Consider Her Ways (23 page)

‘I say,' Stephen announced, with an air of satisfaction, ‘do you know that if I lace up the tape this way round I can hear myself talking backwards!'

Dilys laid down her book, and regarded her husband. Before him, on the table, stood the tape-recorder, an amplifier, and small sundries. A wandering network of leads connected them to one another, to the mains, to a big loudspeaker in the corner, and to the pair of phones on his head. Lengths and snippets of tape littered half the floor.

‘Another triumph of science,' she said, coolly. ‘As I understood it, you were just going to do a bit of editing so that we could send a record of the party to Myra. I'm quite sure she'd prefer it the right way round.'

‘Yes, but this idea just came to me –'

‘And what a mess! It looks as if we'd been giving someone a ticker-tape reception. What is it all?'

Stephen glanced down at the strips and coils of tape.

‘Oh, those are just the parts where everybody was talking at once, and bits of that very unfunny story Charles would keep trying to tell everyone – and a few indiscretions, and so on.'

Dilys eyed the litter, as she stood up.

‘It must have been a much more indiscreet party than it seemed at the time,' she said. ‘Well, you clear it up while I go and put on the kettle.'

‘But you must hear this,' he protested.

She paused at the door.

‘Give me,' she suggested, ‘give me one good reason – just one – why I ought to hear you talk backwards …' And she departed.

Left alone, Stephen made no attempt to gather the debris;
instead, he pressed the playback key and listened with interest to the curious gabbeldigook that was his backwards voice. Then he stopped the machine, took off the headphones, and switched over to the loudspeaker. He was interested to find that though the voice still had a European quality it seemed to rattle through its incomprehensible sounds at great speed. Experimentally, he halved the speed, and turned up the volume. The voice, now an octave lower, drawled out deep, ponderous, impossible-sounding syllables in a very impressive way indeed. He nodded to himself and leant his head back, listening to it rolling sonorously around the room.

Suddenly there was a rushing sound, not unlike a reduced facsimile of a locomotive blowing off steam, also a gust of warm air reminiscent of a stokehole …

It took Stephen by surprise so that he jumped, and almost overturned his chair. Recovering, he reached forward, hastily pressing keys and turning knobs. The voice from the loudspeaker cut off abruptly. He peered anxiously into the items of his apparatus, looking for sparks, or smoke. There was neither, but it was while he was in the act of sighing his relief over this that he became, in some way, aware that he was no longer alone in the room. He jerked his head round. His jaw dropped fully an inch, and he sat staring at the figure standing some four feet to his rear right.

The man stood perfectly straight, with his arms pressed closely to his sides. He was tall, quite six feet, and made to look taller still by his hat – a narrow-brimmed, entirely cylindrical object of quite remarkable height. For the rest, he wore a high starched collar with spread points, a grey silk cravat, a long, dark frock-coat with silk facings, and lavender-grey trousers, with the points of black, shiny boots jutting out beneath them. Stephen had to tilt back his head to get a foreshortened view of the face. It was good-looking, bronzed, as if by Mediterranean sun. The eyes were large and dark. A luxuriant moustache swept out to join with well-tended whiskers at the points of the jaw. The chin, and
lower parts of the cheeks were closely shaved. The features themselves stirred vague memories of Assyrian sculptures.

Even in the first astonished moment it was borne in upon Stephen that, inappropriate as the ensemble might be to the circumstances, there could be no doubt of its quality, nor, in the proper time and place, of its elegance. He continued to stare.

The man's mouth moved.

‘I have come,' he announced, with a pontifical air.

‘Er – yes,' said Stephen. ‘I – er – I see that, but, well, I don't quite …'

‘You called upon me. I have come,' the man repeated, with an air of explaining everything.

Stephen added a frown to his bewilderment.

‘But I didn't say a thing,' he protested. ‘I was just sitting here, and –'

‘There is no need for alarm. I am sure you will not regret it,' said the man.

‘I am not alarmed. I'm baffled,' said Stephen. ‘I don't see –'

The pontifical quality was reduced by a touch of impatience as the man inquired:

‘Did you not construct the Iron Pentacle?' – Without moving his arms, he contracted three fingers of his right hand so that the lavender-gloved forefinger remained pointing downwards. ‘Did you not also utter the Word of Power?' he added.

Stephen looked where the finger pointed. He perceived that some of the discarded scraps of tape did make a crude geometrical figure on the floor, just permissibly, perhaps, a kind of pentacle form. But
iron
pentacle, the man had said … Oh, the iron-oxide coating, of course … H'm, pretty near the border of permissibility, too, one would think …

‘Word of Power,' though … Well, it was conceivable that a voice talking backwards might stumble upon a Word of practically anything …

‘It rather looks,' he said, ‘as if there had been a slight mistake – a coincidence …'

‘A
strange coincidence,' remarked the man, sceptically.

‘But isn't that really the thing about coincidences? That they are, I mean,' Stephen pointed out.

‘I have never heard of it happening before – never,' said the man. ‘Whenever I, or any of my friends, have been summoned in this way, it has been to do business: and business has invariably been done.'

‘Business …?' Stephen inquired.

‘Business,' the man repeated. ‘You have certain needs we can supply. You have a certain object we should like to add to our collection. All that is necessary is that we could come to terms. Then you sign the pact, with your blood, of course, and there it is.'

It was the word ‘pact' that touched the spot. Stephen recalled the slight smell of hot clinkers that had pervaded the room.

‘Ah, I begin to see,' he said. ‘This is a visitation – a raising. You mean that you are Old –'

The man cut in, with a quick frown:

‘My name is Batruel. I am one of the fully accredited representatives of my Master; his plenipotentiary, holding his authority to arrange pacts. Now, if you would be so good as to release me from this pentacle which I find an extremely tight fit, we could discuss the terms of the pact much more comfortably.'

Stephen regarded the man for some moments, and then shook his head.

‘Ha-ha!' he said. ‘Ha-ha! Ha-ha!'

The man's eyes widened. He looked huffed.

‘I beg your pardon!'

‘Look,' Stephen said. ‘I apologize for the accident that brought you here. But let us have it clearly understood that you have come to the wrong place to do any business – the wrong place entirely.'

Batruel studied him thoughtfully. He lifted his head, and his nostrils twitched slightly.

‘Very curious,' he remarked. ‘I detect no odour of sanctity.'

‘Oh, it isn't that,' Stephen assured him. ‘It simply is that quite
a number of your deals have been pretty well documented by now – and one of the really consistent things about them is that the party of the second part has never failed to regret the deal, in due course.'

‘Oh, come! Think what I can offer you –'

Stephen cut him short by shaking his head again.

‘Save yourself the trouble,' he advised. ‘I have to deal with up-to-date high-pressure salesmen every day.'

Batruel regarded him with a saddened eye.

‘I am more used to dealing with the high-pressure customer,' he admitted. ‘Well, if you are quite sure that there has been no more than a genuine mistake, I suppose there is nothing to be done but for me to go back and explain. This has not, to my knowledge, ever happened before – though, of course, by the laws of chance it had to happen some time. Just my bad luck. Very well, then. Good-bye – oh, dear, what have I said? – I mean
vale
, my friend. I am ready!'

His stance was already rigid; now, as he closed his eyes, his face became wooden, too.

Nothing happened.

Batruel's jaw relaxed.

‘Well, say it!' he exclaimed, testily.

‘Say what?' Stephen inquired.

‘The other Word of Power, of course. The Dismissal.'

‘But I don't know it. I don't know anything about Words of Power,' Stephen protested.

Batruel's brows came lower, and approached one another.

‘Are you telling me you cannot send me back?' he inquired.

‘If it needs a Word of Power I certainly can't,' Stephen told him.

An expression of dismay came over Batruel's face.

‘But this is unheard of … What am I to do? I
must
have either a completed pact,
or
the Word of Dismissal.'

‘All right, you tell me the Word, and I'll say it,' Stephen offered.

‘But I don't know it,' said Batruel. ‘I have never heard it. Everyone who has summoned me until now has been anxious to do
business and sign the pact …' He paused. ‘It really would simplify matters very greatly if you could see your way to – No? Oh, dear, this is most awkward. I really don't see what we are going to do …'

There was a sound at the door followed by a couple of taps on it from Dilys's toe, to indicate that she was carrying a tray. Stephen crossed to the door and opened it a preliminary chink.

‘We have a visitor,' he warned her. He did not want to see the tray dropped out of sheer surprise.

‘But how –?' she began, and then, as he held the door open more widely, she almost did drop the tray. Stephen took it from her while she stood staring, and set it down safely.

‘Darling, this is Mr Batruel – my wife,' he said.

Batruel, still standing rigidly straight, now looked embarrassed as well as constrained. He turned his head in her direction, and nodded it slightly.

‘Charmed, Ma'am,' he said. ‘I would have you excuse my style, but my movements are unhappily constricted. If your husband would do me the courtesy of breaking this pentacle …'

Dilys went on staring at him, and running an appraising eye over his clothes.

‘I – I'm afraid I don't understand,' she complained.

Stephen did his best to explain the situation. At the end, she said:

‘Well, I really don't know … We shall have to see what can be done, shan't we? It's so difficult – not as if he were just an ordinary D.P., I mean.' She went on regarding Batruel thoughtfully, and then added: ‘Steve, if you have made it really clear to him that we're not signing anything, don't you think you might let him out of it? He does look so uncomfortable there.'

‘I thank you, Ma'am. I am indeed uncomfortable,' Batruel said, gratefully.

Stephen considered.

‘Well, since he is here anyway, and we know where we stand, perhaps it won't do any harm,' he conceded. He bent down, and brushed aside some of the tape on the floor.

Batruel
stepped out of the disrupted pentacle. With his right hand he removed his hat; with his left, he gave a touch to his cravat. He turned to sweep Dilys a bow, doing it beautifully, too; toe pointed, left hand on a non-existent hilt, hat held over his heart.

‘Your servant, Ma'am.'

He repeated the exercise in Stephen's direction.

‘Your servant, Sir.'

Stephen's response was well-intentioned, but he was aware that it showed inadequately against his visitor's style. There followed an awkward pause. Dilys broke it by saying:

‘I'd better fetch another cup.'

She went out, returned, and presided.

‘You – er – you've not visited England lately, Mr Batruel?' she suggested, socially.

Batruel looked mildly astonished.

‘What makes you think that, Mrs Tramon?' he asked.

‘Oh, I – I just thought …' Dilys said, vaguely.

‘My wife is thinking of your clothes,' Stephen told him. ‘Furthermore, if you will excuse my mentioning it, you get your periods somewhat mixed. The style of your bow, for instance, precedes that of your clothes by, well, at least two generations, I should say.'

Batruel looked a little taken aback. He glanced down at himself. ‘I paid particular note to the fashion last time I was here,' he said, with disappointment. Dilys broke in.

‘Don't let him upset you, Mr Batruel. They are beautiful clothes – and such quality of material.'

‘But not quite in the current
ton
?' said Batruel, acutely.

‘Well, not quite,' Dilys admitted. ‘I expect you get a bit out of touch in – where you live.'