The Mind Readers (25 page)

‘Really? The Main Importers? The people who tried to collect the two little things at the railway station?'

‘Yes. Elsie had to laugh, she was so annoyed!'

‘You do surprise me. I thought from what Syd told me that they weren't interested any more.'

‘If you ask me they're always interested,' Dearest said dryly. ‘They're like the poor, always with us. We don't know how the teashop man got the toys yet, but of course Syd is on to it and I expect your friend Charley and his lot will want to know the answer to that one, in view of the . . . er . . .'

‘Trouble with the sack,' he said easily. ‘Oh, well then, you girls have had a good day. I hope the toys were intact when you got them?'

‘Actually no. Both were damaged or looked like it, but apparently it doesn't matter. It's the idea which is so good.'

‘How interesting. Where are they now?'

‘Elsie has them but they're to go straight to the manufacturers, our head office says. They want to get some more made quickly because of the expected demand.'

Mr Campion's heart sank. He had known that once the amplifiers reached official government hands they would pass automatically to Godley's and thence to Lord Ludor, but he had no power to prevent it, nor reason why he should attempt to.

‘Oh well, if I hang around I may see something of them?' he ventured.

‘You could,' she said slowly, ‘but we rather hoped you were coming home. . . .'

‘Why?' It was difficult to keep his tone casual.

‘Actually, Mephy, because of Auntie's pet.' Dearest was a smooth player and her remark was as brittle as if she really were speaking of someone else's lost budgerigar. ‘It's the Big Boss of the electrical shop who wants to catch that little bird to hear it sing. He knows he has the smaller of the pair safe in his own aviary but it's still in the nest and he doesn't want to upset the parents. Now that he's lost his own bird man he thinks that Auntie's pet will lead him directly to the real handler. He's finding out by listening in. He's a very domineering man and quite alarmed Elsie, which isn't
like
her, so perhaps, Mephy . . .'

There was an abrupt noise on the line and then nothing. Mr Campion found himself alone in the darkness with the sound of the sea in his ears. As he rose to his feet from the step Mr Knapp materialised from the black shadows of the other sheds.

‘You can shout “Dearest” into that mouthpiece until you're black in the face, my lad,' he said cheerfully. ‘She won't hear you. Someone's give the line a yank and broke it I expect. That's nothing new. If it's not a blasted cow grazin', it's a busybody. Come in and sit down by the ole fire and let's have a chin-wag. You can't do nothin' more tonight to please her, 'ooever she is.'

A suspicion assailed Mr Campion.

‘Thos,' he said sternly. ‘You cut that line.'

‘Only in your express interest. Son.' Mr Knapp was unabashed. ‘Your conversation didn't mean nothink to me except that I shouldn't 'ave thought you'd waste your time on such a yappy Judy, but someone was listening out on the marsh. I spotted them about 'arf time. There was someone there. I could 'ear the breaving distinctly, as soon as I cut in.'

IT WAS DAWN
before the visitor set off back across the island and by then Mr Knapp, so he said, had had the time of his life. Mr Campion was glad to hear it for he had certainly relived most of the entire saga.

During his recital Thos had cooked tea and bacon and kept an informed eye on Feeoh's work while that amiable youth, for all that he looked like the Woodwose, had shown himself at home with some remarkable machinery.

For a while a trace of reticence remained between the reunited friends, since Mr Knapp had recollected with astonishment that he and his dear old mate, Bert, had usually operated on opposite sides of the fence in the rose-hung gardens of the past. However, as the hours rolled by, he let it pass. Mr Campion had noticed before that elderly people sometimes seem almost frantic to get rid of themselves as if they were terrified of Death overtaking them with, so to speak, the goods on them. Thus he sympathised with Thos, who hardly gave himself time to breathe. There was no need to dig for information. All the visitor had to do was to keep awake and sort it.

Before midnight Feeoh received the news that the Advance Wires team was safely installed in its Paris headquarters which were, Mr Campion gathered, a small ‘bistro' and garage owned by a relative of the Spark's and situated almost underneath a much more respectable subsidiary of Godley's, who had no idea of their presence.

Thereafter, half-hourly bulletins arrived from them and were relayed to London by Feeoh, who worked alone in a fastness called ‘the Doings' which the guest was only permitted to glimpse. In the intervals, both men were anxious to oblige and, while Mr Knapp concentrated on food and anecdote, his assistant sieved the ether for anything of general interest. At first he was not very successful but in the end he produced some very informative blanks.

Mr Campion learned that there was still no general call out for a missing child; that the news of Paggen Mayo's disappearance, let alone his death, had not broken; and that there was no mention on any police radio or press news flash of the arrest of the owner of a teashop off Wigmore Street.

Meanwhile, the Advance Wires team at work emerged to the observer as something between a rush of press photographers hunting a celebrated divorcée and a united family of tree-monkeys. They reported that the Rubari apartment was conveniently situated as to ‘rooftop cover' and was a ‘cush, window-wise', but that everybody in it was snoring his head off and any real results must wait for the morning.

While it was still dark, Feeoh brought a flash into Thos who read it and looked up, a gleam in his wicked red-rimmed eyes.

‘There's some bogies here interested in something what started out from London in a car and finished up in a lorry outside Saltbridge in the Midlands,' he announced. ‘I don't know if that interests you, Bert? But it looks as though your lady friend has been workin', bless her little heart! Don't worry old boy, it was me, not Feeoh, who chaperoned your conversation with her. I've only told 'im wot to look out for. Beat it, Feeoh, it's getting near the next bleep from the boys.'

Mr Campion took the slip without a flicker on his pale face.

It was a priority call from the Saltbridge police asking for information from anybody who saw the transfer of a heavy object from a grey-green, old model open sports car, one of whose letters of identification was a ‘Y', to an empty Baker-Arnold lorry with a black plastic curtain hanging loose over the open back, Registration GTZ 4678. The change was thought to have occurred outside the Green Man Café, Morton, Middlesex, at approximately six-twenty a.m. the previous morning. Witnesses were asked to call either the north London or Saltbridge police.

Thos was inclined to take a proprietorial pride in the speed of the manoeuvre. ‘In the last few years we've took wings!' he said modestly. ‘You've only got to think of your own work tonight. You made one of your smarty guesses and passed it on to your secretary bird. I suppose that's what she is?'

He made it a question but did not make an issue of getting an answer, patting himself on the back instead. ‘I've grown acute,' he observed and went on with his pronouncement. ‘She got on the blower to the rozzers and immediately all the modern equipment come into play. We couldn't have hoped for that when I first met you. Before you've had time to settle your grub, here it is acted upon. What was in this 'ere sack of waste? Don't tell me if it's personal.'

‘It depends how personal one can get,' murmured Mr Campion fatuously and the wizened old man sucked a tooth at him.

‘A corp, eh?' he said. ‘
A heavy objec
'! I ask you, isn't that the rozzers all over? ‘Oo would tell 'em if they knoo? Well, thank you very much, but I'm not interested! I keep my nose very clean these days.'

Ever a man of taste, Mr Campion forbore to comment and Thos continued unchecked.

‘As soon as there's anyone awake in the Rubari flat we're to look out for calls, particularly from the Smoke. The Rubari youngster is expected to get a signal from another kid who'll be working with adults somewhere in London. Any reference to it whatsoever is to be noted and reported forthwith, top priority. It's the same old story. Each noo step forwards has its generation of born technicians delivered with it. Along comes the idea, up comes the personnel, know-how built in. That's Nature. I've seen it time and again. Myself, I'm a Whisker man at heart. The Spark, he's born Toobs. Feeoh is a right Transistor type and we've got a youngster with a hooter for Light. Now something else is coming. We've got no dope on it at all yet and the trouble is that we don't know what to look for. It's not sound, it's not vision, it's not frequency even. There's no juice, or anyway, no batteries.' He lowered his voice. ‘By what the Spark picked up from one of the Perfesser's young men—the centre of this island is stiff with number nine hats y'know—you get on better if you don't
think
too hard, either, so I can understand kids being important in it. You want a very fresh mind to understand a very fresh thing. I mean to say,' he added reasonably, ‘to you and me a caper like this is liable to look like a pack of damn-all if we're not very careful. And then where are we? On the “Obsolete” tray!'

Mr Campion rose and sighed. ‘At any rate Lord Ludor doesn't seem to have the boy, yet.'

Thos eyed him thoughtfully. ‘That's where you come in, is it? I was wondering. You're playin' the ole guardian angel, are you?
And
not for the first time!'

‘I'm no angel and I'm not playing,' said Mr. Campion dryly. ‘Apart from that you're horribly on target. Now I must go back to the Ferrises.'

‘Not yet! I haven't touched on me war years yet. Did I ever tell you about Phyl the Looter's band . . . ?'

Mr Campion escaped at last and got out into the unearthly light of morning.

The narrow road ran along the top of the sea wall like a strand of seaweed across an immense oyster-shell. The mud was mother-of-pearl, bare and wet and cream and pink and grey with dark edges and ridges. The cold air, heady with sea-smells, forced itself into lungs and eyes. The sky and earth were too alike to be distinguishable and, in the void, there were shapes and wings like the beginning of the world.

He drove a little way and stopped to look around him. In all his life he had never discovered any other sight anywhere which could give him the same sense of loneliness and unhindered clarity. The reek of Thos Knapp's friendly fustiness of mind slid away from him like the memory of a sleazy couch, as he climbed out slowly and stood back from the main history and looked at it.

Two designs were sharply differentiated. First there was the main sweeping curve of the breakthrough, bursting out and up in a mighty new shaft of growth. What would happen to it?

If it could be thwarted, suppressed outright for a time, or curbed and cut down to fit small uses, in whose hands would the fresh powers lie? And to what purpose?

Or if it grew too fast, escaped control and shot up, breaking through the smoked-glass dome, letting in the ruthless light where there had always been shadow and secret ways, what would the result be then? Could idle thoughts, blown up like sound, sweep over mankind in a madness until the world died raving? What kind of young mentalities must harness such a force, what sort of new moralists brave it? He turned away from a problem to which he rather fancied old Thos had already given the only answer. Doubtless now, as in the past, the story would be the same. With the equipment would come the personnel. For his part, he sincerely hoped so.

His own preoccupying pattern was more immediate. He knew now who had killed Paggen Mayo, delivering the vicious Unarmed Combat chop to the throat with the side of the hand, a blow with which an expert can split a block of wood. Anyone, he felt, who had followed events as he had done, must know the man's identity and yet, now that he came to it, he found he knew less than nothing, because he did not know the man. It was like the children's game: ‘You're It! You're It!
But who are you
?'

He was still a long way from the answer as his car bumped over the uneven road, with the dangerous turf edges where the grey grass grew long, hiding the spot where the path ended and the vertical sides began.

He was thinking of the man, visualising him and trying to understand him when he saw the little green van.

It was so insignificant in the vast silver bowl that he found he had been looking at it for a long time before he recognised what it was. It was parked to one side, two wheels almost over the edge, but there was still no room for the Hawk to pass so that he was forced to stop. As Campion came up slowly he could see Arnold in the driving seat. He was waiting, leaning back in the corner, looking at a newspaper.

As the car came to a halt seven or eight yards from him, the light bathed both vehicles in its curious, obliterating, belittling way so that the two men's significance to each other was somehow lessened. It was too early for sun but the gold was there in promise.

The man in the van raised his eyes and looked for a moment, then he folded his paper, pulled his coat round him and leant forward and opened the right-hand door. He came out very slowly so that Mr Campion had time to see him afresh.

The traditional upper-servant polish was still upon him; worldliness and casual bonhomie enveloped him like a robe. But for the first time Mr Campion could see past them easily. He saw a man of forty-five, compact and essentially powerful, with the sloping shoulders and short neck of the natural fighter. He seemed in good trim if a little taut with his shiny skin damp along the hairline. His eyes, he noticed, had lost all their idle amusement.