War in Heaven by Charles Williams (free children's online books .txt) 📖

asks you, say you’ll ask me and find out. I tell you because I want to know what you are doing and saying.”

Stephen was looking out of the window, and a minute went by before he spoke. Then he said absently, “What did you want? Anything important?”

“I wanted to talk about the balance sheet,” his father answered. “There are a few points I don’t quite understand. And I still incline to think the proportion of novels is too high. It fritters money away, merely using it to produce more novels of the same kind. I want a definite proportion established between that and the other kind of book. You could quite well have produced my Intensive Mastery instead of that appalling balderdash about Flossie. Stephen, are you listening?”

“Yes,” Stephen said half-angrily.

“I don’t believe you mean to produce my book,” his father went on equably. “Did you read it?”

“Yes,” Stephen said again, and came back into the room. “I don’t know about it. I told you I didn’t quite like it—I don’t think other people would. Of course, I know there’s a great demand for that sort of psycho-analytic book, but I didn’t feel at all sure—” He stopped doubtfully.

“If you ever felt quite sure, Stephen,” the older man said, “I should lose a great deal of pleasure. What was it you didn’t feel quite sure about this time?”

“Well, all the examples—and the stories,” Stephen answered vaguely. “They’re all right, I suppose, but they seemed so—funny.”

“‘Funny Stories I Have Read’, by Stephen Persimmons,” his father gibed. “They weren’t stories, Stephen. They were scientific examples.”

“But they were all about torture,” the other answered. “There was a dreadful one about—oh, horrible! I don’t believe it would sell.”

“It will sell right enough,” his father said. “You’re not a scientist, Stephen.”

“And the diagrams and all that,” his son went on. “It’d cost a great deal to produce.”

“Well, you shall do as you like,” Persimmons answered. “But, if you don’t produce it by Christmas, I’ll print it privately. That will cost a lot more money, Stephen. And anything else I write. If there are many more it’ll make a nasty hole in my accounts. And there won’t be any sale then, because I shall give them away. And burn what are over. Make up your mind over the week-end. I’ll come down next week to hear what you decide. All a gamble, Stephen, and you don’t like to bet except on a certainty, do you? You know, if I could afford it, I should enjoy ruining you, Stephen. But that, Stephen—”

“For God’s sake, don’t keep on calling me Stephen like that,” the wretched publisher said. “I believe you like worrying me.”

“But that,” his father went on placidly, “wasn’t the only reason I came to see you to-day. I wanted to kill a man, and your place seemed to me as good as any and better than most. So it was, it seems.”

Stephen Persimmons stared at the large, heavy body opposite lying back in its chair, and said, “You’re worrying me… aren’t you?”

“I may be,” the other said, “but facts, I’ve noticed, do worry you, Stephen. They worried your mother into that lunatic asylum. A dreadful tragedy, Stephen—to be cut off from one’s wife like that. I hope nothing of the sort will ever happen to you. Here am I comparatively young—and I should like another child, Stephen. Yes, Stephen, I should like another child. There’d be someone else to leave the money to; someone else with an interest in the business. And I should know better what to do. Now, when you were born, Stephen—”

“Oh, God Almighty,” his son cried, “don’t talk to me like that. What do you mean—you wanted to kill a man?”

“Mean?” the father asked. “Why, that. I hadn’t thought of it till the day before, really—yesterday, so it was; when Sir Giles Tumulty told me Rackstraw was coming to see him—and then it only just crossed my mind. But when we got there, it was all so clear and empty. A risk, of course, but not much. Ask him to wait there while I get the money, and shut the door without going out. Done in a minute, Stephen, I assure you. He was an undersized creature, too.”

Stephen found himself unable to ask any more questions. Did his father mean it or not? It would be like the old man to torment him? but if he had? Would it be a way of release?

“Well, first, Stephen,” the voice struck in, “you can’t and won’t be sure. And it wouldn’t look well to denounce your father on chance. Your mother is in a lunatic asylum, you know. And, secondly, my last will—I made it a week or two ago—leaves all my money to found a settlement in East London. Very awkward for you, Stephen, if it all had to be withdrawn. But you won’t, you won’t. If anyone asks you, say you weren’t told, but you know I wanted to talk to you about the balance sheet. I’ll come in next week to do it.”

Stephen got to his feet. “I think you want to drive me mad too,” he said. “O God, if I only knew!”

“You know me,” his father said. “Do you think I should worry about strangling you, Stephen, if I wanted to? As, of course, I might. But it’s getting late. You know, Stephen, you brood too much; I’ve always said so. You keep your troubles to yourself and brood over them. Why not have a good frank talk with one of your clerks—that fellow Rackstraw, say? But you always were a secretive fellow. Perhaps it’s as well, perhaps it’s as well. And you haven’t got a wife. Now, can you hang me or can’t you?” The door shut behind his son, but he went on still aloud. “The wizards were burned, they went to be burned, they hurried. Is there a need still? Must the wizard be an outcast like the saint? Or am I only tired? I want another child. And I want the Graal.”

He lay back in his chair, contemplating remote possibilities and the passage of the days immediately before him.