The Mind Readers (21 page)

There were a couple of other huts to pass before father and son reached their own; one belonging to the computer's technical expert, who slept whenever he could, and another temporarily empty, so they had no greetings from anybody and no questions, and might have been alone in the world on the grey marsh. Sam had begun to dance as he walked and presently he put his hand in Martin's as he used when much younger.

‘It's nice to be home,' he said and the remark cut so reassuringly into the young man's troubled train of thought that he looked down guiltily.

‘This is a lousy living space for you and your Mom. I guess I ought to let you two settle on the mainland in a decent house while I fix about staying here when I have to.'

‘No. Don't do that. We're all right. We like it here.' Sam was definite. ‘We got a bit peeved by Mr Mayo shoving us all around but we don't really care. He's a great man, I know. Why is he so scared of you being clever too?'

‘Hey! Don't you go saying crazy things like that!'

‘Well, he is.' Sam spoke with the sublime authority of one who has inside information. ‘All his thoughts and feels go dithery when he sees you. Like he can't bear to look. There's a master at school who makes it happen to the Head. It's jolly interesting if you notice.'

Martin passed a hand over his face. ‘Hell!' he said, adding abruptly, ‘so you had one of those devices with you here last holidays?'

‘No. They wouldn't agree to it. They didn't think it was safe.' He paused. ‘Sometimes I can do it without—almost.'

‘What?'

‘Only sometimes. It's when I've been wearing my iggy-tube a lot and suddenly leave it off. For a little while it's still almost as if I had it on.'

‘Your mind is still in the receiving posture?'

‘Something like that.' Sam was not very interested. ‘Anyway, Mr Mayo is scared of you and it makes him sickish. He's a bit ashamed of that but not much.'

‘How do you know, Sam? Because you feel it too?'

‘Well, I feel what he feels but I know it's him and not me. After that I have my own feel, of course, which would be “glad stroke laughing-at” in his case, I expect. Sucks to him!'

‘But you also know
why
he feels what he does?'

‘Of course. Otherwise I'd just be doing it like animals do, wouldn't I? They react. I think. Well, I do. Don't I?'

Martin said nothing, shutting his mouth deliberately. He had given his word to Helena that he would not discuss the device with Sam without her. It was very difficult to keep the promise.

They were approaching the back of their own dwelling; its creosote-impregnated sides rose dark and forlorn in the disconsolate scene. Martin paused abruptly and stood looking down at a small iron trap-head which stood up an inch or so out of the coarse grass and white sand. It was the main water stop-cock; somewhere near it there would be something of the same sort for the gas supply. He had rejected out of hand the story of Mayo and the fake suicide attempt which Helena had suggested and Melisande's account had confirmed. But he could not forget it. He glanced about him in the grass, feeling guilty. If the gas supply had been interrupted for a moment or so to extinguish his fire on the evening before, there could hardly be any proof of it now, let alone anything to incriminate any one particular person. He found the small iron head presently. It was set in concrete and half hidden by a tarred boundary post. Sam was attracted to it at the same moment and went up and kicked it. As he stumbled he saw something behind the post and whipped it up out of the crevice between it and the white concrete.

‘A fab white pencil!' he said. ‘Look, not even broken.'

Martin took it from him and stood holding it with the dark colour growing deeper and deeper in his face. It was an ordinary six-sided pencil but the make was unusual and its length had been cut down to three inches. The neatly fluted strokes with which it had been sharpened were as familiar to him as his own fountain pen. It was one of Paggen Mayo's many little personal affectations that he always carried a piece of pencil like this tucked into the bottom of the outside breast-pocket of the suits he changed into once the sun went down. Moreover, when he lost one it was always in the same way, by bending over and permitting it to slip out. This was no sort of proof of his guilt in the present situation, but had he signed the story with his own hand he could hardly have made it more convincing to the hurt and horrified young man who had admired him and been loyal to him.

Helena unlocked the door to them and caught sight of her husband's face as he stepped into the room.

‘What's happened?' she demanded anxiously. ‘Did you meet him?'

‘Who?'

‘Vaughan-Jenner. He came looking for you a few minutes ago from Professor Tabard. He thought he might catch you on the road. He said not to worry you but to warn you that the Lord is imminent.'

‘Is he? Sorry I missed Drasil. We came along by the sea. Is Paggen back?'

‘He said no. I think that was something to do with it. Will you have to go back up there?'

‘I don't think so. He'll find me if he wants me. The Professor is frankly excited. I don't think he ever really believed the thing could be translated into electronics or anything else. It's knocked him off Olympus, he's almost human.'

He sat down at the table and Sam joined him and they produced their packages. Helena fed them, and as they all sat eating, the family atmosphere settled and they grew close and content.

Martin looked at Helena. ‘Sam says he doesn't need his iggy-tube. He can do it without. What do you know about that?'

‘I only said sometimes. Anybody can do it sometimes.'

‘I can't and I don't want to,' Helena said firmly but she was relenting. Sam's recovery had been sensational and her fears were subsiding fast. She nodded surreptitiously to Martin, who chose the most important of the questions he had been waiting to ask.

‘Sam, when we went over to the lab that day and the Professor came in, did Mr Mayo mention something that had a very long name, something new?'

‘Nipponanium? Yes he did.'

‘I see. I suppose he called it the “magical element”—he often does?'

Sam nodded.

‘And you repeated it to Edward?'

‘Not exactly.' The vivid eyes were wide and defensive. ‘It was only that whenever I saw it written down in papers and things I put a ring round it with my red biro and cut the bit out, because I wanted to remember how it was spelled.'

‘Did you find it in your Japanese paper?' Helena demanded and glanced at Martin. ‘It was that sample airmail news service thing. Do you remember? We all fell in love with the beautiful tissue it was printed on.'

‘Is that where you saw it, Sam?'

‘Not only there. It was in other things too. It was a new discovery. It was in two magazines and
The Evening News
and several other places. I kept them all.'

‘Where are they now?'

‘I gave Edward one so that he knew I wasn't making it up and the others are in my bag; the one Mummy's lost. Edward said I was to keep them safe and I haven't. Shall I get arrested?'

‘You're sure that's all it was? Only the name of the element ringed round?' Helena sounded almost as apprehensive as he was.

‘Wait.' Martin was assessing the position. ‘Did you ever talk about your bag to anybody outside the island? Anybody at school, except Edward? Any grown-ups at all?'

‘Only to one master.' It became evident that he remembered the incident well, and had suffered pangs of conscience about it. ‘He got ill or something and had to leave in the middle of last term. He was a spy, I think.'

‘Sam, don't be silly.'

‘I'm not. He only spoke to me once. He wasn't teaching my form, you see. Everyone said he was American but I knew he wasn't.'

‘That wouldn't make him a spy.'

‘No. But when Mr Allenbury confiscated my iggy-tube in class he gave it back at the end of the period, but he asked me about it and I said it was a game. Allenbaggers didn't ask me anything else but he laughed and he must have told some of the others in the common room because next day this Mr Marshall . . .'

‘Who's that? The man everybody said was American and he wasn't?'

‘Yes. He came up to me and asked me about it and said could he see it and what game was it. I said my magic bandage had got dirty and I'd thrown it away and it was a silly game about going on a space ship and the magic element was Nipponanium. He was going to ask me some more but the Head came by and of course he hurried off, because masters who teach in the upper forms don't talk to kids in the lower ones.'

‘What made you think he was a spy?'

‘Well, I had my tube on, see? And as he turned away he thought “Oh blow! I have missed that!” and I picked it up quite clearly. He was afraid because he had missed it and that was how I knew he must be a spy and afraid of getting into a row.'

Martin caught his wife's eye and they both laughed with the same uneasiness.

‘You're reducing this to absurdity.'

‘I'm not. That's what he did feel. I'm very good on feels. I get them right more often than anybody. I always feel what the sender feels and I know what it is and how much.
You
said so, Mom.'

‘I did?'

‘I heard you. You said it to the Head's wife when I was taken away from his study into the school the first time. You said “He's a sympathetic child”. I asked about the word and it means understanding what other people feel. The dictionary says so.'

‘So you decided the master was probably a spy.' Martin retrieved the subject by its tail. ‘Did you tell anybody else about your bag and what was in it?'

‘The Nipponanium wasn't my only secret,' Sam objected. ‘I had my horoscope in it and my marks ever since I went to school, my book of poems I am writing and “How to catch a fairy” . . . that's a spell Fred Arnold gave me for my bag out of a very old notebook a man called Hogan lent him.'

‘Does it work?'

‘I don't know. You have to have some “Venice glass” and the blood of a white hen.'

‘That's against it, son. Well, did you tell anybody else about this bag of secrets?'

‘Anybody at all?'

‘Anybody.'

‘I told Norah Mayo once.'

‘Did you? I didn't know you talked to her much.'

‘I don't. She's
fourteen
although she's the younger, but there isn't anybody else to talk to. Oh, I told Mrs Rogers the char but she's sloped off now.'

‘Darling! Mrs Rogers was a cleaning woman and she has left the island.'

‘Sorry, Mother. I only said what she said. Anyway she couldn't have taken my bag because she left in the holidays and you both saw it this term. I expect Fred Arnold took it because he's a spy, and spies for the Lord.'

Martin put an arm round his son's neck in a tackler's hold. ‘You must say “Lord Ludor” and not “the Lord” and you've got spies on the brain!'

‘Norah Mayo thought her father was a spy because her mother said so.' Sam gasped, enjoying the field-day whilst it lasted. ‘That was a bit much when she didn't mean it.'

They were still dealing with him and the atmosphere was suddenly united when there was a discreet tap on the outer door. Martin rose to open it.

Drasil Vaughan-Jenner, who stood on the step, was in some ways as unlikely as his name. He was small and dapper and young and his clothes were in the advanced style, very trim and good and outlandish all at the same time. His collarless jacket was a miracle of tailoring and his tight trousers extreme. He had a shrewd, high cheek-boned face and tortoiseshell-coloured eyes, which for all their cleverness were very merry. He came in out of the mist which was rising fast and stood smiling at Helena with polite apology.

‘I got sent straight back,' he said. ‘Please don't let me disturb you; I don't need to be fed. We lead a harassed life, don't we? All hithering and thithering at the command of Great Brains who are utterly above the common necessities.'

‘When did you eat last?' Helena enquired, pushing the remains of the ham towards him. ‘You look a bit waif-like or is it merely the Oliver Twist outfit?'

‘I had a hurried breakfast yesterday, I think,' he said cheerfully, settling himself before the food and looking about the table with bright, birdlike satisfaction.

‘This is very good of you, Mrs Ferris, I shan't forget it when I come to Power! Since breakfast yesterday my Great Man has been all of a twitter and I've not been permitted to sit down, let alone eat! We've been keeping a breathless secret, Martin, both from you and Paggen Mayo, but now, since you've told Sir about your homework, I'm to tell you quicker than soon in case you get offended. Hence the intrusion.'

‘You sound light-headed. Try this,' said Martin hospitably as he carved up the half-loaf. ‘Is there any news of Paggen down there yet?'

‘Not yet. After an hour on the telephone to H.Q. Great Man Tabard now suspects DISLOYALTY. After all, the man Mayo has been unobtainable for a whole half day! Tabard sees no dash to a Foreign Power, you understand, but a sordid commercial default. Mayo is seen in the Lab of Another, in fact. I laughed because it sounded so homey but Big Brain was not amused. He trusts you alone because you came and told him about your mechanical mind-reader and so I'm to confide our little bombshell to you.' He paused, ate gratefully and looked up, his sepia-flecked eyes very shrewd and sincere. ‘That thing you mentioned about the possible importance of the blood-stream was the decider,' he said. ‘That has delighted him. You'll see why. We are daring to think that we're approaching the transmitter.'

‘Really?' Martin caught his breath and the little flush that flickered over his face like a shadow betrayed the jolt his heart had felt. ‘Gosh!' It's going to be practical. I've never really dared to hope.'