The Mind Readers (12 page)

‘I think I should just see Ferris before you go,' he suggested. ‘I hate to say it but a thumping mistake at this juncture might be a considerable embarrassment for all concerned, don't you think?'

‘Embarrassment!' Mayo was shaking and it occurred to them all that it was the Canon's “occupational disease of creators” which was consuming him so agonisingly before their eyes. ‘I'm afraid you really must let me handle this as best I can, and in my own way. You don't understand. You can't realise that you've been monkeying with something revolutionary. The whole world's communications industry could be affected by this, not merely one country's defence system!' He was becoming more and more furious as the position crystallised in his mind. ‘There are certain people,' he went on, biting off each word, ‘who are so damned brilliant, such ruddy geniuses, that they think that everybody else's work is child's play, and it doesn't matter destroying it, pinching it, or giving it away! There are famous Professors whose feet don't touch the ground at any given point, and pathetic young men who are dazzled by their academic glory and bloody snobbishness generally and are liable to go off their cocky young heads. They see a chance to make a splash and they forget their elementary loyalties. They destroy their own interests and get themselves,—and the poor hard-working so-and-sos who are supposed to lead the teams they're paid to work for—into the father and mother of a mess. We're living in the damndest crazy world. I can tell you that.'

Avril cleared his throat.

‘How are you going to square me with Edward?' he said. It was a most unexpected remark and Mayo's response to it was even more so.

‘Oh yes,' he said. ‘You told me he trusted you with them. Exactly. Well now, I think you'd better give him this.'

He took out his wallet again and produced a card.

‘What's his name? Longfox? Right.
“Admit Edward Longfox
.” See? I've written that on the back. You give it to him and tell him I'll be very happy to see him any time. How's that?'

It was a curious little incident and both Luke and Campion were uneasily aware of a quality in the man which neither had suspected. The old Canon took the card. He seemed very satisfied.

‘Thank you. You'll find him very intelligent. He was telling us that young Sam can use this machine so much better than he can. The younger boy is as yet so inexperienced and recognises so little that what he is able to receive doesn't swamp him.'

It was an elementary observation to them all now, but they saw it hit the target like a starshell, and for the first time they caught a glimpse of what it means to tackle a problem which only a combination of several very different types of mind can solve.

Mayo stood looking at the old man. ‘The human unit has built-in valves then?'

‘Possibly,' said Avril who was not at all clear on the subject. ‘Can we get you a cup of tea?'

It appeared to be the end of the incident. Mayo was anxious to leave and like so many enthusiasts seemed liable to turn a social escape into a jail break if anything threatened to hinder him.

‘I shall slip away at once, alone, if you don't mind,' he said hastily. ‘My wife can go back in the van with Arnold.'

‘Oh no, she can't, my dear!' The voice from the doorway was triumphant and Mrs Mayo, a little brighter than life, came into the room followed by a depressed Amanda. ‘I told you,' she went on, looking back at her hostess. ‘I was absolutely certain of it. I've been expecting it. That was why I came.' Her glance rested on her husband with open hostility, and she laughed. ‘Lord Ludor may still trust him. I'm afraid I can't.'

She was neither drunk nor drugged, and indeed looked remarkably healthy and most unlikely to be the victim of some toxic condition, but everybody in the room recognised her typical symptoms with the same sense of dismay.

The breaking middle-class wife, driven by one of twenty possible short-comings of her own or her husband's, strained by a speed of living for which she was not designed, and permitted by the absence of any cast-iron code of manners to destroy them both by public attack, was a figure of the second post-war period. Melisande Mayo was a casualty as familiar and distinctive to the group in the Rectory as any gang of mods and rockers out for a bash and the fact did not make her any easier to have about the house.

She stood just inside the room, forcing Amanda to step round her. She was obviously desperately unhappy but was enjoying a change of torment and revelling in the general unease.

Mayo looked at her as though she had not said anything at all.

‘I'm taking the Jag,' he said. ‘I want to hurry.'

‘I'm driving,' she persisted, the silly, obstinate smile still on her good-looking face. ‘I'm your chauffeur-secretary, I believe? The accountant thinks so!'

‘No.' In his own way he was as out of touch with reality as she was. ‘I want to go alone.'

‘Of course you do! It's tonight you're going, isn't it? I knew it as soon as I saw you putting something in Martin's gin. . . .'

As he started and swung round on her in fury a little excited laugh escaped her.

‘I did. I came into the bar and I saw you. That's why I came up with him.' She smiled round at the company, apparently inviting applause. ‘I thought the poor boy should have someone to look after him.'

The remark fell flat. Nobody spoke. Mayo behaved like everybody else. He looked embarrassed but not any more than Luke; each man was inclined to stare woodenly in front of him.

Melisande Mayo was still carrying her tortured gloves and now she went so far as to slap the back of a chair with them.

‘You don't consider what it will be like for me and the girls,' she said accusingly. ‘We shall be pariahs. I suppose you are counting on us staying put until you care to send for us. You're making a great mistake. I shan't follow you through any iron curtain, my lad.'

She knew at once that she had gone too far and her laugh was for the first time nervous rather than delighted. ‘Well, I shan't,' she said, but the fire had gone out of her and he began to walk towards her.

‘You're raving,' he said mildly and the accusation was so reasonable in the circumstances that they could hardly help agreeing with him. ‘I must go. I've got a lot of work to do tonight.'

‘I shall drive you then.' She was still standing between him and the door, daring him to move her by force in their presence, and he took the wind out of her sails by capitulating.

‘Very well, you drive me,' he said. ‘But one of these days you'll get me shot. You're living in cloud-cuckoo land.' There was no anger in his attitude towards her. He was resigned, and on the whole patient, like a man with a very old illness. ‘I must have a word with Arnold. Then we'll go.'

He stepped past her and called the barman's name down the hall. The response was suspiciously immediate and they went off together at once and stood at the top of the front steps just out of earshot.

Left with her unwilling audience Melisande Mayo regained her terrifying self possession. She gave them a sick little smile but the glitter of uncertainty still flickered over her.

‘I'd better go after him before he cooks up something else with that poor little man,' she said. ‘He doesn't care in the least if he gets him sacked. It's absolutely nothing to Paggen who gets hurt so long as his work is appreciated. That's the trouble between him and Martin. Professor Tabard understands Martin and appreciates him, but he can't be bothered with Paggen and Paggen simply can't make himself clear to the old man. He has to rely on Martin now. That's what makes the poor man so insanely jealous. Martin doesn't even notice it. It's pathetic, isn't it? Well, goodbye. It's been awfully nice to meet you, Lady Amanda.' The final remark was accompanied by the shy ghost of a pleasant smile, and Amanda seized the moment of blessed formality and offered her hand.

‘Goodbye, Mrs Mayo. I'll see you to the car.'

Luke moved over to the window and watched them go.

‘There she is, in the driving seat,' he said. ‘She's got her own way. What a performance! She's going to make him notice her if she kills him.'

‘She will, if she's going to say really dangerous things like that about him before every stranger.' Mr Campion was still shaken. ‘I suppose he
is
all right, Charles? He hadn't seen those things before, had he? I mean, I take it we haven't just taken part in the greatest danger of our joint careers?'

‘Oh no, my boy. That was just her mischief.' The Canon was confident. ‘Martin was telling me about him last time he came up to see me. Mayo is a most distinguished man and I was so glad to meet him. He's just the person to deal with those dreadful little machines. I really felt he was Heaven-sent. Martin has an enormous admiration for Paggen Mayo and he said he would trust him with his life.'

‘Which he appears to have done tonight unless he's stalling,' muttered Luke, glancing at Campion with sudden misgiving. ‘No,' he went on presently, answering himself, ‘the Canon is right. He's a Government Number One, and he'll have been vetted by Security pretty well once a month as routine. Besides, as you said yourself, we'd only got to be good boys and turn those things in and he'd get them anyway. I think the lady is probably right about his jealousy of Martin. That could account for all this, you know. It's mad but they live mad lives.'

Mr Campion considered the suggestion.

‘It went through my mind that the whole thing might be an attempt to undermine Martin's prestige,' he admitted. ‘It was the only thing that made any sense—“attempted suicide: not suitable for responsibility: only valuable if in a subordinate position under Mayo”. That sort of thing.'

‘Martin believes that man has a very difficult time,' Avril observed, ignoring the last part of the conversation. ‘Obviously he has a most uncomfortable marriage. When one is as clever as that I suppose one has no time to live. He certainly has none for her, poor woman.'

He noticed the card which was still in his hand and put it on the shelf. The sight of it waiting there appeared to turn over a fresh page in his mind and he stood looking at the pasteboard with dawning misgiving.

‘Of course, I could have insisted that we woke Edward and that the boy gave his treasures to Mr Mayo himself,' he said at last. ‘How extraordinary of me not to do that.' He turned to his nephew. ‘What am I to say to the child?'

‘Say you acted for the best, sir.' Luke was trying to be comforting and was surprised by the sudden startled look in the intelligent old eyes.

‘My goodness, I hope so!' said Avril. ‘But there's no guarantee, you know. And no escape from the consequences even if I did.'

IT WAS AFTER
midnight when Mr Campion let himself out of the rectory and stepped into a well-lit but deserted city whose polished streets shone like skating rinks and whose tall, stucco houses were quiet and dark.

He noticed the white cat as he approached the steep drive leading down out of the square and recollected that Luke had mentioned it earlier. It was the kind of cat he liked because of its long front legs and high cheekbones, but he noticed the single smudge of tabby on the end of its tail which belied its air of breeding. It eyed him contemptuously as he came up with it and jumped up on to the balustrade as he passed. He gave it no great thought.

He was about to attend to his own homework. At the moment his link with Security was personal rather than professional. Once upon a time he had done a great deal of work for that curious Alice-in-Wonderland body which is purely civilian and contrives to have no specific master, no powers, and no means of defending itself save by adroit evasion, but which exists to protect the Realm within the Realm for just those precise periods when it can be shown to be in danger and for not one instant longer.

Mr Campion knew L. C. Corkran, the Director of the day, rather better than a brother since they had spent a war together, and that morning, after the incident at the railway station, he had been taken back on the strength in a temporary, unpaid and senior capacity. As he strode through the deserted streets he regretted his lost illusions. He was truly sorry he was not seeking some colourful contact lurking, perhaps, in a cabman's shelter, or, better still, conducting some unlikely bureau in a cupboard half-way down the emergency staircase of an underground station. As it was, he was merely looking for that safest of all telephone lines, the one belonging to a public call box one has never used before and never intends using again.

All the evening he had been trying not to think too much about the possible consequences of the extraordinary development the children had brought in. The one conclusion he had permitted himself was that so far as one could see, it was now only a discovery and hardly a working invention, but, as he had tried to suggest to Luke, the inventions would certainly come later. All that had been proved so far was that thought could be transferred from one mind to another sometimes, and that the process could be mechanically assisted, at least as far as reception was concerned. The transmitting end was still very dark. In the wrong hands . . . ? He was off again, the thoughts racing. Which were the right hands, which the wrong hands? Scientific hands? Business hands? Government hands? Foreign hands? Kind but stupid hands?

He took a deep breath, dismissed the question from his mind and hurried on. Meantime he was glad to feel ordinary precautions were still important.

He crossed Portminster Row and walked out of one postal district into the next. It took him a little time but presently he found what he wanted. This was a single kiosk in a cul-de-sac at the back of a department store. It was well lit and there was only one approach to it.

He rang a Hampstead number which he had memorised that morning and was answered immediately by a rather prissy woman's voice, a little severe but very intelligent.