The Mind Readers (18 page)

He was sitting in the Rectory parlour kicking his heels until Mr Campion, who had been summoned by his own Director from the Deputy Commander's office, should arrive to pick up the car and take them both to the island. Luke had come on ahead to report to Amanda and had found the old house sad with the empty untidiness of a deserted nest now that the Ferrises had gone. He had told her about Edward's visit to the Yard and she had taken it very well.

‘He's a funny child,' she said. ‘Very like his father. I felt he knew a great deal about the amplifiers that he wasn't telling us simply because he felt we might not be able to follow him.'

Luke grunted. ‘They're rum things. Sydney didn't believe in them because he didn't want to and I don't know if I do. Gawd! What aspect of modern life couldn't they alter and upset? What's the odds on the whole idea being suppressed?'

She shook her tawny head. ‘Not a hope. Once a key has been found and recognised in science it's like taking the Queen's shilling; the experience is on. This will take a tremendous time, though, and could only make fearful trouble if it gets off on the wrong foot. What about Mayo? Do you agree with the Deputy Commander? Has he defected?'

‘God knows!' He was fidgeting, clattering with his foot on the worn carpet. ‘If he
isn't
bunking he hasn't been gone very long, has he? That's how these vanishing eggheads always do get away. They just go and no one realises they're not still in the bathroom. What's twenty-four hours' absence, especially after a row with the wife? I can say definitely that he's not in hospital, Turkish bath or hotel under his own name. But we've only been able to establish that much because the Home Office has been after us, bleating like a sheep farm.'

‘I think,' said Amanda, ‘that he's in a physics lab; that's where I'd be.'

‘But he's got one on the island.'

‘It's not his. There'll be another irascible genius in charge there who isn't necessarily on his side. They'll be working for the whole station: plenty of other projects are going on down there beside this E.S.P. job.'

‘I see,' Luke was very interested. ‘So where would he go? He walked out of Robinson's Hotel late last night. He needn't have stayed in London. He could have hopped on a train and gone anywhere.'

‘It would have to be somewhere he knew. Where was he before Godley's?'

The Superintendent felt under his chair and came up with a document case containing the notes he had been given by the Deputy Commander, the fruits of the latest probe.

‘The Post Office,' he said presently. ‘He was with them two and a half years ago. Haven't they got a place in London called Parsley Green? You pass it on the way to the Airport. There's an experimental unit there. I don't know about a laboratory.'

‘I imagine they'd have all he'd need. He could do most of the investigation himself better than anybody. It would only be certain analyses he'd have to have help over; those things take an awful long time. There's a famous chap called Fenn at Parsley Green. An electronics wizard. He'd know Mayo.'

‘Would he help him?'

‘I can't tell you, but he lives in the place so he'd be there at night. There's a flat at the top of the old building. I went there once.'

Luke got up. ‘We'll give him a tinkle,' he began, and paused as he saw her expression. ‘Perhaps not. They're all very aware of each other, aren't they? A real old band of brothers—like college professors! Never mind. I'll get someone to call round and do it discreetly.' He grinned at her. ‘His friend will just think he's wanted for debt!'

He went out to make the call and Amanda remained at the window. The square was empty and the tulip tree in the midst of it was black and forlorn.

On the side table was the collection she had made of Edward's week-end belongings before the latest news had partially reassured her. She had meant to show them to Luke in the hope that his trained eye would pick out some detail to explain the child's behaviour. There was little there apart from pyjamas, slippers and sponge-bag. Experience of the treasure trove which her own son Rupert, now finishing at Harvard, had been in the habit of carrying about with him at that age had taught her to expect something exotic, but here were none of the processed breads and fishpaste laid in against sudden and overwhelming hunger; no device for seeing backwards; no Lion Powder; no hibernating fauna. There was just one small roll of cellulose tape and another of two-inch zinc plaster; a razor blade meticulously packed in a home-made cardboard folder; a box of throat lozenges, sealed; four copies of periodicals (
Punch, Make it Yourself, Exchange
&
Mart
and
The Boy's Technician
); a twist of string, and a tube of lanolin. She sighed and turned to the window again. He was a funny little grig, she reflected, with something about him which she felt she ought to recognise and did not; something dangerous and grown-up. Luke had given her the note on the telegram form and she read it for the tenth time.

‘Why Tuesday?' she demanded, as the Superintendent came back into the room. ‘Why do you think Edward says we shall know on Tuesday?'

‘That's when he goes back to school, isn't it? He doesn't want you to worry. It's his main anxiety. I was thinking; have you got a birthday soon? Is he getting you a present? Something difficult?'

Amanda's eyes turned towards the
Exchange
&
Mart
and widened, but Luke was still talking. ‘Speaking of unlikely items, what is this doing here, do you think? It's new since I arrived an hour ago.' He pulled the door wider to show the hall where, leaning against the faded Morris wallpaper, just inside the front door, a sandwich board had appeared. The webbing harness belonging to it lay on the tiles beside it.

On the board was a printed poster with hand-done additions in colour. Its intention was to be sensational.

The lower third of the sheet contained a drawing of the familiar mushroom cloud, to which a watery flavour had been given by the addition of blue, green and crimson splashes, some of which spelled out the word
‘Hydrogen'
in ragged, liquid letters.

‘It's old Deeds,' Luke said in surprise. ‘Does he often come here?'

‘I don't think so. I've never heard of him—unless he's that man who trudges round the West End. All the hydrogen in the oceans to ignite? What a stinker of an idea. Entirely impractical—I hope.'

‘That's one of the End of the World Society's posters. ‘They're always dreaming up trouble!' The Superintendent glanced round him. ‘There should be a satchel-load of their throwaways somewhere. They're a genuine Society; three old girls and a couple of nutties with an office of a sort in Marylebone Lane.'

‘Good Heavens! Who supports them?'

‘There's a fund, of course: there always is in these cases. As a rule it's a few pounds bequeathed for a specific purpose under a nineteenth-century will. The money is invested by law, brings in next to nothing and the income is spent strictly as per the Departed's instructions, usually entailing a lot of homework for all concerned!'

‘What does this lot do? Publicise the Book of Revelations?'

‘That sort of thing.' He was rubbing his blue chin, trying to remember. ‘They pay Deeds as much as they've got, I think, but he still goes on staggering round the Town whether he gets any money or not. He doesn't beg but I imagine people give him a little. The Society supplies the posters but he may touch them up himself, I don't know. What would he be doing here?'

‘Ah, Charles. I thought I heard your voice.' The words came from behind them as Avril put his head out of the study door. ‘Any sign of the boy yet?'

‘He is known to be still in London, sir. He was seen and was all right this afternoon, but he's not home yet.'

‘I see. We must wait. Could you both come into the study a minute? I have a Mr Deeds with me. Albert appears to have sent him. . . .'

‘Campion? But I've only just left him.'

‘Yes, I think they met this morning, in the street before Mr Deeds started work. He spoke to Albert about a problem he has and it was suggested, then, that he should drop in to see me on his way home. Unfortunately I don't know if his difficulty is in your province or mine.'

It was an unexpected remark, for the old Canon was usually very sure indeed where his own boundaries lay. However, when they saw his visitor the problem became apparent.

‘Good' Deeds was a gaunt man, made to look even taller by the monk's habit and cowl which he wore like a brown duffel-coat over a shabby blue suit. His shirt collar was frayed but formal and his tie, which had once belonged to a member of a long defunct Anglo-Indian yachting club, was a colourful example of a very specialised type of design. He had pushed back his hood, and his head, extremely small for his height, showed grey and closely cropped. He had a pallid face which was made remarkable, firstly by an expression of almost stupefying arrogance, and then by the fact, which did not register upon one immediately but provided a shock after the first few seconds, that his spectacles of black plastic were frames only, and had no glass in them.

He was standing on the rug, tapping his foot with theatrical impatience at the delay caused by their arrival, and reminded everyone irresistably of the strangely self-righteous way in which some people feel they must return an unsatisfactory purchase to a shop.

The old Canon appeared extraordinarily interested. ‘It's the Biblical references,' he explained. ‘After years of accuracy, Mr Deeds here is beginning to think he is sometimes wrong. . . .'

‘That's what
you
say!' said the visitor with vast superiority. He had a harsh, hollow voice, a nondescript accent and nothing but contempt behind his smile, and yet he was piteous rather than absurd.

‘No, no. My dear fellow,' Avril was gently firm. ‘You and I have just looked it all up and discovered that both the present references on your board out in the hall are quite correct.
Revelations, Chapter fourteen, verse eight
gives us
“Babylon is fallen”
and Chapter
twenty one, verse one
in the same book gives us the poetic prophecy concerning the ending of the seas. . . .'

‘I admit that.' The End of the World Man shrugged his shoulders as if he were well aware of some trick which Avril was preparing to play upon him, and Luke, who was jingling the coins in his pockets, decided to interfere. He was tired and preoccupied, and the pattern of mental behaviour presented so vividly was depressingly well-known to him.

‘Sometimes the numbers change mysteriously, I suppose?' he began. ‘On your board or in the Bible?'

‘If you were not one of the Lost, Mr Luke—I know who you are, you see, and I shall write it down—you'd know that nothing ever changes in the Bible. Some of us know why.'

‘Blimey! We all know why. Because of the seven vials and the seven plagues and the seven whatnots, as set down on the last half-dozen pages of the Good Book!' The Superintendent's psychiatric treatment, if rough and ready, had a salutary effect. Mr Deeds turned away from him and a brief intelligence appeared in his wide blank eyes.

‘But surely you can see it's a crime?' he said with exaggerated patience, listening to himself speak. ‘I'm being tricked into “Adding unto the Word” so that I may be Flung into the Pit. I'm Labouring to Save and this is my reward—the Sores and the Rivers of Blood.'

‘Oh, I see now!' The old Canon seemed relieved that the trouble was no worse. ‘It's the curse at the end of the prophecy which is worrying you so?'

‘Naturally.' A sad smile of intellectual superiority settled on the tragically stupid face. ‘“If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the Plagues.” It's all there. Written down in letters of red and black.'

‘Oh, come off it for goodness sake, Deeds!' Luke exploded, suddenly embarrassed. ‘This is the man who can put you straight, see? He knows what's the Word and what isn't. That's his job. Those old numbers of chapters and verses, they're not in the Greek, are they, sir? You can set his mind at rest about that, can't you? They're just extras put in by the priests or the printers or someone to make it easy in the translation. That's right, isn't it?'

The End of the World Man perceived the escape route with visible relief. The Canon had no need to speak. A shadow in the blank face cleared at once and immediately he became condescending again, eyeing the proffered easement with capricious suspicion like a spoiled dog sniffing a sweet. Presently he saw another advantage.

‘They don't know that, do they?' he enquired almost brightly. ‘They're doing their best to destroy me and they fail and they don't know why! It's a crime all the same. If you do your duty you'll march them away.'

‘I should say so! Down to the nethermost Hell of Bow Street! No one is altering your board, Deeds. You imagine it.'

The Canon intervened: ‘We were discussing that very point just before you came in, Charles, and it's odd. You told me, didn't you, Mr Deeds, you're convinced that sometimes the reference
“Revelations twenty-one, verse one”
becomes
“Revelations six verses one to seven”
? I must say I found that very extraordinary.'

Luke stared at him. He was not quite so sharply on the ball as usual and turned to Deeds with weary kindliness.

‘You shouldn't come and tell me wonders when I'm having a bucket of them from the scientists,' he murmured. ‘Do the numbers change before your eyes? No? Well then, who complains?'