Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories by Margery Allingham Page B

in book production at that time, and as I examined one of the dreadfully printed little slabs of cheap paper, which crackled open amid a positive shower of dried glue, I was shocked and almost gave myself away.
    It was a dreadful production. The cover was gaudy and vulgar, imitation leather embossed with cheap gilding and embellished with little tin clasps. Even the hymns themselves were bad and had been filched, I suspected, from some mid-Victorian production long fallen into disuse.
    “What d’you think of it?” said Mr. Cough. “It’s not worth a guinea, is it?”
    “Good heavens, no,” I said involuntarily.
    He laughed and put a generous helping of jam on to the edge of a plate from which he had been eating cold bacon.
    “That’s what I sell ’em for,” he said. “I won’t tell you what I pay for ’em, but it’s less than a tenth of that amount, less than a tenth. I sell “em by the half-dozen.”
    “Whoever to?” I said, and my genuine bewilderment delighted him so much that he couldn’t help telling me. He put down his knife.
    “Now it’s no good thinking you can do the same,” he said. “Get that clean out of your head before I begin. You haven’t got the brains and you haven’t got the personality, and you never will. But I can do it. I sell ’em to relations.”
    “Your relations?”
    That made him laugh so much that I thought he was going to choke.
    “Oh, no!” he said. “I haven’t got any relations. Not mine. You’ve got less brains than I thought you ’ad. I sell ’em to the relations of people who’ve died. Every morning I buy up all the local papers and I look for the announcements of people who’ve popped off. Then I trot round to the ’ouse—you’ve got to go at once; it’s no good waiting till the shock’s passed off—I knock at the door and I ask to see the party who’s dead.
    “Well, perhaps some sorrowing relative comes to the door and tells me the news. Then I pretend to be very upset. I say I’m very sorry. I explain that it’s very awkward for me, because the dear departed has ordered six hymn-books from me, had ’em specially bound. It was going to be a surprise present, I tell ’em.
    “Well, you’d be surprised how they fall for it. Nine times out of ten I get my money on the spot. It’s partly to get rid of me, partly because they’re in the mood. It’s as easy as falling off a log if you know how to do it. You’d never do it, though, not in a million years.”
    “No,” I said rather weakly. “No, I don’t think I should.”
    The story was so very shocking that I could hardly speak to him.
    “Some of ’em ask me for a receipt,” said Mr. Cough. “That’s why I’m ’aving this heading. Of course, some of ’em don’t bother. They just give me my money and off I go. It’s my knowledge of psychology that does the trick. I go at the right moment you see, as soon as I see the announcement.”
    “You say nine out of ten?” I said. “Doesn’t the odd one prove rather difficult at times?”
    A thoughtful expression passed over his face.
    “Oh I have awkward moments,” he agreed after a pause, “but I’m very smart. I’m quick-witted. I know when to fade away.
    “Sometimes, of course, there’s been a mistake. That doesn’t happen often, but when it does it gives you a bit of a shock. I’m very careful meself but sometimes the papers get a name wrong and you find yourself askin’ to see the husband when it’s the wife who’s dead.”
    He really was insufferable. As I stood looking at him I thought he was the most revolting specimen I had ever seen in my life, and looking back from this distance I am inclined to be of the same opinion.
    “Had a good day to-day?” I inquired sarcastically.
    “Not bad,” he said, helping himself to another cup of tea. “Only one dud. That was in a house in Putney, rather a nice old ’ouse near the river. I couldn’t get the woman to understand what I was talking about. Thinking it over, I