The Daffodil Affair (26 page)

Time had been gained – but was it certain that the commodity was a useful one? Time to reconnoitre the full strength of Wine’s organization but did they not already know that it was too strong to fight through? They had played for time while knowing that time was not a particularly attractive proposition; had played for it because there seemed nothing else to play for. They had won it, and it remained a dubious gain. But in the same match they had won something else. They had won not an indeterminate extension of the affair, but an instrument for abruptly writing
Finis
to it. An instrument, thought Appleby, out of the very last chapter of a schoolboys’ story. In fact, an aeroplane… And Appleby, strolling across Europe Island, glanced over his shoulder. Not far behind him Wine was taking an after-breakfast walk in the same direction.

And likely enough Wine or another would always be there now. In this fantastic community Appleby had become an object of major scientific interest, something far more beguiling to the psychic investigator than Miss Molsher or Mrs Gladigan had ever been. A man who at any turn may encounter a veridical ghost is abundantly worth keeping an eye on. And this is likely to be annoying to one whose thoughts turn much upon a conveniently hidden aeroplane.

Appleby paused and waited for Wine to overtake him. Had it fuel and oil? Of course Hudspith should slip away with it in the night; that would be the ideal thing. Only Hudspith, by whatever inspiration he had contrived to taxi the craft into hiding, was certainly incapable of controlling it while airborne; that, tiresomely enough, was an accomplishment which only Appleby himself possessed. And his skill was their best chance. Once get the thing into the air and it should be possible, however unfamiliar a crate it was, to get some sort of flying start down the river. It would be a matter of dodging surveillance – surveillance which would be particularly carefully maintained at night. For it is then that ghosts and spirits walk. Perhaps, thought Appleby, as he prepared to receive one of Wine’s most cordial smiles, perhaps the dodging could be done. But somehow his faith in the aeroplane was small. He had tried to terminate adventures in the simple fashion of juvenile fiction before. And always something had gone wrong. It was as if the adult universe wasn’t constructed that way. Of course there was one other method of concluding this deplorable adventure of the Happy Islands – a method much too odd to commend itself to the realism of youthful minds. But a method he had better get going on now. ‘A pleasant day,’ he said; ‘but with a hint of something rather oppressive, don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps so.’ Wine looked absently at the day. ‘I hope you slept well?’

‘Thank you – yes. Rather heavily, in fact. I suppose it is the pampas air.’

‘No doubt.’ Wine shot out a hand which neatly caught a mosquito on the wing. ‘I do not always sleep well myself on the Islands. I find them a great place for dreams. And dreams – after one has thoroughly studied them, I mean – are tiresome when they come in legions. Do you dream?’ The question dropped out casually. ‘Or dream here more than usual?’

Appleby appeared to consider. ‘No, I don’t think I do.’

‘Last night, for instance, when you say you slept particularly heavily: did you dream at all then?’

‘I’m sure I didn’t. Or I think I’m sure. But I suppose one has many dreams one doesn’t remember. I believe people have been studied and examined while asleep in an effort to discover whether they really dream all the time or not.’

‘Indeed?’ Wine was more vague than a man of science ought to have been. He pointed up the river. ‘I take particular delight in those Magellanic swans.’

They walked together for a time in silence. Time. They had gained time. But obscurely Appleby was sure that he didn’t want it – or not much of it. Why not push straight ahead? They were passing through a little grove. Not a bad spot, a grove. For some seconds he walked in an abstraction. Then suddenly he stopped, swung round, stared behind him. It was the evolution of a moment, and he was pacing forward with Wine once more. ‘Those mists,’ he said casually; ‘they seem to hang about quite late among the trees.’

‘Mists?’ Wine’s eyes faintly widened. ‘Ah – to be sure.’

Not that one must go too fast. There was the prime difficulty that something like this trick had been played on Wine before. He had been credulous over Hudspith’s supposed vision on the night of the birthday party; surely he would be on his guard a second time. Still, the point was that the credulous side to him was there. And it might be played upon to the point of complete nervous upset. The experiment – perhaps it ought to be called the counter-experiment – was not easy. But it was beguiling. And a fairly direct road to it might be best. Appleby lit his pipe. ‘What would you do,’ he asked, ‘if you saw a ghost?’

Wine’s eye followed a humming-bird. ‘A ghost?’ he said. ‘What a curious question!’

‘I don’t know what put it in my head.’ Appleby frowned. ‘I suppose this. Here you are proposing to trade in superstition – to batten on it in a very large way. In fact you are going to cash in on the uncanny on a hitherto un-thought-of scale.’

‘Well, I suppose it will be some time before I rival our theological friends in their heyday. But on a fair scale, certainly. Incidentally, I don’t think you put it very prettily. Batten is a horrid word.’ Wine smiled cheerfully. ‘But I think you were saying–’

‘That you are proposing to exploit the supernatural for profit.’

‘Just like Radbone and yourselves.’

‘Quite so. Has it occurred to you that it is all rather disrespectful?’

Wine came to a halt. ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow you, my dear fellow.’

‘You claim to have an open mind on the whole thing. You conduct experiments in a thoroughly scientific manner. You wouldn’t do that unless you supposed it possible that the whole supernatural structure of traditional superstition and belief may, in fact, exist. Suppose it does. Suppose your experiments yield unmistakably positive results. Suppose, as I say, you see a ghost. Where does that take you?’

‘Some way farther along the path of science, I suppose. I have added to human knowledge.’

‘You have indeed. You have demonstrated to yourself that you live, after all, in a magical universe. Not a materialist and rational universe, in which we clearly do the best for ourselves by grabbing what we can of the here and now. On the contrary, you live in an unaccountable universe, one much more like that of what you call our theological friends. Really believe that you see a ghost, and you are bound, on reflection, to see that you see a great deal behind it: malignant spirits, jealous powers. Suppose Hamlet really saw his father’s ghost: where did that ghost come from?’

‘From sulphurous and tormenting flames – if we are to believe Shakespeare, that is.’

‘But if a real ghost were to appear in your laboratory, could you say it didn’t come from the same place?’

‘I don’t know that I could.’

‘In fact you would find yourself in a new universe, and one in which the practical side of your enterprise would look much less smart than it does at present. For if the universe is, after all, a spiritual or spiritualist universe, then exploiting spirits and spiritualism for material ends is–’

‘Disrespectful was, I think, your word.’

‘Just that.’ Wine, Appleby reflected, was not to be easily bowled over by a nerve-war. Still, some undermining might be going on. ‘Think of Faust. He peered too far into the way things work.’

‘And was carried off by demons.’ Wine chuckled and resumed his walk. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said presently, ‘I do at times think of Faust. Your train of thought is not unfamiliar to me. But you put it rather well.’ He walked for some time in silence. ‘And after all, my dear Appleby, you are in the same boat. I wonder what
you
would do if it was
you
who…’

He paused, and Appleby looked at him innocently. ‘If it was I who–?’

‘Nothing, my dear fellow; nothing at all.’

They had turned back and were now in the little grove in which their conversation had begun. ‘Mist?’ he said. ‘Do you know I didn’t notice it?’

‘Mist,’ said Appleby. ‘I saw a wisp of mist where there wasn’t any. And I felt the morning obscurely oppressive when it was quite lovely. I don’t know that you could have done better yourself.’

‘Ah,’ said Hudspith.

‘I’m sure he couldn’t,’ said Lucy. ‘Not that I don’t think Mr Hudspith very clever.’

‘But it was a mistake.’ Appleby shook his head sombrely. ‘One wants to go after an element of the unexpected. The ghost of Hudspith appears to his friend Appleby. It repeats the pattern of the other Hawke Square affairs. The experiment yields a result which has been envisaged. And though it may not be comfortable for Wine to have to decide that the universe does, after all, contain unaccountable powers, still, the disconcerting result has been foreseen by him, and there will be a certain reassurance in that. His equilibrium is much more likely to be upset by something which is both supernatural and
unexpected
.
He
sees the ghost of his victim;
I
fail to see the ghost of my friend. Something like that.’

‘Ah,’ said Hudspith again. Somewhat gloomily, he was peeling the shell off a boiled egg.

Lucy crossed the room from the door where she had been listening. ‘It’s a pity about the sheets,’ she said.

‘The sheets?’

She pointed to the bed. ‘Nice pastel shades. But one wants a good old-fashioned white sheet for a ghost.’

Appleby sighed. ‘Somehow I don’t think we’ll ever catch Wine in a sheet, however snowy. What’s our plan? Nothing less than to make him repent. It’s almost absurd.’

‘Faust was scared into deciding to burn his books.’

‘My dear Lucy, wherever did you learn that?’

Lucy frowned. ‘I don’t know. But I could tell you quite a lot of funny things like that. Things about Socrates and Marcus Aurelius and–’

‘I see.’ Her former sisters were rapidly growing dim to Lucy Rideout; already they had merely the quality of intermittently remembered dreams. In another twenty-four hours it looked as if they would have joined Miss Molsher and Mrs Gladigan on Wine’s somewhat rapidly growing list of wastages. Which was satisfactory, but not immediately to the point. Appleby rose. ‘I must be off. There’s a fellow watching for me at the end of the corridor, and he might get curious if my visit to Lucy lasted too long. Wine won’t repent. Ghosts won’t make him believe that trading in ghosts is disrespectful and dangerous. He won’t shake hands with us and retire into private life. But even one ghost – and that merely in pastel shades – might cause him a bit of a flutter for a time. Remember the birthday party and how het-up he must have got for a bit.’ Appleby turned to Hudspith. ‘This plane – will it have gas?’

‘Presumably so. Beaglehole was certainly going to fly straight back in it. That, of course, is what Wine thinks has actually happened. Beaglehole was going to fly straight back without anybody except Wine knowing that he and I had as much as been here. It would be the obvious thing to have enough fuel to begin with to make the double trip.’

‘It depends on the capacity of the tank. But we’ll hope for the best. The plane is our real hope, such as it is. While everything runs smoothly here it’s no go; I’m watched much too carefully to get away. But tonight we’ll spring our ghost and hope for fifteen minutes’ chaos. Then we make a break for it.’

Hudspith nodded. ‘But must it really be a sheet? I doubt if that’s at all the current fashion with ghosts.’

‘Nor has been for centuries. No, this ghost shall have risen dripping and bloody from the river.’

‘It doesn’t sound at all comfortable.’

‘There will be a reek as of the inside of a charnel-house – no, of an alligator. And a rush of chill air.’

‘I don’t see–’

‘To say nothing of a phosphorescent glow. I think Lucy and I can work it all out this afternoon.’ Appleby moved to the door. ‘And now eat your last egg – my dear fellow, as Wine would say.’

Positive seduction would be immoral. And under the present conditions of constant surveillance it would be moreover, if not impracticable, at least of a daunting impudicity. So what had it better be? A cash proposition was a possibility. Or one could try threats. Or contrive some sort of appeal to professional vanity… Appleby, strolling over Europe Island, shook his head. If he knew anything of the type, sex it would have to be. The promising beginnings of a vulgar intrigue. Hudspith could offer much technical advice. But then Hudspith would disapprove. For that matter Appleby disapproved himself. He was prepared to admire, but reluctant to pursue – in this being like the majority of prudent men past the first flush of youth’s irresponsibility’s. Still, the girl must be nobbled. Appleby strolled on.

She lived in a sort of convent. This was an initial difficulty, though likely to be an eventual advantage – for decidedly she must be feeling rather bored. And probably annoyed: the food would be wrong and, likely enough, they made her take baths. This last would be all to the good. But meantime there was a high, white wall. Appleby climbed it and sat on top. He waved cheerfully. And the dark-skinned person who unobtrusively followed him everywhere this afternoon, and who had quickened his pace as he began to climb, grinned sardonically and sat down on a tump of panicle grass. Appleby waved again; or perhaps it might be better said that he made a gesture of a frank and Latin sort. For there she was. He jumped down on the other side and advanced upon her. Whereupon the dark-skinned man got up, scaled the wall in his turn and settled down to a grandstand view from the top. Well, let him.
‘Buenos tardes
,’ he said.

It was long after dinner. A little fire – a real coal fire – had been lit in the small ground-floor room used by Wine as an office and study. And he and Appleby were alone, sipping whiskies and sodas in the soft light of a standard lamp. Wine was growing increasingly affable. ‘I hear,’ he said, ‘that you have been visiting our Southern European friends.’ And he chuckled good-humouredly.