The Bat that Flits (17 page)

They didn't waver once. Not even when she said: “I want you to do something for me.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I'm getting up to-morrow,” she went on. “And I shall be back in the lab. on Monday.”

Frankly, I was a bit disappointed. There didn't seem to be much in this for me.

“Isn't that rather silly,” I said, “coming back before you're really fit?”

“But that's why I've asked you,” she replied. “I want you to keep an eye on things.”

“What sort of things?”

Una's face was turned full towards me. It was the best view of her eyes that I had been able to get so far.

“Me mostly,” she said. “I'd just like it if you'd stay somewhere near me.”

This was distinctly better. But I still remembered my manners.

“Isn't that Gillett's job?”

It is interesting the way certain things conform to a dull
and rather obvious pattern. I knew Gillett's first name all right; and she knew that I knew. But I couldn't bring myself to say it. Not to her at least.

“Michael doesn't mind,” she said. “It's his idea really, just as much as mine.”

There was a sudden sweep of the lashes as she said it, and I knew that at this particular moment she wasn't exactly speaking the truth. But I've never been a stickler about small things like that. And, in any case, Una hadn't finished what she had to say.

“There are bound to be times when Michael isn't there,” she went on. “And I'd feel safer to-morrow if I knew that there was someone else around.”

“There'll be someone,” I told her.

There was a pause. A long one. The interview had reached that awkward stage when all the bits and pieces begin falling apart. Una was quite as much aware of it as I was.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose you'd better be going now. Otherwise, people will begin to wonder what's happening.”

“Not unless they're psychic, they won't,” I answered.

And bending over the bed, I kissed her. When it was over Una didn't attempt to say anything. If anyone was to speak, it was obviously my turn.

“Sorry, ma'am,” I said, and left her.

The last few minutes had made me forget all about that little screw of paper in the waste-bin. But there was something
else that I was forgetting, too. Young Mellon had simply been left there with nothing but his blood-counts and his curiosity. Before I had been out of the room five minutes he had come round to my side of the bench and begun routing about among the junk. And the idea of cryptic messages was evidently something that stirred up quite a lot inside him. He couldn't have been more excited if he had found a blonde in the waste-bin.

In the result, he was giving quite a party. They were all there gathered round him—Bansted and Rogers and Gillett. And Mellon had just passed the piece of paper over to Gillett, who was examining it. Dr. Smith had come into the room since I left. But he was getting on with his own work despite the chatter. He was even being rather self-consciously isolationist, I thought.

Gillett appeared to be enjoying himself. He was in one of his aggressively efficient and fact-finding sort of moods.

“Shouldn't be difficult to establish the typewriter it was done on,” he said, with an air of having been engaged on typewriter detection cases ever since he had qualified.

I pitied him. If it ever came to the point of accusation and counter-accusation between Gillett and the Director's secretary, I was prepared to back the secretary. Those teeth could make nonsense of any profile that came within snapping distance.

As soon as he saw me, Gillett came over.

“Can you make head or tail of this?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Me no savee.”

“Do you think it's specially meant for you?”

“Could be,” I said. “But it still doesn't make sense.”

“Then that would rather suggest that it isn't for you at all,” Gillett went on. He broke off for a moment. “Have
any of you chaps,” he went on, “ever received anything of the same sort as this”—here he waved my little slip of paper rather tantalisingly under their noses—“yourselves?”

The technique of the questioning was very nearly perfect. Without the use of the word “chaps” it might have sounded just a shade too much like question time in the Army Education Corps. After all, Gillett wasn't actually in charge of us. It only seemed that way.

But apparently Bansted and Rogers both loved being asked questions. Or, at least, they appeared to like being able to say “no” to this one. It was only Mellon who wasn't so sure.

“I had a coupla post-cards from some dame I'd never heard of,” he said, unable to keep the note of regret out of his voice. “She didn't give no address. Just asked why I'd cut the date with her. But that was last summer. Said she'd look me up here some time. Only she never came.”

Gillett shook his head. It was obvious that he was in no mood for comforting young Mellon for his one lost opportunity.

“Sorry,” he said. “She's not the one we're looking for.”

As he said it, he turned and faced Dr. Smith. I may have been wrong. But it still seemed to me that Smith took an unnaturally long time to realise that he was being looked at.

“Smith,” Gillett said finally in his clear hi-waiter kind of voice, “have you ever had one of these?”

Even then Dr. Smith did not reply immediately. He finished what he was doing, or what he was pretending to be doing, and looked up wearing his G.C.M.G.-O.M.-F.R.S. expression.

“One of what?” he asked.

It was only then that I realised what an excellent pokerface all really young babies naturally have. The chubby folds
and unwrinkled forehead of Dr. Smith revealed absolutely nothing. But at least he condescended to walk over towards us.

“You have something to show me?” he asked, when he had finally got there.

Gillett, I noticed, didn't actually give him the piece of paper. He merely showed it to him. Not that Dr. Smith seemed to mind. Rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, he scarcely glanced at it.

“Isn't there being rather a lot of excitement about nothing?” he asked.

That annoyed Gillett. The events of the past few weeks had rubbed quite a lot of the gloss off him already. I'd been watching him change before my eyes from French polish to ordinary fumed oak. And the way things were going he'd be antique finish before we were through with him.

“You
call
this nothing?” he asked.

Dr. Smith allowed his eyelids to fall for a moment.

“Not exactly nothing,” he corrected himself. “Merely nothing of importance. It could, for example, merely be a mistake. Or a hoax. Or it might be intended as a perfectly straightforward and honest warning. I have seen similar notices exposed over switch-rooms in the States. The wording is—er—distinctly American.”

“Say, what exactly do you mean by that?” Mellon demanded.

Dr. Smith put up his round fat hands as if to protect himself.

“Merely what I have said,” he replied. “I was not seeking to attach any particular significance to it. Indeed, I have hardly considered the matter. If our friend here” —Dr. Smith broke off long enough to indicate Gillett, and in this gesture he contrived somehow to make him look like
the Institute's No. 1 scare-monger—“hadn't invited me, I wasn't proposing to give an opinion at all. It is not a habit of mine to give opinions when I am totally ignorant of the facts.”

“Would it alter your view in any way if I told you that this wasn't the first that had been received?” Gillett asked.

He had himself completely under control by now, and was fighting hard to regain his own position. No one with that jaw-line could possibly afford to have himself publicly debunked by a colleague who looked like a Glaxo advertisement.

But Dr. Smith was fighting hard by now.

“It might, or it might not,” Smith replied. “That would depend on the nature of the message. By whom received. And in what circumstances.” He paused. “Have you been asked to keep out, too?”

This was Gillett's opportunity. And he took it.

“I don't think that there is any need to go into what the messages——”

“So you received more than one, did you?” Dr. Smith asked. “May we ask how many? Frequency could be almost as important as content.”

“I am not saying how many I have received,” Gillett replied. “At least not here. Merely that an unknown correspondent has chosen an unusual means of getting in touch with me.”

“Through a test tube?” Dr. Smith asked.

Gillett smiled.

“As a matter of fact, the particular message to which I am referring was left for me clipped under the blade-guard of my electric shaver.”

“And have you still got the message?”

Gillett shook his head.

“I took it straight along to Wilton,” he said, getting out of his chair as he was speaking. “And that is where this one is going, too.”

This was my cue.

“Hi, mister,” I said. “That's my message. How do you know I wasn't expecting it?”

He had got almost as far as the door when I caught up with him. And when we reached it I noticed a curious thing. The door was about six inches ajar. And disappearing down the corridor away from us was the figure of Dr. Mann. There was no other door at our end of the corridor, and something must have made Dr. Mann change his mind rather suddenly.

He was almost running.

Gillett had noticed it, too, and for a moment his eyes caught mine.

“Pardon me,” I said, as I removed the piece of paper from between his fingers. This is part of the Hudson bequest.”

Gillett seemed reluctant to give it to me. But then he let go. It may have been simply that he didn't want the paper to get torn. At any rate, we changed roles and I became bearer. We both understood the position perfectly. I was accompanying him to see whether he had really given Wilton any previous messages. And he was accompanying me to see whether I was going to hand over this one. From the mood of mutual confidence we might have been two Foreign Ministers walking into a Peace Conference together.

But so far as I could see everything was open and above board. Gillett barged in on Wilton without even knocking and waiting for the “Come in.” As for Wilton, he was doing
exactly what I had come to expect of him. That is precisely nothing. He was standing at the window looking at the clouds. From his interest in clouds he might have been thinking of drawing them, or writing a book about them, or even having a shot at making some of them. He didn't turn round when we entered. Just went on sky-gazing.

“Now Hudson's had one of them,” Gillett said, without attempting to keep the note of jubilation out of his voice.

“He's got it here.”

“One of what?” Wilton asked.

He swivelled his head round as he said it, and I showed him the screwed-up piece of paper. I could see now why he hadn't moved immediately when we came in. He was standing on only one leg like an Indian adjutant, and the other was hoisted up on to the window-sill. Getting himself facing in our direction was like resetting a pair of folding steps.

“What's it say this time?” he asked.

“It says ‘KEEP OUT. THIS MEANS YOU,'” I told him.

“Does it make sense?”

“Not to me it doesn't.”

“Where d'you find it?”

“Bunged down inside a test tube.”

“Your test tube?”

“Could have been anybody's.”

“Ever had one before?” he asked.

I paused. This seemed to me to be a good opportunity for doing a little Gillett-reducing on my own account.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have,” I replied. “Three of them. But I didn't see why I should say so in front of everyone. In my view there's been too much talking already.”

“Three, d'you say?” Gillett asked.

I got the impression that he didn't like being outbid in the matter of secret messages. Also, that he didn't entirely believe me.

“Three's the number, brother,” I replied.

And taking out my notecase I unfolded all the earlier specimens. They were a bit creased by now, and looked rather as though I had been sleeping in them. But the typing still showed up black and clear against the obviously inferior-quality paper that the unknown typist had been using.

Wilton took the piece of paper and began to examine it. Not very professionally either. He merely tilted back the shade of the desk-lamp and held the paper up against the naked bulb.

“Mind,” I warned him. “Don't scorch it.”

But either Wilton hadn't heard me or he always looked at pieces of paper that way.

“It
is
German,” he said at last. “There's a bit of the watermark in this piece.”

Gillett stepped forward as though he were on parade-ground. But, after all, it was my piece of paper, and I cut in front of him.

“Me first,” I said.

There wasn't very much to see. For a start, it was right down in the corner. All that I could make out was what might have been an eagle's head and a scroll with some writing on it. The trouble was that the scroll was half-cut off, and the letters “ . . . HE PAP . . . IND . . . ” didn't convey very much to me. Wilton must have seen the expression on my face.

“Deutsche Papier Industrie Gesellschaft,” he explained.

That certainly seemed to fit well enough. My respect for Wilton went up again. It isn't everyone who can read about one-sixth of a foreign watermark.

But Wilton didn't seem particularly excited about his discovery.

“Not that it gets us very far,” he said. “They used to make about three-quarters of all the paper in Europe.”

“But not three-quarters of all the paper in Bodmin,” Gillett observed.