Operation Pax

by Michael Innes

  ‘May we talk about this?’

  Appleby appeared to consider this question with a good deal of grave deliberation. ‘Even if you don’t,’ he said, ‘I suppose the younger ones would be bound to?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. We have them pretty well in hand.’

  ‘That’s an excellent thing.’ Appleby smiled. ‘But I think you can talk. Everyone his own story at tea. It’s a good part of the fun, after all.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Wreathed in smiles, Stuart Buffin and his companion hurried off after the other Tigers. Appleby walked back down the path. The lion was still lying close by the man. They were covered with the same dust. The brute looked at Appleby apprehensively, and sheepishly licked its paws. It looked a very harmless lion. Nor would the man now couched with it ever do any harm again.

  Part 6

  Bodley by Night

  Unwounded of his enemies he fell.

  – SAMSON AGONISTES

  1

  Roger Remnant’s headlong drive to the desmenses of Milton Porcor et Canonicorum, involving as it had done much fast cornering, resulted in trouble during Jane Appleby’s much more cautiously conducted return journey. A tyre blew out just before Eynsham. And as Jane took some pleasure in debarring her companion from attempting to assist her in any way, and laboriously but effectively contrived to substitute the spare wheel herself, it was nearly five o’clock when she reached the Radcliffe Infirmary. There she handed over her charge, answered such questions as the mildly sensational nature of his wound made necessary, and then drove back the few yards to Somerville. Such clothes as she had hastily commandeered from Dr Cline’s deplorable clinic by no means became her, and the frailty of her sex obliged her to get out of them at the earliest possible moment. She changed quickly, resisted the conversational attempts of several interested friends, and returned to the car. It was her intention to return it to the rank where she had so fatefully picked it up, and then to retreat hastily into college without answering any questions. There she would await news from John with whatever patience she could muster.

  The first part of this project went smoothly. She drove down to the end of St Giles’ and saw that there were no other taxis waiting in the rank. This was decidedly to the good. Remnant, presumably, had colleagues, and if one of these was about he might prove tiresomely inquisitive. She had just swung the car round to bring it out of the line of the traffic when she heard a vigorous hail from the pavement opposite. ‘Taxi!’ Since it did not occur to her that she herself might be the object of this shout she paid no attention. ‘Taxi!’ This time the shout was a bellow. She looked up and saw, first the silver knob of an elegant cane being brandished peremptorily in air, and then – beneath it and spread out far on either side, the massive figure of Mark Bultitude.

  Jane was feeling both exhausted and grim. She had been the occasion that day of at least two notable acts of deliverance from evil; and these she regarded with deep and honest satisfaction. But the one thing that she had set out to accomplish – the one act of deliverance that lay nearest her heart – she had failed in, and her final desperate attempt to achieve it had resulted only in the wounding of a total stranger who had stood by her that day like the staunchest friend. Geoffrey had been snatched from her – almost literally from her grasp – with what had been in effect the maximum of cruelty. The situation now was worse than it had ever been, since she at last knew the quality of the people who held her lover in their hands. And despite her long-standing faith in her brother, and her almost equal faith in Roger Remnant, she found it very hard to take comfort from the reassurance they had tried to give her. That John would very quickly run to earth such of that evil gang as yet remained alive – that she would indeed receive news of this before the end of the day – she certainly believed. But she had been at too close quarters with the horrible madness underlying the criminal conspiracy she had uncovered to have anything but the direst forebodings as to what might be Geoffrey’s fate if he was no longer of any utility to it alive.

  All this being so, Jane had very little use at the moment for any further encounter with Bultitude. She had come to the conclusion earlier that day that he was a foolish and rather offensive figure, who had displayed a purely impertinent interest in her troubles. So now she let her gaze pass him stonily by, and prepared to step quickly from the car and march off without explanation.

  This, however, proved to be impossible. Bultitude had recognized her; for a moment his features expressed extreme but seemingly genuine astonishment; then he launched himself into St Giles’ with all the resistless momentum of a hippopotamus taking to the water. A Number 4 bus swerved violently away from him much as it would have done, Jane thought, upon the sudden materialization before it of a Centurion tank. And a moment later Bultitude was at her side.

  ‘Excellent!’ he said. ‘Excellent! In the morning the keen young student off to Bodley, and in the afternoon the resolute and emancipated breadwinner. But – my dear Miss Appleby – have you had the Proctor’s permission to follow this laudable avocation?’

  Jane, who hadn’t thought of this one, eyed him askance. ‘I am putting it away for a friend,’ she said. Her tone was icy.

  ‘Then the misfortune is mine. I had hoped to hire you to take me to Trinity.’

  ‘To Trinity!’ Jane could have thrown a stone into the nearer precincts of this venerable place of learning from where she sat.

  ‘Certainly. I missed a luncheon party there and had intended to present my apologies to my host. However, that can be deferred.’

  ‘I expect there will be other taxis turning up presently.’

  ‘No doubt. But not other young ladies with whom I have a strong impulse to converse.’

  Jane, who could think of no polite reply to this – and who was determined to be polite, since she suspected that earlier in the day she had been rather rude – said nothing.

  ‘I have already had some conversation with your brother, Sir John – on my way back from Milton.’

  ‘From Milton! You mean that you made your – your expedition, as you called it?’

  ‘I went to Milton Manor, decided that it was a very shady place indeed, and came back to think about it. Probably I should have decided to contact your brother in any case. I am not fond of policemen investigating the vagaries of Bede’s undergraduates, and I had – indeed, still have – some notion that I might clear the business up myself. Would you advise me to try?’

  ‘No – certainly not.’ Jane still spoke coldly. But Bultitude’s more direct manner of speech was making her look at him with new interest. ‘We have discovered that it was full of criminals, practising abominable scientific experiments upon people kept there by force.’

  ‘I must confess, Miss Appleby, to being not altogether surprised by what you tell me.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can know anything about it. And, if you did, it was your duty–’

  ‘It is the business of scientists – those few of them who are not engaged upon experiments abominable in one way or another – to put two and two together as rapidly as may be whenever queer appearances come their way. And that – since yesterday – is what I have been doing. And I may say I mean to have Geoffrey Ourglass back at Bede’s.’ Suddenly Bultitude looked Jane very straight in the eyes. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘They have him still. They got away with him at the last moment.

  Bultitude gave a moment to studying the silver knob of his cane. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘John thinks they are unlikely to do him any harm now. Perhaps they will let him go.’

  ‘I see… I wish I could help.’ Bultitude tapped his cane on the ground. ‘And perhaps I can. The scientist sometimes remembers the importance of very simple things. When did you last have a meal?’

  Jane stared. ‘Why – well, it was at breakfast.’

  ‘Then come and have some tea.’

  Jane hesitated. She was coming to believe that she had misjudged Mark Bultitude. ‘Th
ank you very much. But John said I was to go back to college and wait.’

  ‘He hopes to have news?’

  ‘Yes – before midnight.’

  ‘That is rather a long time off – and tea can be consumed with a moderate approximation to civilized custom in something less than half an hour. I should like to hear a little more of your day’s adventures – and tell you a little more of my own. Incidentally, I have some quite good Orange Pekoe.’

  Jane decided to go. Bultitude puzzled her. He seemed to have his own slant on the affair. Perhaps if they pooled what knowledge each possessed something really helpful would emerge. It was a long shot, but a shot worth taking. And the invitation was certainly an entirely harmless one. It was also subtly flattering. For Mark Bultitude was commonly reputed not to care for young women at all. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘I’d like a cup of tea.’

  ‘Then come along. There is only the breadth of Beaumont Street to negotiate, and we can walk straight into my parlour. I need hardly tell you that the rooms I keep in Bede’s are on the ground floor. My philosophy of life, such as it is, is nothing if not ventre à terre.’

  2

  The apartment into which Jane was presently ushered by her host would have been described by an unfriendly critic as overwhelming. It was large, and everything in it had the appearance of being very valuable. Bultitude, dispensing his Orange Pekoe from an equipage that had appeared with miraculous speed, gave his young guest a charming smile. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘that you are looking at my Battle of the Centaurs.’

  ‘Oh – yes.’ Jane was not aware that she had been looking at anything in particular.

  ‘It is, in fact, a Caravaggio. I bought it off the Gräfin Szegedin – you know the dear old Gräfin? I was speaking of her to somebody only last night – a good many years ago. It gave the poor old dear a helping hand.’

  ‘That was very nice of you.’ Jane took her tea and spoke without much enthusiasm.

  ‘And the little hunting scene is by Uccello. Dear Bernhard – you know Berenson? – prefers it to the one in the Ashmolean. The Rembrandt was picked up for me by Bredius – or was it Borenius? I really forget – just before the war.’ Bultitude looked about him with what was either complacency or a good imitation of it. ‘Nothing but odds and ends, of course, but I think they hang together not too badly.’

  ‘I suppose it’s a very nice room.’ Jane, who was much depressed again, realized that this was not altogether a happy choice of words. ‘I mean–’

  ‘They tell me that my pupils call it Toad Hall. Undergraduates have an extraordinary faculty for hitting the nail on the head.’

  Jane stared. Bultitude, she divined, was rather a complex person.

  ‘And the name is the more apposite since I bought a very large car. Perhaps it was the pleasure of driving it that really drew me out to Milton this morning.’

  He plunged back to the point. For some reason it was not easy for him. He was pausing, as if searching for words, and Jane had suddenly the impression of being in the presence of some large, masked anxiety. ‘But you really knew something,’ she asked, ‘before that?’

  ‘I wonder if I did?’ Bultitude frowned. ‘But won’t you have a muffin?’

  Jane suspected that the fat don was going to be evasive, after all. His attitude was coming to puzzle her very much. There was something baffled in it – as if he was helpless in knowing where to begin with her… But now he was trying again.

  ‘This place in Milton is in the hands of the police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So far, so good. I suppose you already know the things your brother told me?’

  ‘John said very little. Our talk was hurried – no more than a scrap. I think he was anxious to get me out of the place and begin clearing up in a professional way. I’d meddled, I’m afraid.’

  ‘If you did, the circumstances make it very natural.’ Bultitude had one of his odd drops into simplicity. ‘Then you don’t know – no, your brother told me you didn’t – that last night this gang of criminals was hunting a man – a little man with a scratched face – about Oxford?’

  ‘I know that they were hunting him this morning. I saw them at it in the upper reading-room, when I was reading there.’

  ‘Sir John told me something of the sort. Who else was working there at the time?’

  ‘I don’t think I noticed them, very particularly. But I was sitting between old Dr Undertone and Miss Butterton.’

  ‘They actually chased him about the reading-room? It seems unbelievable. Surely they’d have been stopped?’

  Jane shook her head. ‘It wasn’t quite like that. There was only one man in chase. The little man kept edging away from him. He came quite close to me. And then his pursuer seemed to force him out of the room by something like sheer will-power. It was rather horrible… But not so horrible as what happened later, at – at Milton.’

  Bultitude laid down an unbitten muffin and again frowned. He appeared to have less and less liking for a conversation which he had himself insisted on initiating. ‘That happened…to the same little man?’

  ‘Yes. They got him, you know. And – and I think he knew something they wanted to know. When I arrived there – with the young man to whom that taxi really belongs–’

  ‘A young man?’

  ‘His name is Remnant. I don’t really know him. He’s in the Radcliffe. He got hurt – not badly. He’s just had to go to Casualty. But I was saying that when we got there, and broke in–’

  ‘You broke in?’

  ‘Well, this Mr Remnant did, and I followed. We found that these people had – had maltreated the little man very badly. He’s dead now. But that’s rather another story. He saved a child.’

  ‘Saved a child – from these people who were conducting abominable experiments?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bultitude – who did so many things with ostentation – slipped a handkerchief from his pocket and gave a covert dab at his brow. ‘I can see,’ he said, ‘that everything has been worse even than I thought. It is quite wrong to make you talk about it so soon. I apologize.’

  ‘That’s all rot.’ Jane did not know at all whether she was grateful or impatient. ‘And I thought perhaps that you had something to tell me?’

  ‘There are one or two things that I can mention.’ Bultitude – and the action, it occurred to Jane, was as incredible as that of the man in the circus who ties himself into knots – Bultitude had stooped down to the lowest of an elaborate system of trays by which he was flanked and grabbed a plate of excessively creamy cakes. But the action had not absolutely excluded from her view a look of swift calculation such as she imagined herself to have seen on his face before. He raised himself, puffing and blowing. ‘Won’t you have one of these?’

  Jane took a cake. She was young, and could eat automatically and unknowingly when her body required it. ‘You can mention– ?’ she prompted.

  ‘I can mention – well, that during the war I had a good deal to do with one or two rather special lines of inquiry. The physiology – and also the psychology – of fear and bravery, endurance and the liability to crack up, aggressive and passive responses to stimuli – things of that sort. For instance, I knew a man called Cline. Later I heard that he had taken a place in the country and was developing new ways of treating drunks. It was a laudable but not very exciting activity. And it didn’t quite fit in with what I remembered of Cline. Naturally, I didn’t think much more about it. Then I gathered that he had associated with him – ostensibly in this blameless species of social medicine – several people whom I knew. The question of why they came together again as crusaders of scientific temperance was a real one, which I found myself turning over from time to time… Those little ones with the cherry on top are excellent.’

  ‘No more, thank you.’ Jane had set down her cup and was leaning forward on her chair. ‘And then?’

  ‘I believed myself to have found the explanation. It was an explanation which meant that
the whole affair was no business of mine. And so I put the matter out of my mind. It was only yesterday, when the sinister nature of your fiancé’s disappearance was brought home to me, and I learnt from his uncle that he had been seen near Milton, that I saw I must make a crucial inquiry. As you have doubtless heard’ – and Bultitude gave a brilliant if rather strained smile – ‘I have a great talent for knowing all the right people. I rang up a friend in town and learnt confidentially that my explanation of the holding-together of Cline and his group was wrong. I had supposed that they were doing work on a secret list; and that the drunks’ home, and the researching into alcoholism and so on, were genuine and reputable activities serving at the same time as measures of secrecy – secrecy dictated by national security. Now I learnt that nothing of the sort was in question. What they were up to, they were up to on their own account. And I didn’t like it. For some of them had quite patently been persons of altogether impaired moral perceptions.’

  Bultitude as he produced this orotund phrase again mopped his brow – but this time openly. There was a moment’s silence. ‘And…about Geoffrey?’ Jane asked. ‘Can’t you say anything about him?’

  ‘I can say this – that as soon as his uncle said something connecting his disappearance with Milton Porcorum I recalled an element in the conversation of one of these people I have been talking about.’

  ‘Cline’s friends?’

  ‘Yes. He was not a scientist but an administrator; an able – and yet again in some ways rather stupid – person, called Squire. This fellow used to praise’ – Bultitude hesitated – ‘used to praise those civilizations, if they are to be called that, which delivered over felons, captives, slaves and the like, alive, to the uses of science. He used to say that it was the way to get results. And there were others who used to back him up. I thought of it as idle talk without substance. But now we must–’