The engine cut out. Seconds passed. Now the plane must be on the water. But nothing more was heard, and the lengthened minutes crawled interminably by.
‘Appleby!’ It was Wine’s voice, sudden and commanding hard by Appleby’s ear. But this was something abundantly to be expected, and the sluggish movement of the head which alone resulted must have been convincing enough. For now Wine took Appleby’s right arm and cautiously pushed up the sleeve above the elbow. Something cool, firm, binding was applied and faintly the arm began to throb. More science. A mere finger on the pulse was not enough; here was one of those gadgets which gives much more accurate information on how the human engine behaves… Minutes passed again, and then a sharp jarring sound came up and in through the open window. That was a boat, thought Appleby; Hudspith and Beaglehole had arrived. And that – there was a click and a distant bang – was the front door opening and closing. And in a moment there would be footsteps on the stairs.
Mr Smart’s stairs – the stairs up which that respectable merchant had mounted on returning from his good-humoured holiday at Yarmouth. And now Hudspith was coming up, with Beaglehole, maybe, a couple of treads behind him… The throb in Appleby’s arm changed its tempo; nothing could be done about that; Wine must make what he might of it. And now they were outside on the landing and there seemed to be a pause. Here they would have to halt if the proposal was to knock up Wine in his bedroom. Would they go higher? Beaglehole had a room on the next floor – the floor where Mr Smart’s nurseries had lain. Could a pretext be manufactured out of that? Appleby strained his ears. Yes, they were going up. Wine sat very still.
A murmur of voices floated briefly down. Voices in talk – and then a voice in surprise, in anger, in alarm. There was a split second’s silence, and then a queer crack or smack followed by a thud. Silence flooded the house, was broken by a deep gasp as of a man raising a burden. Then a brief slither, a bump, a slither again and again a bump. And finally, from below, one single and very horrible sound.
Appleby rolled over, groaned and again lay still; the performance gave some little ease to his nerves. Probably there were beads of sweat on his face; of that too Wine must make what he would. Steps were descending. They went past the landing and down again without hurry but without pause. And then the front door must have been opened once more. For from outside came up a heavy splash. The incomparable digestive system of the crocodile genus was being invoked – and perhaps the affair held no worse moment than that… A very long pause followed. On those smooth marble slabs, transported so far for this far-fetched destiny, a good deal of mopping up would have to be done. But presently that too was over, and up from the river came the low plash of oars cautiously plied. The sound died away, and as it did so the pressure on Appleby’s arm relaxed. Wine was packing up his instrument. Now, with the quiet satisfaction of an investigator who has successfully laid the foundations for an important experiment, he would take himself off to bed.
Breakfast was even better than usual. There was melon in monster slices which the servants had cut so as to give an appearance of quaintly serrated teeth, and Wine, though a modest host, had to confess himself quite proud of the grilled trout. Mrs Nurse placidly poured coffee at the head of the table. Behind her, through the incongruous urban window, the morning showed fresh and lovely, an almost English affair of cool breezes and fleecy clouds. On one of the nearer islands, nestled in greenery, there could just be distinguished a schloss and a chalet pleasantly recalling the curious fantasy of the late Schlumpf. Everything was smiling and cheerful. Only Lucy Rideout looked a little worn and pale. Sick Lucy had looked rather like that.
‘How charming it will be,’ said Wine, ‘sailing down the river this morning. I declare I quite envy our friends. Mrs Nurse, another trout? They are toothsome but small. Or will you take a boiled egg?’ He looked round the table in momentary perplexity. ‘I am sure I saw boiled eggs. But here is what looks like quite a capital ham. Lucy, my dear, a slice of ham will certainly help you on with your Latin later in the morning. We seem quite to have dropped our Latin lately. And quite soon we must begin German. A language full of interesting shades. What do you think, now, is the difference between essen and fressen?’ Wine looked gaily round the table. ‘It’s essen when we eat the trout and it’s fressen when the alligators eat us. I wonder if they thought to put some of these delicious little fish on board the steamer? Hudspith, I am sure, would be not unpartial to them.’
The man had a macabre imagination which seemed at the moment too much even for Lucy’s robustly melodramatic taste. She pushed away her melon – it had rather an alligator-like look – and slipped from the room. Wine watched her go without curiosity; already it was on Appleby that most of his interest was concentrated. How long did a ghost take to get going? Perhaps there would be a preliminary period of obscure intimations. Or perhaps it would walk in as promptly as the shade of Banquo. Appleby, like Wine looking round vaguely for the boiled eggs, frowned sombrely. Fail not our feast… What if the dead man should really walk? And he in turn pushed his plate away – a gesture more expressive than elegant – and left the table. The dead man… Appleby disliked the idea of homicide.
Lucy was on the veranda, and he went up to her with a question in his eye. She nodded – cautious, careful and excited. ‘Dead,’ she said.
‘Instantaneously?’
‘Quite.’ Her glance became troubled. ‘Jacko, about those eggs–’
‘Eggs?’
‘Was it too risky to pocket them? After all, he must–’
Appleby smiled faintly. ‘One must take risks.’ He paused. ‘Do you know, Lucy, I’m rather troubled about – well, about the ruthlessness of the whole affair.’
She looked at him, wondering. ‘But it was one or other of them. Or probably it was him or all of us. And I’m certainly not going to be done for if I can help it. After all, you must remember I’m only just beginning as – as a person.’
‘That’s true, Lucy. And good luck to you.’
‘And now we’ve gained a lot of time, and perhaps we’ll be able to wind the whole thing up. All we have to do is to keep on stealing eggs and things without being noticed.’
Appleby laughed. ‘This ghost must eat. By the way, where is he?’
‘I’ve got him hidden in my room. And we’ve got the plane hidden too.’
‘There was a pilot?’
‘No. Beaglehole piloted it himself. So afterwards we just taxied up the river and into a creek.’
‘But, good lord, he’s never–’
‘He seemed quite good at it. But he’s worried about being concealed in my room. He doesn’t think it quite – quite proper.’
‘No more it is. But, bless him, I don’t suppose anyone since Casanova has had more frequent occasion to hide himself in girls’ rooms than Hudspith.’
‘Who was Casanova, Jacko?’
‘Never mind.’
5
Undoubtedly time had been gained. The liquidation of Beaglehole at the moment when Hudspith was to be liquidated had been a master stroke in its way. Hudspith, preserved, could live on filched boiled eggs indefinitely. And Wine, by the very conditions of his experiment, was obliged to wait patiently upon events. No doubt there would be a limit to the scope of the deception achieved. The Beaglehole who was to have flown down the river again had presumably tasks to perform and reports to make; when these were unachieved Wine’s suspicions would be aroused; and although various explanations of Beaglehole’s disappearance could be imagined, something like the true explanation would certainly present itself to his late employer as one of the substantial possibilities.
Time had been gained, thought Appleby – and once more he frowned over the way the thing had been done. Beaglehole – disagreeable wretch that he was – had been murdered by an aggressively moral policeman and a green and engaging girl. It was true that he had been murdered in the act of committing murder; true that the killing of him had been in a certain sense an act of self-defence. Any oth
er way of attempting to deal with the situation would probably have been fatal to the ultimate interests of law and order. Still, Beaglehole had been deliberately killed as the result of a course of action carefully and ingeniously thought out beforehand. Legally that was homicide in some degree. Morally it was murder. Or so Appleby thought it wise to think. A policeman, if forced to essays in manslaughter and assassination, ought to view them somewhat on the sombre side… And Appleby looked out over the green and yellow of the incredible river. Anyway Beaglehole’s death, whether criminal or not, had been all one to the alligators.
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.’
The Daffodil Affair Page 20