Mandrake (27 page)

‘Beth whistled,’ Oakley said suddenly. He put the gun in his pocket and kept his hand there. He said softly to Mandrake, ‘You’re taking us to Magdalen Bridge. Find a reason, and make it good. If you do anything to give a warning, I shall shoot you. Whatever happens to me afterwards, I swear I shall shoot you first. Now move.’

Mandrake walked out, very upright, into the dark. Queston saw Brunner’s chest heave with an indrawn breath as he swung the door to; locking it, he put his ear close. Through the heavy oak, and two feet of stone wall, the helpless shout was no more than the faint echo of a sound far away.

He followed Oakley, and Beth came to him out of the shadows by the glimmering Shelley memorial. He put his arm round her shoulders and pulled her close, hard, for a second; she put her cheek briefly against his neck. Her skin was cool.

‘Over there,’ she said softly. ‘Coming towards us.’

They strained dazed eyes into the darkness, and heard slow footsteps chewing the gravel.

Oakley said low to Mandrake: ‘
Now
.’

The Minister’s tall figure strode out from the murk of the arch, and they heard his voice firm and peremptory. ‘Jeffries!’ Queston thought, ridiculously: ‘He can see in the dark…’

The footsteps paused. ‘Mr Mandrake, sir! ’ Startled and respectful.

‘I want a car at once to go down to Magdalen, and then round to Christ Church. Is there a driver about?’

‘There’s a couple just come into the lodge, sir. I’ll get one of them at once.’

‘Christ Church? ’ Beth whispered anxiously. Queston pressed her hand, but said nothing. He had seen Oakley’s shoulders already hunch like a dog’s pricked ears at the man’s words. But then they had relaxed. In a moment he relaxed as well. Magdalen was only a few yards away; even Mandrake was unlikely to want a car for that distance, on a fine night. The second part of the order made it plausible. Mandrake was not only doing as he was told; he was adding coolly ingenious extras of his own. Either he was very anxious to avoid death, or he was planning something.

They followed him into the yellow-lit lodge; he glanced at them coldly over his shoulder as if stressing his authority. A man in the dull black Ministry uniform leapt out of the lodge, hastily pulling on his cap, and the porter opened the door cut in the great gate.

‘Thank you, Jeffries,’ Mandrake said. ‘I have my key.’

‘Good night, sir.’ The door closed again. But Queston noticed an inquisitive head peeping dark from the dim-lit window of the lodge.

The driver unlocked the car, took off his cap, and stood holding the door at the back.

Oakley said politely: ‘After you, Minister.’ His right hand remained firmly in his pocket. Queston looked at the buttoned holster on the driver’s belt, and held his breath.

Mandrake’s face was blank. He paused, and looked out at the empty road over the car roof. A distant car’s engine hummed somewhere, and died away. There was no other sound. He inclined his head to Oakley. ‘Thank you,’ he said gravely. He climbed into the car.

‘Perhaps Miss Summers would like to sit in front,’ Queston said hastily. ‘I’ll go round the other side.’ He ran to the other door, and then he and Oakley were sitting on either side of Mandrake; Oakley half-facing him, hand in pocket. Beth slid into the front seat, and the car moved off. For an instant Queston was aware of nothing but the shape of her head, silhouetted against the windscreen.

Round the long curve of the High Street, the driver slowed the car. ‘Magdalen, sir?’

Oakley pointed silently to the near side of the bridge.

‘Just this side of the bridge,’ Mandrake said.

The car stopped. There were lights beyond the bridge, and moving figures. The driver turned off the engine, and made to open the door.

Oakley said quietly: ‘Just a moment, driver. Sit still, and don’t make a sound. I have a gun pointing into the Minister’s stomach. If you don’t do exactly as I tell you, I shall shoot first him and then you. Especially—’ his voice hardened as the man’s left hand involuntarily jerked ‘—if you try to reach your gun.’

The driver sat still. He had a square head; the back of his neck was thick, the hair shaven. He said stolidly: ‘Is it true, sir?’

Mandrake’s voice seemed to come with difficulty. ‘Quite—true,’ he said. He had begun to shake violently; next to him, Queston felt the compulsive jarring of his body, and he did not think it came from fear of being shot. He leaned forward and took the revolver from the driver’s belt; broke it, and spun the loaded chambers. He had seen no cartridges on the belt. ‘Any more?’

‘In the front there,’ the man said.

Beth opened the locker above her knees, and rattled a box. The noise came very loud.

Beyond the bridge, lights began to dance as if someone came towards them.

‘Now,’ Oakley said, ‘will you, David, or shall I?’

‘Stay there.’ Queston got out, and moved quickly round to the driver’s door. He opened it. The man sat looking at him, expressionless, his eyes flicking down to the gun barrel and up. Queston said:
^‘
Get out, and stand where you are. If you make any attempt to raise an alarm before we’ve gone, we shall shoot the Minister at once. Do you understand?’

Suddenly the look of other-listening was on the man’s heavy face; vague, half-possessed. Queston felt the old distaste. ‘Get out.’

‘You wouldn’t shoot the Minister? ’ It was as if the man repeated a blasphemy.

‘That depends on you. If he dies, you’ll have killed him.’

The man got out at once. He looked back at Mandrake, like a sad dog. Then he stood in the middle of the road, his arms hanging limp, watching. Queston slipped into the driving-seat; switched on, felt the wheel affectionately, looked at the petrol gauge. It was registering full. He handed the gun to Beth. ‘You only have to pull the trigger. It reloads itself. No noise, and not much kick.’ She took it gingerly, and nodded.

‘Not a hope of bluffing here,’ Queston said, looking towards the lights. ‘Neck or nothing. All right?’

‘O.K.’ Oakley said softly, behind him. ‘But the Minister looks sick.’

Queston thought for a swift instant of the pull of place: the farmer at Stonehenge… would leaving Oxford kill Mandrake? Too late now. He pressed the starter, felt his right foot take life of its own; and the car swept forward up and over Magdalen Bridge.

‘Keep low,’ he said to Beth.

The lights were arc lamps. It was like a frontier post. He saw figures moving on the road, and a low striped pole barring the way before them. Fifty yards away he slowed, turned his headlamps full on and sounded the horn. The trumpeting roar leapt out into the silence, but none of the figures moved to raise the bar. Two men set off up the road towards them, flashing torches and shielding their eyes.

‘Right,’ Queston said under his breath. He turned off all his lights and put his foot down hard. The car howled, leapt forward; he saw Beth duck, the fights flash close, and startled faces, with black open mouths. Light, white fight, blinding, and then the striped pole a barrier before them, nearer, nearer; and in the second that his arm came up to ward off flying glass he saw that there was no need. The big car took the crashing impact of the bar on the apex of its heavy steel radiator, and they were through and away, the splintered wooden arms tossed aside harmless in the road.

The beam of the headlamps rode before them, thrusting the darkness to either side. Ten minutes from Oxford, and no word spoken inside the car.

‘What time is it? ’ Beth said.

Oakley said from the back seat: ‘Quarter of twelve. David, what road is this?’

‘The London road. Goes through High Wycombe. It turns off north soon. Better decide where we want to go.’

‘I’ve been watching out back. They aren’t following. Why not?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No sign of lights. No one could take this road without them.’

‘They must be there somewhere.’

‘Maybe. But you’ll have to stop soon. Our friend here is in a bad way.’

Queston’s eyes were strained forward on the path of running light, and the hedges flashing without colour on either side. He said, without turning, ‘What’s wrong, Mandrake?’

‘He’s out cold,’ Oakley said. ‘Passed out when we crashed through that pole. I don’t like it. His breathing’s odd, and his pulse is getting faint. It’s as if he’s going deeper under all the time. Maybe he knocked his head. Or maybe—’ He stopped.

If you take him out you will kill him… Queston knew he was remembering Brunner’s anguished plea. He glanced in the driving-mirror. Nothing. Only the dark that swallowed the road again when they had passed. He slid the car slower on to the grass verge, on a long curve in the road.

Silence washed round them as he switched the engine off. He wound down the window, put his head out, and listened for the sound of a following car. Still nothing. Only the murmuring, menacing emptiness that made no noise.

He put his hand automatically forward into the map compartment, and found a heavy, rubber-coated torch.

‘Let’s have a look at him.’

He shone the torch on Mandrake’s face. Beth turned to look, made a small frightened noise and drew closer to him. Mandrake’s head was flung back on the seat; his face was white and glistening, and the light carved deep scornful dark lines down from nose and mouth, and shadowed the eye-brows into a black-gashed frown. It was a mask, chalked and empty. And no way of telling what lay underneath.

‘Tough baby, isn’t he? ’ Oakley said.

Beth’s voice was husky. ‘I was too frightened to look at him properly before. He’s evil.’

Queston said slowly: ‘And defenceless.’ He snapped off the torch, bringing darkness down like a blind, and felt Beth jump. ‘Let’s get him out into the air for a couple of minutes. But we can’t spare more.’

Together he and Oakley dragged Mandrake out on to the grass. He had seemed a narrow-built man, but he was very heavy.

‘His breathing seems better.’ Queston straightened up.

‘Leave him for a bit,’ Oakley said. They spoke in half whispers, without the scuffle of their movements the road was utterly silent, and the darkness hung all round them, threatening.

Beth said, from the car: ‘What are we going to do with him?’

‘If we take him farther away—’ Oakley left the words hanging.

‘I know,’ Queston said. ‘And how do they reconcile
that
little phenomenon with being masters of the collective subconscious, I wonder?’

‘Old Gudgeon tied himself in knots trying to defend it. All he really had to offer was that if you push propaganda hard enough, it can end up having hold of its author as well. It’s possible. I knew an advertising man once, wrote so much crap about a soap powder that he finally bullied his wife into using nothing else. Used to quote his own slogans at her.’

‘Guard thine own,’ Queston said bitterly.

‘White is right, I think it was,’ Oakley turned towards the grass verge, peering down through the darkness for the solid black of the man lying there. ‘How’s the—
Christ!’

‘What is it?’

‘The torch. Quick.’

Queston fumbled for the switch on the heavy rubber case, and the torch-beam flared out over Mandrake. He was not as they had left him. He was crouched, kneeling with his head twisted against the ground; his cheek flat against the grass, so that in the sudden light they could see his face.

It was white, ravaged, impassive, exactly as it had been before; but the eyes stared open, unblinking. He turned his head slowly away from the light like a sick man, and they watched astounded, without a word; and painfully and slowly the Minister moved forward, away from them, on his hands and knees, crawling back along the road.

‘Mandrake! ’ Oakley said, croaking.

The slow, degraded crawl paused, and the figure stumbled clumsily to its feet, and went on, step by gradual step, lurching away.

Oakley’s voice rose. ‘Mandrake!’

Beth said: ‘I don’t think he can hear you.’

‘Let him go,’ said Queston.

‘He’s dangerous.’

‘I doubt it, now. And what could we do with him?’

‘Kill him.’

Queston held the dwindling, sleep-stumbling figure in the spraying beam from the torch. ‘You can shoot him in the back. Or you can take him farther from Oxford. Which d’you prefer?’

Oakley shrugged. ‘He won’t rest till he finds you again. It’s your funeral.’

They watched the shambling, eerie shape of Mandrake disappear out of the end of the light.

‘It seems a funny thing to say,’ Beth said, ‘but will he be all right?’

Oakley laughed shortly. ‘With any luck the first car chasing us will run him down.’

‘They won’t chase us,’ Queston said. He felt very tired. ‘They have other things to worry about. He’s safe enough. He’s going home.’

They went back to the car, and sat in silence. Beth reached for Queston’s hand; he put his arm round her shoulders.

‘O love,’ she said softly.

He felt her hair like a breath against his neck. He looked down at her, and she turned her face to him, a featureless glimmer in the dark car; but when he kissed her their mouths met and clung, and the dark was not there, or the despair, but only a long singing white world that was all the endless ache of wandering dissolved into certainty. He cupped his hand round her cheek, and kissed her eyes.

Oakley said, from behind them: ‘I don’t want to break up the party, but—’

There was pain in the voice, but Queston did not notice; he felt Beth’s smile under his hand, and laughed. ‘Go ahead. I’ve got my girl back.’ He pulled his arm over to the wheel, ruffling Beth’s hair, and started the car. It was like waking to sunshine after long sleep; the world was as easy suddenly as when he was young. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘where would you like to go?’

‘Is there anywhere we can go? ’ Beth said.

The car stirred as Oakley moved suddenly. ‘Listen!’

‘What is it?’

‘I heard something. Switch off again.’

The engine died, the silence murmured in their ears.

‘Nothing there.’

‘It was some way away. It sounded like—damn, it couldn’t have been. Come on, let’s go. This road’s giving me the willies.’