Read Bond Street Story for Free Online Page A

something. A watch, guaranteed for ten years, had stopped dead on the third day, and if that was what Rammell’s meant by a guarantee ... Mr. Rammell broke off and wrote the single word “watches.” There had been another watch complaint yesterday.
    Mr. Rammell worked quickly, spending only a few seconds on each complaint. And he never read the last paragraphs at all. They were all entirely standard, these last paragraphs. Practically interchangeable, in fact. The stricken Cheltenham resident might have collaborated with the woman who had been addressed as a common shoplifter, or the owner of the broken milk jug could have contributed the last few sentences for the lady with smallfeet. It was always in the last paragraph that the big rudeness, the real sting-in-the-tail venom came. It was the last paragraph that made the writer swing round from the desk, and in the glow from the shaded lamp say quietly to the family circle: “You might just care to hear what I’ve said to them ...”
    Not that Mr. Rammell minded these bits of fine writing. After all, he was in business with the object of indulging people. And if what they really fancied was a piece of virtuoso invective on the best note-paper, it didn’t worry him. Rammell’s was quite big enough and old enough to be able to ignore it. It any case, the rude bits were entirely silly and unnecessary. A simple statement of the facts would have had the same effect. Rammell’s wasn’t the sort of shop to let its customers down.
    But it was nine-thirty by now. There was no time for any more uninvestigated complaints. He pushed the tray from him, and rang for Miss Underhill.
    â€œJust stamp the rest,” he said. “And let me have the Board of Trade papers. The carpet file.”
    There was a tap on the door and Mr. Rammell’s other secretary, Miss Winters, stood there. She was a newcomer. A dark intense kind of girl, who seemed to have been born for the delivery of bad news. She was still on probation, and Mr. Rammell was far from sure about her. It was her eyes that troubled him. Too fixed and staring for his liking. They made him feel as though he were taking part in a verse drama, and had just heard that Troy had fallen. This morning that feeling was stronger and more overpowering than ever.
    â€œA phone message from the Chairman, sir,” she said, speaking right past him and out into the auditorium. “Sir Harry is on his way round now, and wonders if he can see you straight away ...”
2
    Mr. Rammell felt the whole calm of the morning suddenly evaporating. Because it was an understood thing that his father never came into the office on Tuesdays. Thursday was his day. And then only for a couple of hours around lunchtime. After all, the old boy was nearly eighty. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He was somewhere in the teen-age of his second childhood. And spry. Spryness was Sir Harry’s chief failing.
    An aura of ghastly good health surrounded him. He emerged from his hotel suite in the morning—the house in Hill Street had been closed when Lady Rammell died—looking as pink and white as a big albino baby. He always wore a flower in hisbuttonhole. And his head was perpetually buzzing like a beehive with all the nonsense that he had been thinking up the night before.
    Like most old people he didn’t sleep very much. And some mornings he would have hatched up as many as a dozen different ideas, all revolutionary, all cock-eyed, and all requiring endless work, research, figures, before the Board could quietly turn them down.
    This morning, moreover, Sir Harry felt simply marvellous. Having ordered the car for nine-thirty, he sent it away again—and set out to walk from Piccadilly to Bond Street. This, however, was a mistake. Too much to see on the way. Too many distractions. He was like a schoolboy. He hung about shop windows. He lingered. And, in consequence, he kept Mr. Rammell waiting. From