Cover

I. The Advertisement

CHAPTER I

THE ADVERTISEMENT

ON New Year’s Day, 1943, C. H. Bondy, head of the great Metallo-Electric Company, was sitting as usual reading his paper. He skipped the news from the theatre of war rather disrespectfully, avoided the Cabinet crisis, then crowded on sail (for the People’s Journal, which had grown long ago to five times its ancient size, now afforded enough canvas for an ocean voyage) for the Finance and Commerce section. Here he cruised about for quite a while, then furled his sails, and abandoned himself to his thoughts.

“The Coal Crisis!” he said to himself. “Mines getting worked out; the Ostrava basin suspending work for years. Heavens above, it’s a sheer disaster! We’ll have to import Upper Silesian coal. Just work out what that will add to the cost of our manufacturers, and then talk about competition. We’re in a pretty fix. And if Germany raises her tariff, we may as well shut up shop. And the Industrial Banks going down, too! What a wretched state of affairs! What a hopeless, stupid, stifling state of affairs! Oh, damn the crisis!”

Here G. H. Bondy, Chairman of the Board of Directors, came to a pause. Something was fidgeting him and would not let him rest. He traced it back to the last page of his discarded newspaper. It was the syllable tion, only part of a word, for the fold of the paper came just in front of the t. It was this very incompleteness which had so curiously impressed itself upon him.

“Well, hang it, it’s probably IRON PRODUCTION,” Bondy pondered vaguely, “or PREVENTION, or, maybe, RESTITUTION. . . . And the Azote shares have gone down, too. The stagnation’s simply shocking. The position’s so bad that it’s ridiculous. . . . But that’s nonsense: who would advertise the RESTITUTION of anything? More likely RESIGNATION. It’s sure to be RESIGNATION.”

With a touch of annoyance, G. H. Bondy spread out the newspaper to dispose of this irritating word. It had now vanished amid the chequering of the small advertisements. He hunted for it from one column to another, but it had concealed itself with provoking ingenuity. Mr. Bondy then worked from the bottom up, and finally started again from the right-hand side of the page. The contumacious “tion” was not to be found.

Mr. Bondy did not give in. He refolded the paper along its former creases, and behold, the detestable tion leaped forth on the very edge. Keeping his finger firmly on the spot, he swiftly spread the paper out once more, and found——Mr. Bondy swore under his breath. It was nothing but a very modest, very commonplace small advertisement:

INVENTION

Highly remunerative, suitable for any factory, for immediate sale, personal reasons. Apply R. Marek, Engineer, Břevnov, 1651.