The Daffodil Affair Read online

  ‘Ah – the alligators.’ Wine’s voice came cheerfully from the bright sunshine beyond the veranda, and a moment later he had sat down beside them. ‘There is rather bad news about that. We have lost some valuable material to them while I have been away. The Bonteen sisters. Thought-readers with a really remarkable technique. But it appears they would most indiscreetly bathe in the river. One would have thought that a very little professional skill would have told them just what was in the creatures’ minds. And now’ – Wine shook his head and his smile was at once rueful and charmingly gay – ‘we know just what is in the creatures’ tummies.’

  ‘You mean that the – the Bonteen sisters have been eaten?’ Wine nodded. ‘And Beaglehole is particularly upset. He hates waste. Replacements are becoming so hard to get.’

  ‘Like French wines, and the toothbrush handles that used to come from Japan.’ Hudspith spoke with heavy irony.

  ‘Exactly so; it is most vexatious. And not so long ago we lost two of our best clairvoyants. I don’t think Miss Mood will be half so good. I suppose you’ve heard of Mrs Gladigan and Miss Molsher?’

  ‘I can’t say I have.’

  ‘Well, they have been far our most serious wastage so far. Not that a certain amount of interesting scientific matter didn’t emerge. It was like this.’ Wine stretched himself comfortably in his chair. ‘Mrs Gladigan and Miss Molsher were in a very remarkable physical rapport. It would work up to about a radius of thirty miles – a most interesting thing. Miss Molsher would go into a trance and one would stick a pin, say, into one of her limbs – much as Appleby here did to poor Miss Mood. And Miss Molsher, like Miss Mood, would be quite insensible to the pain. But Mrs Gladigan – sitting, as I say, perhaps thirty miles away – would immediately feel the appropriate sensation in the corresponding limb.’

  ‘Very remarkable,’ said Hudspith gloomily; ‘very remarkable indeed.’

  ‘Not at all, my dear fellow. Phenomena of that sort are not at all out of the way. Radbone will assure you of that. But what was exceptional was this: as soon as Mrs Gladigan felt the painful sensation to which Miss Molsher had been subjected she was able to make her way to her.’

  Appleby frowned. ‘You really mean that?–’

  ‘Yes. It was simply like a bloodhound following a trail. With no previous knowledge of Miss Molsher’s whereabouts Mrs Gladigan would nevertheless be guided directly to her – buying railway and tram tickets and so on as occasion required. Her explanations of how it came about were, as you may guess, vague. She seemed to imply a species of magnetic attraction between the limb of Miss Molsher actually injured and the corresponding and sympathetic part of her own anatomy. And such was the main accomplishment of the ladies when they consented to join us here – for the purpose of ruthlessly objective scientific investigation, it is needless to say.’ Wine smiled. ‘Well, the investigation turned out to be ruthless enough. But I don’t know if you could call it scientific. Some would say that it was a little too unpremeditated for that. I think I have mentioned that we have some troublesome native tribes?’

  ‘I think you have.’ Hudspith was rubbing his jaw.

  ‘I am sorry to say that some of them are very unpleasant – very unpleasant indeed. And before we could begin our experiments designed to test the supposed powers of the ladies, Miss Molsher disappeared. She had borrowed a canoe and very rashly gone off on a morning’s expedition in it up one of the tributaries. As soon as she was missed of course we organized a search. But all in vain. We could find no trace of her. And it was about a week afterwards that Mrs Gladigan began to experience pains – somewhat sharper than usual – now in one limb and now in another.’ Wine paused and glanced at his watch. ‘Dear me!’ he said; ‘how pleasant. It will soon be quite a feasible hour for a glass of sherry.’ He paused again. ‘What was I saying? Ah, yes, about poor Miss Molsher. Well, we got out the launch, and a gun or two, and Mrs Gladigan steered. But it was soon apparent that something had gone wrong. She was quite at sea. Or perhaps a hunting man would say that she was at fault – badly at fault. We cast – that would be the word – now up the river and now down. And when at length we landed Mrs Gladigan was in yet more evident distress. She appeared attracted now to one and now to another point of the compass. Hudspith, my dear fellow, you look pale. I fear you have had a tiring day. This wretched heat! – it is the one great drawback to the place.’

  ‘That and the savages,’ said Appleby.

  ‘The savages? Oh, yes, of course. That evening we heard that they had dispersed. Some had gone in this direction and some in that. Cannibals? Yes, I rather think they are. And Mrs Gladigan too did not survive. Brain fever carried her off a few days later. Of course without Miss Molsher she was a person of very limited utility. Still, it was sad. And the experiment itself – if we may be allowed to call it so – was tantalizingly inconclusive. One could hardly venture to send it to a learned journal, do you think? As I remarked to Beaglehole at the time: if only she had been able to lead us to an abandoned limb! But here are Mrs Nurse and dear little Lucy come out to join us again.’ He rose and clapped his hands, and instantly a servant appeared with a decanter and glasses. ‘We dine late. It is the Spanish habit. And to give one an appetite there is nothing, I always feel, like lingering talk over a glass of sherry.’

  6

  The following morning was given to a tour of America Island. Besides the buildings put up by the unscrupulous Schlumpf there were several, more strictly utilitarian in appearance, which were the work of Wine. And of these the most impressive was his private research block. It comprised a library, a museum, rest-rooms and living quarters for the subjects under observation, a room for the projection of films, and a laboratory. It was of this last that Wine was particularly proud.

  ‘My dear Appleby,’ he said, ‘pray notice the floor.’

  Appleby looked at the floor. It appeared to consist of polished slabs of wood some eighteen inches square.

  ‘Now walk across it.’

  Appleby walked – somewhat gingerly, but without noticing anything untoward.

  Wine moved to the wall and touched a button. ‘Now try again.’

  Appleby tried again, not without memories of boys’ stories in which, upon such an occasion as this, yawning pits would incontinently open beneath the hero’s feet. And decidedly there was now something odd about the floor. Nevertheless he got safely across.

  ‘Later I will take you into the basement and show you the mechanisms. But at the moment I need only explain that each of these slabs is actually a tolerably accurate balance. Should we place a table here and sit round it in the dark, and should you then be prompted, say, to tie a thread to your handkerchief and pitch it to the other end of the room, the fact would be recorded down below – and so would the trailing return of the handkerchief as you hauled it back across the floor. And here is the cabinet’ – Wine had moved to where a heavy black curtain cut off one corner of the room – ‘and behind it the rest of the paraphernalia that physical mediums are so tiresomely insistent on. As you may guess, our best cameras are here. You notice that everywhere the roof is high. That gives scope for the wide-angle lenses. I wonder if Radbone has learnt much from the technique of aerial and infra-red photography?’ Wine smiled charmingly. ‘I have.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ said Appleby. ‘But do the mediums like it?’

  ‘Commonly they know nothing whatever about it. And now notice this.’ Wine opened a cupboard in the wall and revealed some intricate electrical apparatus. ‘I have no doubt you know that one of the grand difficulties in a long seance is distinguishing between one hand and two. Hudspith, when you rub your jaw in that way I know you are a little at sea. So let me explain what happens during a typical experiment. The laboratory is almost dark, and the medium sits at a table just before the cabinet. I am on one side, and one of my assistants is on the other. My right foot is on the medium’s left foot, and my assistant’s left foot is on her right foot. And each of us holds one of her hands. The medium wri
thes about; she is allegedly in the grip of some supernormal force. And I assure you that presently, although my assistant and I are convinced that we each are in contact with a separate hand, it may very well be that we each have got hold of the same one.’ Wine shook his head. ‘There is really nothing like a little psychical research for convincing one of the fallibility of the human senses and of the difficulty of really unintermittent concentration. But, fortunately machines are inexorable. I dare say you’ve seen in the shop windows radio sets that can be set going by a passer-by simply waving his hand in front of a particular spot on the glass? This machine refines a little upon that not very difficult principle. Let the medium get one hand below the level of the table – which unfortunately is what she probably wants to do – and at once this machine–’

  ‘Poor little Eusapia,’ Appleby interrupted. ‘I’m afraid she hasn’t a chance. And that she should be brought all that way for this.’

  ‘Eusapia is said to be full of the most elementary wiles. But it’s just possible there may be something else as well.’

  And it’s just possible, thought Appleby, that there may be at least a little green cheese in the moon. But who would build a costly observatory on what he held to be the off-chance of making such an observation? Or who, wishing to convince others of the fact, would build in the middle of nowhere? Yet this laboratory, in which Eusapia’s lazy-tongs would presently be exposed with the aid of balances and infra-red light, was no mere flimsy screen. It really was an elaborate unit for the research Wine professed. And in this lay the truth about Wine.

  If there were three Lucy Rideouts, there were – in a sense – three Emery Wines also. And the name of one of these Wines was – again in a sense – Radbone. When Wine spoke of the insufficiencies of this fictitious scientist he was simply drawing a picture of one of the Wines. Perhaps consciously, or perhaps unconsciously. But there it was.

  There was a Wine who was a scientist, a Wine who really wanted to know. And there was a Wine who was a gangster, a Wine who wanted to exploit and grab. But to these two Wines, the scientific and the predatory, there must be added a third: an imaginative and credulous Wine.

  Out of spiritualism and allied interests of the mind he was going to form a vast racket. The thing was feasible: nevertheless it was bizarre and extremely out of the way. What had led him to so remote a project? The same bent that really led the scientist into such territory: an obscure impulse to believe – an impulse which would dispense with intellectually respectable evidence if it dared. When Hudspith had simulated seeing an apparition of the sort traditionally associated with the death of the person seen, Wine had been so far carried away as to attempt to verify the thing by radio. The attempt had been entirely futile, for a cast-iron regulation had been against him; it therefore demonstrated something other than a coolly critical mind in face of a possible supernormal occurrence. In fact on that morning Wine had given much away. Again, he had revealed this streak in his make-up through the picture he had drawn of Radbone. And he had revealed it once more in his fondness for putting across tall stories – of which surely the tallest and most irresponsible was that recent one of Mrs Gladigan and Miss Molsher.

  And yet, later than morning – and as he and Hudspith were being conducted somewhat hastily over other parts of America Island – Appleby thought a good deal on the history of those unfortunate ladies. The mortal remains of Miss Molsher departing to stewpots at various points of the compass and the resulting bafflement of Mrs Gladigan’s psychic perceptions: the notion was rather more absurd than horrible. Wine had spoken of it in terms of an abortive experiment, and though it was doubtless a fantasy, yet the conducting of experiments by Wine was a fact – a fact to which the elaborate laboratory testified. There was something in Mrs Gladigan and Miss Molsher: they were a sort of allegory. Appleby told himself, of that aspect of Wine’s activities with which he himself was scheduled to be most intimately concerned.

  ‘We have half a dozen rather interesting people over there’ – Wine was pointing to a long, low building near the water’s edge – ‘but I think we had better not visit them just now. The fact is that they are really rather tiresome.’ He sighed. ‘A few will prove to be interesting, but all are rather tiresome. It is one of the depressing conditions of our work.’

  ‘You mean,’ asked Hudspith, ‘that they’re discontented? They’d like to get away?’

  ‘To get away?’ Wine looked politely puzzled. ‘Of course they would leave if they wanted to. Actually I believe that most of them feel they have fallen on their feet. All have some rather special nervous organization in one way or another, and the result commonly is that they are misfits in the workaday world. Here we provide a special and carefully contrived environment which I doubt if they would wish to change. They are tiresome simply because they are an edgy and temperamental lot. And I’m not sure that working with them one doesn’t take on something of the same trying nervous organization.’ Wine turned to Appleby and smiled blithely. ‘If you find me – or Beaglehole – a bit queer, you know, you must put it down to that. Perhaps we shall come back here another day. I should at least like you to meet Danilov. He promises some most interesting results. On the other hand, he is perhaps the most temperamental of all.’

  ‘A medium?’ Appleby asked.

  ‘It is really difficult to say. He has the gift of tongues – an endowment common in legend and folklore, but which I have never met elsewhere. A language will come to Danilov perhaps for an hour, perhaps for a day or even a week. Then it will vanish and another will take its place. Curious, is it not? There is never more than one language at a time – or rather never more than one in addition to his basic Russian. The speaker of whatever is the strange language of the moment understands himself but has no Russian. The Danilov who speaks Russian understands none of the other languages spoken.’

  ‘Very odd,’ said Appleby.

  ‘Suppose Danilov to be visited for the moment by French. You can converse with him in either French or Russian, but you can’t converse in French about what has just been said in Russian, nor in Russian about what has just been said in French. You see? Either the man is indeed visited by tongues in some supernormal manner, or the different languages contrive to exist in separate compartments of his mind.’

  ‘Do you know anything of his history?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. He was born in Denmark, his mother being English and his father a Spanish engineer. When he was four the family moved to Greece, where he had a German nurse who went mad and ran away with him to Egypt. Later he was adopted by a wealthy Russian who had married a Dutch lady long resident in France.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But later on his life became somewhat unsettled and he roamed about the world a good deal. He was back in Russia at the time of the Revolution and was wounded in the fighting. In fact a bullet passed through his brain, and for some time he couldn’t talk at all. It was when he recovered from this that he began to exercise his peculiar gifts. But he himself is firmly convinced that it is spirits.’

  They were walking uphill; perhaps it was because of this that Hudspith could be heard breathing heavily.

  ‘And of course spirits it may be. One ought never to jump to conclusions on the strength of fragmentary evidence.’ Wine chuckled. ‘I am taking you this way so that we can get a bird’s-eye view of the islands. This hill in front of us rises to about four hundred feet.’

  ‘I’m inclined to think,’ said Appleby, ‘that you expect Hudspith and me to rise to more than that.’

  ‘Ah.’ Wine walked some paces in silence. Then he chuckled again. ‘I think we are getting to know each other very nicely.’ Again he walked in silence. ‘Just think, my dear Appleby, what one could do with Danilov as a sort of evangelist. He roves about the world – perhaps with a little choir or orchestra – and languages come and go as he moves. It’s tremendous.’

  The breathing of Hudspith became heavier still. Appleby, glancing sideways as they walked, noticed with some
alarm a fixed contraction on his brow. It seemed only too likely that the cheated girls had been usurped. Hudspith had found a new Whale.

  7

  They climbed higher. America Island took form beneath them: an irregular oval of blotched green and brown framed in the yellow of the incredible river. On the summit was a little clearing of which the borders were low palmetto scrub and papaw trees and feathery palm. Parrots flew chattering over them; unknown butterflies hovered; and everywhere was the sweet scent of the espinillo de olor. That the island had been cultivated could be seen – but the orange groves, laid out in quincunx form, were now eroded and forlorn, yielding to a stealthy pincers movement of which the spearheads were a tangled monté of low trees wreathed in creepers; this with a marching army of criss-crossed bamboo behind. Unguarded, nothing human would last here long; nature would sweep in with something of the pounce of Eusapia’s lazy-tongs, and the Happy Islands would be as they had been before ever Domingo de Irala and the Conquistadors had come this way.

  Upstream, the other islands stretched westward; the nearer appearing securely anchored in the flood; those farther away floating uncertainly between air and water. Each was blotched and brown and green, featureless and scrubby except for here and there an aracá or a commanding palm, but with many of the strangely assorted buildings of Schlumpf’s fantasy showing clear in the shadowless light of noon. That queer project had been ragged and untidy and evanescent; superimposed upon it could be seen evidences of the yet queerer but efficient and considered project of Emery Wine. Plain frame buildings had been added here and there; each island had a small uniform jetty; a purposive network of wires ran between the houses and spanned the channels on high-masted buoys; here and there a launch darted on the obscure business of the community. For it was a community of sorts; man dominated this corner of the wilderness and nature took second place.

  But the majestic river floated on, and a few miles downstream the world was a solitary haunt of tapir and capybara, of vizcachas sitting at their holes and of flamingos contemplative on stilt-like legs. The river was an unending world of yellow water and pampas grass and willow, of strange birds – macaws and Magellanic swans – and stranger fish – bagre and dorado, pacu and surubi. The river and its multitudinous life was a world unending. But the river also was no more than a dully variegated thread winding through the immeasurable monotony of what from this eminence could be clearly seen: the great green ocean of high and waving grass which made the larger world of this part of the South American continent. It was a far cry from Lady Caroline and the dusty little antique dealer of York.