The Mind Readers (23 page)

‘Very well . . . once she believed it. Maybe she was a little relieved, too. Campion was very good with her. He's under a considerable strain himself. There's some sort of theory that young Edward might have been involved with Paggen's disappearance. . . . Hell! I didn't mean to tell you that.'

‘Edward!' Her thought turned to Sam at once. ‘He's not . . . ? They haven't found . . . ?'

‘No, no. Nothing like that. Campion is trying to get some more details now. This is him, I'd say.'

The wide beam of headlights had swung across the saltings and instead of turning to the main buildings in the island's centre was already on the circular lane which must lead to where they stood. A ground-mist had risen and the vehicle was proceeding slowly, enveloped up to the windows in curling waves of fine vapour which threatened to make the whole area a single feathery sea. Helena went on speaking of Edward.

‘A strange person,' she said. ‘So grown-up and yet utterly direct, like someone younger even than Sam.'

‘That's the family,' Martin said unexpectedly. ‘You never met his father?'

‘Amanda did and you did. You told me.'

‘Only once, but I never forgot him. He came to John S. Hopkins to give a single lecture when he didn't seem much older than I was. He was extraordinary; descended from Tycho Brahe and probably just like him. To meet him was like being confronted by an advanced model. I don't mean someone just brilliant but someone who was a later type of development. He shook me; he seemed so new; steelclad, streamlined and foolproof!'

The headlights turned and engulfed them, and another pair, moving much more quickly, appeared over the ridge. The second driver knew the ground and had the first to follow, so that the two cars arrived almost simultaneously. Mr Campion's thin figure emerged first, but he turned back and waited as a toot sounded from the little van behind him and Arnold got out. Helena and Martin walked forward to join them.

The barman was not quite his usual bland self. ‘You can say I'm slipping,' he was saying, his waxy face shining baldly in the faint light. ‘I got an urgent order direct from Lord Ludor's secretary and it seems to have put everything else clean out of my bonce. I nipped straight out in the van to do what was asked for and it wasn't until now, when I came back across the Strada and they told me at the post they'd had to turn you back, that I remembered I'd got this for you.' He held out a slip of paper. ‘Telephone message left “await arrival”. It was given me by the switchboard.'

Mr Campion took the slip. It was too dark to read.

‘What does it say?'

‘The Lady Amanda presents her compliments and does not wish to be disturbed. Is that all right, sir?'

‘Perfectly, thank you. When did you say it arrived?'

‘Just before I went out. About an hour ago. Were you already here by then, sir? I am sorry. I am really.'

‘Think nothing of it.' The light voice was so casual that those who knew it best would have been alarmed. ‘Tell me about this flat rule the guard at the post is enforcing. No one at all to be permitted to leave the island tonight. Is it often put on?'

‘I've never known it before, sir. It's Lord Ludor's own idea and he'll have had a word with the military commander, no doubt. It must be on account of Mr Mayo.'

‘You know he's dead?' The words were very sharp and Arnold turned into the light from the car; he was smiling as if amused by an attempt to startle him.

‘I was very sorry to hear it,' he said, glancing towards Martin. ‘I made sure he'd be back, full of fire and fancies.' He hesitated and finally ventured a little further. ‘He was found in the back of a car, I hear. That's right, is it?'

‘How on earth did you get hold of that, Fred?' Helena spoke with innocent astonishment and he shot a thoughtful glance at her.

‘Well, you lot are discreet, I know,' he said at last, lowering his voice. ‘And I've given myself away, haven't I? Frankly, it was told me in the strictest confidence . . . and I've only had one conversation with the outside world which was when the order came through, so it's fairly obvious where it all came from.' He made a depreciating gesture. ‘I'm trusted at head office. It doesn't look as if I deserve it, does it?'

He was very smooth. Helena was satisfied and the others did not speak. He was turning away when an idea appeared to strike him. ‘If I were you, Mr Campion, I'd see if they could do anything for you on Roker's Tail. Goodnight all.'

He raised his hand in salute and slid into his van again. As it raced off through the mist Martin looked at Campion.

‘I wonder when that baby got in last night?'

‘Too early,' said Mr Campion. ‘I couldn't prevail on the post to let me off the island to a telephone but they were decently embarrassed at having to refuse me and came across with a glimpse at the official time sheets. Arnold got back here, laden with stuff from the market, soon after seven-thirty a.m., so he didn't go far out of his way. What was that parting crack about?'

‘Roker's Tail is a spur at the end of the island.' Martin pointed to the northern end of the marsh. ‘There's a devastated area up there where some old huts and workrooms are rented by one of Godley's subsidiary concerns.'

‘Advance Wires?'

‘That's the name. They're an unsavoury gang of Teds or Mods or whatever they're called.'

‘Roker is the local name for skate,' Helena said. ‘And the boys are Tweeters—electrical bods, so Fred told me. They drive extraordinary old vehicles which change colour every time one sees them. No one trusts them.'

‘Ah,' said Mr Campion, regretfully. ‘The address would appear to have my name on it! I go on past the big house, do I, and set my compass by the northern star?'

‘You stick to the path at all costs,' said Helena anxiously, ‘and whatever you do don't try to swim, or worse still walk over any mud to the mainland—'

‘Because wet clay is often quick!' he murmured. ‘ “Born and bred in a brier patch”, sister Helena. I will be more than careful. Expect me later. I appear to be staying the night!'

‘I thought Amanda's message had frightened him,' she said as they watched the car creep off through the mist. ‘It has, hasn't it? What do you think? Edward hasn't come back and she wants the lines kept clear in case he telephones?'

‘It could be that but it sounds to me as if she knows she's under surveillance.'

‘I think so. She's rattled. Mother's a Fitton too and they're a clan with a house language. When they “come their rank” like that it usually means “Family will please take notice of the following because I jolly well mean it”. I think she was telling Albert not to phone for Heaven's sake.'

‘Which is fortunate because he can't, except through the firm's exchange,' Martin said dryly. ‘This curfew of Ludor's is amazingly high-handed. If it's to apply to Campion it must cover everybody. That won't go down with the Great Men!'

As he crept through the ground-mist Mr Campion was thinking much the same thing. It was an alarming drive and it occurred to him that had he been in melodramatic mood he could well have suspected the whole thing to be a trap. The spur of marsh sticking out into the estuary grew quickly more and more narrow until for a quarter of a mile, it became a track upon the stout sea well. Lying hungry on either side was the clucking black mud only a few inches beneath the draining water. When at last the spur widened again he found himself on a little peninsular only some eight or nine acres in area. Ahead of him on a barren plain amid the usual dykes and derelict farm gates was a collection of Nissen huts, still daubed with twenty-five year old camouflage and looking like a herd of prehistoric monsters sleeping in the dark. There were several tallish masts about but no lights and he wondered if the settlement was deserted.

He drove to where the road ended in a concrete circle and got out to investigate. The mist had shifted again and his torch-beam showed sea lavender amid the grass and the empty cigarette cartons of civilization. There was still no sign of life and he was wondering whether to shout when he ran into a linen-prop lifting a line slung between two huts. The two pullovers and a shirt which fell clammily about his shoulders were reassuring inasmuch as they were still very wet. He pressed on quietly and found a door and opened it. The brightness of the light within astonished him. It was set over an inner door and was in a modern fixture. Everything was well painted and very clean.

He tried the handle and found himself peering into a fine, well-fitted clubroom, discreetly lit with shaded hanging lamps and a sumptuous if unlikely ‘coal-type' fire. At the far end was a full-sized snooker table where a young man was knocking the balls about.

‘Hello,' he said. ‘Play you a hundred up?'

Mr Campion made his apologies and explained his mission and the youngster, who was of the hairier kind, charming and extremely masculine once one got used to his ringlets, considered the problem without taking his eyes from the ball he was potting.

‘A London call without going through the Godley exchange? That's a bit difficult. There's nobody about, see? Everybody's out on rush jobs. There's only me and old Pa K. on the whole blessed station. Sorry, I really am.' He sent down the ball, retrieved it and set it up again. ‘Ask Mr K.' he suggested.

‘I'd like to.'

‘He's there.' He jerked his chin towards the dark corner behind the television set and for the first time the visitor became aware of red-rimmed eyes watching him. As he advanced across the composite flooring there was a flurry in the warm shadows and a wizened little man in an old-fashioned flat cap came out, hand outstretched. It was his sniff, and its apparently prehensile organ of origin, which placed him suddenly in the thin man's startled memory.

The avenue of the years rolled back like a dream sequence from a non-profit-making film and the two stood looking at each other, lost in that incredulous dismay with which old colleagues see each other fifteen years older and far less changed than alarmingly over-emphasised by the interval.

‘Bert!' said the old man.

‘Thos!' said Mr Campion, ‘and don't call me Bert. You know I don't like it. What are you doing here, for Heaven's sake?'

Mr Thos T. Knapp was one of Mr Campion's older acquaintances. He cocked a rheumy eye at his visitor, looking even more like a leery ferret than ever in youth. ‘Where else should I be?' he enquired. ‘It's a natural, isn't it? This is me Mecca, Bert boy. I've found it. This is Ome and Dry, this is. You want an outside call. It's not allowed. Especially not tonight. It could be impossible.'

‘I have to have one. Otherwise I have to get off the island without going past the post on the Strada.'

‘That's out!' Mr Knapp put up a thin grey hand. ‘Don't try that. This is black-butter country. I tell you what, though. Come and see my office. I'm the Old Wizard himself here. That's what they call me. You hold your row, Feeoh. You go on playin'. Come on Bert. Through here.'

As he led his bewildered friend through an inner doorway a chuckle of pure delight escaped him.

‘I'd have chosen this,' he said earnestly. ‘If my old Ma had suddenly appeared to me with a fairy wand and three wishes . . .'

‘Heaven forfend!' murmured Mr Campion, who remembered the lady vividly. ‘What a nightmare conceit!'

‘No. Reely. I'd have chosen this.' Thos was not to be discouraged. ‘What a world we're livin' in, eh? Dreams come ruddy true! Sit down a minute, Bert, and I'll make your hair curl. There's things you can tell an old friend. . . .'

AFTER MARVELLING AT
his good fortune for two minutes, it took Mr Campion rather less than five to discover that he had dropped into a morass nearly as fatal as the one outside. In youth Mr Knapp had been something of a liability and in middle age a deplorable if useful little crook, but neither of these phases had prepared his friend for the lonely old man of the sea he had become. He appeared desperate to talk: marooned amid a generation who treated him as something between an oracle and a pet owl, he seized upon the visitor as if he carried the elixir of life.

At any other moment Campion might well have considered him Heaven sent, for there was very little in the whole Ludor empire of which he did not possess at least a limited view, and nothing that he would not tell the hero who reminded him of halycon days. But what Campion needed now most desperately was to know how Amanda fared, if there was news of Edward, and what Dearest could tell him about Luke in Saltbridge.

His host was merciless. It seemed he had some considerable status, and possessed a private office which he delicately proved was his own by displaying an American-type name-plate on the desk, and nothing would stop him giving the history of his firm and explaining how it came to be under the Godley wing. This proved to be much as Campion might have guessed. After the war ended, a demobilised signals sergeant—still referred to as ‘the Spark' and clearly something of a bright one—had joined Mr Knapp in a shop selling electrical parts on the surface but concealing a small business ‘bugging' other people's telephone wires, undercover. In no time at all the newcomer had put the firm on the map, and the moment they spread to noticeable size they were gobbled up by Godley's, who then failed to digest them but found them instead, a dangerous little virus, very difficult to shake off.

Reading between the lines, Mr Campion gathered that Lord Ludor himself considered the concern both entertaining and useful, and Advance Wires Ltd., Prop T. T. Knapp & Partner, traded on the fact, according him an off-hand respect in return for his patronage. Their position on the island was very much in spirit what it was in fact, an arm's-length encampment of skunks, only tolerated by the other inhabitants because of the difficulty and unpleasantness of any attempt to remove it.