The Mind Readers (33 page)

Thos laughed softly. ‘Class,' he said. ‘I like to hear it. I thought I'd pass it on to you and not the Company, though. The kid was getting on the blower to the old girl next door all the time, eh? And she was slipping notes in to the others with the washing. Very deceitful people are nowadays, aren't they? You wouldn't have got Church people behaving like that when I was a nipper.'

Luke sighed. ‘They know about the programme at the Rectory, anyway,' he remarked. ‘They'll all be sitting round the kitchen table looking at the Talismans' set. I wish I was there. I hate this place!'

‘It's the muffle,' said Thos with unexpected sympathy. ‘It weighs on you if you're not used to it. Why don't you stretch your legs outside for a bit?' He was winking at Mr Campion as he made the suggestion, and as soon as they were left alone together he came closer to him with dreadful confiding.

‘What's the form?' he enquired anxiously. ‘I've told the Spark you're the only one to trust. You're an ole friend. Right out of the Supperating Past, I said! . . . Bert will give us the office of works, I told him. And you will, won't you, mate? How bad is it?'

Mr Campion was perfectly genuine in saying that he did not understand him and Thos sat perched on the locker, his incredible nose actually twitching and his red-rimmed eyes anxious.

‘Be a sport,' he said. ‘It'll be “curtains”, will it?'

It took the thin man some seconds to realise that he was being asked if the Ludor Empire was in danger of foundering. Then the spectacle of the original rat getting ready to ‘shoulder its parrot and make for the boats' was too much for him and he began to laugh.

‘No,' he said, ‘of course not. This thing hasn't begun. I should think you've got another fifty years before your divorce investigation service is even touched.'

Thos took this suggestion with unexpected seriousness. ‘My Gawd! It could make a right mess of our Divorce Department,' he said. ‘I think you're right. It'll certainly take a bit of time, which is one comfort.' He nodded towards Lord Ludor. ‘That old Article might get round to stopping it. What do you think?'

Mr Campion did not want to depress him further and so said nothing and he continued to wheedle: ‘I wouldn't blame him and nor would a great many other matchoor people. It's not really a
nice
idea, is it? Private thoughts and all that? I was sorry for that pore little kid who was feeling soft about his horse. Suppose they put it down by law?'

‘I feel certain they will.'

‘Reely?'

Mr Campion put a hand on the thin shoulder; the man actually
had
mouse bones. ‘Be your age, Thos,' he said kindly. ‘Good Heavens, is this
it
?'

As Luke came chasing up from the marsh every monitor in the place, including one in the projection room, sprang to life and for a moment or so the tail-end of one of those rather frightening advertisements, which suggest that the entire population has developed a Lady Macbeth psychosis, urged the hardened company to get itself and its linen ‘Cleaner Than You Realise'.

Then there was a pause, a moment of shooting lights and finally, to the strains of
Land of Our Fathers,
QTV's nightly programme, with Giles Jury in the Chair, came into view. In the past Mr Campion had often found it difficult to believe his own eyes when watching on television the devitalised ghosts of people he knew, but tonight the medium seemed to have a dreadful intimacy. He was vividly aware, for instance, that Jury, an urbane young man rather larger than life, must have insisted on trying the device himself, probably much earlier in the day. It said a great deal for his technique that the only visible effect upon him was a streak of pathos in his inhuman smile.

On his left sat old ‘Peggie' Braithwaite, wonderfully at ease from the crown of his shining head to the middle button of his waistcoat and doubtless below, if one could have seen any more. Leonard Rafael, dark, nervous and not as impressive as he would be the moment he opened his mouth, sat on the other side of Jury with Edward between them. The child was either perched on a pile of books or two feet taller than when last observed and looked tired. No one had told him not to scratch and the heat of the lights was clearly considerable. He seemed determined to see the thing through despite a chronic itch. His flaming hair looked as dark as Rafael's but his eyes remained chill and intelligent.

The fifth member of the group was a complete stranger. He was a bony young man who looked like a worried white bull-terrier and wore ‘short back and sides' but a deal of hair on top, which misled one into thinking that the person he reminded one of so vividly was not present. It was only when he was introduced as Mr Reginald P. Yates Braithwaite, editor of
The Daily Paper
's distinguished contemporary weekly journal,
The Boy's Technician
that the penny began to drop at all.

The proceedings opened with a roll on the drums. Giles Jury excelled himself. His authority had never appeared less bombastic or more impressive and his relaxed manner was just sufficiently tensed to let one know that he felt it was a truly great occasion.

‘One often hears that history is being made,' he said pleasantly, ‘but tonight, you know, I really think it's true. Lord Feste, who is the president of QTV as well as the sole owner of
The Daily Paper,
has decided that we shall have the privilege of bringing this news to you instead of saving it until tomorrow morning, when the newspaper would have had it as an exclusive item. He has done this because he feels—and I think we shall all agree with him when we see the magnitude of the breakthrough—that this is something far above the petty rivalries of news services. This is something which belongs to us all.

‘The Subject is Extra Sensory Perception and it is because of something amazing which has just happened in that field that this programme has changed the whole of its schedules, and that later on tonight, after the News, you will be hearing from a number of the leading brains in this country whose names will be announced later. The interest in Extra Sensory Perception has increased enormously in recent years, but from time immemorial men have sought to communicate with each other by the power of thought alone. I shall not attempt to explain any of this but will lose no time in introducing those sitting round this table who have so much to tell you: Mr Leonard Rafael, Editor of
The Daily Paper
; Mr William Pegg Braithwaite, the well-known writer and broadcaster and scientific correspondent of
The Daily Paper;
his late brother's son, Mr Reginald Yates Braithwaite, Editor of
The Boy's Technician,
and Edward Longfox, of whom we shall all be hearing more later on.

‘Peggie, can you tell us first, please, exactly what Extra Sensory Perception is and then from your own knowledge what it is that has just so amazingly occurred?'

The old journalist seized the ball with the safe hands of a cricketer and when his familiar voice, husky and squeaky by turns, first sounded that evening in three quarters of the living rooms in the land, the actual moment of breakthrough occurred. The crust cracked and the first shoot of the new seedling, strange, awful but wonderfully exciting, appeared to view.

‘Extra Sensory Perception is a thumping bad term,' said Peggie. ‘Or I think so. The thing we're talking about tonight is the communication between minds, animal or human, when no known mechanism is employed. We've all heard of it, we've all met it at some time or other—or something suspiciously like it. Some of us don't like the idea and some of us like it too much and let it make monkeys of us. However, today I can tell you that all that uncertainty is a thing of the past. The young man who has had so much to do with this discovery—for that is what it
is,
I can't call it anything else—is here with us now. But first of all I am going to tell you how
I
came into the story.' He cleared his throat and got down to it.

‘In the early hours of last Sunday morning I was roused from my bed by two young men. There they are: Edward Longfox, son of that brilliant young scientist so tragically lost to us in the Arctic only a few years ago, and Reggie Braithwaite, son of my elder brother Yates, who edited
The Yorkshire Stagecoach
until his death last year. Reggie has a very fine paper of his own to look after and he knows my interest in it, but I was a little surprised to find him calling on me with one of his contributors at two a.m. on a Sunday morning! “Why boy,” I said, “are you out of your mind?” In a moment or so I began to think so, for he told me the most extraordinary story of scientific discovery I had ever heard. While I was still staring at him, wondering if to send for an ambulance, Edward Longfox placed something in my hand: it was this.'

He held out a nest of blunt fingers and the camera rushed up to it so that for a moment the transparent cylinder on a pristine square of adhesive bandage lay glistening, and many times its actual size, in the lights. Old Peggie replaced the exhibit in a splendid snuff box. He was a connoisseur of antique silver and was suspected of never missing a chance of displaying a piece lest it might lead him to another. Watching him, both Mr Campion and Luke were amused.

‘I was in pyjamas and my throat was bare,' he continued, setting the box on the table. ‘So when they told me to fix this instrument over my jugular I did so, still thinking I was taking part in some sort of hoax. The next moment, my Goodness! I was halfway across the room. “This is true!” I cried. “My God, they have done it!”' He shook his head and the lights winked on its shining dome. ‘It was a very frightening experience,' he announced solemnly. ‘I knew that all over the world—Bolitho in America, Broberg in Sweden, Fischer in Western Germany, Tsybukin and Dyudya in Soviet Russia, Dutruch in France and our own Professor Tabard on his island on the East Coast, to name but a few, have each been creeping closer and closer to the wonderful door of the mind which this little key has suddenly unlocked.' He paused, and his sharp little eyes peered knowingly at his audience as if he knew each one of them. ‘Don't ring us up; the door isn't open yet. These instruments are not available and for the sake of you all I'm glad they are not. To try one in its present stage of development is a mind-shattering experience, which could be very dangerous. Great new discoveries and their techniques are not perfected overnight. This will take time. However, the initial step has been made.' Before Giles Jury could stop him he swung round on the editor of
The Boy's Technician
. ‘Reggie, you told me just now that our young friend had an apt simile of his own?'

The sudden catch offered him in the slips almost upset the younger Braithwaite, who fumbled, disclosing a delightful Jacques Tati personality. His mouth split into a huge pup-like smile revealing widely-spaced teeth and a boy's sense of humour. ‘He said we'd got the point of the pocket-knife through the top of the condensed milk can,' he gasped. Edward studied his nails but his lip curled faintly and Mr Campion suspected that he had thought it pretty good himself.

After this flagrant piece of unscripted nepotism, Giles Jury intervened, more in sorrow than in anger.

‘Then you got on the telephone I believe, Mr
Pegg
Braithwaite?' he prompted firmly.

‘Naturally.' Peggie had the grace to look guilty. ‘I obeyed my first instinct. I contacted my editor. There he is: Mr Rafael.'

The editor of
The Daily Paper,
who had been sitting like a log, woke up, uncrossed his legs, hitched his chair towards the microphone and went smoothly into action like some great automobile starting up.

He had a very ordinary voice and a very ordinary face but he pulled the whole circle into a bunch, including without effort all those sitting round at home. ‘When I heard him on my bedside telephone I thought Peggie was overdoing it,' he said, smiling at everybody confidentially. ‘But he convinced me and we all went down to the
Paper
office in Fleet Street where I summoned a staff and we did a few preliminary experiments. As soon as I was convinced that we were indeed faced by a genuine breakthrough and not a mere invention, I contacted Lord Feste who was in America. As you know, their time is some hours behind our own and he was just going to bed, but on hearing my news he too became excited and after a brief conference I found myself fully empowered to embark on the programme we had hammered out.'

He broke off to speak directly to Giles Jury who was fidgeting. ‘Oh, I'm leaning right across the table, am I? I'm so sorry. This thing is so exciting I get carried away completely. Well now, I'm sorry for that. The first thing
I
wanted to know was the thing which
you
all want to know now. How in the wide world did this astonishing thing come about? What led up to it? Whose were the brains behind it? The man who could tell me was there, waiting—Mr Reginald Yates Braithwaite.'

He nodded to the young man but did not relinquish the microphone: Reggie Braithwaite was not
his
nephew. ‘As you have heard, he is the editor of a successful boys' paper owned by the Thousand and One Nights Press, another company of which Lord Feste is Chairman. Mr Braithwaite is in the habit of publishing letters from correspondents. A bright and popular feature which, in his journal, takes an unusual position on the first inside page. Seven weeks ago he received a letter which so pleased him that he decided to publish it at once, giving it the lead position and a headline. Perhaps not altogether unfortunately,
The Boy's Technician
is six whole weeks in print and that letter will not appear until tomorrow morning. However, I have here an advance copy of the paper and now, with the editor's permission, I propose to read it to you.' He put on a pair of spectacles which were almost horse-blinkers and took up a very slim, very new-looking, paper-covered magazine.