The Meddlers (36 page)

“Just a minute. Let me get this clear. You want me to
stop
my bill? Are you quite—”

“No, I am not mad, Mr. Gurney,” Wayne said equably. “I am speaking your language, you will recall. So, I offer you not what you at present reject, although it is the greatest gift I have to give you— the love of God—but what you care about. Mr. Gurney, this organization could make valuable use of the assistance of a man of your caliber. If you will abandon a career which I believe has not been a markedly distinguished one hitherto, I can recompense you most handsomely. As you said yourself, men of God in my country are much better provided for than members of Parliament in yours.”

“I—you’re offering me a job?” Gurney’s voice soared to an almost ludicrous squeak. “To
buy
me off? Good God Almighty—”

“Precisely, Mr. Gurney. Shall we discuss?”

  At first Ian had felt thoroughly ill at ease, sitting waiting in the richly furnished yet heavily drab room at the front of the house; but then he realized that this was precisely why he had been put there and immediately felt better. The lousy bastard, he thought. The lousy bastard. He could just as easily have seen me there in the office, couldn’t he? But no. Makes me come here to his house, and then tells that great ugly wog butler to keep me waiting, just to make me feel bad. Well, it won’t work. Not on this baby.

He pulled another of the heavy chairs from its place at the big central table, put his feet up on it, and lit a cigarette, throwing the match deliberately onto the floor. So far it hadn’t exactly been a successful day. Gurney first, that cheap lousy—ah, what did he matter anyway? The most that he could have given him would be a measly few quid; it was as well he’d refused. But that Wayne man—that hadn’t been so good.

To start with, he’d been so smooth and made him feel so relaxed that he’d almost lost sight of what it was he was trying to do. For
Ian it had been a most unnerving experience, to be so overwhelmed by a man. He understood dimly now how he had contributed to the state Hilary had been in when she had arrived home distraught and incoherent. That was some guy, that Wayne. For a few moments it had occurred to Ian that it might be worth trying to get in there, when he had seen the obvious way money was part of it all. Wayne seemed to use a number of young men, and they had all looked sleekly well-off; why not Ian himself as one of them?

But then as Wayne went on talking to him, probing at him, he had realized that he would never be able to keep up the right front. The man obviously meant every word he said when he went on and on about his bloody Tabernacle and God and the rest of it. If, as Ian had assumed, the man had been a phony, it would have been different, worth opting in on a good racket. But he very rapidly came to the conclusion that Wayne was straight, that he really cared about his dreary religious guff, and that was something Ian could never go for.

Anyway, in the end it had boiled down to a flat nothing doing. Wayne just wasn’t interested in what Ian had to sell, which left just one possibility. The thing he now had to try and work out was how the man would have to be handled. Did he offer to talk, or not to talk? That is the question.

He let his mind drift away into one of its favorite places, watching himself on a stage, his handsome head thrown back, the melody of his voice rolling through a packed auditorium, the adoring faces staring up at him—

“You will come wid’ me to Sir Daniel.”

He jumped slightly and reddened with anger at his own response. Bloody cocky sod, he thought, as he followed the big dark man in his short white jacket across the black and white squares of the hall, still trying to make me lose my cool. Well, it won’t work. I’m not scared of him or his lousy boss.

“You wanted to see me urgently, Briant. You will have to be extremely quick. I have a dinner engagement and I can give you just a few minutes.”

Sir Daniel was sitting behind a red-leather-topped desk in the big somber study, a glass of sherry in his hand, the moving light from
the coal fire across the room gleaming redly on his shirt front. In spite of himself, Ian had to admire the quiet elegance of his clothes, the pearl studs under the white tie, the way the black jacket sat snugly on the erect shoulders. The man looked so marvelously rich. To be as rich as that, and to look like that—great great, great. One of these days…

“You’ll want to hear what I’ve got to say,” he said and sat down, hitching his trousers neatly as he crossed his legs with assumed nonchalance. “It’s good stuff.”

“Well?”

“I’m running out of money.”

“Indeed? In what way is that statement to be regarded as good stuff? You’ve had a good deal from me, and I will need excellent reasons to provide more than I have agreed to already.”

“I’ve been thinking about why, you know,” Ian said. “Why you want me to keep quiet about… things. What good does it do you to stop me from letting people know my old man isn’t much cop as an old man?”

“That is no concern of yours.”

“Oh, I don’t know! I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I’ve got to think of my future, haven’t I? I’m going into the theater, aren’t I? And it takes a while for talent to be recognized. I might have to sit around for a bit waiting, so I’ve got to make the most of my opportunities, haven’t I? Make sure I’ve got a few bob to live on. So if I find out I’ve got something useful, well, I’ve every right to use it, haven’t I? So it is my concern. I mean, I know it’s useful to you not to let people know it was the great Dr. Briant’s little boy that got nicked with a handful of pot, but I don’t know why. So, if I’ve got something else—useful—in the same way, well, I mightn’t realize it, might I, if I don’t know why? Do I make myself clear?”

“No. You are making yourself very tedious.” Sefton pulled a sliver of gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it pointedly. “Very tedious. Be so good as to come to the point.”

“Oh, sorry, I’m
sure
. Wouldn’t want to waste your time, would I? That’d never do—”

“Look, Briant. I really cannot waste time on your heavy-handed juvenilia. If you have something specific to say, then say it. Or go
away. I have no intention of playing games with you. What is it you want to tell me?”

“Sell you, you mean,” Ian said softly. “It’s something about my old man that’ll make a bomb for me, anywhere I fancy offering it. The thing is, will you offer enough for me to say nothing about it, or will someone else pay more for the chance to spread it about a bit?”

“What do you know?”

“Oh, no,
Sir
Daniel. I don’t get caught that way twice. Offer first, story second.”

“Oh? And who has already sent you packing?”

Ian reddened. “Who says someone sent me packing?”

“You did. Come along now, Briant. Get down to it or get out. And be very careful. It may be that I no longer have any use for your silence. It may be that you could talk yourself right out of what you already have, rather than into more. I repeat, therefore, stop this infantile way of talking and get down to it. I am not prepared to play a role you assign to me in one of your adolescent cinematic fantasies, merely to please you.”

“The Prof has got a woman,” Ian said sulkily. “And he’s got his hands on cash, a lot of cash, from somewhere, and it’s pretty obviously a shady deal. So what are you going to do about it? Use it and pay for the information, or cover it up and pay for that?”

“Cash? What do you mean, cash?”

“The woman’s one of the—”

“I am not concerned with the woman. He can have a whole seraglio for all I am interested. What cash are you talking about?”

“He’s got cash. I told you. Bought a car, paying full salaries to his bunch of scientists—including his bird—got my sister a lot of new clothes, the whole bit.”

“Do you know where it’s coming from?”

“Ah!” Feeling he had a grip on the situation at alst, Ian relaxed. “That’d be telling, wouldn’t it? I’ve got to keep something in the bag. You cough up, and then, maybe—”

“You don’t know.”

“Oh, yes I do.”

“Oh, of course you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t be sitting
here. But that is by the way.” Sefton sat in silence for a moment, twisting the slender sherry glass on the blotter before him. Then he said abruptly, “If I choose not to pay you, what will you do?”

“Go to… go to the
Clarion
.” Ian lifted his chin. “You’re not the only pebble on the beach, you know.”

Sefton looked at him, his face closed and thoughtful. Then he produced a narrow-lipped smile.

“I despise you, Briant. You are a thoroughly slimy, nasty, pusillanimous object, and I find your presence in my house as intolerable as I would find the presence of any other parasite.”

Ian, scarlet, opened his mouth, but Sir Daniel rode over him imperturbably.

“And I am not prepared to put up with your presence anywhere near me for any longer. I am rich enough to indulge myself, and I will do so now. I will pay you sufficient to get you not only out of my house and out of my sight, but completely out of this country. Not because I in any way fear you, or think you can be of any use to me, but because you make my gorge rise. You have a passport of your own, or are you, as a minor, still on your father’s?”

“I’ve got my own,” Ian muttered.

“We must be grateful for that. It will shorten the time in which we must tolerate your revolting presence amongst us. Tomorrow you will go to the
Echo
offices, to the cashier’s department, with your passport. You will give it to Mr. Gorton, who will obtain a visa for you, and a permit to work in the United States. You will then be given a one-way air ticket to San Francisco, and sufficient funds to maintain you for a month. Now get out, and never on any account let me or anyone else in this country be forced to suffer your revolting company again.”

He leaned forward and picked up a pen and pulled a sheet of paper from the rack in front of him and began to write. Then he stopped and looked up.

“Your parents, for whom I feel a deep pity, will eventually be grateful to me for what I have done. However, I wish them not to know at this stage that they have cause for gratitude. You will not, therefore, tell them, or the whole arrangement is ended. Is that clear?”

San Francisco, Ian was thinking. ‘Frisco, where it’s all happening. Where the whole scene is, where the action is. San Francisco. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy—

“Is that clear, Briant?” Sir Daniel’s voice was icy cold, but Ian felt no chill at all. He stood up and stretched and grinned and said cheerfully, “Great by me! I’ll write Rusty—the old lady—from the other end. You’ll let me do that? She’ll raise no end of a stink if I just disappear.”

Sir Daniel shrugged and returned to his writing, and Ian went, slamming the door behind him. And after a moment Sefton pulled the telephone toward him, and dialed the Echo office number.

I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. It isn’t true, it can’t be. He can’t mean what he said.

“Is that quite clear, Miss Quinn?” Briant said again, and his voice was sharper. “I know it is a little difficult for you, but I have explained fully why it is necessary. Do you understand just what it is you must do today?”

“No, sir. Not properly,” she said dully and looked up at him, away from Georgie, lying in her lap and looking at her with the alert considering stare she knew so well. “Not really.” He drew a sharp breath that hissed slightly through his teeth and turned away irritably, grimacing at Barbara Hervey standing beside him, and she stepped forward and leaned over Isobel and spoke in a soft but very clear voice.

“We have to see what will happen if he is treated just like any other baby, Miss Quinn. It’s no different to what happens to hundreds,
to thousands, of babies every day. Every mother has to punish her baby sometimes, you know that.”

“But he hasn’t done anything, has he?” she said, her voice still dull and heavy. “It’s not like it’s being naughty, wanting his feed.”

“We know that, Miss Quinn. Of course we do. But mothers often smack their babies for crying. They think it’s naughtiness, you see, even if we know it isn’t really. And we don’t want you to hurt him—at least, not really, you know? It’s just a little tap on his bottom when he cries, that’s all. I’m sure you can manage that for us, can’t you? Of course you can. And we know it’s difficult, when we’ve trained you always to handle him so gently. But it won’t damage him in any way and it is necessary to the investigations we’re doing here. As Dr. Briant explained, it’s no different to what happens to lots of babies—to what happened to you, and me, and everyone else when we were babies. This won’t bother him any more than it did us, you know? So let’s start shall we? Just unbutton your blouse now, there’s a good girl.” Barbara moved then, turning her head to look at George and the other four, standing watchful and with barely concealed impatience in front of Isobel’s feeding chair.

“Er, I’ll stand behind her, shall I, George? Just to help if necessary.”

“What? But I want
her
to—oh, all
right
. But keep well out of his line of vision, you understand? I don’t want him to doubt the source of the stimulus in any way. It must come from the same source of his satisfaction if we’re to get any ambivalence effect. So keep well back, right?”