'I am being accused of fads and fancies,' said Hilary, examining her finger-nails. 'Now let me ask you something; let me put a hypothetical case. Suppose this man is perfectly genuine. Suppose he has the power he says he has, and with the proper effort can read every thought in our heads like plain print. I don't necessarily admit he's genuine, though I never met a performance that made me feel quite so - so creepy. But, supposing him to be genuine, do you realize just what that would mean ?'
Sanders must have looked dubious, for she caught his look with as imperceptible a turn .as a fencer catches a thrust; there was in fact in her mind something of the quality of the swordsman. She smiled.
'Dr Sanders doesn't believe in mind-readers.'
'I don't know,' Sanders admitted honestly. 'But go on. Granting your hypothesis, what do we get?'
She stared at the fountain.
'I've been talking to Larry about a play called Dangerous Corner. The theme of the play, you may remember, is that in all conversations among friends or relatives there is a dangerous corner, where the most trivial word will turn the talk to disaster. Mostly we miss that comer; but sometimes the wheel skids by accident. Then a secret comes, out - about somebody. But, once you've turned that corner, you've got to keep on down the road. The exposure of that secret will lead to the exposure of another secret about somebody else, until one by one the real inner life of everybody is shown up; and the sight isn't pretty.
'That comer is dangerous enough. But it is a comer; it is taken by accident or chance. On the other hand, suppose you had somebody who took it deliberately, because he knew where it was and what it would lead to ? Suppose you had a person with a power to see into minds? To know every secret people were thinking about? The result doesn't bear thinking about in itself. Life would simply become intolerable, that's all. Now wouldn't it?'
She had been speaking quietly, in an explanatory way and without any emphasis on words. At the end she merely raised her eyes. Lawrence Chase looked surprised and doubtful (of her) and somewhat fretful.
'It's a bit too academic for me -'
'No, it isn't, Larry. You know that.'
'And I also begin to suspect, my girl, that you have a low mind.'
'Perhaps I have. I honestly don't know. But I notice that people always accuse you of having something wrong with your mind whenever you ask them to exercise theirs.'
'Of humanity in general, I mean,' said Chase. Hitherto he had been speaking with light good-humour, casting an eye at Sanders as though bidding him to listen to the girl. Now he drew himself up with such straightness that his .sharp shoulder-blades showed through the back of his coat. 'Right you are, then. We'll be desperately serious. Take the play you're talking about: if I remember correctly, before they finished digging out secrets they found that among them the characters had committed nearly every crime in the Decalogue. Hang it all! You don't seriously suggest that that would apply to any casual group of people, do you?'
'Oh, crime!' said Hilary, and smiled. 'Let me ask you something. Suppose every thought that came into your head in the course of one day were written down, and the whole thing read out to an assembled group of your friends.'
'God forbid!'
'You wouldn't like it?'
'I rather think I should prefer to be boiled in oil,' Chase declared reflectively.
'And yet you haven't committed any crime; any great crime, that is?' 'No. None that worries me, anyhow.' There was a silence.
'Oh, and another thing,' pursued Hilary, with a glow of pure mischief in her blue eyes. 'We can leave out crimes. We can even leave out your feminine conquests, or attempted conquests. You don't have to own up to the times you've seen a girl you rather liked, and invited her away somewhere, and thought, "That's nice; that'll be easy," when really you didn't know anything about her. People talk about "secrets," but usually all they mean is secrets about love-affairs or would-be love-affairs - '
'And usually they're quite right,' said Chase with candour. But even in the gloom you could see the blood come into his face.
'Well? Leaving out crime and all matters of sex, would you still -'
'No, look here!' interrupted Chase. 'This is going too far. We're supposed to be having an academic argument; not a game of Truth. Besides, why have my shortcomings and stupidities got to be pitched on? Would you like your thoughts for the course of a day to be paraded out in front of everybody?'
'I should hope not,' said Hilary fervently.
'Aha! Even apart from crime and sex, you've thought thoughts you wouldn't have known?'
'Yes.'
'In fact you've even thought thoughts about crime and sex?'
'Of course.'
'Well, that's all right, then,' said Chase, mollified. 'So, before the party becomes rowdy, suppose we drop the subject.'
'We can't drop it. That's just the point, don't you understand? You see how easy it is to start a thing like this going, just as we've been doing now. That's not because we're all criminals, but because we're all human. And it's why we've got to persuade Mina to get rid of this man Pennik.'
Chase hesitated, and Hilary turned to Sanders.
'He's going to make trouble,' Hilary said. 'I don't mean that his intentions are evil or that he's a mischief-maker. No. On the contrary, his intentions are good, and in that unassuming way of his he's rather charming -'
Then what are you worried about?' inquired Chase: though he himself looked far from at ease.
'Because that's just the whole difficulty. Unless he's a bigger charlatan than seems possible, he really believes in this gift of his. Under that mild exterior of his he would do anything, anything to convince people it was true. Particularly since Mr Constable -'
'Sam.'
'Sam, then. Particularly since Sam antagonizes him at every turn. You remember what happened when he gave that demonstration at their flat in town. Can't you imagine what he might do if he really chose to make trouble among a group like us? Or among any other group in the wide world? What do you say, Dr Sanders?'
It was growing darker in the glass-roofed room, hollow with the faint echo of the fountain and full of plants' that had turned to shadows. The orange-red square of the electric fire glowed more brightly. Sanders had begun to understand his invitation to Fourways.
He looked at Chase.
'Tell me,' he said. 'Was it your idea that H. M. and I should investigate this fellow? Find out whether or not he's a fake?'
Chase looked hurt.
'Oh, don't put it like that. Not at all! Both Sam and Mina particularly wanted to invite you.'
'Thanks. And, before we go into this, where are our hosts? I ought to present myself. Having barged in here -'
'That's all right. They're both out. They went over to Guildford to see how the servants were getting on, and to see whether they could dig up anybody to cook a scratch meal or attend to things generally. It's upset Mina, especially with another book on the way -' 'Another what on the way?'
'Book. You know.' Chase broke off. His eyes opened wide, and he knocked his knuckles against his forehead. 'Good Lord alive,' he said; 'you don't mean to say you don't know? I thought everybody knew.'
'Not when you are entrusted with telling it.'
'Mina Constable,' explained Chase, 'is really Mina Shields - the lady novelist, you know. And don't laugh.'
'Why the devil should I laugh?'
'I don't know,' Chase said gloomily, 'except that for some reason all lady novelists are supposed to be funny. Sort of dogma. Anyhow, Mina is a modern Marie Corelli. By that I don't mean anything pompous or flighty or on the preaching side: Mina is the best of good scouts, as you'll see. She may write romances about reincarnation in Egypt or Satan in the suburbs, but she's sound. When she wanted to do a novel about a temple in the middle of French Indo-China, -she didn't trust to the books; by George, she went to French Indo-China. That trip nearly killed Sam; and Mina too, for that matter. They both went down with malaria. Sam says he can't get warm even yet. Which is why they have these portable fires blazing in every room, and the place is like an oven. Don't open too many windows, or you'll have him on your neck.'
Hilary spoke with a certain intensity, looking over her shoulder at the spray of the fountain. 'Yes. I dare say you will.' 'Now, now!'
'Mrs Constable is fine,' said Hilary. 'I like her enormously. But Mr Constable - no, I am not going to call him Sam -ugh!'
'Nonsense! Sam's all right. It's only that he's the complete British clubman, and he's a bit fussy.'
'He is at least twenty years older than she is,' Hilary said dispassionately, 'and not attractive in any conceivable way that I can see. Yet the way he orders her about, ticks her off, calls attention to things in public - well, before I would let any man do that to me, I'd go off and take poison in a corner.'
Chase spread out his hands. 'She's fond of him, that's all. Like one of her heroes in the books. He was what used to be called a fine figure of a man before he retired.'
'Which the rest of us can't afford to do,' said Hilary rather bitterly.
'Oh, all right.' Chase started to speak, and then seemed to change his mind. 'Anyway, we might just as well stop talking about them in their own house.' Again he hesitated. 'Look here, Sanders, it's no good denying that bout of malaria changed him a bit, and Mina too. He snaps sometimes, though you can't help liking him. I don't know whether I want this mind-reading fellow to be proved a fake or the real thing. He's Mina's discovery, and she seems to think a lot of him; though I've sometimes wondered if it isn't her sense of humour working. Sam doesn't like him, and there's a kind of undeclared row hovering and darkening. The point is, will you and the notorious H. M. do your best for us?'
CHAPTER II
Sanders was almost himself again. He felt enormously flattered and, for the first time in weeks, cheered.
‘Of course. But-'
‘But what?'
'You seem to have got the wrong idea of me, I'm afraid. I'm not a detective. My work is forensic medicine. I don't see how anything I know or could investigate would apply to this man. At the same time -'
‘Cautious blighter,' Chase explained to Hilary.
'At the same time, it's hard to say what particular branch of science or pseudo-science would apply to him if he were genuine. What is his science? By what rule does he work, or pretend to work?'
'I don't think I understand, old boy.'
‘Well, most of the "mind-readers" I ever encountered have been of the music-hall variety. You know the sort of thing: working in pairs. The woman sits blindfolded, the man goes among the audience. 'What am I holding in my hand?' 'and so on. Then, of course, there's the fellow who works alone, makes you write questions on bits of paper, and reads them from a sealed envelope; but he is usually such an obvious fake that if you have an elementary knowledge of conjuring you can spot him. If he's like either of those two sorts, I can help you. Is he?'
'Good Lord, no!' said Chase, staring.
‘Why the vehemence?'
Hilary Keen made a wry face. 'What Larry means,' she explained, 'is that he's no end of an academic swell. Degrees from all over the place. I'm not necessarily impressed by that, but it's no good denying it carries some weight with regard to his sincerity. - Besides, he's nothing like the sort you describe.'
'Then what does he do? That is to say, he doesn't just look you in the eye and say, "You are thinking of a bathing-hut on the beach at Southend," does he?'
'I'm afraid he does,' answered Hilary.
It was growing darker, a powdery twilight in which the palms of the conservatory became weights of shadow and the orange-red square of the fire stood out with fierce distinctness. Even so, they must have seen the expression on Sanders's face. '
'Aha!' said Chase, nodding with great profundity. 'Shakes you up, does it? Why?'
'Because it's incredible. If s scientific gibberish.' Sanders hesitated. 'I won't deny that in the past there have been certain fairly successful experiments in telepathy. William James believed in it, for instance. So did Hegel and Schelling and Schopenhauer, though recently it has died down from sheer lack of investigation. The trouble is that nothing can be regarded as a scientific fact which won't work at will and all the time, on the same recurring principles; and more often than not telepathy hasn't worked at all. If the operator complains that he is not in the mood, or that "conditions aren't right", he may be honest, but he's not being scientific. - Who is this man, by the way? What do you know about him?'
There was a brooding pause before Hilary replied.
'Nothing, really. Except that he's apparently quite well off and doesn't stand to gain a penny by any of this. Mina met him on her way back from this trip to Indo-China. He calls himself a student.'
'A student of what?'
'Of thought as a force. You must get him to explain. And yet all the time,' said Hilary, her soft voice tautening and sharpening, 'I've got a feeling that there's something not quite right about him. I don't mean as regards his being a fake; but something at the back of his own mind. Worry? Self-consciousness? Inferiority complex? You have a feeling that he regards this thought-reading as only a kind of minor prelude to something - Oh, I don't know! Talk to him; that is, if he will'
'I should be only too pleased,' said a new voice.
There was a rustle in the strip of grass outside the conservatory. Twilight touched the stained-glass above, and the long pale oblong of the open window below; and a man moved into that oblong.
The light was not strong enough to make out more than outlines. The newcomer was rather under middle height, with a broad chest, and legs very slightly bowed. You felt rather than saw a smile as he inclined his head. His voice was heavy, slow-speaking, and pleasant.
'Lights. We'd better get some lights on,' Chase said hastily - and Sanders could have sworn that in the way he spoke there was a touch of panic.
He went over and pressed a switch. Under each corner of the glass dome, a cluster of electric globes bloomed like luminous fruit. They had the garish and snaky appearance of such fixtures popular at the end of the nineteenth century; they brought out the garishness of gilt and palms and coloured glass.
'Thank you,' said the newcomer. 'Dr Sanders?'
'Yes. Mr-?'
'Pennik,' said the newcomer. 'Herman Pennik.'
He extended his hand. You would not have found a more unobtrusive or disarming figure than Mr Herman Pennik, despite the curious momentary impression gained from his appearance at the window. He scraped the soles of his shoes carefully on the window-sill to avoid bringing mud into the room. Before shaking hands he even glanced over his shoulder, down at the soles of his shoes as he tilted them up, to make sure.
His age might have been the middle forties. He had a hard-looking head with homely-looking sandy hair; a broad, homely face with leathery wrinkles round the jaw, darkish from hot suns; a broad nose, and light eyes under sandy brows. You saw no sign of strong intellect in that face. There was even a touch of heaviness or coarseness round the mouth. But Herman Pennik had a habit of being incon-spicuous in many things.
