The Daffodil Affair Read online

  Wine seated himself in the shade of a solitary Ñandubay. ‘You are looking down,’ he said, ‘on all the kindgoms of the world.’ The words were spoken without magniloquence and without either the irony or the gaiety that the man was wont to affect. Appleby, withdrawing his gaze from the farthest verge of the rippling pampa, looked at him curiously – as one may look at somebody interesting and new. ‘And the glory of them,’ said Wine. His finger made a circle in air – a small circle which seemed to define no more than the group of islands below. ‘So why should you and I pretend to each other any longer?’

  ‘It does seem unnecessary,’ said Appleby. And Hudspith nodded – not at all like a man who believes that only such successful pretence stands between him and the incomparable digestive system of the crocodile.

  ‘Radbone and I are after the same thing; so let us admit it. And let him admit that here’ – and again Wine’s finger circled – ‘I have got ahead of him. Let him admit that and come in. He sent you to spy out the land. And now’ – and a third time Wine’s finger circled – ‘it is before you. All the kingdoms of the world, graphed and taped.’

  Appleby looked down on the islands and electric wires and launches, on these as a stray and tiny atom of human activity in that great void of green. And he saw the atom as a rebel cell in the vast organism of human civility, a minute cell or nexus of cells, definable still by a circling finger, but having the potentiality for unlimited and disastrous proliferation. Here the thing was growing in treacherous concealment, and presently it would send off down the great river, as if through a bloodstream, armies that should attack every weakened centre of a riven and exhausted planet. It was a large picture, and not a pretty one. ‘Certainly there seems no necessity to pretend,’ Appleby repeated.

  ‘Did I once remind you that home-keeping youth have ever homely wits? When I was a young man I visited Egypt and I visited Rome. And I saw how the resolute man invents gods to put his fellows in awe. I saw what of splendour and power could be built out of the infantile recesses of the mind. I looked at what Milton accurately calls the brutish gods of Nile – and then I looked at the pyramids. By observing how children irrationally fear a dog or a beetle, by probing a little the vast unreason of the unconscious mind, able men had gained all that over lordship and command. I saw it as men must often have seen it before me. I saw it as Faustus saw it.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Appleby. ‘Faust. But there are those who believe rather in Prometheus.’

  ‘And I went to Rome.’ Under the shadow of the Ñandubay, Wine sat staring unseeingly before him, far too absorbed to heed an obscure interruption. ‘My plan came to me there. It was as I sat musing in the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars sang vespers in the temple of Jupiter–’

  The man was the soul of charlatanism, Appleby thought. Spouting Gibbon. Always making a tall story of it. And yet practical and efficient and ruthless. In fact – But better hear him out.

  ‘–that I saw it could all be done again. I saw how such a dominion could be built up more rapidly and surely, because more scientifically, than ever before. Two things were necessary. First, a command of – or better a corner in – all those oddities and abnormalities which must be the instruments for building up a popular magical system. Mrs Nurse and her voices, Eusapia and her conjuring, Danilov and his gift of tongues; all that material one must hold ready and organized. And, second, there must be a softening process. All successful attack, unless it is to rely on sudden and devastating surprise, must be preceded by that. And alone one could not manage it. There must be the hour as well as the man.’

  But the point, thought Appleby, is this: is the man, without knowing it, himself the product of the hour? And is the softening process not the source of the plot as well as its instrument? Was not Wine in some measure involved in his own twilight – and was he not vulnerable in terms of this? The point lay there.

  ‘But the solvents had been at work long before my mind contacted the situation. For decades the great institutional systems of belief had been crumbling. You remember Christianity?’

  Hudspith, to whom this flamboyant question appeared to be addressed, glowered darkly. But Wine was not in an observant mood.

  ‘How exquisitely the rational and the irrational were held together there! What an instrument it was!’ Something of Wine’s gaiety had displeasingly returned, and he spoke as a connoisseur might speak of some rare vintage which had passed its allotted span. ‘But things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ He paused, apparently because this was a quotation and to be savoured. ‘And so we can begin again.’

  There were times at which the man had a certain impressiveness of perverted imagination. But at other times he was merely odious. And this, no doubt, was only another facet of the fact that there were several Wines. ‘And so,’ said Appleby, ‘you begin again.’

  ‘I begin wherever the softening process yields an opening. And there are openings in almost every country. There are openings in all classes – or sections, as I believe your Uncle Len would rather say. The different fields have, of course, been carefully studied; just as carefully as if we were proposing to market a new face cream or soap. In the main it will be spiritualism for the upper class and astrology for the lower. Spiritualism is comparatively expensive – and can be extremely so – whereas astrology is quite cheap. The middle classes will have the benefit of a little of both. For rural populations we shall rely chiefly on witchcraft. What is sometimes called the intelligentsia has exercised my mind a good deal. Yoga might do, and reincarnation and the Great Mind and perhaps a little Irish mythology. But the problem is not important, as there are likely to be singularly few of them left. What we shall have to consider – and that, gentlemen, from China to Peru by way of Paris, London and Berlin – is simply Barbarians, Philistines and Populace. The classification is not one of the most up to date, but I fancy it is sufficient. I may say that the United States, in which even Barbarians are lacking, is going to be the simplest proposition of all.’

  ‘Do I understand,’ asked Appleby, ‘that you are going to start your own Church?’

  ‘Hardly that. But I may say that it will be more like a Church in some countries than others. For instance, in America, we shall gradually take over the churches – the buildings, I mean – themselves. But in England I believe that they would be useless to us, even those that still have roofs to them. In England we shall take over the music halls. Have you ever sat among an English audience during a good variety show? A favourite comedienne singing a sentimental song, with a ventriloquist and a bit of conjuring to follow, can get pretty near the sort of atmosphere we want to achieve. The audience fuses into one cheerful and gullible monster. It is true that the music hall has fallen into a decline, but into nothing like so steep a decline as the Church. We shall make it one of our major centres. And the other will be the pub. Do you remember Wells’ story of the man who tried to perform a miracle in a pub – and it worked? I think he ordered a lamp to turn upside down. ‘We shall see to it that all our pubs have lamps like that.’

  Hudspith stirred uneasily, as if particularly outraged at the thought of hanky-panky in pubs. For some moments nobody spoke; in the heat of noon the viuditas and cardinales had ceased to sing; there was silence except where, directly beneath their feet, a tuco-tuco pursued its subterranean monologue like a gnome.

  ‘The inverted lamp.’ Wine had taken off his panama – and with it had shed his facetiousness, so that he was staring across the river, absent and absorbed once more. ‘It might be our emblem. One by one what men have taken to be the true lamps are going out, and only the topsy-turvy ones will give any light at all. But are they topsy-turvy, after all? Or have we followed false lights for a thousand years or more?’

  The fellow had taken the trouble, thought Appleby, to provide his rascality with a sort of philosophy. And they were going to be treated to it now; if only Hudspith had his professional notebook and pencil a valuable t
reatise might be preserved. He settled his back against the great tree. Suddenly overhead a teru-tero was calling – the plover of the pampa – and obscurely the tuco-tuco answered from below. Between them the well-modulated voice of Wine held the middle air.

  ‘Take a piece of paper and make a pinhole and look through the hole at a lighted lamp. Move the pinhead upwards, between the lamp and the paper until it is within your field of vision as you peer. What happens?’

  Hudspith, whose eye appeared to have been probing after the tuco-tuco, looked up frowning. ‘You see the pinhead upside down.’

  ‘Exactly. Actually it is the image of the lamp which is inverted upon the retina. But our intellect rejects this and insists on seeing the pinhead downwards. It thinks a pin upside down less unlikely than a lamp upside down. And what the intellect rejects shall be our emblem: the inverted lamp.’ Wine’s voice dropped – dropped as if dipping towards the burrowing creature below. ‘Light after light goes out, fire after fire is extinguished. And this gathering darkness has been the work of science. That is the paradox. The Christians had a very clear picture of things. The simplest peasant could take it in and the subtlest schoolman could spend a lifetime interpreting it. It was simple and permanent. But then science came along and substituted something difficult and provisional. Decade by decade the picture became more complicated and shorter lived – until now neither the learned nor the simple at all know where they stand. And it is thus that science puts out the lamps of reason; it is thus that science is a vast softening process, a vast clearing the way for world-wide superstition. Science offers no fixed points of belief. And science, in the popular mind, is the sphere of the unaccountable and the marvellous. Have you studied the strip serials? Nothing could be more significant. The scientist is always there, and he is nothing more or less than the old magician. He belongs to our camp. And we shall use him. Under our control he will become part of what the world most needs.’

  Appleby got to his feet. ‘And that is?’

  ‘A handful of simple and thorough-going superstitions, backed by conjurors, freaks and prodigies.’ Wine too rose. ‘What a pleasant gossip we have had! But now I must go down to the boat. I think you will find luncheon waiting for you. And will you make my apologies to the ladies?’

  They watched him go briskly down the hill. And Hudspith snorted – so vigorously that the tuco-tuco beneath his feet fell silent. ‘Softening process!’ he said. ‘I’ll soften him.’

  ‘On the contrary, it is only too likely that he will soften us. Light after light goes out, including two luminaries from Scotland Yard.’ Appleby stretched himself in the sunshine. ‘Or, if you prefer it, light after light has gone out already, including several in our friend. As the old books used to say, his mind is darkened.’

  ‘You think he’s mad?’

  ‘What is the test? If his fantasies are unworkable – as I rather think they are – then he is mad. But if he could bring his scheme off, or even bring a sizeable fragment of it off, we should have to allow him a sort of perverted sanity of his own. I thought he might have made a little more of that stuff about science and superstition – because of course there’s something in it. And if he isn’t quite so impressive as he ought to be it’s because he fails as the thoroughly objective exploiter of the situation as he sees it. He reckons the uncanny can move the world. Why? Primarily because it can move him, The truth is, he’s the kind that would blench before a ghost.’

  ‘And I would beam before roast mutton and a pint of bitter in the Strand. But I’m as unlikely to have occasion for the beaming as he for the blenching.’ Hudspith stopped as if to scrutinize the syntax of this. ‘We can’t whistle up a squad of ghosts to corner him.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Appleby took a last look at the islands and started off down the hill. ‘But as far as the roast mutton goes there is likely to be some quite reasonable substitute cooking now. One can’t complain of short rations.’

  ‘Talking of short rations’ – Hudspith had fallen into step beside him – ‘has it occurred to you that in all this business nothing much has happened so far?’

  ‘Nothing happened?’

  ‘No one pulled out a gun or smashed a window or pushed someone else over a cliff.’

  ‘Over a cliff? I don’t think I’ve seen any. But perhaps we have been rather quiet.’ Appleby paused to watch a charm of humming-birds mysteriously suspended at the lips of flowers. ‘Would it be a good thing, I wonder, to take the initiative in brightening things up?’

  8

  Halfway down the hill Hudspith halted. His indignation had got the better of his appetite. ‘The cheek of the man!’ he said. ‘Telling all that to people he knows are police officers.’

  ‘He doesn’t know that we know that he knows.’ Appleby tramped on and made this familiar refrain a marching song. ‘He thinks we think we have tricked him. We are Radbone’s men. We have persuaded him we are agents of a man of whose existence he has persuaded us. And that gives the basis of his plan – or that little bit of his plan which concerns you and me. If we believe in Radbone, and believe Wine believes we’re his men–’

  ‘The experiment will work.’

  ‘Just that. It will be colourable that he should send one of us off to do a deal, while the other remains as a sort of hostage. But any suspicion on our part would be a spanner in the works.’

  ‘A spoke in the spook.’

  ‘Just that.’ Appleby nodded placidly at this cryptic remark. ‘But, talking of expectation, I really must insist on luncheon. So come along.’

  Luncheon was excellent; nevertheless it was consumed in an atmosphere of gloom. Something had bitten Beaglehole, who glowered at his companions with frank dislike. Mrs Nurse was tired and without spirits even to pronounce things nice. Opposite to her sat sick Lucy in an abstraction, her mind turned perhaps on moneo and audio, perhaps upon Socrates or Marcus Aurelius.

  ‘This Schlumpf,’ said Appleby, cheerful amid the glumness, ‘–did he build European-looking houses on what you call Europe Land? Did I once hear Wine say something about English House?’

  Beaglehole looked up warily. ‘English House? Yes – and damned odd it looks. It’s the larger part of the sort of house you might find in a Bloomsbury square.’

  ‘What an odd idea! Surely something rural would have been more in the picture?’

  ‘The man was loopy.’ Beaglehole spoke ungraciously but carefully, with evident knowledge that for his employer here was delicate and important ground. ‘And there it is. One of those big houses built about a gloomy sort of well with a staircase going round and round.’

  Mr Smart’s staircase, Appleby thought – and Colonel Morell’s before him. ‘It sounds,’ he said aloud, ‘a very costly affair to erect.’

  ‘Enormously so, no doubt. But the whole house isn’t there.’ Beaglehole caught himself up. ‘I mean, they build just a sizeable part of such a house. And with old materials, I fancy. In places it looks quite genuinely old.’

  ‘Dear me.’

  ‘Dear you, indeed.’ Beaglehole, still unaccountably disturbed, was openly rude. But he continued to give his explanations with care. ‘As a matter of fact, the constructing or reconstructing or whatever it was seems to have been uncommonly badly done. We had a storm some months ago, and a good part of it came down. Awkward, because we have a lot of material for English House. Men are just finishing working on the repairs now.’

  Appleby felt an impulse to smile confidentially at the savoury mess of fish before him. As an explanation of the awkward fact that 37 Hawke Square was still going up this was no doubt as good as could be contrived. ‘It sounds pretty queer,’ he said. ‘I’m rather looking forward to seeing it.’

  Beaglehole put down his knife and fork. ‘You’ll see it, all right. And damned nonsense it is. Bah!’

  ‘Bah, indeed,’ said Appleby cheerfully. It was plain that there were matters upon which Beaglehole and his employer failed to see eye to eye. And it was not difficult to guess what these were. W
ith the proposition that a good experiment is everything Beaglehole had no patience at all. ‘And you have a certain amount of what Wine calls material waiting to move back into English House? The exhibits weren’t blown away in the storm?’

  Beaglehole pushed back his chair; he was even more irritated than before. ‘One’s gone,’ he said. ‘A confounded–’

  ‘Gone? More wastage?’ Wine had returned and was standing in the doorway looking at his assistant with a sort of easy dismay. ‘Don’t tell me that the alligators have got old Mrs Owler – or the Cockshell boy – or little Miss Spurdle?’

  ‘The alligators have got nobody. But that Yorkshire vixen has decamped. I told you there would be trouble with her. They lost her after a couple of days. She’s been gone for weeks.’

  Wine frowned, now genuinely displeased, and turned to Appleby. ‘The girl called Hannah Metcalfe. I sent her on a couple of sailings ahead of us. A mistake. An intractable person I ought to have kept an eye on.’ He smiled wryly. ‘You can tell Radbone we’re at least not a hundred per cent efficient.’

  ‘And it’s not her alone.’ Beaglehole was calmer now. ‘She took a horse with her.’

  Wine sat down, his brow darkening. ‘Not Daffodil?’

  ‘Yes. That’s how she managed it. She sneaked over to German House in the night, nobbled the brute and a saddle, and swam the river with him. After that she had the pampa before her. But she wouldn’t go far with an old cab-horse, you may be pretty sure. The Indians will have got her by this time. There’s some consolation in that.’