The Daffodil Affair (17 page)

There were men who would take the sword and with it conquer the world for their countrymen or themselves. Such men were a nuisance always, and in a world of high-explosive they were a calamity. But always history – a sentimental jade – would give them a little glory: that amid an ocean of tears and blood. Emery Wine was planning a conquest conceivably just as extensive. But decidedly there would be no glory. To few men – thought Appleby, looking sombrely out over the river – had there ever come a plan more absolutely bad.

There were men who had attempted to make what is called a corner in some necessity of life – say in wheat. But to this man had come the conception of making a corner in poison. The thing had a gambling element, as such cornerings commonly have: Wine had to bank on calamity and a gathering darkness. But the plan was clear. It was as if in the fourth century of our era, watching the decline and fall of world order in the empire of Rome, some cunning man had concentrated in his own hands all the promising superstitions, the long-submerged and half-forgotten magical instruments of the twilight ages of the mind.

And yet it was not quite like that; the conditions were different. Today order and science and the light of knowledge might go, but in the chaos there would remain a network of swift communications, a wilderness of still turning and pounding and shaping machines. The great presses would still revolve and the radios blare or whisper. Whole systems of mumbo-jumbo would spread with terrifying rapidity: already were not weird systems of prediction, grubbed up from the rubble of the dark ages, printed by the million every day? Grant but the initial collapse on which this bad man was counting, and the spread of sub-rational beliefs would be very swift. Power would go to him who had the most and likeliest instruments of superstition to hand. And here – were one’s organization sufficiently vast and sufficiently efficient – even a comical cab-horse, even an inwardly riven and tormented cockney girl, might have a useful niche in the new and murky temple. A corner in ghosts, a corner in witches, a corner in
denkende Tiere
. Somewhere in front of this hot and stinking little river steamer lay the first concrete fashioning of this vast and corrosive fantasy. Round any bend now they might come upon the unholy base or depot, the laboriously accumulated reservoirs of the Lucys and Hannahs and Daffodils – unaccomplished works of Nature’s hand, abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed. The project, if he had read it aright, was extravagant beyond the compass of a story-teller’s art. And yet it was not ungrounded in the present state of the world. As a commercial venture it was dangerous; perhaps what the city used to call double dangerous. But one could write a tolerably persuasive prospectus for it should such a bizarre job come one’s way.

Take the Bereavement Sentiment – take that, said Appleby to himself as he watched young Lucy fishing from the side. There are graphs of it, for insurance companies as well as sociologists find such things useful. The peak year in western Europe was 1920. And it was at that time that the papers were full of strange elysiums, cigar-and-whisky empyreans,
revenants
who reported lawn tennis tournaments on the pavements of paradise. And it was at about that time that such bodies as did exist for the objective study of psychical evidences were inundated with members themselves far from objectively disposed. There are times when every man prays, whatever his settled belief or disbelief may be. And there are circumstances in which many men, and many women – And here Appleby stopped. The best thing, perhaps, would be to go below, and knock on the door of Wine’s cabin, and enter, and shoot him dead, and possibly achieve the additional satisfaction of pitching his carcass to the alligators before his retainers interfered. That – thought Appleby with his eye still on Lucy Rideout – would be very nice. Only the train of speculation leading up to it might be all wrong after all. In a way it ought to be all wrong. The comedy of Lady Caroline and Bodfish, the episode of the York antique shop, the extravagant disappearance of 37 Hawke Square, the deplorable adventure of the birthday party, the untoward consequences of the electrical storm: none of these things alone had the quality – had anything of the key or tone – of this to which they were leading up. Nevertheless Appleby felt that the truth was assuredly here. An examination of the facts led to it as certainly as the long reaches of this river led to Wine’s Happy Islands. And the mere scale of the thing made it susceptible of no other explanation.

But the man had miscalculated, Appleby thought. He was banking on what intellectuals of a high-flown kind liked to call the End of our Time. The probability was that this itself was a miscalculation. It is true that times do come to an end, but the thing happens far less frequently than people expect. History is full of periods which appeared to contemporaries agonal and conclusive, but which the textbooks were eventually to describe as no more than uncomfortably transitional. Now things were uncomfortable enough, and for the first time since the creation every continent and every sea was under fire. But in the end of his time or his country, his language or his civilization or his race, Appleby was not very disposed to believe. If Wine was counting on that sort of absolute subversion he had probably made a mistake.

Conceivably, however, all this was to attribute too great an imaginative element to his schemes. Under whatever circumstances the guns ceased fire, and whatever of his foundations Western man preserved, in the remaining superstructure there would for long be confusion and darkness, wildered wits and shaken judgements enough. Once more, it simply came to this: had a bold man but his organization ready he could reap an immense harvest of wealth and power.

Think of Sludge. Appleby rose from his chair and paced the little deck. Think of the original of Browning’s charlatan. In the midst of the immense solidity of the Victorian age he had been able to work up an extremely profitable hysteria in places astoundingly close to the very centres of English culture. Noblemen had solemnly sworn before committees that they had seen him float in and out of windows or carry live coals in his hand about the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. And the tone of all that – England’s first spiritualist epidemic – was most oddly like the tone of more recent movements. In the period between the wars, a period in which much of stability had already gone, it had proved possible to build up – and in the same dominant social class – hysterias of essentially the same kind. This time it had not been spooks; rather it had been a species of cocktail and country-house revivalism even more antipathetic to the rational mind. But the tone was the same; one had only to read the documents to realize that. And it showed what could be done. The ranks of these unstable and disorientated revivalists were full of persons of earnest purpose and sincere conviction. But doubtless the gentlemen who had sworn to the levitating Sludge had been like that. The thing was not thereby the less aberrant, the less dangerous to all that Western man had achieved. And now, should Wine get going –

‘So here we are.’

Appleby turned and found his host beside him, pointing over the prow.

‘Welcome, my dear Appleby. Welcome to the Happy Islands.’

‘My own headquarters,’ said Wine, ‘are on America Island.’

‘America Island?’ Appleby was gazing far up the river. There appeared to be a land horizon straight ahead.

‘Yes. It is the largest of the islands. And then comes Europe Island. Perhaps you will be most interested in that. Particularly in English House. You see, we have found it best to organize our research on a continental, and then on a national or state basis. On America Island, for instance, different groups concentrate on the problems and – ah possibilities of different parts of the continent. Would Radbone have carried the thing thus far? I think not.’

‘Almost certainly not, I should say.’

Wine nodded, seemingly much pleased. ‘Take the Deep South, my dear Appleby. The problems are naturally quite different from, say, those of New England. And so we have a Deep South House and a New England House, with a competent man in charge of each. You must prepare yourself for something on quite a considerable scale. We have been at work for a long time.’

‘I see. Would it be right to say that the collecting of material, as you call it, has gone a good way ahead of the actual investigation?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, it has.’ Wine had glanced swiftly at Appleby. ‘When I speak of having competent men in charge of each section I am thinking in terms of field workers rather than of first-rate laboratory men. The material
is
getting somewhat out of hand. Particularly in German House.’

‘Indeed?’

‘It ought really to be called German Mews.’ Wine gave a gay little chuckle. ‘Most of the thinking Animals are there – our friend Daffodil among them. Germany was always the great place for that sort of thing. You must have a calculating horse or prescient pig if you want really to impress a Prussian academy of science. And at present we have, I must confess, nobody who really understands the creatures, or can make any headway with their investigation. And that is just an example.’ Wine, now gloomy, shook his head. ‘Scientists are frankly short with us. And Radbone has some of the best men.’ He paused. ‘Which is why, you know, I asked you and Hudspith to come and see.’

‘But we are not scientists.’

‘No doubt. But you have Radbone’s confidence. And – well. I must tell you frankly that I have the possibility of some sort of merger in mind. I hope that when you have seen how far we have got that you will go – or that one of you will go – and see if it can be arranged. Go back to Radbone, I mean, with my proposals and your own account of the place.’

‘I see.’ As Radbone almost certainly had no concrete existence, this was scarcely true. Appleby was far from seeing. But it was to be hoped that he was merely anticipating a truth. If Wine was to be worsted in his own stronghold it was urgently necessary to solve the riddle of such an unexpected proposal as this. But perhaps it had little or no meaning; perhaps it was merely more patter until the two men who had come so inconveniently on his tracks could be most simply eliminated. ‘I see,’ said Appleby again, and in as considering tones as he could assume.

‘I may have spoken lightly of Radbone. But that is only an indiscretion of professional rivalry, after all. I do think that he possesses some final and serious intellectual weakness. But he is at least a magnificent deviser of experiments.’ Wine looked Appleby directly but unconsciously in the eye. ‘And, after all, a good experiment is everything.’

‘No doubt.’ Obscurely, Appleby felt disconcerted. And for a moment he had an impulse to be very frank. He would state baldly that he and Hudspith were police officers and that Wine’s game was up. Even in the throes of war the British Government would not let two men disappear into the blue. They would be traced; they would be traced thousands of miles up this river. And the Happy Islands, however remote and undisturbed, were certainly sovereign territory of some friendly state. So that, in fact, the game was already up and Wine had better come quietly… Appleby meditated this and decided: not yet. For it was a last and desperate card, and could be played at any time.

‘It will be nearly an hour before we can tie up’ – Wine was looking through binoculars as he spoke. ‘So do you go and find Hudspith, there’s a good fellow – and we will celebrate the end of this tedious journey in a glass of champagne. With Lucy to help us. Only there had better be ginger pop, too, in case it is the young ’un who is about. Lucy is rather charming, is she not? To tell you the truth, I was rather glad to be able to send those other ladies by the first boat. Eusapia, I fear, was better out of your friend’s way.’ And Wine, thus gay and mischievous and considerate at once, gave orders for a little feast. The champagne was excellent, and there were tiny biscuits and a pot of caviare into which one dug with a knife. Most of the time Wine talked of Radbone still. But not quite as he had recently fallen into talking. It was as if he were now aware that there was some danger of this mysterious rival’s being taken for a shade. And so he was building him up again as solid flesh and blood – establishing him as a real man to whom a real embassy might sensibly be sent. And there were no more jokes about plain-clothes policemen.

America Island was about two miles long by half a mile wide. From each of its shores it was possible to see the corresponding bank of the river, as well as something of the smaller islands farther up. Some of these lay two or three abreast, so that from the air the whole group must have presented the appearance of a single large fish leading a family of varying size downstream. There were several groups of buildings, and the island had been substantially cleared – as had also, it would seem, the riverbanks beyond. Something of cultivation had been attempted, but this effort belonged to the past. From the little jetty where the steamer had drawn up there was a short, straight road to the first building. And here, sitting in the shade of a veranda, were Beaglehole and Mrs Nurse, drinking tea. For a few minutes there was an amiable and efficient bustle of welcome. The servants were greenish brown and must have been of some native tribe untouched by Spanish blood; the air was heavy with exotic scent; from the back of the house there came a species of throbbing howl conceivably intended as musical entertainment. Nevertheless, Appleby thought, it was all curiously like arriving on friends in Hampshire for the weekend.

‘We chose this house,’ said Beaglehole, ‘because it is in the Californian style. There’s something more commodious upstream, but it looks as if it were meant for Cape Cod. And one has to consider the climate. I hope you won’t feel cramped here for a few days. It’s been necessary to arrange it like that.’

Wine was taking round a plate of sandwiches. ‘Beaglehole,’ he explained, ‘does all the running of things in a domestic way. We regard him as a steward or major-domo in that regard. Mrs Nurse, I believe these are gherkin. But here are tomato should you prefer.’