Slow Burner

by William Haggard

  ‘I do not dispute it.’

  ‘Then that would seem to be the end of the matter.’

  ‘Not quite.’ William Nichol was speaking very quietly, and Russell looked at him in surprise. Nichol’s expression, now, was one which he had not seen before: it was the expression which he had hidden from a barmaid in a beer mug. Russell pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

  But Sir Jeremy had turned again to Nichol; he had realized, suddenly, that he was very tired; he wished that he were alone. But he turned again to Nichol. ‘I am not sure that I follow you,’ he said.

  ‘It would be quite improper for me to go directly to the Minister: I do not propose it. But I propose in Monday’s meeting of the Commission to suggest as strongly as I am able that the Nuclear Security Order be invoked. To arrest Mr Parton. I hope the Minister will be present, but if he is not he will see the Minutes of the meeting.’

  ‘I see,’ Sir Jeremy said. ‘I see.’ His voice was flatter than ever. He was looking desperately tired.

  ‘You won’t, I hope, take this decision as more than a legitimate difference of opinion. I shouldn’t wish . . .’

  But Sir Jeremy interrupted. ‘Not at all,’ he said.

  Nichol was silent. He had expected protests, an argument. Bates, he thought, was taking it amazingly well. William Nichol respected a good enemy.

  But Sir Jeremy had dismissed the subject; he seemed to have come to a decision. ‘Meanwhile,’ he was saying, ‘there are tomorrow’s arrangements.’ He was speaking to William Nichol.

  Nichol did not follow this and admitted it. ‘Tomorrow’s arrangements?’ he inquired.

  ‘But had you forgotten? Our ordinary commitments must be met, you know. I believe it is tomorrow that you are taking the first Slow Burner to this new factory at Oxford. If I may I will take the opportunity to come with you. I have always wanted to see how it was installed on a first occasion—it must be fascinating. You are leaving Colton after lunch, I understand, so perhaps I may arrive in the morning. And perhaps you would be good enough to show me anything new of interest before we start.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ Nichol said. He didn’t think it would be a pleasure, but he had excellent manners. ‘You must lunch with us, of course,’ he added.

  ‘That is really very kind. I should be delighted.’

  ‘I should warn you that you may not see a great deal either at Colton or at Oxford. Saturday afternoon, you know. In the factory there will be the technicians to take over the Slow Burner and start it ready for Monday, but at Colton . . .’

  ‘It is of no consequence. I shall be seeing what I want to see. And doing,’ Sir Jeremy added, almost to himself, ‘doing what I want to do.’

  ‘Very well. We shall look forward to it. About what time may we expect you?’

  ‘Would half past eleven be too early? I shall come by road and we can go on together in my car.’

  ‘I was going to use my own.’

  Sir Jeremy waved his hand again. ‘But I insist,’ he said. ‘I must be of some service if I am going to put you to trouble. These Slow Burner canisters—I have never seen one. They are heavy, I imagine, but perfectly safe, and not too big for the boot of my Humber. Once properly packed, once insulated, you carry them about quite freely, I believe?’

  ‘We do. But . . .’

  ‘Then it is settled.’

  ‘Very well.’ William Nichol was thinking that this by-play with Sir Jeremy’s own motor-car was being tediously overdone. But he was thinking, too, that he would be seeing Mary Parton again, and he wasn’t sure that that was very wise.

  He discovered that he wasn’t feeling very wise; he was simply feeling excited. ‘Very well,’ he said again.

  ‘I shall be looking forward to it,’ Sir Jeremy said.

  He rose and walked with them to the door.

  He returned to his desk, realizing with a shock that it was a conscious effort to do so. He sat down deliberately and closed his eyes. For a moment he was an old man, an old man drained of impulse and of strength; but not of the habit of self-discipline, not of the unquestioning response to any demand which the machine might make of him. Moloch, he thought for an instant, unrewarding and without mercy . . . But in a minute or two he had opened his eyes again. There were arrangements to be made, something essential, something of conscience to be done. He rang the bell upon his desk and to his secretary said briefly: ‘Marshall, I shall be leaving in a few minutes and I shall be spending tomorrow at Colton. You can reach me, if it is really urgent, at Doctor Nichol’s up to lunch-time. Then we are going on to Oxford, to the new factory. I plan to return on Saturday evening. But I shall not be going to the country on Sunday.’

  ‘I understand,’ Marshall said. He was thinking that Sir Jeremy’s movements, lately, had become decidedly irregular; he was looking a little strained, a little wild even . . .

  It did not occur to Marshall to comment. He repeated that he understood; he withdrew as he had entered, quietly, discreetly.

  Sir Jeremy sat on, fighting the first of his battles. He had recognized that it would be inevitable ten minutes before when Nichol had spoken of the special powers. He wanted a drink more than he had ever wanted a drink in his life. An hour ago he had one, and two more, like—like a gentleman, he thought miserably. But that had been altogether exceptional. Now—now it wouldn’t be one drink or even three: it would be the bottle. Sir Jeremy Bates, if he took a drink, would, in half an hour, be blind. Disgustingly, shamefully blind. And he couldn’t afford to get blind. There was work to do, imperative work, a matter upon his conscience. His nerves shouted their intolerable message, but Sir Jeremy sat on grimly. He was conscious that he was sweating. Finally he rose; he was a little shaky but he was again Sir Jeremy.

  His clock told him that it was nearly three. He smiled, thinking that that part of it would be easy enough. He knew about clockwork; he understood it. An hour or two that evening in his workshop . . . It needn’t be absurdly small . . . That would be easy.

  But the rest of it—there wasn’t too much time. The shops would shut at five, and he wasn’t too certain what shop he wanted. A chemist’s perhaps, or a toy shop: toy shops sold fireworks. Or more likely a gunsmith’s. There should be enough, properly compressed, in a box of twelve-bore cartridges. It wasn’t as though he wanted a tremendous bang; that would be inartistic as well as unnecessary. No, just enough to blow the casing, to break the insulation. A crack would be enough . . .

  Epsilon killed instantly. Nichol himself had said so.

  Sir Jeremy took a taxi to his library. He ignored the librarian who hurried to meet him and went directly to the card index. He looked under D and he looked under E. D was for detonators. He chose a dozen books and sent for them; he found a desk and began methodically to gut them. One thing, he found himself thinking, about the trained mind: it could find what it wanted extremely quickly. Almost certainly before five o’clock.

  Sir Jeremy sat on studiously. Nobody could have guessed from his manner that his plan involved three deaths: William Nichol’s, which to Sir Jeremy was important because he had decided that it was a plain, an inescapable duty to kill him; his own, which he considered unimportant—indeed rather neat and convenient; and a perfectly innocent woman’s.

  Which he hadn’t considered at all.

  Charles Russell strode reflectively back to his office. He wasn’t altogether sure where Nichol was leading them; he wanted to consider the matter. But he was unable. Major Mortimer was waiting for him in his room. Major Mortimer was methodical, not a man shaken easily from his ordinary habits, but now he was excited and without shame of it. He was standing by the window and he turned to Russell as he came in. ‘Parton has been telephoning to Amadeus,’ he announced.

  Russell shed his hat and coat, seating himself at his desk. ‘Let us have some tea on it,’ he suggested. He pressed a bell and gave the order; he turned again to Mortimer. ‘Now again, please,’ he said. ‘And slowly. I have come from a rather trying meeting.’

 
Major Mortimer repeated his news. The tea arrived and Russell poured it. He drank deliberately. ‘Awkward,’ he said finally.

  ‘It’s the devil.’

  ‘Mr Peter Amadeus,’ Russell said slowly, ‘is a gentleman with whom I should very much like a word.’

  ‘And so should I. But we shan’t get it, I’m afraid. He has really remarkable protection. We’ve been pretty sure for some time that he’s behind the Underground, but . . .’

  ‘Quite so. And Parton has been telephoning to him.’ Russell finished his tea. ‘Amadeus,’ he said, ‘is rather bigger fish than anything Parton has been in contact with before.’

  ‘Very much bigger.’

  ‘And you’re sure about this?’

  ‘Of course, sir. We have a tap on the Colton line, naturally. It was Parton and Amadeus all right.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘That’s the devil of it: we don’t know. They talked gibberish. A code, obviously. We made a tape of it all and the code people are working on it. But they don’t hold out much hope, for it wasn’t a proper code—nothing regular, no pourings back and forth into columns, nothing they can get their techniques into. It was a schoolboy affair—arbitrarily arranged words to mean arbitrarily agreed things. It’s the hardest of all to break, for in the code people’s meaning you aren’t breaking it at all. You’re simply guessing. And it’s millions to one you aren’t guessing right.’

  Charles Russell considered this. ‘Then we have till Monday afternoon,’ he said finally.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, for you weren’t at the meeting I have just come from. What happened was that I told Sir Jeremy what we now know of Parton and Mrs Tarbat. We told him that they had been acquainted for some time and, what we had decided it wouldn’t be worth telling him before, that Parton was suspect on general but inconclusive grounds. The two together might—should in our view—have justified action. But as we feared it made no difference. Sir Jeremy asked me whether I could establish that Parton had in fact visited Mrs Tarbat recently: naturally I couldn’t. Far less could we establish that Parton was responsible for this affair in Mrs Tarbat’s attic. Bates brushed us aside.’

  ‘And you’ve been to the Minister, sir—already?’ Mortimer asked.

  ‘I have not. I didn’t need to. Doctor Nichol took the reins.’

  ‘He’s going to Palliser himself?’

  ‘No. It’s neater than that and a deal less irregular, though it will take a little longer. Nichol is going to tell the whole story in the Development Commission on Monday; he’s going to recommend in the strongest terms that the Nuclear Security Order be invoked. The Minister will be there in the chair, and if I know him he’ll act. So give the meeting a couple of hours to talk, and another for the Minister to get back to his room and sign the Order. That’s generous timing, too. We should have our hands on Parton by early afternoon.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mortimer said slowly, ‘if he’s still there to lay hands on.’

  “What was that?’

  Mortimer sighed; he was looking depressed and deflated. ‘Parton is up and about again,’ he said unhappily.

  ‘You didn’t tell me this,’ Russell said sharply.

  ‘I couldn’t sir—it only came through while you were at the meeting. It will be a shock for Doctor Nichol too when he returns to Colton. Parton is up and about again, though he hasn’t gone home yet—they’re still making him sleep at the hospital.’

  ‘Till when?’

  ‘We can’t be sure. The regular doctor at Colton was a friend of mine—Parton wouldn’t be up if he were still on the job. But he’s gone sick himself and the locum . . .’ Mortimer shrugged. ‘I didn’t feel we could chance the locum,’ he concluded.

  Colonel Russell nodded. He crossed to the sideboard, pouring two considerable whiskies; he handed one to Mortimer. ‘This,’ he said, ‘we shall need.’ He drank most of his whisky and soda, thinking. ‘You are telling me,’ he asked at length, ‘that Parton could walk away from Colton as we sit here?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am, sir. Of course we could follow him, and should, but there’s at least one house in London, West London, a very big house you will remember, where . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know. It might not help him in the long run, but at least there would be a formidable scandal. I’m getting very tired of wasting manpower watching that house day and night for people to be smuggled out of it. And of course there’s no guarantee that that is where he would make for: Amadeus, we all imagine, has much less obvious resources.’ Charles Russell was thinking again. ‘What is the actual problem,’ he inquired, ‘the problem at Colton, I mean . . . Could we stop him, for instance?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. So long as he was in bed it made it very easy for our man to watch him. That’s about what it came to—that and the fact that the hospital is within the perimeter fence. But if Parton had got up and walked to the gate we couldn’t have stopped him and we can’t now. His pass is perfectly in order.’

  ‘We might take it away.’

  ‘How?’ Major Mortimer inquired. ‘Under what authority?’

  ‘People have been known to lose their passes,’ Russell said levelly.

  ‘To such as Percival-Smith, for instance?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Mortimer shook his head. ‘It’s tempting,’ he admitted. ‘Percival-Smith would jump at it. But I doubt if it would turn the trick. Parton, after Nichol, is the biggest man at Colton. Suppose he arrived at the gate in the evening; suppose he told the gateman he had been discharged from hospital and was going home. Do you think an ordinary gateman, a retired policeman probably, is going to stop him? Stop a man he knows perfectly well? Stop Big Boy just because he’s mislaid his pass? Keep him all night with nowhere in particular to sleep?’ Major Mortimer shook his head again. ‘I don’t think I would,’ he said, ‘whatever the rules.’

  ‘And we could hardly tell him to,’ Russell said reflectively.

  ‘Hardly, sir. That would be too easy. We could have told the gate days ago not to let Parton outside it if we had had the authority. But without an Order we can no more stop him at the gate if he insists than we can arrest him.’ Major Mortimer’s quiet manner fell from him suddenly. ‘Damnation,’ he exploded. ‘We’re hamstrung.’

  Russell nodded reluctantly. ‘Hamstrung,’ he repeated. He sat up abruptly. ‘But does Parton know it?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not with you, sir.’

  ‘I was trying to see it from Parton’s point of view—that’s always sound thinking in this business. Consider for a moment. We have agreed that Parton must have realized that even if he wasn’t being watched particularly carefully before he almost certainly is now. And he may be over-estimating our authority—putting it bluntly, our powers. He isn’t a professional, remember. Would he take it for granted that he couldn’t pass the gate?’

  Major Mortimer thought this over. ‘I agree he might not,’ he said after a while, ‘but sooner or later he’s going to be discharged, sent home . . .’

  ‘I wish to heaven we knew when. We are hideously on risk till Monday afternoon.’

  ‘Which is the rest of today, Saturday and Sunday, some of Monday.’

  ‘Don’t rub it in: I like it no more than you do. And even if Parton has suspicions about the gate, something might happen, something which he considered a really good excuse—good enough to get him past even a gatekeeper with instructions to the contrary. He would chance it then, I think, without waiting to be discharged.’

  ‘He probably would,’ Mortimer agreed grimly.

  Russell was silent for some time; his expression was severe. ‘We are on risk,’ he said, ‘and I do not minimize it. I do not dare. If Parton leaves Colton before Monday afternoon . . .’

  ‘If Parton gets to wherever Amadeus and he were arranging,’ Mortimer said venomously, ‘Sir Jeremy Bates will have something to answer for.’

  Charles Russell smiled, but sourly. ‘So we a
re back at Sir Jeremy,’ he said. He rose from his desk, staring from the darkening window. ‘And what about Schmidt?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘He died this morning, sir.’

  ‘Without further chatter?’

  ‘With nothing more.’

  ‘And Williams or yourself—you have discovered. . .?’

  ‘Nothing whatever. There’s no lead of any kind. You rather more than hinted that you didn’t expect one—to Sir Jeremy, that is; and to anything or anybody else there is nothing.’ Colonel Russell returned to his desk. When he spoke again he seemed to be doing something which, with Charles Russell, was a rarity; he seemed almost to be excusing himself. ‘You know, Mortimer,’ he said, ‘I am still very far from accepting that Schmidt was telling the truth. I don’t accept it even, as I know you do, as a working hypothesis. Just the same there are two things I feel I ought to tell you.’ Russell moved again to the sideboard, mixing a second ration of whisky. The first is that I have learnt from Nichol that Sir Jeremy could have known—did know, in fact—of his movements on Thursday afternoon. That proves nothing, of course: I pass it to you as a matter of interest. Negatively. And the second is even more ephemeral. I thought Sir Jeremy’s manner this afternoon decidedly unlike Sir Jeremy.’

  ‘Indeed, sir? In what way?’

  Colonel Russell, for a moment, was annoyed. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said shortly, ‘I’m not a psychiatrist.’

  ‘But you’re a very observant and experienced man,’ Mortimer said evenly.

  Russell laughed. ‘And you’re a very tactful and persuasive one,’ he said. ‘It comes to this: Bates began the meeting as he always does. You know—brisk to the point of arrogance. Putting us in our places. Then—then he seemed suddenly to go flat. He was obviously very tired, but I’ve seen him tired before now. It wasn’t that—I can’t put my finger on it. And when Nichol told him what he was proposing in the Development Commission he took it almost casually. He didn’t even criticize—no fuss, no argument. In another man you would have said that he was laughing it off. He went straight on to this new Slow Burner which they’re delivering in Oxford tomorrow; he invited himself to Colton for the day and . . .’