The Mind Readers (19 page)

‘Too many people, Mr Luke,' said the visitor with sudden reasonableness. ‘They couldn't all be mistaken, could they? It always happens in the evening, always in the same street. People come and tell me afterwards. “It was wrong again yesterday” they say: or “You changed it. It was different”. They tell me together and they've seen it wrong together.'

The hollow voice with its trace of education was eerily convincing and the policeman sighed.

‘But they never stop you and tell you
at the time
?'

‘No. I wouldn't have it; it's well known. I wouldn't pause once I am on my work. I go straight on, handing out my folders, looking neither to right nor left, nor tarrying in the way. Men must wait until my labour is done and my burden is rested before they speak to me.'

Luke ducked his chin and his white teeth appeared. ‘You don't loiter, I'll hand you that. Do you know I thought that was out of deference to our regulations! So people tell you about the alteration afterwards, do they? At the coffee stall? They're ganging up to make a game of you!'

‘No. I know when they do that.'

‘So? What's the explanation? A sort of barmy miracle?'

‘That's not for me to say, nor you neither, Mr Luke.'

The pitying smirk was still on the grey face as Mrs Talisman tapped on the door, opened it and let the white cat into the room.

‘Excuse me, sir,' she said to Avril. ‘But I thought you'd want to see this. I noticed it from the area. It was sitting on the front step and as soon as I opened the door it came in and went sniffing round those things in the hall. It's the same creature which was about here this morning but it's not the same person with it; not the same at all.'

It was an absurd interruption which took everybody completely by surprise. Luke gaped at the animal and the Canon regarded his housekeeper in bewilderment. Mr Deeds' reaction was more extraordinary. The dark colour rose in his grey face and settled in dull patches on his cheekbones. He grew very still and did not look at anything directly, but his eyes shifted disconcertingly and for the first time it occurred to them all that on occasions he might be actually dangerous.

The cat stalked across the carpet towards him, its distinctive tail with the sandy tip waving purposefully in the air as it began to circle the dusty skirts of the brown habit, purring noisily and rubbing itself against the coarse wool. Deeds ignored it and remained staring at the wall with the same flaring uncertainty about him. Surprisingly, the Superintendent seemed to understand.

‘You've been enticing that moggie, Deeds, haven't you? Whose is it? Why do you want it?'

‘How dare you! What a filthy suggestion! Take it away! You've enticed it yourself. It's attracted to you, not me. You've got something on your clothes! Take it away, take it away!' Short of confession he could hardly have conveyed guilt more clearly. He was like a stage caricature of a sex-starved Victorian maiden lady accused of thinking about soliciting. Luke began to laugh.

‘Keep your hair on, I don't see any crime. It's not a very valuable brute. Why do you want it to follow you if you don't like it?'

‘Go away!' Mr Deeds flounced his robes at the animal as if it were the Great Beast of his prophecy and threw himself out of the room with reckless clumsiness. Mrs Talisman squeaked and from the hall came the rattle and clatter of his board as he fought and banged himself out of the house with it. The cat, undismayed and graceful as a swallow, wreathed and circled about him as he strode across the square.

The old Canon was dismayed. ‘Poor fellow!' he murmured. ‘Did you know how much that would upset him, Charles?'

‘Not quite.' Luke was a little taken aback himself. ‘He's shocked to find that some little asininity of his which he thought was absolutely secret is perfectly obvious to everybody. He's discovered in a bus without his pants on, that's all.'

‘I don't understand it,' said Amanda. ‘What was happening to the cat?'

‘Oh, he'd made himself interesting to it to get it to follow him as if it loved him.' Luke was a little embarrassed. ‘There are various . . . er . . . ungents which will do that; some more salubrious than others. I shouldn't think he was fur-trapping or anything venal. If I know Deeds and his kind he's trying to prove either to himself or some other poor nit that Pussy loves him better than Pussy's own master or missus! That's life—less tragic than ruddy silly, half the time!' He glanced at a shabby knapsack lying in the corner. ‘He's left his folders. Never mind, I'll get them dropped back at his room. I'm glad you saw him, Canon. The idea of getting cursed by accident in some way or another is the kind of bogey which seems to ride that sort of bloke. He catches at the idea, colours it, trys it on this way and that to make himself interesting to himself, but it's utterly terrible to him just the same. Nobody knows what those people suffer. If ever this blasted invention of ours gets going we shall all have a few shocks.'

Old Avril shook his head; he was very certain of his ground. ‘He will find a way to escape it. That is Pride, the tourniquet round the soul. No little machine is going to cure that, I'm afraid; even the latest.'

‘“The Paranoic Sin of Pride!”' said Luke, unexpectedly in the picture. ‘Strewth! What an alternative! Did Campion spot that? Is that why he sent him here?'

‘Oh no, I don't think so.' Avril appeared surprised. ‘It was the reference he noticed I should say, wouldn't you?'

‘Which reference?'

‘Why, the second one, Charles. The one Mr Deeds' friends only see him carry sometimes.
“Revelations, Chapter six verses one to seven”
. He told us, don't you remember? He will have told Albert. I looked it up for him but he didn't want to listen. It's that passage with the dramatic repetitions. All the four great Beasts at the four corners of the world sit up and cry the same thing one after the other: “Come and see! Come and see! Come and see! Come and see!” It's a great favourite with the young, or used to be. Albert must have recognised it and thought it was curious. That boy is full of odd information like that.'

‘“Come and see!”? What do you know!' Luke was staring. ‘That doesn't sound like a street joke. It doesn't sound like a joke at all.'

‘A message?' Amanda was startled out of her preoccupation.

‘I'm sure of it,' said Luke.

WHEN MR CAMPION
went upstairs to pack an over-night bag and Luke slipped out to fetch the car, Amanda followed her husband. She closed the door of the bedroom behind her and stood watching him as he hurried.

Ever since he had returned to the house half an hour before, and all through their report on The End of the World Man, there had been something about him which had reminded her of someone she had half forgotten; a pale, blank-faced youngster whose continuous flippancy had masked an acutely sensitive intelligence which as a teenager she had adored.

An explanation occurred to her suddenly.

‘Albert, you're frightened,' she said.

He glanced at her, his pale eyes unsmiling.

‘Only just off the gibber, Lady,' he said briskly. ‘I'm glad you came up. I want to talk to you.'

‘About Edward? I was wondering; suppose I got the name of every parent from the school secretary and simply sat at the telephone and made a job of it, telephoning and asking if he's with them? I needn't offer any explanation. How could that start a rumour or put the newspapers on to Mayo's disappearance?'

‘So Luke told you about the decision not to put out a general call?'

‘He said it was thought to be too early. It is, of course, if you saw him. You did, didn't you?'

‘I saw a small boy in a beret from above and when I spoke to the man on the door downstairs he convinced me. It was Edward all right, and as far as anyone can tell he was completely alone.' He hesitated, looking at the two utterly dissimilar slippers in his hands as if he were trying to decide if they were a pair. ‘That's why I've got the wind up, I think. How well do we know him?' He discarded both shoes as having something unspecified wrong with them, and packed a pair of pumps. ‘Do we really know him? Or do we just think that he's another Rupert at that age?'

Amanda considered and he found it like her that she should not commit herself without thinking.

‘There's something odd about him,' she admitted. ‘It's a sort of austerity. He's very formal and rather boy scout. He's not being disloyal to
us
, to you and me, I mean. I swear that. What's the matter with you, Albert? You're frightening me. Luke's shaken too. He seems to have a vision of a dreadful over-intimate world in which every thought is absolutely communal. Is that what you've been facing?'

‘Frankly, no,' said Campion with a sigh. ‘In my present state I could almost take that. I've been confronted by something a deal more solid and immediate.'

‘What was it?'

‘I don't like to think. It had higher-ape blood, I fancy. Amanda, do we know anything about Lord Ludor?'

‘Not a lot. It's said that he went to see Tubby Hogan—the blind, bedridden, “Sparks V.C.”—not long after the war on some well publicised do-good mission. He appeared in all the pictures, promised a lot of support, and did nothing but bribe the hero's invaluable guide-batman to leave him without notice. Hogan was lying in his room helpless for two days. I heard that in the Alandel Works years ago. Apart from that I know no more than is common knowledge. You've actually seen him, I take it?'

‘Only too closely.'

‘Does he make faces as they say? It's an extraordinary form of affectation.'

‘It is not affectation.' Mr Campion had never looked more serious. ‘There's nothing pseudo about him. He's as real and ugly as a busted atom. I've been shut up with him in the Director's office and my impression is that we all aged ten years and the carpet wore out round him while we looked.'

‘He got on to the story pretty quickly.'

‘Long before anybody else. Hence the truly amazing speed of official reaction. I think Arnold must report to him privately every day on an outside wire, probably in the early morning. By breakfast today he knew everything Arnold knew last night, plus the fact that the Mayos had not returned to the Island as Paggen said they would when they left here. Anyway, Ludor was on the telephone to L.C. Corkran before he arrived at his office and they found Mrs Mayo at Robinson's Hotel for him just after she'd telephoned Luke. Ludor thought the device was Paggen Mayo's own, of course. He still does.'

‘That's absurd.' Amanda spoke flatly and his pale eyes flickered towards her.

‘He doesn't think so. In fact he has the whole story tied up to his own satisfaction. The instant he heard about Edward's friend Rubari and the link with Daumier's the penny dropped with an audible rattle and he produced a complete and certainly logical explanation. His brain is like a computor. In goes the data and out comes the answer in flat, inhuman terms, absolutely correct if everybody concerned happens to be made to one of the half-dozen patterns which he has found most common. A terrible and terrifying chap, Amanda. Almost certain to be fifty per cent right!' He paused and eyed her. ‘His main assumption is that Mayo must have had an unexpected success with his device, realised that under the terms of his contract with Godley's he stood to make less money than he would have done elsewhere, and decided to approach a rival firm.'

‘Oh yes?' She sounded amused. ‘I shouldn't have said Mayo was that type at all.'

‘Nor should I, but Ludor does say so. He has decided that Mayo has been using Sam as a guinea-pig and that Sam has recruited another suitable child at the school—Edward, in fact, who has turned out to be older, more reliable, and has the added advantage of not having parents on hand to get in the way. According to Ludor, Martin is either not in the secret or else he got cold feet at the last moment. Either way, he says, he has been discredited and provided with a bolt-hole by the faked suicide attempt.'

‘Good Heavens!'

‘You wait, my girl! His Lordship is nothing if not tidy-minded. He believes that the object of this particular weekend's outing is to stage a demonstration for the prospective purchasers. He says Edward and Mayo have taken the day off and are somewhere in London waiting for an appointed hour to effect some sort of trial communication with the opposite lads in Paris.'

Amanda's brown eyes became uneasy. ‘He might almost have something there,' she admitted. ‘That is how Edward is behaving. It's what I was trying to say about him; he's dedicated. It's peculiar in a child but he's behaving as if he considers he is on a mission.' She stood hesitating, reviewing the position. ‘No,' she said at last. ‘That story of Ludor's is impossible. We all saw Mayo try the things out last night and the man was staggered. He
couldn't
have been putting on that performance.'

‘Ludor says he must have been. He says we were deceived.'

‘I don't believe it. Why did Mayo come here anyway? To further the plot to discredit Martin? Or to see if the family had found the things and confiscated them? That's idiotic.'

‘Well, is it?' Mr Campion was standing by his open bag, regarding her curiously. ‘Ludor says that no inventor would permit his work to go out of his control; he insists that Mayo must have been in touch with the children all the time.'

‘—and knew what was happening by Extra Sensory Perception? Whatever next!'

‘Lord Ludor believes the thing works,' Mr Campion said drily. ‘He admits that communication may not be perfect, but he feels that must come. He says Mayo must have known it the instant that the things passed out of the children's possession, and that he hurried to retrieve them, using Martin as an excuse. He also says that the arrangement for Mayo and Edward to meet today was evidently made beforehand and that the boy has simply carried on, still under the influence of the man.'