The White Room

by L. P. Davies

  Five minutes later she drew up outside a telephone kiosk. She discovered then, looking for money, that she had left her handbag behind. Axel, taking time off from watching for any signs of pursuit, filled her cupped palm with his loose change. The call took over ten minutes. She explained why it had taken so long when she returned to settle herself behind the wheel again.

  “They had to chase after him. When he did come, he sounded peeved. I think that’s because he was worried about me. I should have known better than think I had him fooled. That talk Sibault had with him set it off. And when I spoke to him over the phone he had the feeling I was keeping something back. So he decided to come out to Green Ladies and see what was going on. He tried to ring me to come and pick him up in the car. He tried twice, with no luck. I didn’t tell him why the line was dead—I thought it best to keep that till we’d got him on his own. If I hadn’t called him then, he was all set to come out by taxi this afternoon. So all that chasing round the countryside was unnecessary. Still, it was fun while it lasted. I told him I’d pick him up at the laboratories. They’re this side of the town, so it won’t take us long. Did I do right, Axel?”

  “I only hope to God I’m doing right,” he said.

  # * *

  Dr. Vincent Salter was a very small and very dark man, untidily dressed and vaguely foreign in appearance. Heavy black-rimmed glasses and a fringe of black beard made a small face look even more small and pointed than it was. For a hat he wore a knitted blue wool affair that would have been more at home on a skiing slope. For luggage he carried an oddly shaped and very battered suitcase. His shabby grey suit reeked of some kind of chemical.

  “Champlee …” Seated in the back, he leaned forward as the car moved away. “Unusual. Don’t think I’ve met it before. What’ll it be—Norman-French?”

  “Originally Champs-de-lys,” Axel said. “Flaubert of that name appropriated Grenfelle Manor in 1067. He married a local girl—Elizabeth Chance. Her father and brothers were swordsmiths. Hubert took over the business, imported craftsmen from the Continent and became what was probably the first true industrialist in the country. The Eloise of Champlee, as it is known today, was founded by Etienne some three hundred and fifty years later, in 1411.”

  “Interesting,” Salter observed, and attracted his niece’s attention by digging his bearded chin into her shoulder. “You got that phone fixed yet?”

  “No.” Louise concentrated on the road ahead. “Nothing we can do about it. Wire cut.” She took one hand from the wheel and turned two fingers into the blades of a pair of scissors. “Like that. Outside.”

  “You don’t say,” Dr. Salter said pleasantly. “And what the purple hades has been going on out there?”

  “Me?” She threw Axel a quick glance. “Or would you rather?”

  “You,” he told her, and leaned back to close his eyes and try to shut out the sound of her voice.

  When he opened them again the car was turning into the drive of Green Ladies.

  Salter sneered disgust at the exterior of the house.

  “Mock something-or-other. Why the purple hades can’t they be original?”

  He sneered again at the hall. “Worse than the outside.” The pink and gold room left him speechless. The kitchen he was prepared to tolerate, making himself at home there, jacket slung over the back of a chair, shapeless hat flung on the table.

  “Anything to drink in the bloody place?” he demanded generally.

  “Only slops,” Louise said placidly. “Coffee?”

  “Out of a bloody can. Christ. What a bloody way to live. Why the hell did I ever leave the island?”

  “Uncle Vince,” the girl said to Axel, “doesn’t mean half of what he says. He makes a thing of being unadaptable. He’s nothing but a poseur. A character.”

  “And my niece,” Salter rejoined tartly, “talks too bloody much. As you’ve probably discovered for yourself, Champlee. If that is your name.”

  “It’s one of the few things I can be sure about,” Axel said evenly.

  Salter’s tone and manner underwent a transformation. A doctor now, in consultation with a patient, he drew up a chair and sat down, motioning for Axel to do the same.

  “Let us talk about you, Mr. Champlee,” he said. “Yes, I think that must be your real name. Let us talk about what has been done to you in the hope it may tell us something of the people responsible. That is the only way in which I may be of help. That, and the offering of advice. But that we will keep until later.”

  Lie leaned forward in his chair, elbows resting on the creased cloth of his trousers. Louise, kettle on the stove, cups set out ready, stood with her back to the sink, watching and listening.

  “I know something of brain-washing,” the doctor said. “Every practitioner worth his salt does. I know something of what has been done to you, and I know, too, that undoing it is something only an expert could tackle.

  “And you have been brain-washed, Champlee—whether you can accept it or not. Your real you has been subdued and a false you laid on top. In your case, this must have called for an even more elaborate technique than usual, for not only has your you been changed, but also your time. The false you has been fitted with a background that is ten years old. There must be a reason for that—”

  He looked round as the kettle boiled. “What the purple hades—?”

  “Sorry, Uncle.” Louise turned the gas off.

  “Smoke?” Salter brought a crumpled packet from his pocket.

  Axel shook his head. “No.”

  The other tossed the packet on the table. Louise removed both it and the knitted hat before bringing the coffee.

  Salter tasted his. “Muck.” He had been about to use a stronger word but changed his mind at his niece’s expression. Lie sipped again, pulled a face and looked across at Axel.

  “You think all this started last Saturday—just a few days ago. No. No, it didn’t. It started long before that. This isn’t simple hypnotic suggestion. This is the result of refined and prolonged techniques. First, your real you had to be pushed back into the mists. The new you had to be ready and waiting. Like a new suit of the right size, colour, fit, style. It had to fit like a glove; otherwise, you would have rejected it. And all that took time. Months, even years. And all to what purpose?”

  “I have got to kill somebody,” Axel said.

  “So it would appear,” Salter agreed, pushing his cup aside, its contents virtually untouched. “But more than that, I think. Oh—much more than that. The very fact that your time had to be changed tells us that. This isn’t the first time a subject has been conditioned to kill. It won’t be the last. I’ve read of many such instances. But your case is different. You are aware of what you are to do. More, you even know where and when. Only the who is still unknown. It’s all very strange. This dream you’ve been having … Tell me about it—slowly, putting in everything, everything you can remember.”

  Axel closed his eyes, painted pictures on the black canvas of his mind and turned those pictures into words.

  “Two separate episodes with a time space between …” The doctor leaned back, hands together in the attitude of one about to pray. “Sense of a kind. A grey place and a voice repeating the command to kill. Then a room where everything is white. Two very different places. Two separate periods of indoctrination?” He rubbed his beard pendulum-wise over his fingertips. “Unlikely.”

  “The words I hear my sister saying in the White Room,” Axel said, “are those she did actually use just before they say I collapsed in the study. ‘What are you going to do?’ ”

  The doctor peered up over the steeple of his fingers.

  “You used the expression ‘White Room,’ not ‘a white place.’ And you used it with an air of familiarity, almost as if it were an accepted title, one in constant use. Odd.”

  Parting his hands he shrugged a shrug that was wholly Gallic and leaned back.

  “I’ve said my piece, Champlee. I don’t suppose you’re any the wiser. And the only
advice I can give you is just plain bloody common sense. First, you must either go to the police yourself or let me go for you. And then you must get in touch with Julius Sibault. And now you’re going to tell me I don’t know what the purple hades I’m talking about.”

  “I can do neither of those things,” Axel said coldly.

  “And you’ll be able to give me any number of reasons why you can’t. Forget them. Forget that you’re a millionaire with your fortune at stake. Think of yourself as just an ordinary man who’s in one hell of a purple mess. You’ve been primed to kill. You think you know the time and the place. Forget them. They could have been put into your mind to mislead you, put you off guard. What you’ve been set up to do you can do at any time and any place. Don’t run away with the idea that you’re unique, Champlee. This sort of thing’s been done before. Our yellow friends are past-masters at the game. You’ll hear a certain sequence of words or see a certain sequence of events and that will be it.

  “Going to the police will protect you, as well as your intended victim. In your case, a kind of insurance. It can all be done quietly. I go to Norwich, talk to someone from the CID, he will arrange for you to be protected while we go about the next stage of getting you unravelled. If you do manage to slip away—which is unlikely; the police know their business—you wouldn’t be held to blame for anything you might do. Think about it, Champlee. It’s the only thing you can do.”

  It made sense of a kind.

  “If it could be done without attracting attention,” Axel said doubtfully.

  “No need to leave this house,” Salter told him. “They’ll send a couple of men here. Stick to you like leeches. Embarrassing at times, but what the hell? My niece can feed them. God help their purple stomachs.”

  “But not Sibault,” Axel said.

  “Because you think he’s mixed up in it already. I’ve been honest with you so far, I’ll be honest now. He could be, but it’s damned unlikely. Sibault is a man of repute. He’s known the world over for his articles on psychiatry. I’ve never met him personally, only spoken to him the once over the phone, but I’ve known of him for years. Research is his field, not walnut panels, a plush couch and a blond dilly in Harley Street. I was surprised at first when Louise told me he’d mixed himself up with Mosaic. But that explains why there have been no articles from his pen for the past three years. He’s found another way of financing his research. And bloody good luck to him. Well, Champlee?”

  “He can’t be trusted,” Axel said stubbornly.

  “I won’t argue. We find someone else.” Salter looked at his watch. “Half after eleven. An hour to Norwich, half an hour there, an hour back. Late lunch.” He came to his feet, collecting jacket and blue hat. “Expect me back with company at about two-thirty.”

  “Remember to drive on the left,” Louise warned.

  “I learned how to handle ears when you were a puking infant,” her uncle rejoined equably.

  Standing in the porch. Axel and Louise watched him go down the drive, a shabby, insignificant little man, a doctor, the very last thing he could be.

  “Uncle Vince knows how to look after himself,” the girl said, her tone a mixture of anxiety and confidence.

  The tiny car jerked violently backward, its engine roaring. Gravel sprayed from the tyres as it swung out into the lane. Its driver wasted no time over the niceties of getting the feel of the vehicle. He crashed his way through the old-fashioned gears, swearing aloud at their grating objections. He took the first bend too close to the verge, branches rattling along the side of the car. It was a while before he thought to adjust the mirror to his particular eye level. When he did he found it filled with the reflection of the black saloon that was sitting on his tail, that was already swinging out to overtake.

  This winding country lane was no place for a neck-and-neck race. He eased his foot off the accelerator. The saloon drew alongside, stayed alongside, making no attempt to draw ahead. Instead, there could be no doubt but that it was doing its best to force him off the road. Dr. Salter, driving a tin box, up against a vehicle constructed like a tank, had no option but to brake. The two cars came to a halt at the same time.

  Fuming, he crashed his door open and climbed out. Two of the occupants of the saloon were already out on the road, two men, both coatless and hatless, both thin and dark, but one a good head taller than the other. It was the taller who spoke, getting in his say while Salter was still assembling phrases that would be blistering enough to suit his mood.

  “Dr. Vincent Salter,” the tall man said blandly, smiling. “I do apologise for all this. My name is Hardie, Chester Hardie. This”—motioning to his smaller companion—“is Mr. Howard Nolan. You may have heard the name before.”

  A woman’s slim legs were framed in the open rear door, her blond head was framed in the rear window.

  “Miss Joan Kilby,” Hardie continued in the same smooth tone, with the same courteous manner of a social occasion. “And someone whom you already know but have yet to meet. Mr. Julius Sibault.”

  Sibault, a massive man with a massive mottled face, leaned across the woman, smiling, one hand extended.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Salter,” he said. “Let me add my apologies to those of Hardie for having had to intercept you in such a manner.”

  He moved along the seat so that there was a space between his gross body and the slim one of the woman. He patted the space invitingly.

  “Come and sit here, Salter,” he said genially. “We have a great deal to talk about.”

  11

  Louise had the meal all ready to serve at two o’clock. “Uncle Vince might not take as long as he thought.” She had prepared enough for five. “Lucky I bought all that stuff in Norwich.”

  Axel had some idea of trying to mend the broken french window. It was pointless, but it would be something to do. He couldn’t recall ever handling tools before. Louise helped him look for a screwdriver and screws. There was nothing of that kind at all in the house.

  “In the garage, probably,” she said. “But I shouldn’t bother, Axel. Leave it for the police to see. Let them take care of it.”

  She followed him into the lounge.

  “I know how you feel about them being brought in, but honestly, it’s the only thing we can do. Uncle Vince will tell them all there is to know. They won’t have to plague you at all. They’ll know what to do.”

  “The sort of thing they must meet every day,” he said laconically.

  At half past two she turned up the gas under her array of saucepans. “When Uncle Vince says a certain time, lie’s never far out. Any moment now.”

  Fifteen minutes later she turned the gas down again, making it seem that her concern was solely for a meal that might be ruined. At half past three she gave up pretending there was nothing to worry about.

  “An hour now … He should have been back before this.”

  She fretted between lounge and kitchen, refusing to sit down. “Perhaps they were longer talking than he thought.”

  She went into the hall. Not back into the kitchen this time, but to the front door—Axel heard her open it, heard her cry aloud; not his name, just a wordless exclamation.

  He followed, taking his time, through the front door and down the drive to where she stood by her car, her empty car, drawn up just inside the open gates in its usual place, as if it had never been away.

  He had expected something like this. The bonnet, when he tested it with his hand, was cold.

  “It’s been here for some time,” he told her.

  Her face was white. “Then where is he?” She gazed helplessly about her. “Where’s he gone? Why didn’t he come in the house?”

  It wasn’t easy to be patient in the face of such stupidity.

  “He’s not here,” Axel said. “They’ve got him. They stopped him, took him away and then brought the car back here.”

  And still she couldn’t get it into her head.

  “They know I can’t walk all the way to Grenfelle,”
he said curtly. “So they brought the car back again.”

  She wrenched open the door of the driving seat. He stopped her, grasping her arm, as she was about to get in.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  She looked up at him, angry now, the colour back in her cheeks.

  “What d’you think I’m doing? I’m going to the police of course!”

  “And how far do you think you’d get? How far do you think your uncle got? You were lucky enough to give them the slip that other time. The same trick won’t work again, or any others you might think up.”

  He loosed his grip. “Go if you want to.”

  Her anger melted; her features crumpled. For a moment she seemed on the brink of breaking down. Then she took hold of herself.

  “I can’t think. No”—when he would have taken her arm again—I’m all right now. I’ve got to think. There must be something we can do …”

  “There’s nothing,” he said flatly. “They’ve got him, and that’s all there is to it. If I had tried to warn him, he wouldn’t have taken any notice. They’ll probably try to make use of him in the same way they wanted to use you. Bait. They’ll be hoping you’ll be worried enough to talk me into going to Barkley House. That’s where they’ll have taken him.” He took hold of her arm again. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  She let him lead her back into the house. Something was burning on the stove. She turned out all the gas rings.

  “Do you want anything to eat, Axel?”

  “No.” He went into the lounge to stand by the window, looking out at a garden that was too bright-neat to be real. Louise came to him sometime later. Her expression made it obvious she had thought of something.

  “If we wait for dark, Axel, and then try—”

  She was still harping on going for the police.

  “Light or dark,” he rejoined impatiently, “it’s all the same.” “But if we don’t use the car at all,” she urged. “If we keep away from the road—”