The Mind Readers (15 page)

‘Could Sam have picked up anything while he was there?'

‘No. How could he? There was nothing in this class on the island. I must get down to Paggen right away and see what's cooking. It sounds as if we're on the point of breakthrough.'

‘Before you go I want to ask you something,' said Amanda. ‘When you woke up in the van and saw Mrs Mayo you said you felt a sudden surge of dismay because you thought she'd gone round the bend at last. Did you do anything about it? I mean did you try to tell someone?'

He stared at her. ‘No,' he said. ‘No, I didn't. But I can guess what you're getting at; I had a small emotional explosion—a sort of spark. Very slight really, but this whole thing seems to run on very low power of whatever kind it is. Why? Did someone here pick it up? On one of the new devices?'

So it was a commonplace already! Mr Campion shivered. Scientists terrified him most by the ease with which they accepted their own wonders once they were in existence. As soon as they were factual they seemed to treat them like old bicycles. The power of the things did not seem to interest them, and they were able to look at truth in the nude, however new and disconcerting, with the dispassionate interest of medicos.

‘Uncle Hubert picked up a whatd'yacallit—a signal—from you,' he said. ‘He had put on one of the amplifiers, concentrated on his prayers to counteract the mental hullabaloo, exhausted himself and fallen asleep. He awoke with the strong impression that you had been suddenly shocked and dismayed about something. That's all in order, is it?'

‘Utterly. It's a typical good result. Tabard will accept the Canon as a witness, too, which is terrific. These things of yours sound better and better the more I hear of them. We'll have to check the times. Don't be astonished if they seem a little hay-wire. In our experience one often gets a message a few minutes before it's sent.'

‘Which shakes me,' said Amanda dryly. ‘What's the juice?'

‘That's just it. We keep coming back to this spark or overspill. If it's not electrical, what is it?'

Mr Campion hesitated. ‘Old Uncle Freud had a rather famous theory when my papa was young about a latent pool of creative energy which got depleted and filled up again. It could, I suppose, slop over,' he remarked. ‘“Creative” would seem to be the operative word. I understood it was the kind of life force one needs to lift oneself up by the boot-straps out of some fearful moral abyss, and it seems to be squeezed out of the emotional structure pretty mysteriously. The explanation of the power could be as easy or as difficult as that, I suppose?'

‘Oh, that would be outside our orbit,' the young man said somewhat alarmingly. ‘You'd have to go to Tabard with that query. He's the great man—human as well. Old Paggen just wants something in a battery and he wants it quick. Gosh! I must get hold of him!'

Another consideration occurred to him and he frowned. ‘They've got to have been made by somebody, haven't they? I guess I'd better talk to those brats before I do anything else.'

‘Oh, not Sam! Please, not Sam.' Helena was so very frightened. The headmaster's letter crackled in her hand. ‘Can't he be left alone? Just for a little while? Just till he settles?'

‘Edward is the elder and quite responsible,' Amanda ventured to intervene. ‘Let's have him up first, shall we?'

As well as the extensions to the outside line, the Rectory possessed an old-fashioned house telephone with an instrument on the bedroom wall. She turned the handle and was answered by Avril himself who had been walking through the hall downstairs. When she hung up she turned to her husband.

‘Edward is next door. He's gone into Miss Warburton's to get some money for Uncle Hubert. He'll send him up the moment he comes in.'

Martin looked at Helena.

‘I guess I'll just have to go down and have a word with Sam,' he was beginning when an incoming call on the outside line put every other thought out of their minds.

Mr Campion, who was nearest the instrument, took the message and Luke's vibrating boom was audible to them all.

‘Campion? That chap Mayo. . . . Have you got him there?'

‘No, of course not. Why? Oh Lord! Well look: he ditched his wife at Robinson's Hotel, Piccadilly, just after they left us. She spent the night there and the car was garaged there. That's checked. This morning she rang me here and asked for me by name. She wanted to know if I could find out what had happened to him “unofficially”! There was none of the hysterical nonsense of last night and I sent a chap round to see her. He says she's frightened and is being most careful not to make any of the wild suggestions we heard before, but he thinks that's what she's afraid of. He didn't pause in the hotel at all last night, just walked straight through it. You know how you can? In at the Roding Street entrance—out at the Winton Street one.'

‘I think it's just wife trouble, Charles.' Mr Campion sounded hopeful.

‘But that's only half the story.' Luke's effort to speak quietly made him even more distinct to those standing round. ‘I've checked the island. He didn't go back. He has two clubs and hasn't been seen in either. He has a sister in Paddington, she hasn't heard of him. He has a girl friend and he wasn't there. I've been as discreet as I can with Mrs Mayo's assistance, but I've had a good look round and in my opinion he's gone. He had those things on him, remember. Anyway, I thought I'd better let you know I'm reporting it to the Special Branch right away. Yes, well, there you are! Better safe than sorry! You'll come down will you? Bring young Ferris.'

WHEN AMANDA CAME
into the church, looking for the Canon, the elegant Georgian interior was misty with London sun. It shone in, high under the pale blue ceiling with the gold stars, and made dusty shafts of yellow light across the dark mahogany arch behind the altar. Saturday morning chores were being done. Miss Warburton, with a black woollen skiing cap perched on her thin hair like a biretta, was making sure that the parishioner who did the flowers had not been a ‘silly girl and forgotten the water', while old Talisman fiddled with the cords which controlled the transom over the north door in his weekly attempt to cure its chronic rattle.

Avril was in the vestry, standing before the smallest gas fire in the world, looking thoughtfully at the walls. He was not permitted to help with the church but they liked him to be there on call, and the enforced wait before he did his part and walked round admiring the industry of others was one of his penances.

Amanda stood in the curtained doorway, a worried brown woman in a loose chestnut-coloured coat, and he turned and saw her.

‘Is Edward back yet?'

‘No, but don't worry. I'm not really alarmed. It's only that it was so unlike him to slide off and not to mention where he was going. There's plenty of time still and, after all, he is on guard after yesterday. They say that sort of attempt couldn't possibly happen again. . . .' The disjointed remarks, each counteracting the last, were very unlike her.

The Canon hunched his shoulders: he was most unhappy.

‘When I told him what I'd done he looked at me as if I'd suddenly tripped him up . . . amazed,' he observed wretchedly. ‘After that he seemed to take it very well. I know he said something about Tuesday. It would all be over by Tuesday anyhow—something like that. He didn't want to discuss it and I was in no position to press him.'

‘Did he refuse to tell you anything about it?'

‘Not exactly. He said: “You've given them to an expert and he'll be able to explain them to you, won't he?” I'd given him Mayo's card, you see.'

‘Could he have decided to go down there?'

‘I don't think so.' The old priest was trying to remember, hindered all the time by his sense of guilt and shortcoming. ‘My impression was that he thought very little about Mayo, or of him come to that. He talked about other things for a while and I imagined he'd dismissed the whole matter as unfortunate but finished with, when he asked me for money.'

Amanda was surprised. ‘I thought he had some money. There was a letter from his mother waiting for him here and she usually encloses something.'

‘I did wonder if he was trying to punish me,' Avril said mildly. ‘He knows I don't like asking Dot for advances. . . .'

‘Oh Canon, how can you?' Miss Warburton herself had appeared in the doorway; bright, kind, and with her nice flat heels firmly on the earth which she seemed so determined that Avril should be meek enough to inherit.

‘I gave him the two pounds ten you promised him and I haven't grumbled at you at all, although it is really time you bought some under . . . oh well, never mind. Edward has the money he wanted and can go and buy his little friends their presents. He'll be home as soon as the shops shut, which they all do at one o'clock today. He's a sensible boy and older than he looks.
I'm
not worried about him.'

Amanda accepted the reproach. ‘It's only that I wish he'd told me he was going out. He's usually so thoughtful. He was buying something for somebody else, was he?'

‘Yes, I think he said someone had given him a guinea and he must do some shopping or “they”—I'm sure he said “they” and not “he”—would be disappointed. What does Albert say?'

‘I haven't told Albert or Martin yet that Edward isn't still at your cottage. They both wanted to talk to him but they're both fully occupied at the moment. Some excitement has blown up because Paggen Mayo seems to have gone off somewhere last night. Martin has been sent to discover if he can persuade Mrs Mayo not to say anything utterly damaging should the Press try to work up a story, and Albert has had to rush down to see someone called L. C. Corkran, whom he knew in the last war.'

‘Edward will be back when the shops shut,' Miss Warburton repeated. ‘I'm burning with curiosity. What are the things the Canon has taken from Edward and given to an expert? Are they important?'

‘Not very—at the moment,' Amanda spoke hastily but Miss Warburton had heard that tone before.

‘Ah, as you're all so scientific and experimental perhaps what I should have asked is what are their potentials?' she enquired archly.

Avril laughed abruptly. ‘Potentially they could be Dot's delight. . . . Popular Pocket Omniscience. You'd love them!'

‘Oh, what a wicked idea!' She was shocked and huffed. ‘You shouldn't say such things; especially in the church, surely?'

‘Wicked?' Avril pounced on the word, all his fears returning. ‘That dreadful old question. Can Advance be wicked? Oh my dear girls, I do wonder if I have done right or wrong!'

Miss Warburton took his arm. ‘You come along and see the flowers,' she said, ‘and tell Talisman not to be such a
cackhand
with that transom. He'll take it from you.'

Avril went with her obediently but turned to Amanda as he passed. ‘Sam,' he said. ‘You go over. I'll follow you.'

Amanda went back to the rectory and, walking round to the eastern side, took the area steps down to the basement. The kitchen door was unlatched and she stepped in to find Sam sitting at the solid centre table with the blue linoleum top. He was wrapped in a blanket as if he were ill, his yellow hair was on end, and his face was red. He was sorting buttons, taking them out of a nine-inch cube biscuit tin and arranging them in little heaps of the same size and pattern. He was concentrating with weary difficulty and a dogged endurance which was almost too good to be true. Helena was sitting opposite him, her face dark and her eyes very grim under straight brows.

‘Come along, darling,' she was saying briskly. ‘Now the black ones. Keep your mind on it, Sweetie. Don't be silly. Come along.' As Amanda's shadow fell over the threshold she glanced up and met her eyes warningly. ‘Not now,' she said. There was no compromise whatsoever, no pleading. The message was curt and unmistakable. Amanda stood her ground and they remained looking at one another.

Amanda said: ‘Edward's gone. I've got to hear all Sam knows.'

Helena got up, pushing her chair back with a rattle on the composite floor.

‘Not now and not here, darling.' She swept round the table, slid her arm through the newcomer's and took her to the inner door. The force she emitted was enormous. Her entire sum of nervous energy was concentrated in the effort. ‘Hurry up, Sam. I shan't be a moment. Just keep your mind on the job. I'll be back in a minute to see what you've done.'

She piloted Amanda through the doorway, up the single flight of stairs and through the old red baize door, which divided the service part of the house from the back hall where Mr Campion and Luke had talked the night before.

‘You go in there to Sam over my dead body,' she said.

Amanda stared at her in polite astonishment which turned slowly to consternation.

‘What's happened to him?'

‘I . . . I don't know. I mean I think it's going to be all right. It's only that . . . oh God, Amanda, I'm so frightened! He's not thinking properly. He seems to have forgotten how to use his head.'

The older woman put an arm round her and drew her down upon the stairs. ‘Sit here a minute. He's missing the iggy-tube, is he?'

Helena dabbed her eyes with a ball of handkerchief. ‘He's hopeless without it. I found it out this morning. He came in to the bedroom, gave me the headmaster's letter and went down to find Edward. When I'd read the dreadful thing I went after him and I took him out of the parlour where Edward was and talked to him in the study. He was quite awful . . . lost and bored and irritable and sort of blah . . . do you know? He wasn't thinking
at all
! I left him with Mary Talisman while I did what I could with Martin who was still pretty ill.'