I looked at him.
"I shouldn't advise it," he said softly. "No, I shouldn't advise it. We don't like welshers."
"I shan't welsh," I said.
"I'm sure you won't, Mr Easterbrook. Now for the - er - arrangements. Mrs Easterbrook, you say, is in London. Where, exactly?"
"Do you have to know?"
"I have to have full details - the next thing to do is to arrange an appointment for you with Miss Grey - you remember Miss Grey?"
I said of course I remembered Miss Grey.
"An amazing woman. Really an amazing woman. Most gifted. She'll want something your wife has worn - a glove - handkerchief - anything like that -"
"But why? In the name of -"
"I know, I know. Don't ask me why. I've not the least idea. Miss Grey keeps her secrets to herself."
"But what happens? What does she do?"
"You really must believe me, Mr Easterbrook, when I tell you that honestly I haven't the least idea! I don't know - and what is more, I don't want to know - let's leave it at that."
He paused, and then went on in an almost fatherly tone.
"My advice is as follows, Mr Easterbrook. Pay a visit to your wife. Soothe her down, let her think that you're coming round to the idea of a reconciliation. I should suggest saying that you have to go abroad for a few weeks, but that on your return et cetera et cetera..."
"And then?"
"Having purloined a trifle of daily wear in an unobtrusive manner, you will go down to Much Deeping." He paused thoughtfully. "Let me see, I think you mentioned on your previous visit that you had friends - relations - in the neighbourhood?"
"A cousin."
"That makes it very simple. This cousin will doubtless put you up for a day or so."
"What do most people do? Stay at the local inn?"
"Sometimes, I believe - or they motor over from Bournemouth. Something of that kind - but I know very little about the matter."
"What - er - is my cousin likely to think?"
"You express yourself as intrigued by the inhabitants of the Pale Horse. You want to participate in a sйance there. Nothing can sound simpler. Miss Grey and her medium friend often indulge in sйances. You know what spiritualists are. You go protesting that of course it's nonsense, but that it will interest you. That is all, Mr Easterbrook. As you see, nothing can be simpler."
"And - and, after that?"
He shook his head smiling.
"That's all I can tell you. All, in fact, that I know. Miss Thyrza Grey will then be in charge. Don't forget to take the glove, or handkerchief, or whatever it is with you. Afterwards, I would suggest that you take a little trip abroad. The Italian Riviera is very pleasant at this time of year. Just for a week or two, say."
I said that I didn't want to go abroad. I said I wanted to stay in England.
"Very well, then, but definitely not London. No, I must strongly advise, not London."
"Why not?"
Mr Bradley looked at me reprovingly.
"Clients are guaranteed complete - er - safety," he said, "if they obey orders."
"What about Bournemouth? Would Bournemouth do?"
"Yes, Bournemouth would be adequate. Stay at a hotel, make a few acquaintances, be seen in their company. The blameless life - that is what we aim at. You can always go on to Torquay if you get tired of Bournemouth."
He spoke with the affability of a travel agent. Once again I had to shake his podgy hand.
Chapter 17
"Are you really going to a sйance at Thyrza's?" Rhoda demanded.
"Why not?"
"I never knew you were interested in that sort of thing, Mark."
"I'm not really," I said truthfully. "But it's such a queer setup, those three. I'm curious to see what sort of a show they put on."
I did not find it really easy to put on a light manner. Out of the tail of my eye, I saw Hugh Despard looking at me thoughtfully. He was a shrewd man, with an adventurous life behind him. One of those men who have a kind of sixth sense where danger is concerned. I think he scented its presence now - realized that something more important than idle curiosity was at stake.
"Then I shall come with you," said Rhoda gleefully. "I've always wanted to."
"You'll do nothing of the sort, Rhoda," growled Despard.
"But I don't really believe in spirits and all that, Hugh. You know I don't. I just want to go for the fun of it!"
"That sort of business isn't fun," said Despard. "There may be something genuine to it, there probably is. But it doesn't have a good effect on people who go out of 'idle curiosity.'"
"Then you ought to dissuade Mark, too."
"Mark's not my responsibility," said Despard.
But again he gave me that quick sidelong look. He knew, I was quite sure, that I had a purpose.
Rhoda was annoyed, but she got over it, and when we chanced to meet Thyrza Grey in the village a little later that morning, Thyrza herself was blunt upon the matter.
"Hallo, Mr Easterbrook, we're expecting you this evening. Hope we can put on a good show for you. Sybil's a wonderful medium, but one never knows beforehand what results one will get. So you mustn't be disappointed. One thing I do ask you. Keep an open mind. An honest inquirer is always welcome - but a frivolous, scoffing approach is bad."
"I wanted to come, too," said Rhoda. "But Hugh is so frightfully prejudiced. You know what he's like."
"I wouldn't have had you, anyway," said Thyrza. "One outsider is quite enough."
She turned to me.
"Suppose you come and have a light meal with us first," she said. "We never eat much before a sйance. About seven o'clock? Good, we'll be expecting you."
She nodded, smiled, and strode briskly away. I stared after her, so engrossed in my surmises, that I entirely missed what Rhoda was saying to me.
"What did you say? I'm sorry."
"You've been very odd lately, Mark. Ever since you arrived. Is anything the matter?"
"No, of course not. What should be the matter?"
"Have you got stuck with the book? Something like that?"
"The book?" Just for a moment I couldn't remember anything about the book. Then I said hastily, "Oh yes, the book. It's getting on more or less all right."
"I believe you're in love," said Rhoda accusingly. "Yes, that's it. Being in love has a very bad effect on men - it seems to addle their wits. Now women are just the opposite - on top of the world, looking radiant and twice as good-looking as usual. Funny, isn't it, that it should suit women, and only make a man look like a sick sheep?"
"Thank you!" I said.
"Oh, don't be cross with me, Mark. I think it's a very good thing really, and I'm delighted. She's really very nice."
"Who's nice?"
"Hermia Redcliffe, of course. You seem to think I know nothing about anything. I've seen it coming on for ages. And she really is just the person for you - good-looking and clever; absolutely suitable."
"That," I said, "is one of the cattiest things you could say about anyone."
Rhoda looked at me.
"It is, rather," she said.
She turned away and said she had to go and give a pep talk to the butcher. I said that I would go and pay a call at the vicarage.
"But not -" I forestalled any comment - "in order to ask the vicar to put the banns up!"
II
Coming to the vicarage was like coming home.
The front door was hospitably open, and as I stepped inside I was conscious of a burden slipping from my shoulders.
Mrs Dane Calthrop came through a door at the back of the hall, carrying for some reason unfathomable to me an enormous plastic pail of bright green.
"Hallo, it's you," she said. "I thought it would be."
She handed me the pail. I had no idea what to do with it and stood looking awkward.
"Outside the door, on the step," said Mrs Dane Calthrop impatiently as though I ought to have known.
I obeyed. Then I followed her into the same dark shabby room we had sat in before. There was a rather moribund fire there, but Mrs Dane Calthrop poked it into flame and dumped a log on it. Then she motioned me to sit down, plumped down herself, and fixed me with a bright impatient eye.
"Well?" she demanded. "What have you done?"
From the vigour of her manner we might have had a train to catch.
"You told me to do something. I am doing something."
"Good. What?"
I told her. I told her everything. In some unspoken way I told her things I did not quite know myself.
"Tonight?" said Mrs Dane Calthrop thoughtfully.
"Yes."
She was silent for a minute, obviously thinking. Unable to help myself I blurted out, "I don't like it. My God, I don't like it!"
"Why should you?"
That, of course, was unanswerable.
"I'm so horribly afraid for her."
She looked at me kindly.
"You don't know," I said, "how - how brave she is. If, in some way, they manage to harm her..."
Mrs Dane Calthrop said slowly:
"I don't see - I really don't see - how they can harm her in the way you mean."
"But they have harmed - other people."
"It would seem so, yes..." She sounded dissatisfied.
"In any other way, she will be all right. We've taken every imaginable precaution. No material harm can happen to her."
"But it's material harm that these people claim to be able to produce," Mrs Dane Calthrop pointed out "They claim to be able to work through the mind on the body. Illness - disease. Very interesting if they can. But quite horrible! And it's got to be stopped, as we've already agreed."
"But she's the one who's taking the risk," I muttered.
"Someone has to," said Mrs Dane Calthrop calmly. "It upsets your pride, that it shouldn't be you. You've got to swallow that. Ginger's ideally suited for the part she's playing. She can control her nerves and she's intelligent. She won't let you down,"
"I'm not worrying about that!"
"Well, stop worrying at all. It won't do her any good. Don't let's shirk the issues. If she dies as a result of this experiment, then she dies in a good cause."
"My God, you're brutal!"
"Somebody has to be," said Mrs Dane Calthrop. "Always envisage the worst. You've no idea how that steadies the nerves. You begin at once to be sure it can't be as bad as what you imagine."
She nodded at me reassuringly.
"You may be right," I said doubtfully.
Mrs Dane Calthrop said with complete certainty that of course she was right.
I proceeded to details.
"You're on the telephone here?"
"Naturally."
I explained what I wanted to do.
"After this - this business tonight is over, I may want to keep in close touch with Ginger. Ring her up every day. If I could telephone from here?"
"Of course. Too much coming and going at Rhoda's. You want to be sure of not being overheard."
"I shall stay on at Rhoda's for a bit. Then perhaps go to Bournemouth. I'm not supposed to - go back to London."
"No use looking ahead," Mrs Dane Calthrop said. "Not beyond tonight."
"Tonight..." I got up. I said a thing that was out of character. "Pray for me - for us," I said.
"Naturally," said Mrs Dane Calthrop, surprised that I should need to ask.
As I went out of the front door a sudden curiosity made me say:
"Why the pail? What is it for?"
"The pail? Oh, it's for the schoolchildren, to pick berries and leaves from the hedges - for the church. Hideous, isn't it, but so handy."
I looked out over the richness of the autumn world. Such soft still beauty...
"Angels and ministers of grace defend us," I said.
"Amen," said Mrs Dane Calthrop.
III
My reception at the Pale Horse was conventional in the extreme. I don't know what particular atmospheric effect I had expected, but it was not this.
Thyrza Grey, wearing a plain dark wool dress, opened the door, said in a businesslike tone: "Ah, here you are. Good. We'll have supper straight away."
Nothing could have been more matter-of-fact, more completely ordinary...
The table was laid for a simple meal at the end of the panelled hall. We had soup, an omelette, and cheese. Bella waited on us. She wore a black stuff dress and looked more than ever like one of the crowd in an Italian primitive. Sybil struck a more exotic note. She had on a long dress of some woven peacock-coloured fabric, shot with gold. Her beads were absent on this occasion, but she had two heavy gold bracelets clasping her wrists. She ate a minute portion of omelette but nothing else. She spoke little, treating us to a faraway wrapped-up-in-higher-things mood. It ought to have been impressive. Actually it was not. The effect was theatrical and unreal.
Thyrza Grey provided what conversation there was - a brisk chatty commentary on local happenings. She was this evening the British country spinster to the life, pleasant, efficient, uninterested in anything beyond her immediate surroundings.
I thought to myself, I'm mad, completely mad. What is there to fear here? Even Bella seemed tonight only a half-witted old peasant woman - like hundreds of other women of her kind - inbred, untouched by education or a broader outlook.
My conversation with Mrs Dane Calthrop seemed fantastic in retrospect. We had worked ourselves up to imagine goodness knows what. The idea of Ginger - Ginger with her dyed hair and assumed name - being in danger from anything these three very ordinary women could do, was positively ludicrous!
The meal came to an end.
"No coffee," said Thyrza apologetically. "One doesn't want to be overstimulated." She rose. "Sybil!"
