Tall stories

I've blogged before about A J Alan, radio raconteur of '20s and '30s Britain. Think of an English Rod Serling, only on the wireless instead of the TV and with considerably less formulaic a cast to his storytelling.

That era was the Burgess Shale of broadcasting, when interesting experimentation trumped genre, ratings and tribally narrow tastes. A J Alan's tales of the odd, the quirky, the (mildly) racy and the (sometimes) supernatural were definitely perfect for long winter evenings by the fireside with tendrils of grimy London fog pressing up against the window panes. Not "the Twilight Zone" so much as "the Velvet Hour" - which, I know, some say is dawn, not dusk, but I think of it as the time when cocktails may be respectably mixed and drunk and one might start to think about dressing for dinner - at least, in the world that Mr Alan and his listeners inhabited.

I mention this now because Spark Furnace Books have just published a paperback edition of But That's A Detail, my collection of A J Alan stories. So if you want something different, and really rather good, I'd say it's an absolute snip at £3.99.

"The Clock"

William Fryer Harvey was a writer of quintessentially English weird tales. Usually one cannot pin his work down as ghost stories, or horror stories, so much as the sort of off-kilter yarn spun around the same time (the '20s and '30s) by John Collier or A J Alan, or earlier by Saki, or later by Rod Serling, that would so perfectly unsettle the reader precisely because there is never anything quite so substantial as a ghost there to put your finger on.

His most famous tale is "The Beast with Five Fingers", remembered today because it became a movie starring Peter Lorre. This story, "The Clock", is one of my favourites, a little masterpiece of understated unease:

THE CLOCK
by W. F. Harvey

I liked your description of the people at the pension. I can just picture that rather sinister Miss Cornelius, with her toupee and clinking bangles. I don't wonder you felt frightened that night when you found her sleepwalking in the corridor. But after all, why shouldn't she sleepwalk? As to the movements of the furniture in the lounge on the Sunday, you are, I suppose, in an earthquake zone, though an earthquake seems too big an explanation for the ringing of that little handbell on the mantelpiece. It's rather as if our parlour maid — another new one! — were to call a stray elephant to account for the teapot we found broken yesterday. You have at least, in Italy, escaped the eternal problem of maids.

Yes, my dear, I most certainly believe you. I have never had experiences quite like yours, but your mention of Miss Cornelius has reminded me of something rather similar that happened nearly twenty years ago, soon after I left school. I was staying with my aunt in Hampstead. You remember her, I expect; or, if not her, the poodle, Monsieur, that she used to make perform such pathetic tricks. There was another guest, whom I had never met before, a Mrs Caleb. She lived in Lewes and had been staying with my aunt for about a fortnight, recuperating after a series of domestic upheavals, which had culminated in her two servants leaving her at an hour's notice – without any reason, according to Mrs Caleb, but I wondered. I had never seen the maids; I had seen Mrs Caleb and, frankly, I disliked her. She left the same sort of impression on me as I gather your Miss Cornelius leaves on you — something queer and secretive; underground, if you can use the expression, rather than underhand. And I could feel in my body that she did not like me.

It was summer. Joan Denton — you remember her; her husband was killed in Gallipoli — had suggested that I should go down to spend the day with her. Her people had rented a little cottage some three miles out of Lewes. We arranged a day. It was gloriously fine for a wonder, and I had planned to leave that stuffy old Hampstead house before the old ladies were astir. But Mrs Caleb waylaid me in the hall, just as I was going out.

“I wonder,” she said, “I wonder if you could do me a small favour. If you do have any time to spare in Lewes — only if you do — would you be so kind as to call at my house? I left a little travelling-clock there in the hurry of parting. If it's not in the drawing-room, it will be in my bedroom or in one of the maids' bedrooms. I know I lent it to the cook, who was a poor riser, but I can't remember if she returned it. Would it be too much to ask? The house has been locked up for twelve days, but everything is in order. I have the keys here. The large one is for the garden gate, the small one for the front door.”

I could only accept, and she proceeded to tell me how I could find Ash Grove House.

“You will feel quite like a burglar,” she said. “But mind, it's only if you have time to spare.”

As a matter of fact I found myself glad of any excuse to kill time. Poor old Joan had been taken suddenly ill in the night — they feared appendicitis — and though her people were very kind and asked me to stay to lunch, I could see that I should only be in the way, and made Mrs Caleb's commission an excuse for an early departure.

I found Ash Grove without difficulty. It was a medium-sized red¬brick house, standing by itself in a high walled garden that bounded a narrow lane. A flagged path led from the gate to the front door, in front of which grew, not an ash, but a monkey-puzzle, that must have made the rooms unnecessarily gloomy. The side door, as I expected, was locked. The dining-room and drawing-room lay on either side of the hall and, as the windows of both were shuttered, I left the hall door open, and in the dim light looked round hurriedly for the clock, which, from what Mrs Caleb had said, I hardly expected to find in either of the downstairs rooms. It was neither on table nor mantelpiece. The rest of the furniture was carefully covered over with white dust-sheets. Then I went upstairs. But, before doing so, I closed the front door. I did in fact feel rather like a burglar, and I thought that if anyone did happen to see the front door open, I might have difficulty in explaining things.

Happily the upstairs windows were not shuttered. I made a hurried search of the principal bedrooms. They had been left in apple-pie order; nothing was out of place; but there was no sign of Mrs Caleb's clock. The impression that the house gave me — you know the sense of personality that a house conveys — was neither pleasing nor displeasing, but it was stuffy, stuffy from the absence of fresh air, with an additional stuffiness added, that seemed to come out from the hangings and quilts and antimacassars. The corridor, onto which the bedrooms I had examined opened, communicated with a smaller wing, an older part of the house, I imagined, which contained a box-room and the maids' sleeping-quarters. The last door that I unlocked (I should say that the doors of all the rooms were locked, and relocked by me after I had glanced inside them) contained the object of my search. Mrs Caleb's travelling-clock was on the mantelpiece, ticking away merrily.

That was how I thought of it at first. And then for the first time I realised that there was something wrong. The clock had no business to be ticking. The house had been shut up for twelve days. No one had come in to air it or to light fires. I remember how Mrs Caleb had told my aunt that if she left the keys with a neighbour, she was never sure who might get hold of them. And yet the clock was going.

I wondered if some vibration had set the mechanism in motion, and pulled out my watch to see the time. It was five minutes to one. The clock on the mantelpiece said four minutes to the hour. Then, without quite knowing why, I shut the door on to the landing, locked myself in, and again looked round the room. Nothing was out of place. The only thing that might have called for remark was that there appeared to be a slight indentation on the pillow and the bed; but the mattress was a feather mattress, and you know how difficult it is to make them perfectly smooth. You won't need to be told that I gave a hurried glance under the bed — do you remember your supposed burglar in Number Six at St Ursula's? — and then, and much more reluctantly, opened the doors of two horribly capacious cupboards, both happily empty, except for a framed text with its face to the wall.

By this time I really was frightened. The clock went ticking on. I had a horrible feeling that an alarm might go off at any moment, and the thought of being in that empty house was almost too much for me. However, I made an attempt to pull myself together. It might after all be a fourteen-day clock. If it were, then it would be almost run down. I could roughly find out how long the clock had been going by winding it up. I hesitated to put the matter to the test, but the uncertainty was too much for me. I took it out of its case and began to wind. I had scarcely turned the winding-screw twice when it stopped. The clock clearly was not running down; the hands had been set in motion probably only an hour or two before.

I felt cold and faint and, going to the window, threw up the sash, letting in the sweet, live air of the garden. I knew now that the house was queer, horribly queer. Could someone be living in the house? Was someone else in the house now? I thought that I had been in all the rooms, but had I? I had only just opened the bathroom door, and I had certainly not opened any cupboards, except those in the room in which I was.

Then, as I stood by the open window, wondering what I should do next and feeling that I just couldn't go down that corridor into the darkened hall to fumble at the latch of the front door with I don't know what behind me, I heard a noise. It was very faint at first, and seemed to be coming from the stairs. It was a curious noise—not the noise of anyone climbing up the stairs, but — you will laugh if this letter reaches you by a morning post — of something hopping up the stairs, like a very big bird would hop. I heard it on the landing; it stopped. Then there was a curious scratching noise against one of the bedroom doors, the sort of noise you can make with the nail of your little finger scratching polished wood. Whatever it was, was coming slowly down the corridor, scratching at the doors as it went. I could stand it no longer. Nightmare pictures of locked doors opening filled my brain. I took up the clock, wrapped it in my Macintosh, and dropped it out of the window on to a flower-bed. Then I managed to crawl out of the window and, getting a grip of the sill, ‘successfully negotiated’, as the journalists would say, ‘a twelve-foot drop.’ So much for our much abused Gym at St Ursula's. Picking up the Macintosh, I ran round to the front door and locked it. Then I felt I could breathe, but not until I was on the far side of the gate in the garden wall did I feel safe.

Then I remembered that the bedroom window was open. What was I to do? Wild horses wouldn't have dragged me into that house again unaccompanied. I made up my mind to go to the police station and tell them everything. I should be laughed at, of course, and they might easily refuse to believe my story of Mrs Caleb's commission. I had actually begun to walk down the lane in the direction of the town when I chanced to look back qt the house. The window that I had left open was shut.

No, my dear, I didn't see any face or anything dreadful like that... and, of course, it may have shut by itself. It was an ordinary sash-window, and you know they are often difficult to keep open.

And the rest? Why, there's really nothing more to tell. I didn't even see Mrs Caleb again. She had had some sort of fainting fit just before lunchtime, my aunt informed me on my return, and had had to go to bed. Next morning I travelled down to Cornwall to join mother and the children. I thought I had forgotten all about it, but when three years later Uncle Charles suggested giving me a travelling-clock for a twenty-first birthday present, I was foolish enough to prefer the alternative that he offered, a collected edition of the works of Thomas Carlyle.

"The Dream" by A J Alan

We're still working on new Mirabilis but while you're waiting here's something just as good, a new (ie, 85-year-old) story as originally recounted by the pseudonymous Mr Alan on BBC radio:

They’ve asked me to tell you about another of my experiences, and I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to try and describe to you a dream I often have.

Before describing the dream itself it may be as we1l to explain a few things about it.

First of all, I've had it some fifteen or twenty times altogether at quite irregular intervals. Sometimes it gives me a miss for two years, at others it will happen twice in six months. There's no knowing.

It began—to visit me—when I was eight or nine years old, and I used to think then that it was just the same dream each time, but it wasn't, and it isn't. The general setting, or locale, is the same, but there's a gradual moving forward of events which makes it somewhat interesting — to me, at any rate — and just a bit creepy.

It always begins in exactly the same way. I am walking up a broad flight of stairs in a very large house. The carpet is dark-blue and very thick, so thick that you sink right in.

The walls are all white.

The time, as a rule, is between eleven and twelve at night. It's evidently a party I'm coming to, and I'm rather late for it. My left forefinger is poking a piece of paper down into my waistcoat pocket, and I'm aware in some occult way that it's the ticket for my hat and coat.

The whole place seems deserted except for me, not even anyone to take my name and announce me. In fact, I'm not rather late, I'm very late.

At the top of the stairs there's a broad sort of landing-place, and, immediately facing me, a very massive mahogany door with a large cut-glass knob. Through this door I go.

In my very young days I used to have quite a job to push it open, but now it's merely heavy and solid.

There's a screen inside the door which cuts me off from the rest of the room, and it just gives me the opportunity to pull down my waistcoat. I walk, with a certain amount of diffidence, round the screen. It's a great big room — very high and brilliantly lighted. The walls are white and the carpet blue — like the stairs — and the furniture is very dark oak.

The scene is rather peculiar. There must be at least forty or fifty men in the room, and they are all sitting on chairs in front of a little platform against the far wall. They aren't sitting in rows, but just anyhow. It looks as though they've drawn up their chairs as near the platform as they can get. I expect that's what happens, really, but I've never got there early enough to see.

They are all much of the same class, as far as general appearance goes; but their ages are widely different. They range from twenty or less right up to seventy and more.

I used to wonder, many years ago, what it was all about, but now I realise that all these people are watching, with very great interest, a conversation which is taking place between a man and a woman. Incidentally, she is the only woman in the room.

These two are sitting on chairs on the dais or platform. It's quite a low platform really — not more than a foot high.

I say they're watching the conversation because I'm sure that unless one happens to be in the very front row it isn't possible to catch more than a word here and there.

The man on the platform doesn't call for any particular remark — at least, I don't know — it is rather funny about him.

He is evidently just one of the audience who has been invited up, as it were, and I've usually seen him a few times before in the body of the room. But the thing is that once a man has spent the evening on the platform he never appears again.

Now we come to the lady. She is very beautiful — almost too beautiful to be respectable. In fact, if one didn't actually know... However, when I say respectable, I don't mean that she would faint clean away if anyone said damn; but one would hesitate before digging her in the ribs on short acquaintance.

As far as I can tell, she's on the tall side, and very graceful. I've never seen her standing up. She looks as though she could dance well. By dance I mean waltz, of course. She has lovely copper-coloured hair, and she's had the sense not to cut it off. She apparently believes in looking like a woman and not like an ungainly boy. Most unfashionable — but then you must remember that this is a dream.

She's usually dressed in a simple black evening-frock and a hat. The hat is rather of the — I think it's called the turban type. It's a little difficult to describe. It's got a sort of asprey — no, osprey — thing that points backwards and downwards, rather like the tail of the comet does. I think Miss Lily Elsie wore something like that in The Merry Widow (if she doesn't mind my dragging her in).

When I say she's wearing a simple black frock, I mean one of those simple little frocks which you can pick up anywhere for fifty or sixty guineas.

And it's never the same dress twice.

While she's sitting down she isn't having a perpetual struggle to make her skirt cover her knees. Not that I've any quarrel with knees — qua knees — but those rows of bony excrescences which stick out at you in the Tube, well, surely some of them might be left to the imagination. In fact, if things go on as they are doing now, one won't want an imagination at all, and then what?

To go back to the lady's hat for a moment, I must confess that it rather beats me — why she's wearing one at all, that is — because she must be in her own house.

You can tell that from the way she behaves—I mean, that she's obviously acting as hostess, and her manner is a treat to watch.

She sits quietly in her chair without looking as if she'd been spilt into it, and she doesn't fidget. She hasn't any of those irritating little affectations which one often sees. She doesn't drag out a repair outfit every two minutes and plaster a lot of stuff on her face. Perhaps she doesn't have to. I don't believe she'd even powder her nose in public. Oh, I know that on this subject I'm only a locust crying in the wilderness, but it is refreshing to see anyone who isn't ashamed of her complexion.

I've mentioned before that the conversation, or whatever it is, between the good lady and the man on the platform is so quiet that I've never been able to hear her voice, but there's no doubt in my mind that it's the kind that anyone vulgar, who wished to be extra offensive, would describe as a "refained voice"; but he wouldn't be there, so it doesn't matter.

I've racked my brains trying to imagine what on earth they can be talking about for such a long time. In the early part she seems to be asking questions and getting very deferential answers. Perhaps she's applying some sort of test. Later on it's more as though she is giving information or instructions, and he just puts in a word here and there.

At about half-past twelve she usually lights a cigarette. Between you and me, I think it's a signal as much as anything to tell all the rest of us that we can smoke if we like. Some of us do.

Now, it's rather a funny thing about the time. More often than not the place where I'm standing gives me a view of a clock there is on the mantelpiece. It's one of those clocks which pretend they haven't got any works, like the women of the present day. You know them — er, the clocks. All you can see is a sheet of plate-glass with the figures and hands on it, and the hands go round in some mysterious way. This clock goes and it's right. How do I know it's right? Let's see, how do I know it's right? Oh, yes, because it always indicates the time of about one hour after I've gone to sleep, and that may vary quite a lot.

As regards the age of the lady — well, it's a little hard to say. In my extreme youth she was about as old as an aunt. When I grew up she seemed more like a sister, and now I'm blowed if I know how old she is. Early thirties probably. It's rather unusual to grow past anyone.

I think I said at the beginning that there aren't quite enough chairs for everyone, and those who come late — like me — have to stand up at the back. All the same, it becomes apparent every now and then during the evening that there is a vacant chair a little way in. It's always a mystery to me how this happens, because no one would ever seem to go out (only a blind man would), but when it does happen one of the men at the back sort of tiptoes in and takes it.

We just settle amongst ourselves who, like you do in the Tube - "That's all right, I'm getting out at the next station" — you know. A man who has once sat down always has a chair after that, so you see there's a process going on all through the years whereby everyone gradually works forward to the front and eventually finishes up on the platform. It has often, undoubtedly, been my turn to take a vacant chair, but some instinct has always warned me not to. Even our hostess has noticed it, and she's occasionally looked at me as though to say: "Aren't you going to sit down?" but I've always half-shaken my head and let someone else have it — the chair, that is. Then she has given a slight, very slight, shrug of the shoulders, and I've felt rather ungracious and left it at that. I know now why I don't sit down, and I'll tell you about that presently.

It's extremely difficult to give you the facts about this dream in their proper order, because there isn't a proper order, and it differs in so many ways from ordinary dreams. There are none of the mad things in it that you ordinarily get... The one I'm telling you about is so abnormally normal.

The one constantly variable factor is the man on the platform, and it's rotten bad luck that I've always been too late to see how he comes to be chosen out of all the others. He was once just sitting down, but that's the nearest I've ever got.

It used to strike me what a rag it would be if only I could recognise anyone there. After all, it stands to reason that all these other people must be dreaming, too — and then we could compare notes next day.

Well, one night the man on the platform was a man, a rather famous man, whom I knew very well. When I say I knew him very well, I really mean that I knew his secretary very well, which is infinitely better, believe me. So next morning I rang her up — the secretary — and said, "I say, I wish you'd fix me up an appointment with the old man some time during the day, because I want to see him very particularly". And she said, "I'm afraid you can't because he was found dead in bed this morning".

Wasn't it just my luck? Fearful hard lines on him, too, of course, but it absolutely dished my chance of finding out what the dream meant.

However, the Fates were kind. Three or four years later I again saw a man on the platform whom I knew perfectly well. His name was Ribblechick, but he couldn't help that, poor chap. He recognized me, too, and we grinned at each other, and I thought now it's all right — he'll have heard her speak, and will be able to tell me what she is — if not who.

So next morning I trotted round—they lived quite near us—and will you believe it, the whole house was upside down. He, poor old Ribblechick, had been found dead in bed, too. Heart-failure, they said it was.

Please don't think that I'm suggesting for a moment that it was anything but the purest coincidence that these two unfortunate people happened to die in the same way. But all the same, each time I dream my dream nowadays, and a chair does fall vacant, I still let someone else have it, and the good lady still shrugs her shoulders.

A teller of tales

A guest post today from the long-dead Mr Kenelm Foss, who reveals some interesting details about the nature of the persona created by Leslie H Lambert for his radio broadcasts, thus firmly placing A J Alan in an English tradition that runs through Ziggy Stardust to the likes of Count Arthur Strong today. (For more on Mr Foss himself, see his daughter's book Stage, Screen and Sandwiches: The Remarkable Life of Kenelm Foss.)

On January 31st, 1924, with the broadcasting of a short story, "My Adventure in Jermyn Street", there for the first time crept over the air a pernickety, shy, languid, somewhat emasculate, "posh" voice of the kind with which we are now only too familiar in radio-announcers. But its owner had something novel and original to sell, and it is not too much to say that, owing to the instant public acceptance of his delightful entertainment, Leslie Harrison Lambert, a civil servant in his early forties who elected to hide his light under the pseudonym of A. J. Alan, was the initiator of the B.B.C. accent.

This curious hybrid, which is neither the King's English of George V, Edward VIII, and George VI, nor the unaccented, unaffected Queen's English of Elizabeth II, but a class-conscious, mincing travesty of correct diction, was precisely suited to A. J. Alan's material. Those diffident hesitations of his were in reality artfully contrived stage-pauses, for dramatic or humorous effect. His radio-personality was in itself expert character-acting, not so much a disguise (like his borrowed name) as a facade to hide a much more exuberant and artistic personality than his Whitehall-inhibited self.

Rex Palmer, at that time in charge of 2LO, reveals how the mythical and fabulous A. J. Alan came into being. Palmer was a near neighbour of L. H. Lambert at Holland Park, knowing him as an agreeable but elusive, slightly-built, middle-aged fellow with a good job in the Foreign Office, married to a lady older than himself, a lady with private means and a county-family background. This childless couple, living in style in a large house filled with well-polished antiques, possessed also a holiday bungalow in Devonshire. Except for weekly whist-drives and an occasional evening where host and hostess played the Murder Game with their guests, the Lamberts stood aloof, and Rex Palmer was therefore the more surprised when his neighbour called at 2LO in some excitement, apropos of anecdotes told over the air the previous evening by a director of the old British Broadcasting Company, Sir William Bull, a well-known M.P., with a histrionic gift which has been inherited by his son, Peter Bull, the actor. Lambert was convinced that he himself had a flair for the same sort of "turn". Palmer, eager to uncover new talent, arranged an audition, being so impressed with the outcome that Lambert found self-expression and a new career as A. J. Alan.

All Alan's recitals were rehearsed and re-rehearsed in the meticulous and finicking way which was part of Lambert’s character. He sat on a high stool close to the microphone, the text on his knees being pasted on cardboard so that no rustle of paper should disturb the broadcast. On this script pauses for laughs were marked in red. The speaker even brought his own candle with him in case the studio lights failed. He invariably arrived in a dinner-jacket, but Rex Palmer considers that dress-clothes would at that period be the normal wear of an evening in the Lamberts' environment.

The new radio-star certainly never visualized a wider and more selective audience than was given him by the wireless. So modest was he regarding his attainments as a raconteur that he refused to broadcast more than, at most, three times a year. It was originally, no doubt, his meteoric, astonishing, but fully justified popularity which prompted a publisher to issue two volumes of his spoken tales. The pages of "Good Evening, Everyone!" and "A. J. Alan’s Second Book" revealed to the discerning that the author's talent as a dramatic monologuist had not bamboozled listeners into accepting as a first-rate yarn something which was really only a vehicle for an engaging and disarming personality. No: these proved to be capital yarns in their own right, even to people who were not biased, for or against, by that lackadaisical, old-school-tie delivery into the microphone.

Two decades later, nearer three, his printed volumes are virtually unprocurable collectors' pieces. But the stories therein still emerge as exceptional and individual, well worthy of reissue in a judicious selection, eliminating certain facetious jeux-d'esprit and others too slight or ephemeral for exhumation, such as "Christmas Story". Restricted by the demands of his radio medium, all the A. J. Alan stories profess to be personal reminiscences (like the bulk of Somerset Maugham's output) but they are nevertheless quite un-egotistical. The speaker is always victim, dupe, or stooge rather than hero. No one man could ever have had so many peculiar things happen to him, and the adventures related by A. J. Alan had mostly occurred to his acquaintances, who were startled to hear over the air half-forgotten episodes in their own lives, deftly dramatised by their whimsical friend.

A. J. Alan the writer is no cosmopolite, like Maugham, any more than he can claim O. Henry's gift for picturesque dialect. Nor is he sentimental, like Guy de Maupassant, from whom this school of authorship derives. The chief resemblance between A. J. Alan and these greater craftsmen, not omitting also Saki, is in the invariable surprise ending, the sting in the tail. But in Alan's case the unexpected culmination is less often drama than pure spoof... The listener and reader find that a shaggy dog has been leading them up the garden path to a climax of anti-climax. As a radio "act" it was, of course, essential that the conte should conclude with a good exit-line or "curtain punch", but Alan's preference for understatement and leg-pulling is distinctively English.

Though, like Maupassant and Saki, primarily a humorist, Alan shares with these other two a strong tendency towards the macabre. To call him merely a writer of ghost-stories is to do him less than justice, for his mischievous ghastliness when they occur (as for instance in "Wottie", where the preamble in a good-class school lures us to a stomach-turning denouement) are intensified by being phrased with the well-bred reserve befitting his alter ego, that circumspect civil servant, L. H. Lambert. The leopard had changed his spots to some purpose, for the cumulative effect is irresistible.

Exactly why is difficult to say. Though, in "Charles" and "My Adventure at Chislehurst", he is capable of a nice line in murderesses, besides proffering a convincing gangster's moll in "My Adventure in Norfolk", his character delineation is elsewhere negligible. On the credit side, his use of slang is sparing but effective; contrariwise, though habitually referring to himself as a West End clubman, educated at Rugby, a model husband resident in Kensington, his references to other females are embarrassingly skittish — wishful thinking, perhaps. His settings rarely range outside the upper-middle-class section of society to which he himself belonged. The clue to his nation-wide appeal probably lies in that overworked word, charm.

Standard works of reference are strangely silent about this man of mystery. The Dictionary of National Biography and Who Was Who both totally ignore him. One explanation may be that his last broadcasts occurred in war-time, when his prominent position at the Foreign Office and hush-hush service with the R.N. rendered advisable a diplomatic silence concerning his lay activities. In consequence, when he died in 1940, aged fifty-seven, in a Norwich nursing-home, his obituaries were sparse and uninformative, although from them we learned for the first time his real name and that he lived at Potter Heigham, Norfolk, his will being proved at £1,134 gross. Incidentally, Mrs. Lambert did not long survive him.

Stuart Hibberd, formerly Chief Announcer of the B.B.C., who introduced A.J.A. to listeners, tells us in his autobiography that Alan was cheery, slim, well-dressed, sported a dangling monocle, and always carried a neat, discreet, despatch-case. Genial, he could be irritable at any interruption. To keep his voice in good trim for his recitals, he neither smoked nor imbibed alcohol during the week preceding each broadcast, self-denial which must particularly have irked him, as a connoisseur of food and wine.

Anyone sitting by his ain fireside with an Alan volume is ensured a delightful evening. His is no book for a deck-chair on a beach, a hammock and a sunny day. Though laughter is plentiful, the supernatural hovers persistently; a skeleton is liable to pop its head out of the cupboard and mar the feast of mirth. But, Alan being the spellbinder he is, after pushing a corpse under your nose, a murdered corpse, sometimes a putrefying one, he will characteristically square the circle with politely insincere apologies for having curdled your blood.

So bizarre an amalgam is little affected by the passage of time. References by him to performances of "Bulldog Drummond" at Wyndham's and Lily Elsie in "The Merry Widow" establish his epoch, as do his female fashions: knee-length skirts, turbans with ospreys, and ostrich-feather fans. A pretty girl is to him a "peach" instead of a "smasher". Notwithstanding, this author does not date appreciably, because he is unique.

"The Hair" by A J Alan

Another of early broadcaster A J Alan's tall tales today, following his return to public domain. I like to think that Mr Alan (that is, Mr Lambert, I should say) would appreciate these yarns, originally broadcast in the late '20s and early '30s on the wireless, finding a new lease of life on today's cool new(ish) mass communication medium.

I'm going to give you an account of certain occurrences. I shan't attempt to explain them because they're quite beyond me. When you've heard all the facts, some of you may be able to offer suggestions. You must forgive me for going into a certain amount of detail. When you don't understand what you're talking about it's so difficult to know what to leave out.

This business began in the dark ages, before there was any broadcasting. In fact, in 1921.

I'd been staying the week-end with a friend of mine who lives about fifteen miles out of Bristol.

There was another man stopping there, too, who lived at Dawlish. Well, on the Monday morning our host drove us into Bristol in time for the Dawlish man to catch his train, which left a good deal earlier than the London one. Of course, if old Einstein had done his job properly, we could both have gone by the same train. As it was, I had over half an hour to wait. Talking of Einstein, wouldn't it be almost worth while dying young so as to hear what Euclid says to him when they meet--wherever it is?

There was a funny little old sort of curiosity shop in one of the streets I went down, and I stopped to look in the window. Right at the back, on a shelf, was a round brass box, not unlike a powder-box in shape, and it rather took my fancy. I don't know why--perhaps it was because I'd never seen anything quite like it before. That must be why some women buy some hats.

Anyway, the shop window was so dirty that you could hardly see through it, so I went inside to have a closer look. An incredibly old man came out of the back regions and told me all he knew about the box, which wasn't very much. It was fairly heavy, made of brass, round, four inches high, and about three inches in diameter. There was something inside it, which we could hear when we shook it, but no one had ever been able to get the lid off. He'd bought it from a sailor some years before, but couldn't say in the least what part of the world it came from.

"What about fifteen bob?"

I offered him ten, and he took it very quickly, and then I had to sprint back to the station to catch my train. When I got home I took the box up into my workshop and had a proper look at it. It was extremely primitive as regards work, and had evidently been made by hand, and not on a lathe. Also, there had been something engraved on the lid, but it had been taken off with a file. Next job was to get the lid off without doing any damage to it. It was a good deal more than hand tight, and no ordinary methods were any good. I stood it lid downwards for a week in a dish of glycerine as a start, and then made two brass collars, one for the box and one for the lid. At the-end of the week I bolted the collars on, fixed the box in the vice and tried tapping the lid round with a hammer--but it wouldn't start. Then, I tried it the other way and it went at once. That explained why no one had ever been able to unscrew it--it had a left-handed thread on it. Rather a dirty trick--especially to go and do it all those years before.

Well, here it was, unscrewing very sweetly, and I began to feel quite like Howard Carter, wondering what I was going to find. It might go off bang, or jump out and hit me in the face. However, nothing exciting happened when the lid came off. In fact, the box only seemed to be half-full of dust, but at the bottom was a curled-up plait of hair. When straightened out, it was about nine inches long and nearly as thick as a pencil. I unplaited a short length, and found it consisted of some hundreds of very fine hairs, but in such a filthy state (I shoved them under the microscope) that there was nothing much to be seen. So I thought I'd clean them. You may as well know the process--first of all a bath of dilute hydrochloric acid to get the grease off, then a solution of washing soda to remove the acid. Then a washing in distilled water, then a bath of alcohol to get rid of any traces of water, and a final rinsing in ether to top off with.

Just as I took it out of the ether they called me down to the telephone, so I shoved it down on the first clean thing which came handy, namely, a piece of white cardboard, and went downstairs. When I examined the plait later on, the only thing of interest that came to light was the fact that the hairs had all apparently belonged to several different women. The colours ranged from jet-black, through brown, red, and gold, right up to pure white. None of the hair was dyed, which proved how very old it was. I showed it to one or two people, but they didn't seem very enthusiastic, so I put it, and its box, in a little corner cupboard we have, and forgot all about it.

Then the first strange coincidence happened.

About ten days later a pal of mine called Matthews came into the club with a bandage across his forehead. People naturally asked him what was the matter, and he said he didn't know, and what's more the doctor didn't know. He'd suddenly flopped down on his drawing-room floor, in the middle of tea, and lain like a log. His wife was in a fearful stew, of course, and telephoned for the doctor. However, Matthews came round at the end of about five minutes, and sat up and asked what had hit him. When the doctor blew in a few minutes later he was pretty well all right again except for a good deal of pain in his forehead. The doctor couldn't find anything the matter except a red mark which was beginning to show on the skin just where the pain was.

Well, this mark got clearer and clearer, until it looked just like a blow from a stick. Next day it was about the same, except that a big bruise had come up all round the mark. After that it got gradually better. Matthews took the bandage off and showed it me at the club, and there was nothing much more than a bruise with a curved red line down the middle of it, like the track of a red-hot worm.

They'd decided that he'd had an attack of giddiness and must somehow have bumped his head in falling. And that was that.

About a month later, my wife said to me: "We really must tidy your workshop!" And I said: "Must we?" And she said: "Yes, it's a disgrace." So up we went.

Tidying my workshop consists of putting the tools back in their racks, and of my wife wanting to throw away things she finds on the floor, and me saying: "Oh, no, I could use that for so and so."

The first thing we came across was the piece of white cardboard I'd used to put the plait of hair on while I'd run to the telephone that day.

When we came to look at the other side we found it was a flashlight photograph of a dinner I'd been at. You know what happens. Just before the speeches a lot of blighters come in with a camera and some poles with tin trays on the top, and someone says: "Will the chairman please stand?" and he's helped to his feet. Then there's a blinding flash and the room's full of smoke, and the blighters go out again. Later on a man comes round with proofs, and if you are very weak--or near the chairman--you order one print.

Well, this dinner had been the worshipful company of skate-fasteners or something, and I'd gone as the guest of the same bloke Matthews I've already been telling you about, and we'd sat "side by each," as the saying is. My wife was looking at the photograph, and she said: "What's that mark on Mr. Matthews's forehead?" And I looked--and there, sure enough, was the exact mark that he'd come into the club with a month before. Thecurious part being, of course, that the photograph had been taken at least six months before he'd had the funny attack which caused the mark. Now, then--on the back of the photograph, when we examined it, was a faint brown line. This was evidently left by the plait of hair when I'd pinned it out to dry, and it had soaked through and caused the markon Matthews's face. I checked it by shoving a needle right through the cardboard. Of course, this looked like a very strange coincidence, on the face of it. I don't know what your experience of coincidences is--but mine is that they usually aren't.

Anyway, I took the trouble to trace out the times, and I finally established, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I had pinned the hair out on the photograph between four and a quarter-past on a particular day, and that Matthews had had his funny attack on the same day at about a quarter-past four. That was something like a coincidence. Next, the idea came to me to try it again. Not on poor old Matthews, obviously--he'd already had some--and, besides, he was a friend of mine. I know perfectly well that we are told to be kind to our enemies, and so on--in fact, I do quite a lot of that--but when it comes to trying an experiment of this kind--even if the chances are a million to one against it being a success, I mean having any result--one naturally chooses an enemy rather than a friend. I looked round for a suitable--victim--someone who wouldn't be missed much in case there happened to be another coincidence. The individual on whom my choice fell was the nurse next door.

We can see into their garden from our bathroom window--and we'd often noticed the rotten way she treated the child she had charge of when she thought no one was looking. Nothing one could definitely complain about--you know what a thankless job it is to butt into your neighbour's affairs--but she was systematically unkind, and we hated the sight of her. Another thing--when she first came she used to lean over the garden wall and sneak our roses--at least, she didn't even do that--she used to pull them off their stalks and let them drop--I soon stopped that. I fitted up some little arrangements of fish-hooks round some of the most accessible roses and anchored them to the ground with wires. There was Hell-and-Tommy the next morning, and she had her hand done up in bandages for a week.

Altogether she was just the person for my experiment. The first thing was to get a photograph of her, so the next sunny morning, when she was in the garden, I made a noise like an aeroplane out of the bathroom window to make her look up, and got her nicely. As soon as the first print was dry, about eleven o'clock the same night, I fastened the plait of hair across the forehead with two pins--feeling extremely foolish, as one would, of course, doing an idiotic thing like that--and put it away in a drawer in my workshop. The evening of the next day, when I got home, my wife met me and said: "What do you think--the nurse next door was found dead in bed this morning." And she went on to say that the people were quite upset about it, and there was going to be an inquest, and all the rest of it. I tell you, you could have knocked me down with a brick. I said: "No, not really; what did she die of?" You must understand that my lady wife didn't know anything about the experiment. She'd never have let me try it. She's rather superstitious--in spite of living with me. As soon as I could I sneaked up to the workshop drawer and got out the photograph, and--I know you won't believe me, but it doesn't make any difference--when I unpinned the plait of hair and took it off there was a clearly-marked brown stain right across the nurse's forehead. I tell you, that _did_ make me sit up, if you like--because that made twice--first Matthews and now--now.

It was rather disturbing, and I know it sounds silly, but I couldn't help feeling to blame in some vague way.

Well, the next thing was the inquest--I attended that, naturally, to know what the poor unfortunate woman had died of. Of course, they brought it in as "death from natural causes," namely, several burst bloodvessels in the brain; but what puzzled the doctors was what had caused the"natural causes"--also, she had the same sort of mark on her forehead as Matthews had had. They had gone very thoroughly into the theory that she might have been exposed to X-rays--it _did_ look a bit like that--but it was more or less proved that she couldn't have been, so they frankly gave it up. Of course, it was all very interesting and entertaining, and I quite enjoyed it, as far as one can enjoy an inquest, but they hadn't cleared up the vexed question--did she fall or was she pu--well, had she snuffed it on account of the plait of hair, or had she not? Obviously the matter couldn't be allowed to rest there--it was much too thrilling. So I looked about for someone else to try it on and decided that a man who lived in the house opposite would do beautifully. He wasn't as bad as the nurse because he wasn't cruel--at least, not intentionally--he played the fiddle--so I decided not to kill him more than I could help.

The photograph was rather a bother, because he didn't go out much. You've no idea how difficult it is to get a decent full-face photograph of a man who knows you by sight without him knowing. However, I managed to get one after a fortnight or so. It was rather small and I had to enlarge it, but it wasn't bad considering. He used to spend most of his evenings up in a top room practising, double stopping and what-not--so after dinner I went up to my workshop window, which overlooks his, and waited for him to begin. Then, when he'd really warmed up to his job, I just touched the plait across the photograph--not hard, but--well, like you do when you are testing a bit of twin flex to find out which wire is which, you touch the ends across an accumulator or an H.T. battery. Quite indefensible in theory, but invariably done in practice. (Personally, I always use the electric light mains--the required information is so instantly forthcoming.) Well, that's how I touched the photograph with the plait. The first time I did it my bloke played a wrong note. That was nothing, of course, so I did it again more slowly. This time there was no doubt about it. He hastily put down his fiddle and hung out of the window, gasping like a fish for about five minutes. I tell you, I was so surprised that I felt like doing the same.

However, I pulled myself together, and wondered whether one ought to burn the da--er--plait or not. But there seemed too many possibilities in it for that--so I decided to learn how to use it instead. It would take too long to tell you all about my experiments. They lasted for several months, and I reduced the thing to such an exact science that I could do anything from giving a gnat a headache to killing a man. All this, mind you, at the cost of one man, one woman, lots of wood-lice, and a conscientious objector. You must admit that that's pretty moderate, considering what fun one _could_ have had with a discovery of that kind.

Well, it seemed to me that, now the control of my absent treatment had been brought to such a degree of accuracy, it would be rather a pity not to employ it in some practical way. In other words, to make a fortune quickly without undue loss of life.

One could, of course, work steadily through the people one disliked, but it wouldn't bring in anything for some time.

I mean, even if you insure them first you've got to wait a year before they die, or the company won't pay, and in any case it begins to look fishy after you've done it a few times. Then I had my great idea: Why shouldn't my process be applied to horse-racing? All one had to do was to pick some outsider in a race--back it for all you were worth at about 100 to 1, and then see that it didn't get beaten.

The actual operation would be quite simple. One would only have to have a piece of card-board with photographs of all the runners stuck on it--except the one that was to win, of course--and then take up a position giving a good view of the race.

I wasn't proposing to hurt any of the horses in the least. They were only going to get the lightest of touches, just enough to give them a tired feeling, soon after the start. Then, if my horse didn't seem to have the race well in hand near the finish, I could give one more light treatment to any horse which still looked dangerous.

It stood to reason that great care would have to be taken not to upset the tunning too much. For instance, if all the horses except one fell down, or even stopped and began to graze, there would be a chance of the race being declared void.

So I had two or three rehearsals. They worked perfectly. The last one hardly was a rehearsal because I had a tenner on at 33 to 1, just for luck--and, of course, it came off.

However, it wasn't as lucky as it sounds. Just outside the entrance to the grandstand there was rather a squash and, as I came away I got surrounded by four or five men who seemed to be pushing me about a bit, but it didn't strike me what the game was until one of them got his hand into the breast-pocket of my coat.

Then I naturally made a grab at him and got him just above the elbow with both hands, and drove his hand still further into my pocket. That naturally pushed the pocket, with his hand inside it, under my right arm, and I squeezed it against my ribs for all I was worth.

Now, there was nothing in that pocket but the test tube with the plait of hair in it, and the moment I started squeezing it went with a crunch. I'm a bit hazy about the next minute because my light-fingered friend tried to get free, and two of his pals helped him by bashing me over the head. They were quite rough. In fact, they entered so heartily into the spirit of the thing that they went on doing it until the police came up and collared them.

You should have seen that hand when it did come out of my pocket. Cut to pieces, and bits of broken glass sticking out all over it--like a crimson tipsy cake. He was so bad that we made a call at a doctor's on the way to the police station for him to have a small artery tied up. There was a cut on the back of my head that wanted a bit of attention, too. Quite a nice chap, the doctor, but he was my undoing. He was, without doubt, the baldest doctor I've ever seen, though I once saw a balder alderman.

When he'd painted me with iodine, I retrieved the rest of the broken glass and the hair from the bottom of my pocket and asked him if he could give me an empty bottle to put it in. He said: "Certainly," and produced one, and we corked the hair up in it. When I got home, eventually, I looked in the bottle, but apart from a little muddy substance at the bottom it was empty--the plait of hair had melted away.

Then I looked at the label on the bottle, and found the name of a much-advertised hair restorer.

"The 19 Club" by A J Alan

I belong to a dining club – as a matter of fact I’m the secretary – but apart from that there's nothing much to distinguish it from lots of other clubs of a similar kind. It's called the 19 Club.

You may think that sounds rather mysterious, but it isn't in the least, really. There are nineteen members and it was started in 1919, so I don't honestly see how it could have been called anything else.

We are just a lot of people who had a certain job to do during the war, and when it was over we thought it would be rather fun for us all to meet and have dinner together every now and then. So we do, twice a year: on June the first and December the first. When the date falls on a Sunday we make it the Monday.

This arrangement saves the secretary a lot of work, as there aren't any notices to send out – in fact being a secretary is no trouble at all. We always stick to the same restaurant and I go in two or three days before and order the dinner. When it's over, just before we leave, I go round and collect thirty bob or so from everyone and hand it straight over to the head-waiter; he gives me a receipt, which I generally lose, and there you are.

Nothing could possibly be simpler from my point of view, or, you'd think, from anyone else's, but it was this very simplicity which nearly landed us in a mess on June the first this year.

If you’ll examine our somewhat casual procedure for a moment, you’ll see that it leaves the management of the restaurant, and of course the waiters, quite in the dark as to who any of us are (not that we care): for all they know is that we are the "19 Club", and they write it up on a card down in the hall. There's a highly polished mahogany board on an easel just inside the entrance, giving the names of the rooms –
and they shove it on that.

Well, by some mischance, a prowling journalist in search of prey wandered into the hall during our last December meeting, and he happened to see this card.

He asked who we were and the people down below couldn't tell him because they didn't know – they said they had no information about us of any kind. This appears to have piqued his curiosity, and he promptly sent up his card addressed to the secretary asking for an immediate interview.

A waiter brought it to me during quite an amusing speech that was going on, and I thought it was rather cheek. I just said "No", or words to that effect, and would Mr. Heacham please go away – Heacham was the name on the card. I mean, the freedom of the Press is all very well in its way, but if a few friends can't dine together quietly without reporters butting in – well, it's a bit too thick. However, Mr. Heacham did not go away. He seems to have hung about outside for the rest of the evening until we left, and then got the commissionaire at the door to point me out to him. I never saw him at all, but he must have followed me home and then looked up my name in the directory, because two days later there was a letter from him – he wrote from some office in the Strand.

He described himself as a free-lance journalist and said that he’d been commissioned by the editor of a well-known London Daily to write a series of articles on dining clubs. Mind you, I never believe this story because I think it's so much more likely that they write the articles first and hawk them round to the editors afterwards – but I may be wrong. He went on to ask for the names of all our members, together with any biographical details likely to interest the public, and so on. I believe he added that it would be a fine advertisement for us. At any rate I called loudly for my stylographic pen and wrote him a letter to which he made no reply – and there it was. But it only goes to show that some people don't like you to mind your own business.

By the bye, I made a statement a minute or two ago which, I'm afraid, wasn't strictly accurate: I said that when this man's card was brought to me at the dinner, there was a speech going on. Well, actually, we don't have speeches in the generally accepted sense of the term – what merely happens is this. Supposing anyone does something clever or interesting, like flying to Australia and back or motoring across China or inventing something wonderful, we ask him to come and dine, and then afterwards he just gets up and spouts about it – er, describes his achievement in an informal kind of way.

And we don't confine ourselves to respectable exploits either. If anyone were to break into the Bank of England and get away with a million pounds, I'm quite sure we should ask him to come and tell us exactly how he did it. So you can see that in one way and another we do get a good deal of amusement and instruction, but we don't attempt to get it for nothing. Oh no: there's an honorarium of ten guineas which we always hope the guest of the evening will accept, and we are getting more and more sanguine about its getting accepted, because no one's ever refused it yet. You'd be surprised at some of the distinguished people to whom a tenner hasn't come amiss: in fact the man who pouched my furtive envelope with the greatest gusto was a certain Chancellor of the Exchequer – I shan't say who it was. He'd come along and explained his budget to us.

It isn't anyone's job in particular to procure these artists, but we all keep our eyes open for suitable “turns”.

At all events, last March I happened to come across a paragraph in the newspaper. It was tucked away in a corner but it took my fancy very much. It was all about an Englishman called Kennedy who'd escaped from a foreign prison. There's apparently a small island off the coast of Java which the Dutch use as a convict settlement, and Kennedy was there serving a sentence of ten years.

Well, whether they weren't kind to him, or he'd got tired of the place, I don't know, but one fine morning he decided to leave. He climbed over the barbed wire when no one was looking and made straight for the house of the Governor of the island.

The Governor wasn't in, so Master Kennedy went into his bedroom, put on one of his uniforms and strolled down to the harbour. There he borrowed the Governor's motor-boat and left the island flying the Governor's flag. He even managed to extract a salute from one of our light cruisers which was lying in the harbour at the time.

After that all trace of him was lost. I showed this paragraph to several other members of the 19 Club, and they all agreed that he was just the lad for us if only we could get hold of him.

It so happened that I knew the editor of the paper which had published the report, and I went round and asked him to let me know if he ever heard anything more. He promised to make enquiries, but he wasn't very hopeful.

However, roughly seven weeks later I got a somewhat cryptic letter from a man in Chiswick. He said he was just back from the East and understood that I'd been enquiring about a certain person whose name began with K. If I still wanted the information would I please call at the address on his letter (No. 23 something-or-other Gardens) and ask for John Smith. This I did that same afternoon. Something-or-other Gardens (and I'm not going to give the name) consisted entirely of red-brick villas with "Apartments to Let" in the windows. The door was opened to me by an obvious landlady – quite a nice old thing – and when I asked for John Smith she somehow looked as though she knew it was an assumed name. She said he was expecting me, but would I mind not stopping too long as he'd been ill. I promised not to, of course, and then she showed me into the right-hand front sitting-room.

It was typically, but comfortably, furnished. There I found a nervous little rabbit of a man of about thirty-five who kept darting to the window and peering out into the street. He also had one of those high voices which have never broken – it was so pronounced that it was quite difficult to get used to. We discussed the weather until the landlady got tired of listening at the door, and he admitted what I'd already guessed, and you too, probably, that he wasn't John Smith at all but John Kennedy, the escaped convict himself. He apologised for receiving me in such a hole-and-corner way but he was terrified of the police finding him and banding him over to the Dutch. I said they'd get no help from me, and we finally got down to the business of the 19 Club dinner.

He was a bit chary at first of coming out into the open so much, but he eventually thought he'd risk it, and he brightened up quite a lot at the idea of a tenner. The only trouble was that he was what they call "a bit pushed for the stuff" and he only had the clothes he stood up in. Could anything be done in the way of an advance? He was quite frank about his affairs: he'd had a bad go of flu soon after landing which had left him with a flabby heart muscle and prevented him from looking for a job; he was in debt to his landlady, and altogether things weren't too rosy. Anyway, I was able to let him have enough to square his landlady and get some clothes, and I also told him I'd get the Club to spring a bit more in the way of fee. I was most careful not to refer to his prison experiences because he didn't seem up to it, so I gave him the time and place of the dinner and came away. My only regret was that his voice was so singularly unsuitable for the recital of daring deeds.

It would be as well, perhaps, to explain that to get to the room we dine in at the restaurant you have to go through a sort of ante-room, and it is our custom to assemble first of all for sherry and cocktails in this smaller room.

Well, on June the first we were all waiting in this room when John Smith walked in. (We'd arranged to go on calling him that in his own interest.)

He looked a good deal better in health than when I'd seen him last, but he'd evidently been fortifying himself against the ordeal of delivering his discourse. Not that he was at all screwed, but he had undoubtedly had one or two. It was a good thing he was a bit late and that there was only time for him to have one glass of sherry before we went in. I also took the precaution of sitting next to him and seeing that he didn't overdo it. It seemed mean, but it was no use him getting tight too soon.

Anyway, dinner went off all right, and soon after “the King”, when the waiters had all cleared out, our chairman invited him to tell us about his experiences out East. He also gave an assurance on behalf of the Club that nothing he said would go any further. Whereupon John Smith Kennedy got up and proceeded to tell his story, and a very astonishing story it was.

He led off by saying that the crime of which he'd been convicted had been a burglary in Brussels, of all places.

No one said anything, but most of us thought it rather peculiar for a man to be sent to a Dutch penal settlement for an offence, however heinous, against the laws of Belgium. He made other equally glaring mistakes too, and it soon became perfectly clear that the whole story was a pack of lies from beginning to end and that he'd never been nearer Java than Southend.

Things got so ridiculous that it was finally put to him that he was romancing – and he admitted it without any beating about the bush. He said lie wasn't the man Kennedy at all, that he'd never been in prison, and that the whole thing was a hoax. We said, “Ha, ha, very funny and all that, but if you aren't Kennedy, who are you?”

And then he sprang his great surprise.

You remember that man Heacham, the journalist who'd sent un his card and tried to find out about the Club? Well – he was Heacham, getting a bit of his own back. I didn't see at first how he'd got hold of the Kennedy story in connection with us, but he explained with fiendish glee that he occasionally did work for my editor man, and he'd actually been sent for and given the job of making enquiries about it. The editor must have mentioned my name and told him why I wanted the information. Needless to say he hadn't traced Kennedy, but he'd used the circumstances to score off me and the Club – and there was no denying that he'd done it jolly well. We shouldn't have cared two hoots if lie hadn't been so beastly offensive: he strutted up and down and jeered at us and that wasn't the worst – he was going straight along to the Daily What Not and the whole story would be in the paper next morning, complete with such of our names as he knew. He got so truculent that if he hadn't been our guest I am quite sure someone would have slogged him on the beak. We told him that we didn't wish the story to appear in the paper and should take steps to prevent it, whereupon he completely lost his hair and got awfully excited. He said: "I'm still in the doctor's hands for my heart. If you offer me any violence it'll be the worse for you". It was pointed out to him that no one had the slightest intention of using any violence, and I can't make it too clear that nothing which any of us said or did could have been taken as in the least threatening.

We did, however, say that before we left we should like a few minutes to discuss the situation in private, and would he mind going into the anteroom.

He did, and one of us went with him to keep him company.

Well, the rest of us hadn't been talking, for more than a minute when the man who'd gone in with Heacham appeared at the door and said, "I wish you fellers would come and have a look at this bird. He doesn't seem very well".

So we all crowded in and – my word – he didn't look at all well. He'd fallen forward in a chair, apparently in a faint or fit or something.

One of our members was a doctor and he examined him for a moment, and then he said, "I'm sorry, good people, but this is a bad show. The man's dead", and he went on to explain how a heavy dinner and over-excitement had caused acute dilatation of the heart when it was a bit groggy, and it had snuffed out. Extremely simple, no doubt, from the medical point of view, but devilish awkward from ours.

We were very sorry, of course, but, at the same time, we couldn't help feeling a little annoyed with this person for coming to the dinner under false pretences and then going and dying on us as well, so there definitely wasn't the frantic amount of sympathy which there otherwise would have been. It would be bound to get into the papers, and a tragedy like that always does a restaurant a certain amount of harm, and it would also mean that some of us would have to spend a merry morning in the coroner's court.

So we were all standing about looking rather grave, and putting our cigars down, when one man remarked in a thoughtful kind of way: "What an awful lot of trouble it would have saved if only this individual could have survived long enough to get home". And then he gave a little nod – just like that; and, as everyone knows, a nod is sometimes as a good as a wink, especially when it comes from anyone as high up in the service as he was – and his meaning was so utterly scandalous that I'm sure all of you will have grasped it.

I asked him. I said: "Is it too late, sir, for you to get a game of bridge somewhere?" And he thought: No, it wasn't too late. He caught the eye of two or three more of similar rank to himself and they all sauntered out.

When they'd gone we put our heads together and settled our course of action.

We posted a man on the door to keep out stray waiters and went and fetched all the hats and coats, including the unfortunate Heacham's. While we were putting his on, the man with the largest car was told to go and get it and send his chauffeur home. As soon as word came through that it was at the door we got a move on.

A sort of advance guard of five went on ahead to make a demonstration. They were to send all available commissionaires for cars and taxis and generally clear the entrance of hotel staff. The main body, so to speak, followed a little way behind—this main body consisted of another man and me supporting Heacham, with the rest of the 19 Club in close formation all round us.

We went down the stairs without the slightest check, all laughing and talking, though not feeling a bit like it; but when we got into the hall we were confronted by a most appalling snag. They'd gone and rigged up the revolving doors. They'd been folded back out of the way before dinner, but I suppose it must have turned cooler during the evening. Anyway, there the brutes were revolving away like anything, and we wondered how on earth we were going to manage. Perhaps some of you've tried going through those doors two at once. It's a bit of a squash at the best of times, when you're both of you alive, but you try it when one of you isn't and you'll admit that it's no fun at all.

We couldn't stop and confer without attracting attention, so our front rank went through and formed a screen on the outside. Then, as secretary of the Club, I felt it my duty to be entirely responsible for our guest, and he gave me no help at all. When we were half-way through and completely shut off from the outer world, his hat fell off – I had to retrieve it with one hand and keep him propped up with the other. The people who were turning the doors round saw and backed water to give me time, but it was a trying experience and I'm quite prepared to swap nightmares with anyone. I didn't feel happy until we'd got him into the car, and even then "happy" is rather an over-statement. Another man and I sat with him between us at the back, and there was just the owner in front, driving. He drove very carefully, too, because it wouldn't have done for us to run into anything and all get asked for our names and addresses. Also, we didn't want to get to Chiswick too early. As it was, in spite of simply crawling the whole way, we found a light in the first floor window, so we kept straight on. We came back in ten minutes but it was still there, and we drove about the district for the best part of an hour, passing the house at intervals, before it was put out.

However, it finally was, and the last stage of our operations began.

The car dropped us and drove off to wait a few turnings away. The other man and I carried our friend up the garden path and in at the front door. This was easy because we'd got his key, but then we struck another bad patch. When I'd called at the house the first time there'd been linoleum on the hall floor, but this had evidently been taken up, leaving nothing but bare tiles. There wasn't even a mat, and when we stepped on to these tiles straight off a gravel path you can imagine the row we made – slate pencils weren't in it – and it woke the landlady.

She came to the top of the stairs and called down: "Is that Mr. Heacham?" and I said "Yes”, in a very high voice (after all it was). Then she said "Your cocoa's on the kitchen stove", and I said, "Thanks very much. Good night", and she mercifully went back to bed.

We then breathed again and got Heacham into his room and switched on the light. We took off his hat and coat and arranged him as naturally as we could in an armchair. I went along to the kitchen and fetched his cocoa and cup and saucer and poured some out for him.

If we'd been his murderers, and we almost felt like it, we couldn't have taken more pains, but I should like to put it on record that from first to last he was treated with all due respect. We didn't forget to leave the light burning, and his own fingerprints were on the cup and saucer.

We got away without a sound, picked up the car as arranged and reached home without incident.

There wasn't an inquest, or if there was it didn't get into any paper, and everything must have passed off quite smoothly, but we had an anxious few days all the same.
We were anxious, because I'd made one foolish mistake, as, criminals so often do. On the face of it it was trifling, but, even so, it ought to have rotted up the whole of our good work.

I'd come away with Heacham's latchkey in my overcoat pocket.

Good evening, everyone!

A J Alan was the pseudonym of Leslie Harrison Lambert, a Foreign Office official, amateur magician, former Royal Navy officer and cryptographer in Hut 8 (the Enigma team) at Bletchley Park. Phew. Well, why did he need a pseudonym, you'd like to know, and the answer to that is that he made occasional broadcasts on the wireless in the '20s and '30s, spinning tall tales that he wrote himself and pasted onto large squares of cardboard so as not to disturb the audience with the sound of rustling pages. Lambert - that is, Alan - always turned up at the BBC in full evening dress, and with his own candle and matches as contingency in the event of a studio light failing.

Now the reason I'm telling you all this is that I was introduced to Mr Alan's - I mean, Mr Lambert's - stories many years ago by my friend William Burton, who was read them by his housemaster at school who might very well have been one of Alan's original listeners. The stories made a strong impression on me. They are shaggy dog tales for the most part, often but not always steering away at the last moment from anything as vulgar as mere plot resolution. Some have a delicate touch of the supernatural about them, though only in the way a chap might tell you about an actual spooky experience, nothing so overtly supernatural as in an M R James tale. In the most part the stories are very effective at doing just what the storyteller intended, namely letting you pass an agreeable half-hour in the company of an amusing raconteur who's spinning an elegant verbal picture of how he went gadding about on various outré and/or outrageous adventures. All of them are charming and whimsical, and definitely took their place along Dunsany's tales of Jorkens as a big influence on Mirabilis.

Anyway, I recently noticed that A J Alan breathed his last in a Norfolk guest house seventy years ago. Which I'm sure was quite a tragedy, especially for Mrs Alan (well, Mrs Lambert, of course, is who I mean) who followed her husband soon after, poor woman. But time heals all wounds, and the silver lining in this case is that A J Alan's stories are now in the public domain. We talked a bit about publishing rights yesterday - well, here's a fine body of work in which everybody has publishing rights. It no longer need languish, secured by the strangling chain of copyright. Now the A J Alan oeuvre can enjoy a new lease of life.

Obviously it's too much to hope that the BBC would have kept the original recordings. These are the fellows who wiped Tomb of the Cybermen, after all. But possibly somebody at Broadcasting House will have the bright idea of getting Hugh Laurie or somebody to re-record the stories, if indeed they can still afford him. In the meantime, doing my bit, I shall bring you some of A J Alan's stories here, starting with "The 19 Club" tomorrow.