‘And they would be likely places for Orientals to forgather. That would make it easier to keep them under surveillance. I mean the ones who handle the big money,’ Drury said as an afterthought.
Vicki Seeburg said, ‘The ‘Golden Pagoda’ required more money than Janssi and I had. We didn’t have to go to a bank for a loan. Is that plain enough, Mr Drury?’
Drury nodded again. ‘Thank you. Who introduced Jeremy Truncard to the ‘Golden Pagoda’?’
‘We don’t know,’ Vicki said.
Drury looked from the woman to her husband, who nodded and said, ‘It may sound incredible, Mr Drury, but it is true.’
‘You were with Mr Truncard,’ Drury reminded the woman. ‘You could have asked him.’
‘I did several times, trying to take him by surprise. But the ‘Golden Pagoda’ meant nothing to him unless one first said the words Russian Roulette.’
‘My God,’ said Bill Hazard. ‘Mesmerized — hypnotized — some damned Oriental trick that — ’
He stopped short, flushing warmly as he bit back the rest and looked at the flashing eyes of the visitors, now turned wholly on the big man who had pushed himself into the centre of interest.
‘Precisely, Inspector,’ Vicki said. ‘Someone has been using Jeremy Truncard without his being aware of it. He has gone to the ‘Golden Pagoda’ when, if you like, the coast was clear. That was clever, because I would never check on that club. It would be the last place I would think of. But Wilma saw him. He went in and sat at a table and wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to a waiter, who went away, came back, and told Jeremy to follow him. The waiter stood back, screwing up the piece of paper, which he dropped into an ashtray. Wilma changed her seat and collected the piece of paper. When she unfolded it she read two words. I think you can guess what they were.’
‘Russian Roulette,’ muttered Hazard.
‘How about the waiter?’ Drury asked.
‘Unfortunately there is a large turn over in Indian staff who come to London, stay for a time, and move on to the provinces. I can’t find out who that waiter was. I think,’ Janssi Singh said slowly, shaking his head, ‘he must be one who left.’
‘Who would he take the piece of paper to?’ Drury inquired.
The broad shoulders under the blue turban shrugged.
‘Again it is impossible to say. There are private rooms, and three dining-rooms. When the shows are given the partitions slide away and the main portion of the club is then a big auditorium.’
‘Rather like the way the Japanese change their rooms,’ Drury nodded.
‘Very similar, except that the walls are not bamboo, and the private rooms are what they purport to be.’
The woman said, ‘Something seems to be puzzling you, Mr Drury.’ It was an invitation, which Drury acknowledged with a smile. ‘Why I asked for you to have a tape recorder when I rang up?’
‘No.’ The Yard superintendent leaned forward. ‘I still can’t see how it was a risk to have Mr Truncard meet whoever he did meet at the club, Vicki. In the nature of things there was always a chance that you or your husband might be there. You knew him, I believe, had met him with Wilma Haven, and — ’
‘Just a moment, Superintendent,’ said Janssi Singh. ‘You are covering a lot of ground. First, it is a rule Vicki and I have, never to go to the club except together. There could be danger, more for her perhaps than for me, and alone she might be vulnerable. Although she can take care of herself, as she has demonstrated several times, a word could be passed on if she was alone. With two of us it would be a different matter, and remember — I am talking about only if one. of us was recognized by someone who feared us. By going always together the chances of a hostile act were considerably narrowed down. Another thing, we are man and wife. It would be natural for her to come with me, and we are shareholders in the business. Also, if something unexpected happened, we could act jointly. That too was important, for I have to report to one High Commissioner’s office, Vicki to another. It wasn’t easy to set this up in the first place, I mean our working together. There was a good deal of opposition in Delhi and in Karachi, and I may say we weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms at first in London.’
When the man in the turban sat back Drury said, ‘I can understand why Vicki wanted you here with her.’
‘We have to share what we know. All the time, with no delay, Mr Drury,’ she said, a new earnestness in her manner. ‘We couldn’t continue otherwise. There are career diplomats in both camps who eye us with suspicion, and now more than ever.’
‘You mean now today?’ the Yard man frowned.
‘No, now in the sense of recently. Neither of us has been reporting since Wilma broke the news to me about Jeremy and that Russian Roulette code password. There has been a gap while we have been going about things normally, keeping contact on my part with Daniel Paget and Wilma, and my husband fulfilling his engagements in Bournemouth and not losing contact with me or Peregrine Porter.’
Drury shook his head. ‘I can understand that, for your own reasons, you wanted things to appear normal, as you say, but — ’
She interrupted, aware that Drury was overlooking a whole cluster of important points because he did not know enough, and did not realize why Paget had been shot, so that what he knew died with him.
She said, ‘Mr Drury, forget how it came about. Let me tell you what we think happened and what Wilma Haven thought happened. They are not necessarily the same thing, but they indicate the same underlying motive.’
Bill Hazard stirred. This was getting deep for him, and when that time arrived he wanted to smoke.
‘Anybody care for a cigarette?’ he asked.
Janssi Singh took a cigarette from the packet held out, the woman said, ‘Thank you, Inspector, I don’t smoke.’
Drury took the opportunity to fill and light his pipe.
The woman went on.
‘Wilma was surprised that Jeremy did not notice her. I’m referring to the occasion when she picked up that piece of paper with the words Russian Roulette on it. But she was also surprised that he did not appear specially interested in his surroundings. He arrived, had a fruit drink, and passed over the piece of paper with what we believe was a special code signal. Shortly afterwards he left his fruit drink and went out with the waiter. But he did not stay in the club. He had the waiter call a taxi. Wilma was a woman who was not easily put off when she had set her mind to find out something. I think I’m at fault for encouraging that trait in her character. I met her in Saint-Tropez when I was making inquiries about the dope ring that was shifting raw heroin from Albania to Marseilles. We took to each other and remained friends and she later introduced me to Jeremy in London, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t take to him. He seemed an ineffectual young boffin, I suppose is the word, immersed in his work, and not very manly. I have since then modified my opinion. However, to modify is not necessarily to change drastically. I thought Jeremy intelligent but not bright with women. He thought he was in love with Wilma, but never got to grips with the problem of making sure if she could love him.’
She paused to look at the face under the turban. Janssi Singh’s eyes were screwed up as though to avoid a rising feather of smoke from the cigarette in his mouth. He looked pained but not terribly surprised at what he was hearing and feeling. Like a bull receiving the estogue. He looked pierced. Suddenly his eyes opened wide and there were etiolating lights in their dark depths that masked the reflection of his thoughts as he took the cigarette from the corner of his mouth and dropped ash into the tray on Drury’s desk.
‘You must be fair, Vicki,’ he said. ‘Wilma should never have started that joke about having a baby. Afterwards he wouldn’t have believed her if she had told him the truth. So she went on with it and he grew away from her. It has happened before. Women sometimes want their fun and their virginity and don’t know how to compromise, so they end up by lying and getting in a mess and getting men in a mess with them. It is sad, Mr Drury. Very sad. Someti
mes,’ Janssi Singh added thoughtfully. He shook his colourful head and his teeth flashed in a fresh smile before he said, ‘I feel sorry for Mr Jeremy Truncard. Pulsating with a late-arrived puberty and the beginnings of a Freudian id, he could never hope to handle Wilma. So Gladys, as Vicki tells me, was inevitable.’
Bill Hazard choked over some smoke that went the wrong way down. Drury looked not at the man in the turban, but at the woman. He was stone-faced.
She said, ‘Gladys Albirt, the daughter of Sir Thomas Albirt, Jeremy’s I.C. boss. Jeremy hasn’t bought her the ring, but he feels morally engaged to her. He’s even told her about the fictitious baby he believes Wilma let him father. She took it rather well. Quite enlightened. Told him these things happen. The big thing is not to let them happen too often.’
Bill Hazard choked again, but this time for a very different reason. He was grinning. Janssi Singh looked at him and shrugged.
‘Women, my dear Inspector. They are utterly and wholly unpredictable. They can kill you with a smile and make you intolerably happy with a tear.’ He crushed out his cigarette and turned to his wife. ‘Don’t let me interrupt, Vicki.’
He caught one of her hands, stared down at it like a pedologist who has grabbed up some moon dust, and dropped a kiss in the palm as he turned it over.
‘You were right, as always, to insist I come along. But I’m afraid we will never make a good double act. Superintendent Drury must be wishing he had agreed to hear us separately rather than together.’
If Drury thought he detected a note of quiet mockery in that statement he gave no sign. But his expression was not quite so stony when he said, ‘The baby Mr Truncard mentioned on the phone to Miss Haven. It sounds almost unbelievable, but then so does most of this case.’
Vicki Seeburg asked quietly, ‘Just what is the case you’re on, Mr Drury? I mean, just so that I have an idea of what interests Scotland Yard. I know you want all the facts you can come by. But you also have a case to solve.’
‘Who put the plastic bomb in that gnome? That’s my case, Vicki. Whoever planned the explosion was about to take care of Jeremy Truncard, Professor Warrender, and possibly a couple of nosy Yard men besides Wilma Haven.’
Vicki shook her head.
‘I can’t somehow believe that, Superintendent,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘It isn’t logical.’
‘Well,’ said Drury with fine patience, ‘how is it illogical?’
She caught her hands together and compressed them until the knuckles shone waxy white through the dusky brown flesh.
‘Jeremy was important. He hasn’t finished telling all he knows about the new explosives and the latest kind of napalm.’
She spoke with such a cool matter-of-factness that Drury wondered what in hell he had missed.
At that moment the tape on the recorder ran to the end of its spool.
When Hazard had fixed a fresh spool and the familiar faint whirring was again heard in the room she said in a crisper tone, speaking like someone who had made up her mind about something, ‘Listen, Mr Drury. Jeremy was being contacted at the ‘Golden Pagoda’ just the way Wilma happened on. He was instructed where to go, and it is certain that he arrived at some consultant’s room, where he thought he was undergoing psychiatric treatment. Instead he was being brainwashed in reverse. He was surrendering, under hypnosis and traumatic suggestion, all he knew of the experiments being made at International Chemicals. Formulae he couldn’t remember when in his right mind, as it is termed, were reproduced from his subconscious, which had stored them. It was like having a mental sound track playing back what his mind had absorbed.’
She paused.
Her husband added his few words. ‘This isn’t new. Freshly acquired drugs can not only stimulate memory, but condense it, like light seen through the reverse of a telescope. Jeremy Truncard could not only be induced to surrender what he knew, but he could be conditioned to go away and mentally store what he was about to absorb of fresh secret results.’
Bill Hazard came forward and crushed out about a millimetre of smoking cigarette.
‘This is actually practicable?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said the man in the turban. ‘Of course certain drugs are helpful in the process. That is how Wilma tumbled to what was happening.’
‘How?’ asked Drury, and this time the woman took over.
This pair might not be good for a double act, but they were certainly a smoothly operating team, the Yard superintendent reflected. He was both impressed and wary. They were in their own way and their own time, he felt, feeding him all the information he could expect to receive from two individuals in a very privileged position. But they were doing so in a way that would leave him afterwards with no false impression about their own part and their co-operation with the British authorities.
Someone in Whitehall was being very clever. A lot of hands with itchy fingers were being kept clean until he had sifted the dirt. If any stuck to him — well, he was the clever bastard who let Wilma Haven be killed by something that might have been prevented if . . .
Drury could supply a score of ifs. That someone in Whitehall would need only one in a showdown. He wondered if Wilma Haven had had any real idea of what she was getting into, or even why she had been allowed to go to perdition in her own sweet way.
He became aware that the woman was watching him closely as she continued speaking.
‘Wilma took Jeremy’s cigarette case from his pocket and found it empty. He was smoking long-sized filter tips, which didn’t fit the case,’ Vicki said, careful not to hurry her words. ‘She found it was a cigarette with a strange taste that made her feel mildly elated and mentally unburdened, as though she didn’t care about things she should be caring for. She purloined a second and had it tested. It was impregnated with LSD-25. You know of course what that is.’
‘The favourite drug of the new crop of acidheads,’ Bill Hazard said with a rough snort. ‘Well, if that’s all it comes to, Truncard being one of the new breed of psychedelic junkies — ’
‘No, that isn’t all it comes to.’
Janssi Singh’s voice was sharp with reproof. Hazard looked startled. He looked at Drury, and got a warning scowl that lasted only the time it took to give a brief headshake.
‘A moment please, Inspector,’ said the man in the turban. He removed a wallet from a pocket inside his mohair jacket and extracted a folded piece of printed matter. ‘This is something,’ he went on, ‘by a Harley Street psychiatrist, possibly of equal standing with Professor Warrender, whom Wilma consulted about Jeremy later. I will read two extracts. They will be sufficient. The first.’
He paused, then read: ‘I cannot sufficiently emphasize how infinitely dangerous the haphazard use of LSD can be. LSD is not a drug for everyone. Psychiatrists are exceedingly careful in selecting their patients.’ He paused, and looking up said, ‘Note that Jeremy Truncard was not given the drug haphazardly, but by careful and calculated assimilation. Also that it is a drug useful in the hands of psychiatrists. Now the second extract.’
He paused again before reading: ‘I myself have found that, for the drug to have its therapeutic effect, the patients must be of average or above average intelligence.’
Again he looked up. ‘A therapeutic effect, which could become an inverse or reverse therapeutic effect. You follow? And Jeremy Truncard, despite his poor performance with the women in his life, must be rated well above average intelligence. He is thought to be a brilliant research chemist, which is why he is with I.C. and also why his brain and subconscious have been milked like a milch-cow.’
‘Good God,’ breathed Hazard, feeling for his cigarettes and lighting another in an absentminded way.
‘Perhaps,’ said Janssi Singh, ‘I should take up just a few more moments of your time by reading you one more passage. It helps one to understand the other two in relation to Jeremy Truncard. Here it is.’
He smoothed out the cutting and held it farther from his face, then
read aloud: ‘I’ve been using the drug on patients since 1958, with a fifty to sixty per cent success rate. I’m absolutely convinced of its value in medical treatment. Often, after twenty sessions of LSD — with talks and discussions on what the drug reveals — patients who have been under analysis for years and years, with little or no progress, have improved out of all recognition.’
Janssi Singh stopped, folded his cutting, put it away in the wallet which he returned to the inside pocket of his jacket, and then crossed his arms in a very deliberate manner.
‘For medical treatment you substitute hypnotic treatment of a conditioned mind. We don’t know how many sessions Jeremy Truncard had, but they were continuing, and he knew nothing about them. He went to London, called at the ‘Golden Pagoda’ when told, and afterwards found himself travelling back to Nuneaton. Vicki has thoroughly checked with Jeremy Truncard himself, and all he remembers is that he has been to see a psychiatrist suggested by Wilma. Wilma! You get the devilish cunning of that implanted suggestion? If he saw her and recognized her at the club while he was in some traumatic condition he would rationalize her being there with himself. It would not be a surprise. He was in a psychedelic cocoon, to use your word, Inspector.’
Hazard’s mouth was slack.
‘Finish what you were going to tell me, Vicki,’ Drury invited, his gaze on the woman, who was moving her head and making her ear ornaments bob along her cheeks.
She fingered her lower lip with a very pointed nail glinting with mother-of-pearl lacquer before saying over her slim pale brown finger, ‘Lysergic acid diethylamide, to give LSD its full name, was something Wilma at first didn’t know how to cope with. She made inquiries about the drug and its users and thought Jeremy was some schizophrenic enjoying what is called a freakout by the addicts seeking escape in hallucination. She found she was wrong, and went after the truth. She got me caught up in it, and I couldn’t do anything inside I.C., so I made liaison with Daniel Paget, who was concealed as a special inquiry agent with a normal security man named Bateman. Wilma found she could do nothing apart from interesting me and Professor Warrender, who had once treated her. Frankly, I didn’t think anything of it until Janssi and I worked out some patterns of the visits to the ‘Golden Pagoda’. Both of us, for instance, we were never there together. No one on the staff seemed to know anything about Jeremy. But there was a man, they recalled, who came in occasionally and had a phone call and got a waiter to take it and say Russian Roulette, and then the voice at the end of the line would tell the waiter to summon this man. When Jeremy took the call it was apparently to leave shortly afterwards and keep a rendezvous.’
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