T a quarter-past eight in the morning, every working day of the year, summer and winter, little Jack Harding left his little house in Ealing for the Charing Cross Road, where he had a little bookshop. A month every year he took a holiday, but even during that month he might be said to go through the same procedure, because, wherever he might be, he woke up at half-past seven and, lying on his back in bed, went through all the stages of dressing, having breakfast, hurrying to the station, changing at Hammersmith, getting out at Leicester Square, walking up to the little shop, scolding the boy with adenoids, opening his correspondence, and entering happily on the business of the day. It was luxurious indeed to lie on one's back and take this journey, hearing the waves murmur outside one's window, or seeing the clouds pass in lazy procession, or hearing the separator hard at work in some distant part of the farmhouse. He enjoyed his holiday, of course, but he enjoyed still more getting back to work again. He loved his shop, although it made him the barest living in these difficult post-war days, and he could not be said to care very generally for books for their own sake. He was a little man, stout and round like a rolling-pin, with very small feet and hands, of which he was immensely proud. He was cheery and optimistic by temperament, loved to hear the sound of his own voice, and, although he was forty-five, was still unmarried. He enjoyed the society of ladies, but liked them in general rather than in particular. An old woman looked after him and his little house, cheated him and robbed him, scolded him and abused him, except when he was ill, when she adored him and took an enormous amount of trouble to make him comfortable. He had only one enemy in the world.
OW the point about this enemy was that he had seldom spoken to him. Some years ago, when he had first come to live in Ealing, he had noticed on his regular morning journey a large, heavy, red-faced man, who lived apparently in his own street, always plunged out of his door at precisely the moment when he, Harding, passed it, and so plunged apparently in order to have a bright morning conversation. In fact, it very soon became Harding's conviction that the large, heavy gentleman waited behind the dining-room curtain until he saw him approach and then made his plunge. Now Harding did not want a bright morning conversation. His mind was busy with the details of the day's work. The catalogue that he was preparing, the cheap lot of books that had come in yesterday and would, most of them, find their way into the sixpenny box outside, and the chances of discovering some unexpected find that would add glory to the aforementioned catalogue: such questions as these made a morning conversation with a stranger extremely irritating, and Harding was English enough to suspect at once of the most abominable crimes anybody who spoke to him without a proper Ealing introduction.
This large man was, in Harding's view, exactly the person of whom you would expect a crime. On the first morning the large man had insisted on walking with Harding to the station, he talked in a great booming voice about the weather, about the neighbouring music-hall and a dainty little piece who was dancing there, about some shares he had somewhere, about his being a widower, about some geraniums in his back garden, about some horses, about indigestion, and about where he was going for his summer holiday. All these things before they reached the station at all. Then in the train he sat next to Harding, might indeed be said almost to sit over him. and went on with a long, cheerful proclamation about potatoes and beans and cabbages, shouting it all out at the top of his voice in rivalry with the noisy train. If there was one thing in the world that Harding detested it was talking against a train, he himself having a rather small, shrill voice which was not at its best when it was unduly raised, as he very well knew. Then this horrible man stuck closely to him at Hammersmith, marched down the platform with him, pushed past the ticket collector, marched up the other platform, and sat over him once again in the Tube. He went all the way with him to Leicester Square and would, Harding believed, have followed him to his bookshop had he not managed to lose him in the crowd. Work was spoilt for Harding that day. Whenever he tried to think clearly that man's booming voice seemed to get in the way, his large, bushy, black moustache seemed to whisk up and down the bookshelves, and his broad, aggressive chest overshadowed the customers.