The Daffodil Affair (13 page)

Appleby came along, noting that it was just three-quarters of an hour short of twelve. Beaglehole suggested poker; Hudspith demanded bridge and carried his point, so that presently he was demonstrating very convincingly those peculiarly rapid powers of sobering up which some men possess. It was a dull game, for small stakes, with Beaglehole making occasional bets in the prudent manner of a commercial man, and with Wine displaying an orthodoxy so consistent as to suggest some hidden absence of mind. Hudspith himself was now as sober and normal a businessman as ever came out of Auckland or Sydney. And over the deserted bar the clock ticked steadily towards midnight.

Deep below them the engines throbbed and the slap and hiss of water came faintly up; occasionally they could hear the high note that a ship’s rigging seems to take on only south of the line. Perhaps bridge does fix the mind, but bridge at midnight and in mid-ocean can strangely emphasise the isolation of a voyage. Close round about, sleeping or at watch, is the tiny company to which one is attached. Beyond, and stretching past the bounds of any concrete awareness, is the utterly alien deep. We are accustomed to think of the distances of interstellar space as alone baffling to the human imagination. But after a fortnight at sea we know that we have traversed distances equally transcending any realizing power of the mind. Through the night the engines drove with their mysteriously unfailing power. And the four men flipped their pasteboards on the square of green baize.

Hudspith was partnering Appleby. He was laying down his hand for dummy. And as he finished doing so he looked past Appleby’s shoulder and smiled – smiled with evident pleasure and perhaps a trace of surprise. ‘Lucy!’ he said. ‘I didn’t know–’ He broke off, frowned, spoke again with sudden anxiety. ‘What are you doing? What are you doing with that–’

Appleby, although he ought to have been looking at Wine, swung round despite himself. The door was behind him and it was closed. Behind the door, he knew, was a curtain, and behind that an outer door, also closed. But Hudspith, it was almost possible to swear, had been looking at the deck directly beyond. And now he had sprung to his feet and was passing a hand across his eyes. ‘She had a gun,’ he said hoarsely. ‘There were trees…palms…’ Dead sober, he looked at his companions. ‘I’m drunk,’ he said. ‘Damn drunk – sorry.’ He turned round, pushed his chair back clumsily and stumbled from the room.

As a piece of acting it was absolutely first class. Appleby, although he felt an inclination to cheer, contrived to whistle. ‘Poor old Ron!’ he said. ‘I never knew him get it as badly as that.’

Beaglehole rose. He looked both scared and angry – which is no doubt how the sceptical do look on such occasions. And when he spoke it was more aggressively than usual. ‘He’ll be seeing pink and green rats next. It’s a mistake to drink anything but whisky on a ship.’

‘Not at all.’ Wine, who was stacking cards while staring thoughtfully before him, shook his head. ‘This has the appearance – at least the superficial appearance – of something rather more interesting than that. What is called, I believe, casual veridical hallucination of the sane.’

‘You mean second sight?’ asked Appleby.

Wine shrugged his shoulders. ‘My dear man, that is a term from superstition and folklore. If we positively believe in such things we shall no doubt use these old words. I prefer the description science gives to something it still regards as extremely debatable.’ He turned round. ‘Midnight, you will notice. I wonder if your friend’s Lucy is still alive? Or has conceivably just died? People who investigate these affairs would no doubt like to know.’ He yawned. ‘And now what about bed?’

‘Sure,’ said Appleby and turned towards the door. Suddenly he stopped and laid a hand with innocent familiarity on the other’s shoulder. ‘But say, Mr Wine, you knew all that jargon about those horses – and now you have the jargon about this. Perhaps you’re a bit of a hand at investigating these things yourself?’ Appleby let his hand drop, but not before he had felt Wine’s muscles grow momentarily rigid. Whatever reply came would be the product of rapid calculation.

‘Investigate spooks, Mr Appleby? Dear me, no.’

‘Spooks and thinking animals and various sorts of mediums – that sort of thing.’

Wine’s eyelids flickered. Then he smiled. It would have been a snubbing smile had it been a shade less merely amused. ‘Dear me, no. Beaglehole, shall we be talking too freely if we say that we have more important work than that?’ And Wine laughed pleasantly. ‘Good night, my dear sir. Good night.’

Appleby swung himself out of his bunk and sat on the edge. His hands lay on his knees and the morning sun shone on them. ‘You see?’ he said. His right thumb almost imperceptibly moved. ‘You see?’

‘Yes, I see.’ Hudspith had just returned from an early prowl on deck. ‘But I
don’t
see what sort of contrivance–’

‘A lazy-tongs. Something that Beaglehole said put it in my head. It used to be quite a popular toy, and nowadays they make elevator doors and things on the same principle. Something rather like a pair of scissors with a piece of latticework pivoted to the blades. You close the scissors – a movement of the thumb will do it – and the whole affair shoots out and extends itself a surprising distance. Open the scissors and it retracts itself and folds up. Eusapia was practising with a contrivance like that.’

Hudspith shook his head. ‘But surely such a thing would quickly be found out? No conjuror could get away with it.’

‘A physical medium isn’t a conjuror. Or rather he is a conjuror who imposes conditions which no theatre audience would put up with. He sits in next to complete darkness. His limbs may be held, but he can claim a supernatural origin for all sorts of calculated physical convulsions. And if he is too strictly controlled – for instance if he has had to agree to a careful search before a seance – he can simply announce that the spirits are on holiday for that day. Eusapia is this special sort of conjuror and Wine knows it and is carrying her off to join his circus.

‘Which places Wine. He collects frauds.’

‘No.’ Appleby shook his head decidedly. ‘The thing is not quite so simple as that. Perhaps no known physical medium has ever been exhaustively investigated by scientists without the exposure of fraud. But there are highly intelligent investigators who maintain that with these people fraud is a sort of emergency line of defence. Mediums – roughly speaking – are paid by results. It is conceivable that they are genuinely the channels of supernormal agencies to which the methods and attitudes of scientific investigators are antipathetic. When the mediums are hard pressed by the scientists the supernormal agencies desert them. And then, to sustain their reputation, the mediums resort to trickery. There is thus a case of sorts for continuing to investigate the phenomena even of persons who have been frequently exposed as fraudulent. Wine may know that Eusapia is a little twister and yet his intentions may be those of a serious investigator.’

‘Or they may be those of a showman.’

‘Exactly. We may be on the track of the Strangest Show on Earth. Something of that sort. But the question is – is Wine on the track of two inquisitive policemen who have begun their dealings with him in a deplorably holiday mood?’ Appleby rose and stretched himself. ‘I’m going to have a bath. If I meet him I’ll ask him.’

‘Don’t do that.’ Hudspith spoke with serious concern. ‘Don’t, I mean, do any more forcing of the issue at present. You’ve claimed to know a relative of Daffodil’s and I’ve claimed to know Lucy Rideout–’

Appleby laughed. ‘My claim is quite harmless. But the laws of slander are absolutely savage against yours. And from a man whose mission in life is the defence of British maidenhood–’

Hudspith held up his hand. ‘Bawdry,’ he said with dignity, ‘will get us nowhere. I am simply insisting that we’ve strained coincidence to breaking-point and must go easy if he’s not to spot us. I don’t think I ought to have had that vision of Lucy last night. I’m afraid I was a bit carried away.’

‘Not exactly that. You did contrive to get out of the room on your own legs. And so, for that matter, did Wine. I mean that he wasn’t at all bowled over. Beaglehole was much nearer letting some cat out of the bag. Wine is a deep one. And just what he’s thinking – or planning – at this moment I can’t at all guess.’

‘That’s because you don’t get up early enough. He’s been trying to send a wireless message.’

Appleby was picking up a large sponge; he held it suspended in air. ‘A wireless message? He must know he has no more chance of that than of taking over command of the ship.’

‘You forget that he’s ostensibly on some sort of hush-hush job. And to get a message away he’s been straining any authority he possesses.’

‘It looks as if we’ve upset him all right. Did they send him away with a flea in his ear?’

Hudspith frowned at this vulgarism – and then fleetingly smiled. ‘What you might call half a flea. They told him it was absolutely impossible to send out wireless messages anyway. The atmosphere is electrical.’

Appleby stared. ‘Isn’t that what they say in a diplomatic crisis?’

‘This time it’s meant literally. I had all this from the first officer. There’s some sort of electrical disturbance in the offing quite outside his experience. That’s why the air felt so queer last night.’

‘It’s nice to know it wasn’t just the drink. But isn’t it pretty queer still?’

‘Decidedly. I think you’re quite likely to be electrocuted in that bath.’

Appleby chanced it. And as he lay in the warm salt water and watched its obstinate refusal to dip and tilt with the ship he realized how significant that attempted wireless message was. It went some way towards explaining the theft of 37 Hawke Square.

Mrs Nurse picked up the milk jug. ‘I suppose they make it out of powder,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t think it at all nice. Particularly in tea. I don’t think tea is at all nice on steamers.’ She put the jug down again. ‘Has anybody noticed the funny sky?’

‘I never saw a sky that colour before,’ said Wine.

‘It’s not so much the colour,’ said Miss Mood, ‘as the way it seems to go all wavy when you look at it.’

Beaglehole nodded. ‘You need go no farther than the wireless aerial to see something damned queer. Lights like little blue devils running and jumping on the wires. Mr Hudspith mayn’t believe it, but they’re really there.’ Beaglehole as he said this looked swiftly at Wine, as if to make sure that this was the right line to take. Then he laughed uneasily and thrust away a plate. ‘Uncommonly oppressive, isn’t it? Makes you feel queer. No appetite.’

‘Feel queer?’ said Mrs Nurse – and appeared to consider. ‘No, I don’t think it does that.’

Miss Mood’s nervous hands played with a large amber necklace. ‘The astral influences,’ she said sombrely. ‘It may be some great disaster. But I think one ought to eat.’ And she tore the paper cover off a roll.

‘These disturbances do happen in the tropics,’ said Wine. ‘I believe they are not yet very well understood. But I don’t think Miss Mood need apprehend disaster.’

Miss Mood was clearly not reassured; instead of eating her roll she was tearing the little paper bag into fragments.

‘Feel queer?’ said Mrs Nurse again.

Appleby, who had been eating bacon and eggs stolidly, turned to Wine. ‘A funny old day, all right,’ he said. ‘A real cow.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘And gets at the nerves. I’ve known the same sort of thing during a dust storm.’

‘That’s right.’ Hudspith nodded heavily. ‘And I’ve known Uncle Len say–’

‘The fans!’ Beaglehole was pointing excitedly. ‘Did you ever see–’

It was warm and the fans were going – but now suddenly they could be seen only through a spiralling fuzz and crackle of electrical discharge.

‘Did you ever see–’ Beaglehole, still dramatically gesturing, was interrupted in turn by Miss Mood. Miss Mood screamed. She screamed because, from the table before her, a little snowstorm of paper fragments had risen and was circling round her head. For a moment her startled face was like a pinnacle seen through an eddy of gulls. And then, like gulls coming to rest, the little scraps of paper had clustered on her amber necklace.

It was distinctly odd. But the behaviour of the placid Mrs Nurse was odder. ‘Queer?’ she said faintly, and fell back in her chair with closed eyes. A moment later they had opened again, but the pupils were upturned and only the whites were showing. ‘Queer?’ she said very faintly, and her body jerked itself upright. ‘Near,’ she said in a new voice. ‘It is very near.’ Her voice deepened again and took on a foreign intonation. ‘The Emperor says it is near. He says Beware. No, he says Prepare. The Emperor wants you all to know that it is clear. He understands it all. The Emperor understands everything. We understand everything here. The Emperor advises prayer. It is very near now.’ There was a long sigh. ‘I feel all hollow,’ Mrs Nurse said in her ordinary voice. ‘I feel all hollow,’ she said piteously.

Appleby, who had started on his last rasher, turned again to Wine. ‘I expect you know the jargon of this too, Mr Wine?’

‘No doubt she will come to herself presently.’ Wine uttered the words non-committally and then took refuge behind a coffee cup.

‘Would you call it a trance?’ asked Hudspith. ‘Uncle Len once knew a woman–’

Like an erupting geyser Miss Mood went off into high-pitched laughter. Peal after peal of it rang horridly through the saloon. And then it ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Breathing rapidly, Miss Mood sat rigid and with a dilated eye.

‘Now there’s another strange thing,’ Appleby was almost owlishly placid. ‘Talking of your Uncle Len, Ron, my Uncle Sid had a cowgirl just like that.’ And Appleby nodded towards Miss Mood.

‘A cowgirl?’ said Wine. He spoke, Appleby thought, a trifle wildly, as if the situation were becoming too much for him. There would come a point at which you could bowl over Wine.

‘A cowgirl. And when she went like
that’
– and again Appleby nodded at Miss Mood – ‘you could do
this
.’ And Appleby’s hand went to the lapel of his coat and produced a pin. ‘This,’ he repeated – and leaning across the table he pushed the pin firmly into Miss Mood’s arm. ‘Ron, have you got another?’ He felt in his pocket. ‘Or if one has a penknife–’