The Green Drift

by John Lymington

  There is no sign of anything wrong here.”

  “The rest is covered in wild amnesia, which is not surprising” said Griswold “and that phone box is the one used last night”

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  “And behind the phone box is the village transformer unit where the contact breakers kept kicking out,’ said Griswold.

  “Yes, sir. In that square of railings. Nobody got in there—boys, I mean. The trouble seems to have been voltage surge which hasn’t yet been explained.’

  ‘I took a house once that suffered voltage surge,’ Griswold said. ’The bulbs kept blowing. The radio fuses went. In fact everything behaved very curiously. The fault happened to be that the main input cable had not been joined to the house box, and the current was literally jumping half an inch of empty air.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the Inspector said, discarding it as idle reminiscence.

  They came back through the inn and out into the street. Griswold looked down to where the crowd thickened and the cars stood in ragged lines.

  ‘I will walk to the house,’ said Griswold, ‘alone.’

  The Inspector raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Keep someone on the phone all the time.’

  At the house the telephone bell rang. Both Richard and Jennifer started and looked at the instrument. Hayles wondered what had made them jump. Ellen appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her thighs.

  Richard answered.

  ‘We are just testing,’ a voice said. ‘The line has been restored.’

  ‘Just a minute, Doris,’ said Richard. ‘The bill hasn’t been paid.’

  ‘I guessed that,’ the operator said. ‘But I’ve had instructions to open your line again. You must have a friend at Head Office.’

  Richard rang off.

  ‘Even the GPO’s gone mad,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t see how it helps,’ Jennifer said, holding out the newspaper. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Let’s get back,’ Richard said, turning to Hayles.

  Where did you get this yarn, from? …

  You do understand, Mr Chance, that I didn’t get it at all” Hayles said quietly, almost persuasively. ‘I called in at the office this morning, to talk over a new angle on a certain subject and they threw this at me. Under the contract I can be sent where they say or take any subject they think is important. So here I am.’

  ‘But where did they get it from?’ Richard said.

  ‘From you, of course, as it says in the article. It’s yours. look again. That’s your name, isn’t it? They played the tape and your voice—’

  ‘My voice on your tape?’ Richard said. ‘No! Never! ’

  “1 don’t think I could mistake your voice and style.’ Hayles smiled slightly.

  ‘How did I get on a tape in your office, man?’

  ‘By phone.’

  ‘But my phone is out. It was out last night. You just heard—’

  Don’t keep interrupting, for goodness’ sake! ’ Jennifer said. ‘Go on Mr Hayles”

  ‘We tried to get you this morning” said Hayles. ‘So I know it was out. Nevertheless, you taped that story last night, but we couldn’t get confirmation of the story from any local personality. You see, all phones in this area were out last night”

  ‘What? Didn’t anybody pay?’ said Richard.

  ‘Some technical trouble,’ Hayles said.

  ‘Please tell me what he did! ’ said Jennifer.

  ‘Mr Chance rang at about eleven and asked for a rewrite man” Hayles said. ‘He was asked to wait, said he couldn’t because things were happening so fast, and was switched to a tape. That tape shook the office. Nobody believed it, but the Proprietor was in the office at that time. He was able to contact the highest authority. The authority were very surprised, but admitted that there was considerable truth in it. It was enough for us to publish. The first editions went through with a serious error due to subbing. They gave the impression that you were somehow connected with this alien force. I have express instructions to assure you that everything possible has been and will be done to put that impression right—’

  ‘So this is a corrected edition?’ Richard said, holding up the paper.

  ‘It is. Yes.’

  ‘And the morons out there have read the earlier one?”

  ‘The country edition, yes.’

  ‘Do they think it has happened, or that it’s going to happen?’

  ‘I’m asking myself the same question about you.’ said Hayles slowly.

  ‘But how could you think that it has—?’

  ‘There are a lot of dead spiders out there,’ Hayles said. He watched, wondering whether to let relief case his fears that Richard might hit him or otherwise go mad because of the subbing error. Richard appeared to have taken no notice of it; had accepted it, almost fatalistically.

  Jennifer also felt a strange little relief, for if Richard had been making mad phone calls from the village box and taping long records he couldn’t have been making love to Barbara Baynes.

  It was a fleeting little feeling, for suddenly a bigger thought came into her head.

  Supposing that this terrible thing had happened during the night, and they had been somehow doped not to remember it?

  That was a horrible idea.

  The phone rang. Again Richard took it.

  ‘This is Inspector Wales.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘There is a Mr Griswold coming up to see you about this item in the paper.’ said the Inspector.

  ‘One of your lot?’

  ‘No.’ The Inspector sighed. ‘No. A very big cheese indeed, Richard. Right from the top, and not a policeman. Top government stuff. He’s scared the daylights out of us already.’

  ‘Home Office cheese?” said Richard.

  ‘No. Worse than that. Just thought I’d give you the wire. Be careful. He has almost unlimited powers—at least, to us poor hogtied coppers it seems like it. Treat him like a greased pig—don’t try and get to grips with him.’

  ‘John,’ said Richard.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything, you know?’

  ‘No, but you’ve said a lot.’ Somebody else came into the office and the Inspector spoke aside briefly, then, ‘Goodbye, sir.’

  FOUR

  Griswold came in like God, needing no guide or introduction. His eyes flicked from one to another of those assembled in the hall as if calling a silent roll.

  ‘You’ll forgive me not wearing my jacket,’ he said. It is getting unbearably hot.’ He nodded at Hayles as if he already knew him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Representing the Daily News,’ Hayles said.

  Griswold put his jacket on a chair.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Mr Chance, Mrs Chance—’

  ‘ This is Ellen,’ said Jennifer, unwillingly bullied. ‘She keeps us tidy.’

  ‘You said it,’ said Ellen, staring disapprovingly at Griswold.

  Griswold was watching Barbara Baynes standing in the study doorway.

  ‘Mrs Baynes,’ he said. ‘The police are looking for you.’ He flicked a hand towards the telephone. ‘Better ring them and say that all is well. They worry.’

  Barbara started towards the phone, and then hesitated as if wondering what she was doing. But Griswold nodded and she went on and began to do as he had told her.

  Griswold looked keenly at Richard.

  ‘We are very greatly troubled,’ he said.

  ‘Appearance wouldn’t suggest it,’ Richard said.

  Griswold pulled his left hand from his pocket for the first time since his entry and opened it. In the soft, white palm there was a small, dead spider. Richard looked at it.

  There are lots outside,’ he said.

  ‘Another of those! ’ said Jennifer quickly. ‘There’s been a perfect plague of them.’

  ‘There is an insect whose name I forget,’ said Griswold, putting the dead spider carefully on to the polished top of the telephone table. ‘It eats into a man’s head an
d consumes his brain.’

  ‘How horrible! ’ Jennifer said.

  ‘Mind maggots.’ Richard said.

  ‘I think you have it wrong,’ Hayles said. ‘It’s a matter of wax. The brain is incidental.’

  ‘As usual,’ Richard said, staring at the dead insect, then up as Griswold held out a typed slip with an official heading. Richard scanned it. Griswold put it back into his pocket. ‘We are distinguished.’

  ‘Particularly,’ said Griswold.

  He turned. Everyone looked out down the garden path. Porch was coming up carrying a case. Griswold turned to where he could see into the study and to the window.

  ‘I’d like to use that room,’ he said. ‘It looks in the right direction.’

  ‘Use it for what?’ Richard said.

  ‘I have a lot of work to do,’ Griswold said. He signalled Porch to carry the case into the study. ‘Mrs Baynes, you spent the night here?’

  ‘Well, I think so,’ she said. ‘It’s all very peculiar—’

  ‘Yes,’ Griswold said, and walked into the study.

  The five people in the hall looked at each other, some blankly, some angrily, but all with an air of puzzlement and uncertainty. Griswold was challenging in an odd way : he fitted the rest of the morning’s strange affairs.

  Richard went into the study. Griswold had opened the case. Part of it was a tape deck, and he was plugging in to the wall socket. He took little notice of the scattering of little spiders on the carpet there. It was a double plug. The TV remained plugged in.

  ‘What have you got to do?’ Richard said.

  ‘Find out the truth.’ Griswold straightened. ‘It may be essential to our continued well-being.’

  ‘That must have been some kind of nightmare, that article,” Richard said.

  “A local journalist called on you at your office a fortnight ago today,” Griswold stated. ‘You told him you were working on a short story about explosive seeds being showered on the earth from somewhere in space.’

  ‘I told him some rubbish. I didn’t think he’d publish it.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But I had no intention of doing such a story. I don’t go for the grim stuff. I like the humorous twist. It’s difficult to get that with explosives.’

  Griswold’s look was sour, searching and mixed with a slow, disbelieving grin.

  ‘I don’t think that anything we do is ever quite purposeless,’ he said. ‘Each small irrelevant action must be part of a cumulative effect hereafter.’

  ‘That’s one theory. I believe in the Big Bang.’

  “Yet immediately you said you didn’t.’

  ‘I was talking of humorous twists then. Now I’m talking about life.’

  ‘The difference is not marked.’ He stared out of the window at the aimless crowd. ‘They thin somewhat. It must be getting near feeding time.’ He turned and set the tape reels moving. ‘Now I should like to ask questions in accordance with the authority which I have shown you.’ ‘If you can find anything. I’ll be glad to help.’

  The woman—Ellen, first.’

  Richard, surprised, shrugged and went out. Ellen came in. Richard closed the door behind her. Ellen became quite still finding herself shut in alone with this queer, forceful man.

  ‘You found a number of dead spiders about the house this morning,’ said Griswold.

  ‘Yes, sir. Upstairs and in the kitchen and places.’

  ‘What about in your own home? Any there?’

  ‘Well. I don’t know, you see, because when I get up I get Bert’s sandwiches and get my boy ready for school. He’s such a messer, one sock here and the other in the lavatory—’ She looked surprised. ‘Oh no! It’s Thursday! ’ ‘What’s different?’

  He: always stays with his grandma Wensdy night, but this morning I got up and called him before I rembered it was Thursday.

  ‘You forgot Wednesday?’

  ‘Well, we went to bed early, that’s all.’

  ‘What time?’

  I don’t know. It was after the Ray Allen show on the telly.’

  ‘And you didn’t find any spiders this morning?’

  Well, 1 didn’t look. It’s like I said. When my little boy isn’t there I just get up later, and then put the things in the sink and come on up here. Then I go back dinnertime and do the house in the afternoon. So you see. I wouldn’t see anything like that till afterwards—this afternoon, like.’

  ‘Were there any people out there when you came?’ He pointed out, poising his hand like a revolver, wagging the trigger.

  ‘No, there was nobody there, just Mr Barson with the milk van at the end of the lane, like always, but he was late, he said, because some electricity broke down and the milk coolers went off or something. I don’t understand what they do. They used to get it just from cows, mother says, and it was all right. I don’t know why they do all these things—’

  ‘And there was nothing funny up the lane?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Anything funny when you got in here?’

  ‘Yes. Everybody was asleep. At first I thought they’d gone out, p’raps, because when lie’s on holiday or Sundays or Saturdays you can always hear him on the typewriter and putting something on the tape. Always doing something, he is. He’s like my boy, he can’t stay put on his bottom for two seconds together, and he gets up early, too; that’s why it was funny when it was all quiet. Then in the kitchen I saw the tea things hadn’t been used, because that’s the first thing he does, gets up, makes some tea and takes it in the study with him. Always the same. That’s every day, not only when he’s on holiday like now….

  ‘There were some dead spiders on the tray, but they were very small. I thought somebody spilt some tea when they put it in the pot last night.’

  ‘So somebody did put tea in the pot, then?’

  ‘Yes. He gets it ready before he goes to bed, so that all he has to do in the morning is carry the tray in and plug in the kettle there.’ She pointed to where the tape was connected.

  ‘It wasn’t more spiders in the pot?’

  ‘Crummy, no!’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘I made tea with it. That was before I saw the spiders on the tray.’

  ‘You remember getting up this morning?’

  ‘Yes, of course! ’

  ‘Do you remember going to bed last night?’

  ‘No. It’s funny that. I—’

  ‘Please ask Mrs Chance to come in.’

  Ellen went, flushing a little, and Jennifer came in.

  ‘Up to what point do you remember things happening last night?’ Griswold said.

  ‘I came back from my mother’s. It’s a long drive and X was tired. I went up to lie on my bed and listen to the wireless, and I must have gone to sleep then.’

  ‘You had been away for several days, and yet you didn’t sit with your husband that evening?’

  ‘Oh yes I did! We talked together for a long time after I got back at five. But I was feeling very heady and tired, and he wanted to watch a play.’

  ‘Unusually heady?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yes, I think I was. You know on a long drive you are keyed up, and it gets tighter the closer you are to home, and then you’re happy to be there and all the strain sort of comes on you at once.’

  ‘Was there anything unusual about the house?’ ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Do you remember waking in the night?’

  ’No.’ .

  ‘Do you remember it being dark last night.

  ‘Well, dusk, because of the fireflies.’

  ‘So it must have been dark if you saw them.

  ‘Nearly, as I say.’

  ‘Is your bedroom upstairs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did you see the fireflies?’

  ‘There are french windows up there on to the balcony. They were open because of the heat.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather high for a firefly? Aren’t they beetles?’ Jennifer gave a helpless laugh. ‘Really, I’ve no idea! I just see them
sometimes.’

  ‘Everything this morning has been somewhat unusual?’ ‘Very unusual.’

  ‘Things look strange to you ?’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘Even familiar things?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yes, I think even familiar things.’

  ‘As if you were regarding them through a stranger’s eyes?’

  Again she laughed. “I wouldn’t go as far as that and yet—in a way, yes. There is a sort of unusual feeling. As if colours are not as I always see them. These curtains. They used to go with the wall colour. Now they don’t. They look different somehow.’

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘Oh no. He’s normal.’

  ‘Do you still have this heady feeling?’

  “Yes. I think it must be the heat. Thundery.’

  I would like to see Mrs Baynes.’ He watched her face tighten momentarily, and turned to the window with a grin.

  Barbera Baynes came in with an aggressive attitude hiding her nervousness.

  “You don’t remember coming here last night” Griswold stated “ In what circumstances did you find yourself here this morning?’

  ‘In there,’ she said, pointing, and told him the brief details as if defying him to find them comic. ‘I must have thought it was my bedroom, but Lord knows how.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Griswold said, watching the uneven speeds of the tape reels. ‘Tell me about yesterday evening at your inn. What time did Richard Chance get there?’

  ‘He came in about half-past nine. I couldn’t be sure, but about that. He had a pint of Bass and stood chatting. It was very hot and he was thirsty from the walk.’

  ‘What did he chat about?’

  ‘Oh, he said his wife was back and gone to bed with a headache. Then he said something about a play boring him stiff, and joked about coming down to me for a slightly less of a bore. Then he had a half put in his glass and went out on to the porch. It was getting dark then.’

  ‘Did he often do that?’

  ‘Yes. He worked out plots, he said.’