by John Wyndham
The rest of our conversation was unspoken. We understood one another well enough.
Ten
The rest of the week went uneventfully, until Friday. I had to work late that evening, and had dinner in London. At almost ten o’clock I arrived home to find Mary on the telephone. She finished her call just as I came into the room, and pressed the rest without putting the receiver on it.
‘Matthew’s not back,’ she said. ‘I’m ringing the hospitals.’
She consulted a list and began to dial again. After two or three more calls she came to the end of her list, and laid the receiver in its rest. I had got out the whisky.
‘Drink this. It’ll do you good,’ I told her.
She took it, gratefully.
‘You’ve tried the police?’
‘Yes. I called the school first. He left there at the usual time all right. So then I tried the police, and gave them particulars. They’ve promised to ring us if they have any news.’ She took a drink of whisky.’ Oh, David. Thank goodness you’re back. I’d got to imagining all sorts of things.… I hoped everything would be all right once that Chocky business was over. But he’s gone all closed in.… He doesn’t say anything – not to me.… And then going off like he did on Monday.… You don’t think…?’
I sat down beside her, and took her hand.
‘Of course I don’t, And you mustn’t either.’
‘He’s kept everything so bottled up…’
‘It did come as a shock to him. Whatever Chocky was he’d got used to having her around. Suddenly losing her upset him – knocked the bottom out of things for him. It needed some adjustment – but he’s making it all right…’
‘You really think that? You’re not just saying it…?’
‘Of course I do, darling. I’m perfectly certain that if he were going to do anything silly he’d have done it a fortnight ago, and he wasn’t near that even then – he was distressed and pretty wretched, poor boy. But nothing of that kind ever entered his head. I’m sure of it.’
Mary sighed.
‘I hope you’re right – yes, I’m sure you are. But that makes it all the more mysterious. He must know how we’ll feel. He’s not an insensitive boy…’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘That’s what’s worrying me most…’
Neither of us slept much that night.
I rang the police the next morning. They were sympathetic, doing all they could, but had no news.
The gloominess of the breakfast table subdued even Polly. We questioned her though without much hope. Matthew no longer confided in her, but there was just the chance that he might have let something slip. Apparently he had not – at least nothing that Polly could remember. We relapsed into our gloomy silence. Polly emerged from hers to say:
‘I expect Matthew’s been kidnapped. You’ll probably get a note wanting an enormous ransom.’
‘Not very likely,’ I told her. ‘We don’t keep enormous ransoms round here.’
Silence closed down again. After a time Polly found it irksome. She fidgeted. Presently she felt impelled to make conversation. She observed:
‘When Twinklehooves was kidnapped they tried to turn him into a pit pony.’
‘Shut up,’ I told her. ‘Either shut up, or go away.’
She regarded me with hurt reproof, but decided to go away, in a huff.
‘What about the Sunday papers? They were anxious enough to interview him before,’ Mary suggested.
‘You know what that means. “Child Artist Vanishes.” “Guardian Angel Hero Missing”, et cetera.’
‘What’s that matter if it helps to find him?’
‘All right,’ I told her. ‘I’ll try.’
There was no news that day.
At ten o’clock on Sunday morning the phone rang. I grabbed it.
‘Mr Gore?’
‘Yes.’
‘My name is Bollot. You don’t know me, but my boy goes to the same school as yours. We’ve just been reading in the paper about it. Shocking business. Very sorry to hear it. No news yet, I suppose?’
‘No.’
‘Well, look here, the point is my Lawrence says he saw your Matthew on Friday. He noticed him talking to a man with a big car – a Mercedes, he thinks – a little way down the road from the school. He has an idea they were arguing about something. Then your Matthew got into the car with the man, and it drove off.’
‘Thanks, Mr Bollot. Thanks very much. I’ll let the police know at once.’
‘Oh, is that really –? Yes, I suppose it is. Well, I hope they find him quickly for you.’
But they did not.
The Monday papers took it up. The BBC included it in their local news bulletin. The phone seemed scarcely to stop ringing. But it brought no news of Matthew…
That was a dreadful week. What can one do in the face of utter blankness? There was no corroboration of the Bollot boy’s story, but he stuck to it with unshakeable conviction. An inquiry at the school failed to discover any other boy who had accepted a lift that evening. So, apparently, it had been Matthew…
But why? What possible reason? Even threats, a demand for ransom would have been more bearable than this silent vanishing into utter nothingness which left our imaginations roving horridly at large. I could feel the tension in Mary growing tighter every day, and dreaded the moment when it should break…
The week seemed endless. The week-end that followed it, longer still, but then:
At about half past eight o’clock on the following Tuesday morning a small boy paused on the pavement edge of a busy crossing in Birmingham, and watched the policeman directing the traffic. When that ahead of him was held up he crossed to the middle of the road, stationed himself alongside the policeman, waiting patiently to be attended to. Presently, his traffic safely on course for the moment, the policeman bent down.
‘Hullo, Sonny, and what’s your trouble?’ he inquired.
‘Please, sir,’ said the boy, ‘I’m afraid I’m sort of lost. And it’s difficult because I haven’t any money to get home with.’
The policeman shook his head.
‘That’s bad,’ he said, sympathetically. ‘And where would home be?’
‘Hindmere,’ the boy told him.
The policeman stiffened, and looked at him with sudden interest.
‘And what’s your name?’ he asked, carefully.
‘Matthew,’ said Matthew. ‘Matthew Gore.’
‘Is it, begod!’ said the policeman. ‘Now you stand just where you are, Matthew. Don’t you move an inch.’
He took a microphone out of his breast-pocket, pressed a switch, and spoke into it.
A squad car drew up beside them a couple of minutes later.
‘That’s service for you. Come to take you home. Hop in now,’ the policeman told him.
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ said Matthew, with his customary respect for the police.
They brought him home about six o’clock that evening. Mary had rung me up, and I was there to greet him, so, by request, was Dr Aycott.
Matthew seemed to be on very good terms with his escort. He invited them in, but they spoke of duty. Matthew thanked them, we thanked them, and they drove off, narrowly missing a car that was turning in. It’s driver introduced himself as Dr Prost, police surgeon, and we all went inside.
We had drinks, and after ten minutes or so Dr Prost spoke quietly to Mary. She took Matthew off in spite of his protests that the police had already given him a super tea.
‘Well, first of all,’ said Dr Prost as the door closed behind them, ‘you can put your mind at rest. The boy has come to no harm, no harm at all as far as we can tell. Furthermore, he has not even been frightened. It is quite the most considerate kidnapping that I have ever heard of. I see no reason at all for you to fear any ill-effects either physical, or mental. He seems to me to be in A I condition.
‘But, having said that, there are one or two things I think I ought to mention, which is why I wanted you, Dr Aycott, to come along. In
the first place, he has had a number of injections. A dozen or more, in both arms. We have no idea at all what was injected. Whatever it was, it appears to have had no after effects, depressant, or otherwise. He makes no complaints of lassitude, or any abnormal condition. In fact he appears to be in excellent spirits. Nevertheless, since there have been these injections we feel that it would be wise to keep a careful eye on him for any delayed reactions. We have no reason to expect them, but we thought it as well, Doctor, that you should be informed of the possibility.’
Dr Aycott nodded. Dr Prost went on:
‘The second thing is rather curious. Matthew is quite convinced that he has been in a car accident, and that his leg was fractured. Specifically, his right leg. He says that it was in plaster, and that the people “at the hospital” gave him a new treatment which made it mend very quickly. In our examination we found slight abrasions, and a skin condition consistent with the use of a plaster cast on the limb. Naturally, we X-rayed. There was no sign of a break.’
He paused, frowned into his whisky, and tossed it off. He went on:
‘He seems to have been treated very well. Everybody at “the hospital” was friendly and reassuring. The whole, thing has the appearance of an elaborate hoax deliberately contrived to be as unalarming to him as possible. In fact it seems never to have occurred to him that he had been kidnapped. The only two jarring elements that puzzled him were, first, why you and his mother did not go to see him, or answer when he wrote to you, and, second, the way he was dumped in Birmingham.
‘It looks to us very much as if somebody wanted him out of the way for ten days, or so.’ He turned a penetrating look on me. ‘If you know, or suspect, anybody who could have an interest in doing that, I think you’d be well advised to tell the police.’
I shook my head.
‘I can’t think of any conceivable reason for anyone to want to do such a thing. There’s no sense in it,’ I said.
He shrugged.
‘Well, if you can think of any other explanation –’ he said, and left it in the air, not looking entirely convinced.
He and Dr Aycott conferred briefly, and left together a few minutes later, Dr Aycott promising to look in the next day.
I found Matthew, Mary, and Polly in the kitchen. The police super tea had left him with some appetite still. I sat down and lit a cigarette.
‘Well, now, suppose you tell us all about it, Matthew,’ I suggested.
‘Oh dear. Again?’ said Matthew.
‘You haven’t told us yet,’ I pointed out.
Matthew took a deep breath.
‘Well, I was just coming home from school, and this car passed me and stopped a little way in front. And a man got out and looked up and down the road in a lost sort of way,’ he began.
The man looked at Matthew, appeared to be about to speak, but hesitated, then just as Matthew was passing him he said:
‘Excuse me, but I wonder if you could help us. We’re looking for Densham Road, but none of the roads here seem to have any names.’
‘Yes,’ said Matthew. ‘You turn right at the next corner, then the second on the left. That’s Old Lane, only when you get over the crossroads it’s called Densham Road.’
‘Thank you. That’s very clear,’ said the man, and turned to the car. Then, on an afterthought, he turned back.
‘I suppose you couldn’t tell us which side of it to look for a house called Poyntings? A Mr Gore lives there.’
It was as easy as that. Of course Matthew accepted the offer of a lift home. He did not know anything else until he woke up in ‘the hospital’.
‘What made you think it was a hospital?’ Mary asked.
‘It looked like one – well, the way I think hospitals look,’ said Matthew.’ I was in a white bed, and the room was all white and bare and terribly clean. And there was a nurse; she was frightfully clean, too.’
He had discovered that he couldn’t move his leg. The nurse told him not to try because it had been broken, and asked him if it hurt. He told her it didn’t a bit. She had said ‘good’, and that was because he had been injected with a new ‘anti-something’ drug that stopped the pain, and not to worry because they were using a wonderful new process which healed bones, particularly young ones, very quickly.
There had been two or three doctors – well, they wore white coats like doctors on television, anyway – and they were very friendly and cheerful. There was rather a lot of injecting. He hadn’t liked that at first, but didn’t mind it much after the first two or three times. Anyway, it was worth it because the leg hadn’t hurt at all.
Sometimes it had been a bit boring, but they gave him some books. They hadn’t a radio to spare, they told him, but they had let him have a record-player with lots of records. The food was jolly good.
His chief disappointment was that we had not come to see him.
‘Of course we’d have come if we could, but we’d no idea where you were,’ Mary told him.
‘They said they’d told you. And I wrote you two letters with the address at the top,’ Matthew protested.
‘I’m afraid nobody did tell us. And we never got your letters, either,’ I said. ‘What was the address?’
‘Aptford House, Wonersh, near Guildford,’ he told me promptly.
‘You’ve told the police that?’
‘Yes.’
He went on. Apparently he’d seen nothing of the place save the room he had been kept in. The view from its window had been undistinguished, a meadow in the foreground, bounded by a hedge with tall trees in it. Sometime the day before yesterday they had taken off the cast, examined his leg, told him it had mended perfectly, and would be as good as ever, and that he’d be able to go home the next day.
Actually they had started in the dark – he did not know the time because there was no clock in the room. He had said good-bye to the nurse. One of the doctors – not in a white coat this time – had taken him downstairs to where there was a big car waiting in front of the house. When they got in the back the doctor said they’d leave the light on, but had better have the blinds down so as not to dazzle the driver. After they’d started the doctor produced a pack of cards and did some tricks with them. Then the doctor brought out a couple of vacuum flasks, coffee in one for himself, cocoa in the other for Matthew. Shortly after that Matthew had fallen asleep.
He had woken up feeling rather cold. The car had stopped, and there was daylight outside. When he sat up he discovered that not only was he all alone, but he was in a different car which was parked in an utterly unfamiliar street. It was very bewildering. He got out of the car. There were few people walking along the street, but they looked busily on their way somewhere, and took no notice of him. At the end of the street he saw its name on the wall of the building. He didn’t remember what it was, but above it he read ‘City of Birmingham’, which puzzled him greatly. He was now facing a bigger, busier street, with a small café just opposite. He became aware that he was hungry, but when he felt in his pocket he found he’d no money. After that, the only thing to do had seemed to be to find a policeman, and put his problems to him.
‘A very sensible thing to do, too,’ I told him.
‘Yes…’ said Matthew, doubtfully. ‘But they kept on asking so many questions.’
‘And they brought you all the way home in a Z car, free?’ Polly asked.
‘Well, three cars,’ Matthew told her. ‘There was one to the Birmingham police station where they asked a lot of questions, then one to the Hindmere police station, where they gave me that super tea, and asked all the same questions over again. And then one here.’
‘Gosh, you are lucky,’ said Polly enviously. ‘When Twinklehooves was kidnapped they had to hire a horsebox to bring him home. It was very expensive.’
‘Kidnapped…’ Matthew repeated. ‘But.…’ He broke off, and became very thoughtful. He turned to me.
‘Was I kidnapped, Daddy?’
‘It looks very much like it.’ I told him.
; ‘But – but.… But they were kind people, nice people. They got me better. They weren’t a bit like kidnappers ‘He lapsed into thought again, and emerged from it to ask: ‘Do you mean it was all phoney – my leg wasn’t broken at all?’
I nodded.
‘I don’t believe it. It had plaster on – and everything,’ he protested. ‘Anyway, why? Why should anybody want to kidnap me’ He checked, and then asked. ‘Did you have to pay a lot of money, Daddy?’
I shook my head again.
‘No. Nothing at all,’ I assured him.
‘Then it can’t have been kidnapping,’ asserted Matthew.
‘You must be tired out,’ Mary put in. ‘Give me a kiss. Then run along upstairs, both of you. Daddy and I will come up and see you when you’re in bed, Matthew.’
The door closed behind him. Mary looked at me, her eyes brimming. Then she laid her head on her arms on the table and – for the first time since Matthew had disappeared – she let herself cry…
Eleven
That was Tuesday.
On Wednesday Dr Aycott looked in as he had promised. He gave Matthew a very thorough examination with so satisfactory a result that he saw no reason why Matthew should not go to school the following day.
On Wednesday, also, Mary felt it incumbent upon her to ring up her sister Janet and inform her that Matthew was now restored to us in perfect health, and then had to spend some time explaining that his health was not perhaps quite perfect enough to withstand a family invasion the next week-end.
On Thursday Matthew went to school and returned a bit above himself on discovering that he had been a figure of national interest while at the same time feeling somewhat inadequate in not having a more exciting tale to tell.
By Friday everything was back to normal.
That evening Mary, feeling tired, went upstairs soon after ten. I stayed down. I had brought home some work, and thought I would clear it off to leave the week-end free.
About half past eleven there was a tap on the door. Matthew’s head appeared, and looked cautiously round.
‘Has Mummy gone to bed?’ he inquired.
I nodded.