Operation Pax

by Michael Innes

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Perfectly all right, thank you. But hungry – as I say.’

  ‘And do you often dress like that?’

  Remnant nodded his head seriously. ‘Only change I have. That and a pair of pyjama trousers. Everything else gone up the spout to support the wife and little nippers… Any news?’

  ‘Yes and no. No news from John – nothing about Geoffrey. But I have found out something queer myself.’

  Remnant looked at her, she thought, with momentary apprehensiveness. ‘Something to tell?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And John’s coming to see me at ten.’

  ‘We can eat quite a lot by then. Where would you like to go? Mitre? George?’

  ‘If the family is right down on the breadline like that, Mr Remnant, you oughtn’t to be thinking of going anywhere at all.’

  Remnant made no reply to this. Argument indeed was unnecessary, for they were already walking down the Woodstock Road. ‘The Radcliffe’s not a bad place,’ he said. ‘I got a cup of tea and bun.’

  ‘And I got Orange Pekoe and some outsize cream cakes from Mark Bultitude.’

  He gave her a quick sidelong glance. ‘Like him?’

  ‘I don’t think I know. But he’s in on all this in some queer way.’

  ‘He’s the enormous great fat man at Bede’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, listen.’ Remnant hesitated. ‘He was the fat man that I caught a glimpse of on that terrace when we were waiting for Cline.’

  Jane nodded. ‘That doesn’t surprise me a bit. He told me that he’d been out there this morning, doing a little quiet investigating. He’d been suspicious about the place for some time.’

  ‘I see.’ They walked for some way in silence, and when Remnant spoke it was abruptly. ‘Here we are. In we go.’

  Their dinner at first showed some signs of being rather a laboured affair. But Roger Remnant made no attempt to be more entertaining than the continued crisis in Jane’s personal affairs warranted. He was hungry as he had said, and he managed to make Jane feel hungry too. As she ate and drank she ceased to find a good deal of silence burdensome. She ceased, too, to feel that her sallying out like this had perhaps been in rather feeble taste. Remnant now had the manner of a civilized businessman, with matter of substance to come to that must yet wait until dining is over. And thus they arrived in decent comfort at coffee and cigarettes. He eyed her gravely. ‘What is the queer thing you have found out for yourself?’

  ‘It’s not so much something I’ve found out as something I’ve remembered. And you’ll think me an utter ass for not remembering it before. When the little man was in the upper reading-room this morning he hid something – a paper.’

  ‘And has anybody found it?’

  ‘Almost certainly not. And now it seems possible that all chance of finding it is gone. It’s like this.’ And Jane told the story of the late Dr Undertone and his books.

  Remnant heard her through in silence. ‘Good riddance,’ he said at last.

  ‘Of poor old Undertone?’

  ‘Lord, no. He sounds a decent stick. But of that paper. If it was something your little man had stolen from our Milton friends, then, ten to one, it’s better vanished. Some secret trick of their dirty game – that’s what it must be.’

  ‘Yes – I think it must be that too. But it hasn’t disappeared in any absolute sense. Some other reader in Bodley may come on it tomorrow.’

  Remnant was frowning across the room. He started, ‘Sorry! I was just thinking there was somebody over there that I’ve knocked up against not long ago… Whatever it is, your new reader isn’t likely to make head or tail of it. He’ll chuck it in the waste-paper basket – I suppose there are such things in Bodley? –and that will be that.’

  ‘I think it’s important.’

  He looked at her curiously. ‘It’s hardly the centre of your problem, Jane.’

  ‘It might be. It might be the key to it.’ Jane, who less than an hour before had been feeling that she had no more fight in her, was again quick and eager. ‘To begin with, it must be important to them. They did so much to get it back that–’

  ‘I agree. But still I don’t see how, directly, it’s going to help.’

  ‘If we had it, it might be a card in our hands.’

  ‘You mean a bribe, a bargaining point, a hostage – something like that?’

  ‘That against Geoffrey.’

  He looked at her with yet fuller gravity. ‘These people can’t be bargained with. They are outlaws. It would be futile, immoral, illegal. You couldn’t give them back–’

  ‘Of course I know that. But if we had it the thing might be a bait, a trap, something.’ Jane’s voice was suddenly urgent and appealing.

  ‘Very well. The thing, whatever it is, would certainly be better in our hands than simply lost. It may be the key to something that has potentialities for good as well as evil. But how do we get it?’ Jane could see that Remnant’s mind was beginning to work swiftly and in a way she knew. ‘You are sure nobody could have spotted the actual book the little man thrust it into? What about the person on Undertone’s other side?’

  ‘There wasn’t anybody.’

  ‘Then on your other side? Somebody might just have got a squint from there.’

  ‘That was Miss Butterton. She might conceivably have seen that the little man was fiddling with Undertone’s books. But she couldn’t have seen that it was this particular book or that.’

  ‘Certain?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Then we come back to the start. There’s only Undertone himself. Short of a séance, we can’t ask him… What was his line of country?’

  Jane considered. ‘He was an ecclesiastical historian… no, that’s wrong. I remember! He retired ages ago from the chair of Pastoral and Homiletic Theology. And he’s been compiling an enormous history of that ever since.’

  Remnant grinned. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘that I stopped off from all that lecture stuff. Do you mind telling me just what that rigmarole means?’

  ‘It means something more impossible than I can say. His work in Bodley consisted in reading all the sermons that were ever published.’

  ‘And have a lot been published? I don’t think I’ve ever seen any.’

  Jane laughed a little desperately. ‘Far more of them than of anything else in the whole world.’

  ‘Well I’m blessed! I’d never have thought it.’ Remnant stared at her with the utmost naiveté – but his next question was sufficiently shrewd. ‘Do you think Undertone would have a collaborator – work hand in hand with some other old person who would share the burden?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t. Part of his legend is his extreme aloofness and isolation.’

  Remnant had paid their bill. ‘Up you get,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a walk on this. It needs thinking out.’

  There was now a thick mist shrouding Oxford – the Thames Valley mist which is not quite a fog, but which gets in your throat and eyes all the same. Jane thought walking through this a poor idea and not likely to clear the brain. But she had got in the habit of obeying Remnant. They set off. Tom, the great Christ Church bell, had not begun the tolling that would announce five past nine. She still had plenty of time in hand if she was to be back in college with half an hour to spare before her brother’s arrival.

  ‘I suppose we couldn’t get in?’ Remnant’s voice spoke from the uncertain darkness beside her. ‘I mean into this old man’s rooms in Gregory’s?’

  She was rather shocked. ‘The body’s there. They’ll have sported the oak by now to leave it in decent security. And we couldn’t possibly ask.’

  ‘You can’t think of a story that would get us in? Nephew and niece? Illegitimate but sorrowing children hurrying to Oxford at the news?’

  ‘Of course not! I think you are the most unscrupulous person I’ve ever known. And – anyway – it wouldn’t be the least good.’

  Remnant said nothing. They continued to walk
in silence. Either their footfalls were producing a queer echo in the mist or somebody else was walking this inclement evening behind them. Jane lost her bearings. Presently Remnant spoke with an air of casual surprise. ‘This is Gregory’s,’ he said. ‘Never been in it. Have you – before today? Low college.’

  ‘We can’t all go to Balliol.’

  ‘True – true. And we can’t even, all of us, stop there when we make it. They’re very keen, at Balliol, on a chap’s going to those lectures.’ Remnant’s voice was extremely absent. ‘Whereabouts are that poor old chap’s rooms?’

  ‘Number five staircase in the second quad.’

  ‘Well, I believe this is the second quad we’re skirting now. On this side?’

  ‘Yes – on the first floor, at the corner. You can’t see in this stuff – or I can’t. But they must be those rooms just above our heads now.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Remnant did not sound as if he was at all interested. ‘Mind if I just step behind this archway to light a pipe?’

  ‘Not a bit.’ It was a chilly night, Jane felt, to hang about. But she owed Remnant a good deal more than permission to smoke. She waited. Suddenly – and utterly without rational occasion – she felt panic grip her. It was as if danger had suddenly reached out hands at her in the dark… ‘Roger!’ Her call was low but urgent. There was no reply. ‘Roger!’

  ‘Yes, Jane?’ The mist was playing odd tricks with sound. His voice seemed to come from straight overhead. ‘Don’t worry. Keep quiet. Even with only one arm it’s pie. I’ll be back in two ticks.’

  She understood – she understood and trembled. But she did not call out again. Aeons passed. Once she was certain that she heard whispering in the darkness – an angry and dissuasive whispering. There was a further effluxion of almost infinite time. She knew that – for the first occasion in her life – she had lost her nerve and her wits. So she must keep still. If she only kept still nobody – not even Remnant – need ever know. More time went by – enough time for whole solar systems to emerge from mere vapour, spin, and perish… Suddenly her right hand was taken in a strong clasp. She knew that she could scream. Fear sometimes kills the power to do that – but with her it had not done so. She kept silent. Remnant’s voice spoke in her ear. ‘Good girl.’ He took her arm and moved her forward through the mist. ‘A bit more walking. Say as far as Magdalen bridge. This still needs thinking out.’ They went on in silence. It seemed incredible that only a minute or two before she had been scared out of her wits… ‘I say’ – Remnant’s voice was unwontedly diffident – ‘what would perlegi mean?’

  For a moment she was puzzled. Then she understood. ‘Perlegi? It’s Latin for “I have read through”.’

  ‘I guessed as much.’ The voice was now triumphant. ‘Then we’ve got it.’

  ‘You actually got into Undertone’s rooms?’

  ‘Quite easily. I went up the rustication and in at the bedroom window. Roof-climbing used to be one of my things, rather.’

  ‘I see… You said the bedroom window?’

  There was a quick chuckle in the dark – and then Remnant’s voice, swiftly repentant. ‘I’m sorry if it shocks you. I’ve had times that rather blunt one to all that… And he’s dead, all right.’

  ‘You–’

  ‘I made sure. This is so queer a business that you can take hardly anything on trust… And then I got it – this perlegi business. A fairly fresh piece of paper on his desk, with a lot of book titles in Latin and French – and then after all but the last two this word perlegi and a date. The last date was today’s. Oh – and there were a lot of letters and numbers against each book. I copied them down too.’

  ‘The case-marks.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Where the books live on the shelves – all over Bodley. They’re very complicated, and only the Bodley people understand them. You copy the case-mark from the catalogue, and that tells them where to find the book for you.’

  ‘Don’t you go and get it yourself?’

  ‘Of course you don’t, you idiot. But I suppose you’re pulling my leg.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ Remnant sounded aggrieved. ‘Just not been my line. If you roof-climb, and that sort of thing, then you just can’t expect to sit in libraries too and have people bringing you books. It wouldn’t be reasonable. You must see that.’

  Jane was silent. She knew by this time that when Roger Remnant talked such ineffable nonsense as this his mind was likely to be hard at work in its own effective way.

  ‘Aren’t there a tremendous lot of books underground?’

  Jane started. She had been thinking that she again heard footsteps. ‘I believe so – although, of course, readers don’t go down. I’ve been told that it’s quite tremendous – miles and miles of it. But of course that must be an exaggeration.’

  ‘Well, now – don’t they arrange the books in a sensible order – alphabetically, or something like that?’

  ‘My dear boy, you just haven’t got the scale of the thing. There are millions of books. Some are kept together in great collections, more or less as they were given to the place. Others are arranged I just don’t know how. The commonly needed books – the sort of book you would ask for if you ever went in – are kept together and handy; and a lot of them are on open access. But the sort of stuff old Undertone revelled in is probably all over the place. And the catalogue – or those case-marks you’ve copied – is the only clue. And it’s only a clue, as I say, to one of the library people.’

  ‘I think it’s quite absurd.’ Remnant was honestly exasperated. ‘You mean to say that you and I couldn’t find these things? That if we broke into this Bodleian place–’

  ‘Broke into Bodley!’ Even although she knew she was being absurd, Jane’s voice was stiff with horror.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘You just don’t understand. Besides, you’re talking nonsense. We’ve found what we want. The thing is certain to be in one of those books. And it’s certainly safe there till tomorrow. John must see about it.’

  ‘I hate to say it – but I think John might be a bit behind the times.’

  ‘John is never behind the times.’

  ‘Well, we don’t need to argue about that. I’m sure he’s a good sort of stick.’ It was evident that Sir John Appleby’s manner at Milton that afternoon still rankled a little. ‘The point is that I’m not at all sure about the thing’s being safe there till tomorrow… Did you think I took rather a long time over my burglary?’

  ‘Well’ – Jane was cautious – ‘yes. I did.’

  ‘It was because I had to join in the queue.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘There was somebody before me, jotting down those books. I had to lurk in the bedroom quite a bit.’

  ‘It’s impossible! I’m sure nobody in the reading-room understood what was happening, besides me… Did you see who this person was?’

  In the darkness Remnant seemed just to hesitate. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Somebody we know?’

  ‘Yes. At least you know him. And I know him by sight.’

  Jane gave a gasp. ‘Was it Mark Bultitude?’

  ‘No. It was your young man’s uncle, Dr Ourglass.’

  ‘Dr Ourglass! He’s the most harmless–’ Jane gave a little cry, and groped for Remnant’s arm. ‘But that’s what I said to myself when I saw him – I forgot. I haven’t told you. I saw him in the upper reading- room this evening, peering at Undertone’s empty desk – just as I had been doing myself. I thought it could be no more than a queer coincidence.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Surely old Dr Ourglass hadn’t climbed–’

  ‘Good Lord, no. He had plainly been brought into Undertone’s room, as official as anything, by some great panjandrum at Gregory’s.’

  ‘I can’t understand it.’

  ‘No more can I. But it doesn’t make me feel that this needle in your absurd haystack of a Bodleian is particularly safe… Hullo – I wonder where we�
�ve got to?’ They had been walking seemingly at random, and now Remnant was peering about him in the dark. ‘How very odd. Do you know, it looks like Radcliffe Square?’ Suddenly he turned his head, as if listening.

  Jane’s heart sank. She had experienced just this technique a little too recently to have forgotten it. ‘Now look here, Roger Remnant. I simply will not–’

  Reaching out in the darkness, Remnant suddenly put his fingers on her lips. She fell silent – and found that, like her companion, she had frozen into immobility. The mist was now very thick, and the few lights in the Square made little impression on it. One could see no more than the vaguest outlines even a couple of yards ahead. His voice was in her ear. ‘Sorry, young woman. Getting into melodramatic habits. But I’ve had a feeling that there’s somebody interested in us.’

  ‘So have I. I had it when you were doing your climb into Gregory’s.’

  ‘Well, we’re old hands at all that. And it’s probably imagination anyhow… We’ll scout round here.’

  They were somewhere out in the Square, for she could feel cobbles under her feet – the identical cobbles on which the little man had been lying before they bundled him into the ambulance. Then she lost her bearings. Far away she heard a train hoot, and nearer at hand there were some young men calling to each other in the mist. But the voices might have come either from Brasenose or from Hertford, and her sense of disorientation was complete. The street lighting was going dimmer and more yellow. Straight ahead of them, nearer the ground, they saw a dull red glow. Remnant moved towards it. She realized that he was reconnoitring the terrain of some proposed operation. Again she felt misgivings. She ought to be back in college, waiting for John… The red glow came from a charcoal brazier. Some building was going on, and in a little shelter before the fire a night-watchman was settling in to his job. They went on, and were presently in complete darkness. Again Remnant spoke softly in her ear. ‘About roof-climbing–’

  ‘I’m not going roof-climbing, and neither are you. You can’t possibly – not with that arm.’