“They must have been through the W’s once, and be starting again.”

“Yes-I suppose there are quite a lot of M’s. But then there are hundreds of W’s. Still, we’ll try it, Peter, any way. What is it, Lumley?”

“Report from the hospital, sir. Puncheon has come round.”

Parker glanced through the report.

“Much what we expected,” he said, handing the paper to Wimsey. “Mountjoy evidently knew he was being followed. He put through a telephone call at Piccadilly Tube Station, and started off on a wild scamper across London.”

“That was how the gang came to be ready for him.”

“Yes. Finding he couldn’t shake Puncheon off, he lured him into the Museum, got him into a quiet corner and laid him out. Puncheon thinks he was slugged with a weapon of some kind. So he was. He did not speak to Mountjoy. In fact, this report tells us nothing we didn’t know, except that, when Puncheon first saw him, Mountjoy was buying an early copy of the Morning Star from a man outside the office.”

“Was he? That’s interesting. Well, keep your eye on the Yelverton Arms.”

“And you keep your eye on Pym’s. Do remember that what we want is the man at the top.”

“So does Major Milligan. The man at the top is very much sought after. Well, cheerio! If I can’t do anything more for you, I think I’ll tootle off to bed. I’ve got my Whifflets scheme to get out tomorrow.”

“I like this scheme, Mr. Bredon,” said Mr. Pym, tapping his finger on the drafts submitted to him. “It has Breadth. It has Vision. More than anything else, Advertising needs Vision and Breadth. That is what determines Appeal. In my opinion, this scheme of yours has Appeal. It is going to be expensive, of course, and needs some working out. For instance, if all these vouchers were cashed in at once, it would send up the cost per packet issued to a figure that the profits could not possibly cover. But I think that can be got over.”

“They won’t all be cashed in at once,” said Mr. Armstrong. “Not if we mix them up sufficiently. People will want time to collect and exchange. That will give us a start. They’ve got to look on the cost of the thing as so much advertising expenditure. We shall want a big press splash to start it, and after that, it will run itself quite happily in small spaces.”

“That’s all very well, Armstrong, but we’ve got to think of ourselves.”

“That’s all right. We make all the arrangements with the hotels and railways and so forth and charge our fee or commission on the work. All we’ve got to do is to average the thing out so that the claims won’t amount to more than their estimated appropriation, for the month. If the thing goes big they’ll be willing enough to increase the appropriation. The other thing we’ve got to do is to see that each coupon bears more or less the same actual cash value, so as not to get into trouble with the Lottery Act. The whole thing comes down to this. How much of the profit on each shilling packet are they prepared to spend in advertising? Remembering that this scheme, if properly put through, is going to sweep every other fag off the market for the time being. Then we make our coupons up to that value minus an appropriation for the opening press campaign. At present their appropriation is sixty thousand and their sales… have we got that report on sales?”

The two directors plunged into a maze of facts and figures. Mr. Bredon’s attention wandered.

“Printing costs… see that they have a sufficient distribution… bonus to the tobacconists… free displays… tackle the hotels first… news-value… get the Morning Star to give it a show… no, I know, but there’s the Boost Britain side of it… I can wangle Jenks… reduce overheads by… call it £200 a day… Puffin’s aeroplanes must be costing them that… front page splash and five free coupons… well, that’s a matter of detail…”

“In any case, we’ve got to do something.” Mr. Armstrong emerged from the argument with a slightly flushed face. “It’s no use telling people that the cost of the advertising has to come out of the quality of the goods. They don’t care. All they want is something for nothing. Pay? Yes, of course they pay in the end, but somebody’s got to pay. You can’t fight free gifts with solemn assertions about Value. Besides, if Whifflets lose their market they’ll soon lose their quality too-or what are we here for?”

“You needn’t tell me that, Armstrong,” said Mr. Pym. “Whether people like it or not, the fact remains that unless you continually increase sales you must either lose money or cut down quality. I hope we’ve learnt that by this time.”

“What happens,” asked Mr. Bredon, “when you’ve increased sales to saturation point?”

“You mustn’t ask those questions, Bredon,” said Mr. Armstrong, amused.

“No, but really. Suppose you push up the smoking of every man and woman in the Empire till they must either stop or die of nicotine poisoning?”

“We’re a long way off that,” replied Mr. Pym, seriously. “And that reminds me. This scheme should carry a strong appeal to women. ‘Give your children that seaside holiday by smoking Whifflets.’ That sort of thing. We want to get women down to serious smoking. Too many of them play about with it. Take them off scented stuff and put them on to the straightforward Virginia cigarette-”

“The gasper, in fact.”

“Whifflets,” said Mr. Pym. “You can smoke a lot more of them in the day without killing yourself. And they’re cheaper. If we increase women’s smokes by 500 per cent-there’s plenty of room for it-”

Mr. Bredon’s attention wandered again.

“-all right, date the coupons. Let them run for three months only. That will give us plenty of duds to play with. And they’ll have to see that their stockists are kept up to date with fresh goods. By the way, that makes a selling point-”

Mr. Bredon fell into a dream.

“-but you must have a good press campaign as well. Posters are good and cheap, but if you really want to tell people something, you’ve got to have a press campaign. Not a big one, necessarily, after the first big bang. But a good, short, snappy reminder week by week-”

“Very well, Mr. Bredon.” The creator of the Whifflet scheme came out of his doze with a start. “We’ll put this up to Whifflets. Will you see if you can get out some copy? And you’d better put a few other people on to it as well, Armstrong. Ingleby-it’s rather his line. And Miss Meteyard. We want to get something out by the end of the week. Tell Mr. Barrow to put everything else aside and rough out some really striking displays.” Mr. Pym gave the signal of dismissal, and then, as a thought struck him, called Bredon back.

“I want a word with you, Bredon. I’d almost forgotten what you were really here for. Has any progress been made in that matter?”

“Yes.” The Whifflets campaign receded from Lord Peter Wimsey, dying along the distance of his mind. “In fact, the investigation is turning out to be of so much importance that I don’t quite know how I can take even you into my confidence.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Mr. Pym. “I am employing you-”

“No. There’s no question of employment. I’m afraid it’s a police job.”

The shadows of disquiet gathered and deepened in Mr. Pym’s eyes.

“Do you mean that those earlier suspicions you mentioned to me were actually justified?”

“Oh, yes. But it’s a bigger thing than that.”

“I don’t want any scandal.”

“Possibly not. But I don’t quite see how it’s to be avoided, if the thing comes to trial.”

“Look here, Bredon,” said Mr. Pym, “I don’t like your behaviour. I put you in here as my private inquiry agent. I admit that you have made yourself very useful in other capacities, but you are not indispensable. If you insist on going beyond your authority-”

“You can sack me. Of course. But would that be wise?”