Hat in hand, salaam down to the ground.

‘And that piece of shit says it’s not worth his while advertising in the Chronicle! No one reads our fish-and-chip paper!’

‘So then what did you say?’

‘I wanted to smack him one. Then I thought of my family, and I exercised restraint. After all, my wife wants her housekeeping money on the first of the month.’

Stuff takes off his pince-nez and asks: ‘Were those his words? “Fish-and-chip paper”?’

‘As sure as I’m sitting here, Stuff.’

And Wenk puts in his tuppenceworth: ‘You mustn’t let him get away with it. Surely this is a case for Stuff. You should kick sand in his face.’

‘I would do too. I would. But the proprietor doesn’t want—’

‘But it would be a great way to put the frighteners on potential advertisers. If one gets it in the chops, the rest of them will be so scared they’ll buy space from sheer dread.’

‘But the proprietor –!’

‘Ach, never mind the proprietor. We’ll all three of us go to him and say something has to be done.’

‘Wouldn’t I love to stick it to him,’ muses Stuff.

‘I’ve got an idea!’ cries Tredup. ‘You tell him you want to lay into the Socialists, and then he’ll leave you Monte as a sop.’

‘Not bad at all,’ nods Stuff. ‘There a story just doing the rounds about the police superintendent . . .’

‘Well, what are we waiting for, let’s go up to the lab . . .’

‘Right now?’

‘Of course, right now. You have to trash yesterday’s gala opening.’

‘All right then, let’s go and see the proprietor.’

III

There was some hitch in the compositors’ room. Both linotypes were abandoned, and the machine compositors were standing by the window with the job-setters and the maker-up.