第 30 页

Mr. Molloy looked up, blinking, as Jim reached up and took a bonnet that Sally often wore off a hook near the door.

"But where are you going?" said the little man. "What's going on, Jim?"

"I've got to find her," Jim said, hobbling down the steps as best he could. "Go and help Mr. Webster; that's the best thing to do."

He swung himself into the cab, gritting his teeth against the pain, and called up, "Hampstead, mate. Kenton Gardens—number fifteen."

MACKINNON'S LANDLADY shrank back when she opened the door, recognizing Jim from the day before.

"It's all right, missis," he said. "No trouble today. Is Mr. Mackinnon in?"

She nodded. "But—"

"Ail right, then. I'll come in, if I may. Stay there!" he called to the cabby, and limped inside, sweating now as the pain took hold, and sat down on the stairs to pull himself up backward. The landlady watched, open-mouthed.

At the door of Mackinnon's room he pulled himself upright again and banged hard with the stick.

(

"Mackinnon!" he called. "Let me in, will you?"

Silence from inside. Jim banged again.

"Come on, open up! For Gods sake, Mackinnon, this is Jim Taylor. I'm not going to hurt you—I need your help."

There was a shuffling, and a key turned in the lock. Mackinnon looked out, pale and suspicious and sleepy, and all Jims anger nearly boiled over. So much to do, and this miserable worm had crawled back here to go to sleep! With an eflFort he controlled himself.

"Let me through, will you?" he said. "I've got to sit down. ..."

He hobbled to a chair. The landlady had wasted no time getting fresh furniture in; the room still bore the scars of yesterday's fight, but the bed and the wardrobe at least were brand-new.

"Sally," Jim said. "Where'd she go? Any idea?"

"No," said Mackinnon.

"Well, we've got to find her. Now there's a trick you do, I don't know what it's called—not a trick, I mean, some kind of psychic thing—I've read about it. I think you're a genuine psychic, aren't you, at least part of the time? Take this."

He handed Sally's bonnet to Mackinnon, who took it and sat limply on the bed.

"I've read that what they do is they take something that belonged to the person and concentrate on it, and they get an impression of where that person is. Is that right? Can you do that?"

Mackinnon nodded. "Aye," he said, licking dry lips. "Sometimes. But—"

"Go on, then. That's hers. She used to wear it a lot. You've got to find out where she is, and you've got to do it now. Go on—I won't interrupt. Tell you what, though—if you've got a drop of brandy in here, I wouldn't say no. ..."

Mackinnon glanced at Jim's leg and produced a silver flask from the bedside table. Jim took a deep swig and caught his breath as the fiery liquid ran down his throat. Mackinnon picked up the bonnet.

"Very well," he said. "But I guarantee nothing. If I see nothing, I can tell nothing. And this is hardly the time to ... I know, I know. Let me concentrate."

He sat down on the bed, holding the bonnet in both hands, and closed his eyes.

Jim's leg was throbbing vilely. His head was aching too. He took another mouthfiil of the spirit from the flask and let it trickle down slowly this time and closed his tyts like Mackinnon. One more mouthfiil, and then he screwed the top back on the flask and put it in his pocket.

"North," said Mackinnon afi:er a minute. "She's going to the north. I think she's in a train. I have the impression of a silver emblem. A star, maybe? Aye, that's what it is. It could be her destination, I suppose."

"North Star," said Jim. "That makes sense. She's going north, you reckon?"

"No doubt about it."

"Where?"

"Well, she's still traveling. This is not an exact science, you know."

"Fm aware of that. But can you tell, northeast or northwest? Or how far north she is now?"

"It s fading. You mustn't question so much," Mackin-non said severely. "Now it's gone altogether."

He dropped the bonnet on the bed and stood up. Jim pushed himself up on the stick.

"All right," he said. "Get dressed, then. I don't know when you left Burton Street. Perhaps you don't know that Fred's dead. He was the best pal I ever had, and I'm never likely to find a better. And now Sally's gone and put herself in danger, and we're going to find her, you and me. I don't know what I'd do if she went as well, 'cause I love her, you know that, Mackinnon? You know what that means, love? I love her like I loved Fred, like a pal. Wherever she goes, I go, and you got to come with me, 'cause it's on account of you that they got into this mess in the first place. So get dressed, and hand me that Bradshaw."

Speechless, Mackinnon passed over the railway guide and began to put on his clothes as Jim turned the pages with a trembling hand and looked for the Sunday connections to the north.

Cjower and QJe

ervice

Bellmann's house was oppressively warm and richly, almost densely, furnished. The servant asked Sally to wait in the hall and offered a chair, but it was too close to a radiator, and she preferred to stand next to the window. There was a coldness inside her that she didn't want to dissipate.

After a minute or two the man came back and said, "Mr. Bellmann will see you now. Miss Lockhart. Follow me, please."

As they left the hall a clock struck nine, and she was surprised at how much time had passed. Was she losing her memory? She felt more and more remote from the world. Her hands were shaking badly, and her head was throbbing.

She walked after the servant down a carpeted corridor and stopped while he knocked at a door.

"Miss Lockhart, sir," he said, and moved aside to let her in.

Axel Bellmann was in evening dress. It looked as if he had just dined alone, for there was a decanter of brandy and a single glass with the scatter of papers on the desk.

He got up and came toward her, hand outstretched. She heard the door close, but only dimly, because there was a roaring in her ears, and she dropped her bag. It fell heavily to the rich carpet. He bent at once to pick it up for her and helped her to a chair.

She realized with a blush at her own stupidity that she had been going to slap him. To slap him—as if that would make the slightest difference!

"May I offer you some brandy. Miss Lockhart?" he said.

She shook her head.

"Something warm, then? You have come in from the cold. Shall I ring for coffee?"

"Nothing, thank you," she managed to say.

He sat down opposite her and crossed his legs. Sally looked away. The room they were in was even warmer than the hall, if possible, because not only was there a large iron radiator under the window, but a fierce fire burned in the grate—coke, she noticed. All the furniture was new. There were prints on the walls—shooting scenes, fox hunting—and above the mantelpiece and between the windows hung various sporting trophies: anders, the head of a stag, a foxs mask. One wall was entirely covered in bookshelves, but not one of the books looked as if it had ever been opened. The room had the air of having been ordered complete from a catalog, with all the conventional accessories for a wealthy gentleman's study, without his having the trouble of as-sembUng them himself

Then she looked back at Bellmann and saw his eyes.

They were alive with compassion.

She felt as if she'd been suddenly stripped naked and plunged into a snowdrift. She had to catch her breath and look away, but then she felt her tyts drawn back again, and she hadn't been wrong: there was compassion and understanding and tenderness in his face, or she couldn't read human expression at all. And strength—such a strength as she hadn't seen since her childhood, when she woke from a nightmare to cling to her father and saw from the love in his eyes that she was safe, everything was secure, there were no bad things in the world.

"You killed Frederick Garland," she said in a shaky whisper.

"You loved him?" Bellmann said.

She nodded. She didn't trust her voice.

"Then he must have deserved your love. I knew when you came to see me the first time that you were a remarkable young woman. That you should come again at this time means that I was right. Miss Lockhart, you shall have the truth now. Ask me what you will—I promise I shall give you the truth. All of it, if you want."

"Did you kill Nordenfels?" she said. It was the first thing that came to mind.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"We disagreed over the fiiture of the Self-Regulator.

He came to think of it as disgusting, and wanted to destroy all records of it so it would never be built; I saw it as a device to promote human happiness. We quarreled and fought a duel like gentlemen, and he lost."

His voice was quiet, his tone frank and sincere, but it was out of joint with his words. She couldn't take in what he was saying.

"Human happiness?" she said.

"Would you like me to explain?"

She nodded.

"It is simply that the Self-Regulator is too appalling to be used. Once enough of them have been built, wars will come to an end, and civilization will develop in peace and harmony for the first time in the history of the world."

She tried to understand how that might be true. Then she said, "Did you arrange for the IngridLinde to disappear?"

"The steamship? Yes, I did. Would you like to know how I arranged it?"

Sally nodded. She felt unable to speak.

"She carried a gasification plant in her engine room, like most coal-burning ships. A Capitaine Marine Gas Plant, to be precise. It burned some of the coal to produce gas for lighting and so on, and the gas was stored in a large, expandable metal tank. Very safe, you know. Now, also in the engine room, on the main shaft that turns the screw, there was an automatic counter. It clicked on one turn every revolution, and told the

engineer when to grease the bearings. Well, inside that counter I soldered a series of metal pins that would line up when a certain number was reached—a number that would mean the ship was somewhere in the middle of the sea. When that happened, the pins would complete an electrical circuit and fire a spark plug that I had put in the main gas tank. Naturally I was not there to see it take place, but judging by the result, it must have worked, don't you think?"

Sally felt sick. "But why did you do it?" "First, because it hastened the decline of the Anglo-Baltic company, which I needed to accomplish for financial reasons. You had spotted that when you came to Baltic House; it was astute of you, but you could not have known the second reason, which was that on board the ship was an agent of the Mexican government bound for Moscow, with documents that would have induced my Russian backers to withdraw their support. That would have been disastrous. As things stand now, I am on the point of signing a contract with that same Mexican government, so everyone has benefited— workers and their families and children, whole communities, both in this country and in Mexico. There are poor children in Barrow who will eat and go to school because of what I have done. There are families in Mexico who will have medical supplies, clean drinking water, transport for the produce of their farms, security, education—all because I sank the Ingrid Linde. It was a

completely humane act, and if I had to do it again, I would do it without the slightest hesitation."

"What about the innocent people who died?"

"I cannot pretend to regret the deaths of people I never knew. No one can do that. If they say they do, they are lying. Humbug, I believe you call it. No, I promised you the truth, and this is the truth: I do not regret killing those people. If I had not sunk the ship, a much greater number would have died—of starvation and poverty and ignorance and war. It was an act of the highest charity."

Sally was feeling dizzy, seated though she was. She closed her eyes and tried to control the sickness, tried to bring Fred back to mind, tried to remember what she was doing and why.

Eventually she said, "What about your connections with the British government? When Mr. Windlesham came to Burton Street on Saturday night he told us the names of some officials who were in your pocket. Why do you need to work like that? And why did Mr. Windlesham come to us, anyway? We didn't believe him when he said North Star was on the point of collapsing. I think you sent him."

"Of course I did. I sent him to spy. But you ask about the government—it's a very interesting, very delicate matter. . . . Of course, you know that the real business of government is carried on far out of the public eye. You may not be aware that much of it is unknown

even to ministers, sometimes even to ministers of the departments that might be expected to be concerned. It is so with all states, of course, but particularly so with Britain, for some reason. Thanks to the contaas I made through Lord Wytham (though their purpose was quite unknown to him) I have my hands now on the levers of real power in Great Britain. But, you know something, Miss Lockhart: in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, this secret power, this invisible authority which no one has voted for, works for good. For the benefit of the ordinary citizen. In hundreds of ways that they would never understand, ordinary lives are better for this benevolent oversight, this hidden, fatherly hand that guides and protects. Among all men who are truly powerRil—and, as I've explained, that is not always the men the world thinks are powerful— there is a kind of comradeship, an ideal, almost a freemasonry of service. Has the life of the employees of North Star improved? Is it better than when they were making locomotives? Of course it is. Go and look into their houses. Visit the schools. Inspect the hospital that we have just built. Watch a football match on the sports ground we have laid out. They are prosperous and healthy and happy. They don t know why, but you and I know. When wars have finally ceased, when peace reigns all over the world, they won't know why either; they'll put it down to improvements in education, or an evolution in the human brain, or the sophistication of the economic system, or an increase in churchgoing, or