The Bat that Flits (24 page)

“That sort,” she replied.

This was a bit of a stumper. I'd imagined up to that moment that I'd been an entirely free agent. Playing instrument of heaven was a new one to me, and it gave me the creeps. But I didn't want to show that I was put out in any way.

“I came as soon as I got the message,” I said politely.

She was beside me in the car by now, and I could see how tired she was. There were two deep lines beside her mouth that hadn't been there before. Evidently this conversion business had taken quite a lot out of her.

“I want you to do something for me,” she said.

“Not Una,” I began. “She won't budge. She told me last time——”

“No. It's not Una,” she said slowly. “It's worse than that. It's . . . ”

The pause was so long that I turned round to see what was happening. She was crying. Not the sort of noisy boo-hoo stuff that never hurt anybody. But the silent, tear-you-to-pieces kind.

“Like my handkerchief?” I asked.

She took it without saying anything, and I just waited. When it seemed reasonable to reopen the conversation I tried again.

“You got as far as ‘It's,'” I reminded her.

But she only shook her head.

“I shouldn't have asked you,” she said. “It was silly.”

This was the other Hilda speaking. She was now being unapproachable again.

“But I thought you said you prayed . . . ” I began.

“I did,” she replied.

Then she put her hand on my arm in that strange disturbing way she had.

“I've got to go through with this myself,” she went on.

“I'm going to see Colonel Wilton as soon as I get back.”

“What about?”

“If I told you that I'd have told you everything.”

“You might at least give me a hint.” Hilda paused.

“I don't think so,” she said. “If I did I mightn't go through with it.”

We drove home with Hilda leading, and that faulty rear lamp of hers blinking in my eyes all the way. She had apparently meant what she said, too. I discovered that as soon as we reached the Institute. The Phoenician was still slopping about in the kitchen, and I heard Hilda ask her to see if the Colonel could spare a few minutes.

I was still wondering if I oughtn't to have gone along and stopped her, when I reached my room and switched the light on. Then I paused. The room looked as though something pretty hearty in the way of an end of term rag had been taking place. The contents of all the drawers were on the floor. My clothes lay in a heap in front of the wardrobe, with my Jermyn Street cap with the lining torn open on top. Even the mattress had been turned upside down.

Evidently Bansted and Rogers had been having a real thorough look round this time. Either that or the original owner had been hunting about for his missing revolver.

It was only one week off Christmas by now. And every day the Institute was remorselessly assuming the festive look. Paper chains, ingeniously woven by Ma Clewes during the long winter evenings, now hung criss-crossed in the awful little common room. Someone had put up a big fluted lantern affair in the hall. And while Hilda and I had been talking quietly together in the parked Singer, the same someone had gone to work on the dining-room. This morning we now had pink and green and orange streamers radiating from the centre light bracket. The melancholia ward in a big county asylum as decorated by the night sister would have had just the same air of simple cottage gaiety.

I had just finished my breakfast when the door opened and Hilda came in. Her new digs were the bed without board kind, I remembered.

She must have noticed the look on my face when I saw her. And I suppose that a twelve-stone man transfixed with the marmalade spoon held aloft in full drip is a bit conspicuous. It was obvious, too, that she didn't want to attract any attention.

“Good morning,” she said. “Did you get back all right last night?”

It was the extreme coolness of the question that staggered me. But I was recovering my poise by now.

“In the end I didn't go out,” I said. “Too cold.” That brought young Mellon in.

“Then someone else had your car out,” he said. “Saw it in Padstow last night.”

I wasn't going to let that get me started.

“Gipsies,” I said briefly. “They're terrible in these parts.”

I was nearly at the end of my breakfast. The Phœnician had brewed the coffee in a fish-kettle this morning from the taste of it, and I decided that I would do without my fourth cup.

“Duty calls,” I said vaguely as I slid my chair back.

I'd got about two paces down the corridor when Hilda came after me. That was silly. Because so far she hadn't even had her Danish egg. But it showed that her calm wasn't real, only assumed.

“I want you to forget everything I said to you last night,” she told me.

I looked her straight in the eyes.

“You're making a mistake, lady,” I said. “You just heard me say I stayed in all the evening.”

That seemed to satisfy her. But it didn't satisfy me.

“Wilton say anything?” I asked.

She didn't tell me. Which in the circumstances, was rude. But I forgave her for it. She had her part to play like the rest of us. And from what she had said last night I guessed that it was a hard part. I only wished that I knew the cue-line.

I didn't get very much work done that morning for thinking about it. Also, there were too many interruptions. The first of them was waiting in the front hall as I went through. He had managed somehow to get past the draw-bridge and the portcullis, and he now had the air of impatience
that suggested that if there had been a gong in the hall he would have sounded it.

“You Mr. Mellon?” he asked.

He was a large man with a florid complexion. Up in Norfolk in the turkey world he would have been regarded as a very handsome stag. As it was, he looked as though he would be very well advised to stick to beer and avoid spirits. He was wearing flannels and a rather noisy ready-made sports coat. And in his hand he carried a riding-crop. This struck me as odd. Because even in a country district I would have expected to find him on a bicycle rather than on a horse. But that may have been only because I had the advantage of prior knowledge. Even without his helmet he was still undisguisable. He was the policeman who had tried to arrest me for obstruction up in Padstow.

“Be along in just one minute,” I said. “You'll recognise him—the tall, dark, handsome one.”

“Thank you,” the man said, and touched his forehead with his hunting-crop.

I promptly forgot all about him, and was thinking of Hilda again when I reached the laboratory. But straight away the telephone rang, and I went across to answer it. It was a bit early for calls. I suspected a wrong number. And when I lifted the receiver I was sure.

“Professor Sonnenbaum?” a voice asked.

It was a foreign-sounding voice, and very faint. A longdistance call obviously.

“No Professor Sonnenbaum here,” I said. “Try the little café at the corner.”

“Pardon?”

“Never mind. They probably won't be open yet.”

There was a pause.

“Is that Bodmin Moor 21?”

“That's right.”

“Professor Sonnenbaum, please.”

At this rate we could go on like that all the morning.

“There is no Professor Sonnenbaum here,” I said very slowly and distinctly. “He died way back in the eighties. Family went out to Canada, I think it was. No forwarding address. Sorry.”

I was just hanging up when the voice spoke again.

“But that is Bodmin Moor 21?”

“There hasn't been time to change it yet,” I admitted.

“Then can I speak to Professor Sonnen? . . . ” The voice broke off and seemed to be consulting someone. I could hear the mutter of conversation above the muzz of the longdistance line. “Dr. Smith, I mean,” the voice corrected itself. “Dr. Sebastian Smith.”

I paused. “If I go off and fetch him, will you promise not to change your mind again?”

“Pardon?”

“Doesn't matter,” I said.

And then a really clever idea came to me.

“This is Dr. Smith's batman speaking,” I said in a hard, clipped sort of voice that was new to both of us. “The doctor is out beagling. He's not expected back until dinnertime. May I have your number, please. He'll call you.”

But I don't think that the person at the other end can have understood. Perhaps the line wasn't good enough. Or he was new at spying, and hadn't yet got as far as field-sports in his vocabulary.

“Thank you, it does not matter,” the voice said.

With that there was a click, and it was all over. I saw then how much cleverer it would have been to call Dr. Smith, and remain at my bench quietly eavesdropping. But I couldn't do that. I hate underhandedness.

And at that moment the door opened and Dr. Smith himself came in. It was still only about nine-five, and he seemed taken aback to see anyone there. But he recovered himself admirably.

“Was that the phone?” he asked.

I looked him full in the eyes.

“Telephone Maintenance,” I said. “Just checking up on the lines. Didn't leave any message.”

The second interruption occurred at about nine thirty-five. This time it was Mellon's turn. When I had last seen him he was still looking like a displaced person on the Claridge quota—perfectly laundered soft white shirt, a dove-grey suit without a ripple in it and one of those extraordinary bow-ties with points instead of square corners. But there was now a bruise over his right eye and the front buttons of his shirt were all missing. The feathers of his dove-grey suit had a rather ruffled look and he kept holding one of his monogrammed handkerchiefs to his nose. But he can't have been doing too badly. At least he had the hunting-crop.

“Fallen over something?” I asked.

He didn't, however, seem to want to talk about it.

“Jeez Christ,” he said. “Don't they have no family feelings in these parts?”

I paused.

“You've caught the spirit of the place,” I said. He paused.

“Do you reckon there's a decent libel attorney anywhere in these parts?” he asked at last.

I thought for a moment. Then I answered him.

“There's a firm in Okehampton,” I said. “On the right just before you come to the dairy. It's over a corn-chandler's. Looks all right to me. They've got the whole of the second floor.”

Mellon was not impressed. He began flicking about with the hunting-crop.

“I'm going up to London,” he said. “I want to get this thing fixed properly. I can't have some crazy guy going round here telling people I'm a traitor.”

“A what?” I asked.

“You heard,” Mellon answered.

From ten o'clock until ten-five I worked uninterrupted. Flat out. Giving the job all I had. Obsessionally. Then there came a message from Wilton. Really he was behaving in a most peculiar manner just lately. Like a kept woman. Cold at one moment. And all tingly and oncoming at the next. If the message had said that he had decided to sell the pearls or publish the correspondence I could not have been more astonished. It asked if I would play golf with him.

The cub-Captain didn't seem to know why I had been invited. Merely that golf was the latest whim of his strange master. Wilton had been practising putting all yesterday evening on the study carpet, the cub-Captain told me. And in consequence he was, I gathered, about as near the top of his form by now as he was ever likely to be.

“Of course, I'd simply love to come,” I said. “Anywhere with Wilton. At any time. He knows that. It's just my work that's stopping me.”

The cub-Captain had all the manners of a good bell-hop. From the way he was standing, he might have been waiting for me to slip sixpence into his little paw.

“The Colonel mentioned he felt sure that the Director would excuse you, if you asked him,” he said.

That looked rather as though things had been pretty much arranged already.

The cub-Captain was shifting from one foot to the other, and looked embarrassed.

“What shall I say, sir?” he asked.

“Leave it all to me,” I said. “I'm just boiling some water. And I don't trust anybody to do my job for me. When I've drunk it, I'll come.”

“Very good, sir.”

He went off so pleased at having found me reasonable that I don't think that he even remembered about the tip. There was a distinct lilting movement in his walk as he moved away from me.

I thought all the same that I might as well mention things to the Old Man. And again I had the impression that he had been conditioned for something of the kind. He was walking up and down his room when I found him, and he looked hairier and more prawnlike than ever.

“Ah, Hudson,” he said, somewhat jumpily as I came in.

“Good morning, sir,” I began, in a bland, easy manner to put him thoroughly at his ease before hurling my odd little brickbat full at him. “It's a beautiful morning and Colonel Wilton has very kindly suggested . . . ”

The method of my approach seemed to have relieved Dr. Clewes considerably.

“Oh, capital,” he said. “I wasn't sure you played.”

That was all he said. But behind it there was just a hint that it hadn't come as an entire surprise to him. And I still didn't want him to write me off as the sports absentee type.

“Wilton and I often chat things over together,” I explained. “I expect there's some aspect of his work that he wants to discuss with me.”

“Possibly,” said Dr. Clewes, and began fumbling with his desk papers.

It was the first really decent morning since I'd been to Cornwall. The air was clear, like gin. And the colours of the hills were at their loveliest. I felt on the top of the world suddenly, getting away from the Institute and all its troubles. If Wilton had been a woman I would probably have proposed to him.