The Satan Sampler

by Victor Canning

  She smiled almost provocatively, and said, “Of course I would. But I get a feeling that the Hattons are just bait.”

  “Well, yes. There is a little more involved.”

  He told her quite frankly of the dinner dance at Clyro and how Nancy had been going with him, but now could not.

  She said, “I’d have come—without the Hattons. I love dancing and you’ve been very kind to me, Mr Seyton.”

  He grinned, not attempting to deny himself her attractions, the thought of dancing with her, holding her, a pleasure which he would want to have in other than an imaginative role. “Well, that’s splendid.”

  Driving back with her cut of salmon she thought about him and found herself comparing him with Kerslake. The one twisted up and going to take a long time to untwist himself. And this one—born with a silver spoon in his mouth and able to drive straight ahead for what he wanted without having to blinker himself to anything happening to either side of him. She knew the power and attraction of her own body, appearance and intellect. And so did Quint for there must be others he could have chosen to put in this role of hers, but for one reason or other they had been rejected. Dear Quint was no fool. And Miss Hope—was the name one of good or ill omen for her? No hopeful and pretty woman would ever lead this man by the nose. Virtues he undoubtedly had but his strongest clearly was knowing what he wanted and going for it. It would be interesting to know what lay behind all the concern that Birdcage was showing over him . . . Just for a while she let herself play with the fancy that Birdcage had no existence, that she really were here in truth from her own volition and professional needs. Dear Quint. Bloody Quint. But anyway she would have gone to a dinner dance with a man with two heads for the chance of seeing some more Hattons.

  Back at her bungalow she telephoned Birdcage and found herself talking to Quint, and telling him about the invitation.

  “That’s splendid. Moonlight, we hope. Dancing, for sure, and if music be the food of love, and so on.”

  “Bugger you, Uncle Quint. The only thing I’m really looking forward to is to see the Hattons.”

  “Why not? In the same category as come-up-and-see-my etchings, no?”

  “It’s easy to be flippant from where you sit.”

  “Don’t be fooled, Georgy. Anyway, you could have said No to me right from the start.”

  “You know I couldn’t. It might help a bit if I knew just a little of what all this is about.”

  “Ah . . . well, it might help me too. Though I do know minimally a little more than you. What will you wear for the dance?”

  He was teasing with an element of cruelty in it which was unnatural to him so that she knew he was uneasy but that did not hold back her own sudden resentment. She said brutally, “Topless and a bloody grass skirt!”

  “Ideal.” He laughed gently and rang off abruptly, which she knew was an act of charity to stop her from saying more.

  * * * *

  Some days later Seyton went up to the Hall to have dinner with Felbeck and Shanklin. With them also was the Hall housekeeper. This last was a widow in her late thirties, a Clarissa Hampton, whom Seyton had not seen around at all during his previous residence at the Dower House. Over drinks before dinner this absence was accounted for by his being told that she had been making an overseas tour of the Foundation’s various hostels and centres. The term housekeeper, too, he learned was only a loose description of her duties. She was a catering and dietary expert and, before joining the Foundation, had held important positions in the hotel management world. High-powered she might be in her work, but in appearance and manner she was far from outstanding. She was a quiet-spoken jolie laide with a good figure and a retiring habit which lay somewhere between shyness and reserve which—Seyton thought—might disappear altogether when she got down to her professional work. She had dinner and then coffee with them in the library and then quietly withdrew. Not long afterwards Shanklin went too and Seyton sat, monopolized by Felbeck.

  He had a feeling that the whole arrangement had been designed to give Felbeck his sole company. In no time at all the man was happily immersed in a monologue which chiefly concerned itself with the state of the world—bad but not without hope—and then the state of their country—a bloody mess—but not such as to lead to despair if the right remedies were applied soon and with rigour. Curiously enough these remedies only included the briefest reference to the exercise of the Christian spirit and ethic which might have been expected from him. Largely he called for the return of true discipline, less tolerance and wishy-washy attempts at ‘understanding’ and ‘re-education’. The time had come, or was soon to, for a more Spartan approach from authority to stamp out the evils which had attached themselves and flourished like lice on the body of the Welfare State. He was like—Seyton thought—a terrier at a rat hole, quivering with anticipation, and the odd thought occurred to him that the man was speaking either from some hidden stress or a slightly unbalanced mentality—something, anyway, which he had not noticed in him ever before. True impatience and something like near rage seemed to be working in him. This country was being cut to ribbons industrially and commercially by strikes and the amorphous power of the Trade Unions. Its peoples were being turned into zombies and work-shy degenerates who flourished like rats in a sewer on the easy pickings offered by Social Security. The laxity of sexual morals got his whipping, the degenerative effects of television, discotheques and bingo halls he scourged with a fierce passion, and the growth of crime, he declared, was nurtured and flourished by the gross misconception that ‘understanding’ and ‘constructive regeneration’ was what the evil-doers needed to rehabilitate them rather than draconian punishment. . . the restoration of the death penalty . . . bring back the lash . . . flog the rapists. And then—with a sudden sigh and a heave of his shoulders—he smiled, spread his hands and said, “Oh, my dear Seyton—forgive me. But just now and then it all boils up in me so that I feel quite primitive and need the outburst. Of course, you must discount a lot of what I’ve said. But in the main I’m sure you will agree that this country is in one hell of a state. Blowing off steam—a man must have a chance to do that sometimes. I’m sure you will agree.”

  “Yes, of course.” Seyton said it without knowing whether he did or did not agree. Politics, unless he had to handle and manipulate them in the way of business, were of no interest to him. But he did know that he sympathized with the man. “Still, it hardly fits the Christian principles of the Foundation, surely?”

  “No, of course not. But don’t forget that Christ took a scourge to the money changers in the Temple. The real trouble is that the state of the world is intolerable and religion doesn’t seem to be able to do anything really effective about it. I inherited this Foundation—just as I inherited my wealth mostly—and I love it, but I begin to doubt its effectiveness in any significant degree whatsoever. We are in the middle of the Christian dilemma. Kindness, understanding, charity, love one another, I’m beginning to think just don’t work. Not because they can’t, but because—for the time being anyway—Anti-Christ is back and reigns and that is an enemy which must be fought with the only weapons it understands—power backed by punishments which match the committed sins.” He sighed. “Sometimes I really do wish that I had never inherited this responsibility. I’d like to hand back the Hall to you tomorrow and walk out. But that is impossible for many reasons, but principally to me for a sole one which you will understand. Family tradition. What a Felbeck started all those years ago must be carried on. It was a noble conception. I have it in trust and can’t abandon it or hand it over to anyone else.”

  “That’s why I want this place back.”

  “I know. Two solid traditions finding themselves in opposition. Is that not the work of Anti-Christ?”

  Smiling, knowing sympathy for the man, Seyton said, “I don’t give a damn for Anti-Christ or for the Felbeck Foundation.”

  Felbeck shrugged his shoulders. “We both have our problems —and there is no immediate solution to th
em.”

  Looking straight at Felbeck, Seyton said firmly, “Are you giving up the Foundation?”

  “No.”

  “And I’m not giving up the Hall.”

  “Well, there it is. But at least we are being civilized about it.” As Seyton walked back to the Dower House under the bright April night stars, an owl calling from the direction of the chapel, a slow mist risen knee-high over the pastures, a figure came up the driveway towards him. It was Clarissa Hampton wearing a light coat and with a head scarf wrapped over her dark hair. She stopped in front of him and, as though they had already met and were in conversation, she said, “He talked a lot, I imagine? And probably quite out of character?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “I know the signs. You must discount most of it. Oh, we all know how it goes. But it is just a safety valve.”

  “That’s clear to me, Mrs Hampton.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You’ve been waiting for me to come out?”

  “Oh, yes. I know when the strain is going to hit him. I just wanted to hear for myself that you understood. He could retire from it all. But he won’t.”

  “Can’t is the truth. He’s tied.”

  “Yes. It happens to a lot of us.”

  She was silent for a moment or two, and then said, “I wasn’t here at the time—but I’d like you to know how sorry I was about your brother.”

  “Thank you.” He had the impression that she did not want to let him go, but could think of no way to keep him talking. “What will you do? Settle down here?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a business to run. Without it I couldn’t keep this place going when I get the Hall back.”

  “ ‘When’—so much in life hangs on that word, doesn’t it?” Suddenly irritated by her, he said, “It doesn’t bother me. When can be in an hour’s time or ten years’ time.” And then quite bluntly, he went on, “Are you trying to say something to me—because if so I’m not with you?”

  She laughed—a surprisingly gay sound in the night—and shook her head. “Oh, dear, no. This is only about Mr Felbeck. Circumstances have trapped him as they do all of us in some degree. I knew he was going to be a bit overwrought tonight. I just didn’t want you to misunderstand . . . well, that it’s his way of shedding tension.”

  “I knew that right from the start. I know something else too. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Her voice lifted with a frankness that held an almost joyful note. “I’d do anything for him. Anything he asked me. I frankly worship him. Anyway, he’s married and very happily. So, there we are.” Her tone was free of any selfpity. “All wanting something which we may or may not get.” She looked up at him and smiled and he sensed for the first time the force of her dedication to Felbeck and also the effort it must have taken to overcome her natural pride and selfesteem to have waited to waylay him to make excuses for Felbeck; an exercise which, so far as he was concerned, was quite unnecessary. He did not care a damn for Felbeck—except as an obstacle between himself and the Hall.

  He gave her a hod and a smile and said quite genuinely, “The gap between wanting and getting isn’t fixed for ever. Life has a way of upsetting what we think are cast-iron certainties. That’s why betting is a mug’s game.”

  She put out a hand and touched him briefly on the arm, and said, “You’re a very nice, but hard man. Good night, Mr Seyton.”

  By the time he had got back into the Dower House he had forgotten her.

  * * * *

  There were times—more frequently of late than before—when Felbeck found himself wishing that he had never met Sir Manfred Grandison—though that first meeting, some years ago now, had saved him and the Foundation from very considerable embarrassment and scandal. Any large organization, no matter what safeguards it adopts, is open to manipulation from the clever and dishonest. One of their most trusted overseas administrators had for two years misdirected the use of the Foundation’s funds to his own profit and—like so many peculators—had grown overbold and confident so that his guilt had inevitably come to light. The loss of money from the Foundation’s funds, though large, had presented no difficulty since he had made that good from his own private fortune. Suppressing the inevitable bad publicity—which would have come from the facts being widely known following a prosecution—had presented a problem which Felbeck was determined to overcome. Good works spoke for themselves—and so drew charitable donations and bequests which were vital to keep the Foundation viable. At stake had been its good name. And imminent had been the prospect of a public prosecution. . . and Grandison had saved the Foundation.

  Listening to him now in the flat overlooking Regent’s Park, Felbeck remembered with irritation the casual way Grandison had made light of the difficulty, remembered too—though by now he was well used to the mannerism—his quotation tricked-out comments. But he that filches from me my good name, Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed. At the time Grandison had been known to him only as a then Member of Parliament and a public figure with considerable influence in Government circles. He knew better now. At the time—when through Grandison’s influence the question of a public prosecution had been dispelled and the whole business settled without ruffling the calm of the charitable waters—Felbeck had been deeply grateful and indebted to Grandison. Over the succeeding years, though at first not recognizing it, the debt had been slowly paid back. That process had been painless because everything asked of him was within his gift and within his will. Only recently had he realized that Grandison had skilfully suborned him to his will, and left him not only uncertain of his compliance, but fearful of the position in which he now found himself. And ‘only recently’ meant since the return of Richard Seyton to the Dower House and his inheritance.

  From the window where he was watching the strollers in the Park, Grandison, without turning, said, “You have nothing to fear but fear itself. What we have done had to be done. In this day and age if you wish to do good you have—sadly, I acknowledge—sometimes to first do ill. And anyway it has been done under the aegis of authority.”

  “Whose?”

  “Mine. As the Head of a Government organization. I am answerable for all that. Not you. But culpability is not the point. Since there is nothing for Seyton to find—then there is nothing to fear.”

  “How can one be sure that there is nothing to find?”

  “Can you suggest anything?”

  “No, but. . .”

  “A small, unfinished phrase. Like a broken ritual chant. . . meaningless. So he pokes about in the chapel for hours at a time? Meaningless to you—but worrying? Forget it. I had an uncle who would sit in a cold barn all night because he was interested in the feeding habits of barn owls with their young.”

  “You don’t find barn owls in a church.”

  Grandison turned and laughed. “It’s too positive a statement. Life is full of surprises. My uncle found that. He confessed that while he learnt a lot about the feeding habits of owls he also learnt a great deal about the copulatory patterns of the local lads and lassies. A small bonus—mentioned only to cheer you up. Seyton may be secretly and deeply religious and spends hours on his knees seeking expiation for real or imaginary sins. There’s none so odd as folk. Or he could be considering where to put a memorial plaque or stone to his brother. The place is overcrowded with such already or——”

  “I wish you would be serious, Grandison.”

  “But I am. However, if you wish me to be particular, then I will. What we have done—from the most worthy of motives—and what we intend to happen at some time in the future—from the most practical and patriotic of motives—is vital nationally. The end we seek justifies any means. If the future is to be bright then we must accept that the continuing present must sometimes be shadowed by stratagems which taken in isolation would appear to be—and indeed be to the victim—drastic and final.”

  “What in God’s name are you talking
about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Removing obstacles from our path. Should the unlikely need arise, then Seyton would be removed. And we should remain, as Ovid said, ‘blameless in life and clear of——’ I interpose the words all detectable—‘offence’.”

  “You must be out of your mind!”

  “Not in the sense you mean, my dear Felbeck. Only in bothering to calm your momentary and quite phantom fears. Given the real need it would be done, I promise you. But I am sure that the necessity will never arise.”

  “You really mean this?”

  “Felbeck, the phrase demeans you. Sport I may with words and phrases but never with their meaning. You know at the head of which Service I stand. Do you think all trouble-makers and traitors come to a just trial? Our courts are burdened with too long a backlog of cases as it is. In our service there is no need always for twelve good honest men to decide. There are things honest men should not be plagued with. Their honesty is too often only misguided sympathy, or tainted with the dialectical hues of their own political convictions. I assure you that if Seyton should ever—which is as remote as the snows of Everest top to most of us—find proof to plague us with . . . well, then he would go without pause for absolution.”

  Felbeck nodded. “I know all you say is true. It’s just that there are times . . .”

  “When the spirit flags and courage falters? Well, then, since the hour is six, there is a timely remedy. What would you like to drink? Brandy, whisky, gin—or a timely cup of hemlock?” Felbeck laughed, a little shakily, and then said, “Whisky, I think.” Then with a sigh, he went on, “My God, Grandison, you are a most extraordinary man. It’s a human life you’ve been talking about.”

  “And in this case one which, I swear, has nothing to fear from me. Seyton is a good work horse. He wants to break your lease. He wants his Hall back. Blinkered, he looks neither to right nor left. Dead ahead. All right. Let him work his heart out. There is nothing he can do but work out his term of years until the lease falls in. Our one-time ancillary use for the Hall is done with. It remains now the headquarters of one of the world’s noblest and most Christian organizations—without blemish or aught to fear from any calumniator.”