The Bat that Flits (21 page)

It must have been because I had been reading one of the magazines that young Mellon had left lying about in the common room that the idea came to me. The magazine had been sent to him from the States, and was one of those immensely knowledgeable and outspoken publications that make you feel while you're reading them that everyone except the writer, and possibly the editor, has up to now been living right on the outside of things.

What may have roused me was that this particular piece of outspokenness was directed against the British. The author was evidently a Californian counterpart of our great Dr. Smith. He had been over here, sampled us, found the flavour a bit stale and tasteless, and had returned to warn the rest of mankind against further nibbling. In his eyes the one thing in which we possessed a whole corner was picturesqueness. But there was a scarcely concealed threat behind it all that if the British didn't pull their socks up and manage things a bit better they would find a United Nations Commission taking the job of preservation over from them. And as for scientists engaged in work of military importance, it was the writer's view that the time had already come. “According to the F.B.I, files,” the article went on, “British investigation methods are only 43.7 per cent as effective as the American. And Britain's Harwell”—I don't think that the Pacific Coast expert had ever heard of Bodmin —“is now the international staging-post for Stalin's spies playing between Las Vegas and Russia's Kharkovsk.”

I read that sentence twice. The first time with a kind of
sultry resentment because I suspected the fellow of over calling his hand. And the second time with a great flash of understanding as though one of Pontecorvo's pills (that was the writer's phrase, not mine) had gone off right inside me. Perhaps “understanding” is too strong a word. Because at the moment it was nothing more than one big, howling suspicion. But it felt like understanding all right. And I have noticed before that there comes a point in all philosophical systems where the straight hunch is worth any amount of pure reason. Not the least of its advantages is that it is so much quicker.

I argued it out this way. The U.S.A. is the most violently anti-Communist country in the world.
Ergo
any American is non-suspect. Nowadays an American could come into Southampton with a hammer under one arm, and a sickle and two H-bombs under the other, and the Customs man would chalk him up to go through the barrier before he had even had time to complain about the coffee.

Young Mellon fitted perfectly into that picture. You couldn't see him without liking him. Inside the first five minutes, fully-grown disgruntled scientists and policemen succumbed before the open sunny charm of the campus and the drug-store. And women didn't even have to wait that long. If Mellon had accidentally sunk the duty destroyer in the Sound the Admiral wouldn't have thought twice about forgiving him.

And I saw now the uses to which Mellon had been putting his charm. It had been the master key and passport to everything. Every time his big blue Buick swept down the Institute's front drive, the older ones, with all passion spent, had sat about shaking their heads sadly over another impending West Country fall. It was significant, too, that whenever the Inspector saw Mellon going by he winked at
him—that from an ice-cold eye showed what the Mellon myth could do. And I remembered it was Mellon who had spread the myth. While we had assumed that he was safely rounding up some houri in Okehampton, he
could
have been half-way to the Soviet Embassy.

That meant that I now had no fewer than three separate lines of inquiry. I still wanted to know more about Dr. Smith's poste restante activities in Plymouth. There was an investigation agent's job to be done watching the disarming little villa in Padstow. And now there was Mellon's Buick to be trailed. That didn't promise to be too easy. Even when all my eight cylinders had still been working, Mellon's Fireball acceleration had always left me somewhere on the wrong side of the level-crossing.

But I had learnt one thing from Wilton. That was to leave the other fellow to do the talking. And it occurred to me that if I just planted myself on a bar-stool adjacent to Mellon's and kept the conversation going with an occasional “You don't say!” or “My, my, isn't this a small world?” I might be able to find out quite as much as if I bought a T.T. racing-model Norton and went road-hogging after him.

Starting up the conversation wasn't difficult. After mine —some way after—Mellon's thirst was easily the biggest thing in the Institute. Whisky ruined by ice was his tipple. And because he was a nice friendly boy he liked to have someone beside him just to suggest the next round to him. He was there exactly where I expected him to be. And his “What'll you have?” before I had even got across to the bar made me just a wee bit cautious. It occurred to me that he may have been just as eager as I was to get the other one to do some talking.

The first thing that I noticed was that he was still intent on establishing his part. He turned the conversation to sex before I got myself properly settled on the high stool alongside him.

“Say, what are your divorce laws like around here?” he asked.

I shook my head before answering.

“Pretty stiff,” I told him. “Adultery's usually punished by stoning. Both parties.” I paused. “It's worse up Somerset way,” I added.

But young Mellon was in no mood for spoiling his own effect by seeming to take things too lightly.

“Do they still hang you if you kill someone?” he asked.

“Only if they catch you,” I reassured him.

“And what about
crime passionel
?” he went on.

Here I shook my head again.

“No use pleading that,” I advised. “If you'd ever seen an English jury you'd know that they'd convict for the
passionel
part even without the
crime
. They're dead against it in our law courts.”

Mellon still looked worried.

“Can ya get police protection if you ask for it?” he inquired.

“You've been having it,” I replied.

“Then I guess I gotta find some other way.”

It was my turn to stand this round.

“Who're you planning to kill?” I asked.

Mellon pushed his glass away from him. This itself was an unnatural gesture and showed that the internal stresses must have been considerable.

“Ya got me all wrong,” he said. “I'm the guy that's on the spot.”

“Meaning you're hot?” I asked.

“Meaning there's some god-damn fool of a husband who's after me,” he corrected me.

I smiled. Only inwardly, I hope. Because I didn't want Mellon to know what I was really thinking.

“And what do you propose to do?” I asked.

I had my fingers crossed at this point.

“Get outer here,” Mellon answered. “Get outer here before they have to carry me.”

That meant that my fingers could uncross again.

“Where to?” I asked innocently. “He'll find you easily enough if he's really all that keen. It's only a small place, Bodmin.”

Mellon was reaching out for his glass again. Evidently instinct had got the better of panic.

“Who said anything about Bodmin?” he demanded. “I mean Paris; Paris, France.”

“Or Rome, Italy,” I suggested.

“Could be,” he agreed.

“Then why tell me?” I asked. “I might help to put him on to you.”

Mellon finished the rest of the drink before answering and called for another as soon as he put the glass down.

“Because I'm going crackers,” he answered. “How d'you like it yourself if ya just had to sit around here waiting for some crazy guy to come sneaking upter ya?”

“I see your point,” I said. “Must make ya sorter restless.”

Altogether it was one of the neatest pieces of sustained strategy that I had so far encountered. And the acting throughout had been admirable. There wasn't a single one of us in the Institute who wouldn't have been prepared to go into the witness-box to swear character—Mellon had seen to that. And even if running away from danger wasn't quite
in the best Illinois tradition I felt that Mellon would be able to laugh that one off all right by the time he got through to Moscow, Russia.

What was more, now that he had told me everything, he knew that he was perfectly safe. Simple, sun-soaked and boyish, young Mellon may have been. But I felt that since he had arrived here, he had made a pretty accurate reading of English character. He knew that if only you confide in an Englishman you can tell him the date and time of his own assassination with the absolute certainty that he'll turn up punctually and wait about if necessary.

The only thing that he didn't know was how much an Englishman can think to himself without saying anything.

The following day I decided to apply something of the Mellon technique on my own account. What I wanted to do was to keep my Padstow appointment that evening. And what I didn't want was to have Wilton out looking for me.

“Ouch,” I said very loudly for the third time since lunch.

“This wet weather plays hell with me. Thank goodness I'm seeing the chiropodist this evening.”

The fact that I had shown the forethought to be wearing one of my big woolly bedroom slippers on the left foot added just that touch of drama that was needed. And by the time five-thirty arrived both Bansted and Rogers had come round to my side of the bench and advised me to take things easily for a bit. Rogers even had some kind of crack-pot radium-impregnated sock that he wanted me to wear inside the
bedroom slippers. But I declined politely and hobbled off to my bedroom with all the dignity of a confirmed sufferer who doesn't want to have his pain snatched away from him quite that quickly. And five minutes afterwards, having changed into my brogues, I was going pit-a-pat down the back stairs and out across the courtyard towards the car.

There was no moon that night. And whatever stars there might have been were obscured by a layer of cloud that was still undecided whether to remain aloft or come down and blot out everything. Not that it need have troubled itself. As it was, the night could have put extra shadows into the original Egyptian plague of darkness and still have had some.

A younger man could probably have gone straight on without falling over anything. But there's nothing like a combination of alcohol and nicotine for cutting down on the eyesight. With my habits I'd have been disqualified years ago even from shunting engines. I just had to stand where I was waiting for the tired old pupils to adjust themselves. And it was while I was still waiting that I heard someone coming.

Judging by the sound, whoever it was must have been in a hurry. There was a kind of flick and scurry rather than a good solid crunch about the footsteps. And they were heading straight in my direction. Either I had a bat for a co-worker, or somebody was taking risks in the darkness.

It wasn't a bat. And apparently I wasn't the only person in Bodmin with a marked vitamin A deficiency. For the next moment I was bumped into. Bumped into hard by someone who was running. And that someone was carrying something small but heavy that went clattering across the courtyard.

But then came the unlikeliest part of all. Because it was a woman who had cannoned into me. And, as a sex, women
don't usually go dashing about from place to place the way men do. There is some protective biological reason that usually makes them take far better care of themselves.

But this was a woman all right. And, when I heard the gasp she gave, I recognised it. I knew then that it was Una that I had grabbed hold of.

“Going somewhere?” I asked.

But she was evidently in no mood for being held. She still seemed pretty frantic about something.

“Help me find it,” was what she said. “You've got to help me find it.”

“Find what?” I asked.

It was obviously no use expecting to get a reasonable answer out of her in her present mood. She was already down on her knees searching. And I went down on all fours and began searching too. It seemed thoroughly silly, the pair of us playing bears out there in the darkness, especially as one of the bears didn't even know what it was looking for.

And the next moment I put my hand right on top of something. It was a leather case, half jammed down into what seemed to be a lady's handbag. And from as much as I could feel of it, it seemed to be a very ordinary pair of binoculars that Una had been carrying.

“Here it is,” I said. “You can stop worrying.”

But that was apparently the one thing that Una couldn't do.

“Mind,” she said. “Don't point it at yourself. It's loaded.”

I lowered the case and handbag gently into my raincoat pocket. Then I put my arm round Una.

“Come and tell me all about it,” I said.

But she was too nervy.

“There's nothing to tell,” she answered. “I just want you to get rid of it for me.”

I still had my arm round her, and we were walking over in the direction of the car.

“Look here, lady, I said. “That doesn't make sense. You were trying to
find
it just now.”

“I wanted to give it to you.”

“But you didn't know I'd be here.”

“Yes, I did. I saw you come out.”

“And you came after me?”

“Yes.”

“That makes a difference,” I agreed. “But what am I supposed to do?”

“Throw it into the sea,” she replied. “It's safest.”

“Why, what's it done?”

“I can't tell you. I just want you to get rid of it.”

“And if I don't?”

There was no argument about that one.

“You've got to.”

“Leave it to me,” I said.

Then I had an afterthought.

“That your handbag it's wrapped up in?” I asked.

“It's only an old one,” she replied, in the way that makes all female reasoning seem as though it's being carried on according to a quite different set of regulations.