VISITORS TO THE CRESENT

by MARY HOCKING

  George Vickers was particularly distressed. For some time previously events had been moving fast. He had been recalled over a week ago and he had been instructed to bring Saneck with him. He had no doubt what that meant. The unforgivable crime was to play the game for yourself, for your own amusement and pleasure. Either way he looked now, destruction awaited him. He had become the universal enemy. It was a rôle that he liked: it would be interesting to see whether he could beat them all.

  And then, suddenly and inexplicably, they seemed to lose interest in him at this end. He was like a man in a tennis match, exhilarated, playing at the peak of his game, whose rhythm is suddenly broken when his opponent begins to slow down the pace. He had expected that from now on things would move at an ever increasing speed, and it was with a sense of outrage that he realized that someone else was controlling the pace. This sudden damming of his violent exhilaration wreaked irreparable damage; when the brake was applied it seemed that something within him was wrenched out of place. The jar of pain was more than he could bear.

  He felt the first shiver of fear. Suppose he could not sustain his strength? Was it possible that the spring of his hatred might run dry so that even this fulfilment would be denied him? He began to dread that this last adventure might peter out in a tussle in a blind alley; he saw himself impotent, a ludicrous figure in a grotesque puppet show too mean to beget passion. And afterwards, because they did not understand hatred, they would let the psychiatrists work on him, burrowing in his past, searching his home life and early childhood for motives that fitted their neat little theories on human behaviour.

  The religious, too, would be contaminated by pity, by tolerance, by the humanism that refused to acknowledge evil in man. Once they would have spoken with a sterner voice; but each age recreates God in its own image and now God had become the supreme psychiatrist. The Middle Ages would have been better: that was the time to have lived. Men had a respect for sin in those days. He would have been accorded his true magnificence: to be God’s enemy—that was a rôle worthy of him. To be God’s enemy and to be punished accordingly. For if punishment there must be, let it be savage and without the taint of mercy, let it be something that would be full of hate, that would engender fear almost equivalent to the fear of God himself.

  He thought these thoughts at night, but in the daytime another person took over. Across a widening chasm, as the slow days dragged by, he watched that other person making preparations steadily and calmly as though the future were still a matter in which he had a stake.

  There was no reason why he should not follow his instructions, if a little tardily, to the extent of planning an escape; if he could get out of England he might yet outwit them all. So the daytime stranger argued.

  He decided that Ames must be left to fend for himself. Apart from his contact with Vickers, Ames knew nothing about the set-up. But Saneck knew much more; Saneck could reveal information which would be useful, though hardly sensational. It was no part of Vickers’s plan to make a free gift to British Intelligence. Also, the man who was going to aid him in his escape would certainly expect him to be accompanied by Saneck. He was, therefore, angry when he discovered that Saneck had disappeared, but not seriously alarmed. He fancied he knew Saneck well. He could not imagine this man suddenly taking flight for places unknown; there was nothing of the pioneer in Saneck; when, and if, he made a real escape he would need a guide. Saneck, Vickers guessed, had run away on a panic-stricken impulse and soon he would be back because, when the first fear died, he would experience the greater fear of having to decide what to do next. And the simplest thing to do next would be to return. Nevertheless, Vickers set certain enquiries in motion and it was not long before he found out where Saneck was staying. He arranged for him to be watched but he made no immediate attempt to get in touch with him. It was safer for the moment to have Saneck out of the way; and he could pick him up as soon as it was necessary.

  All the time that he made his plans, the pain grew more intense and the throb of blood in his veins was an intolerable agony. The edge of his fear sharpened.

  II

  Desmond Ames was not torn by any conflict of personality; both in the day and in the night, Ames was afraid. He had begun to think during the last few days about his position and how he could improve it. Murder was something he had not bargained for when he got into this racket, and if the man who had been killed turned out to be a policeman, Ames supposed it was possible that the charge would be capital murder. He was rather hazy about this aspect of the law, and he was hardly in a position to demand clarification.

  He began to drink even more heavily, but during the periods of enforced sobriety his mind hovered over the events of that dreadful evening. He wished that he had not allowed Vickers to arrange an alibi with Paddy Brett. How did they know the girl could be trusted? Once or twice he toyed with the idea of going to the police and telling them that it was all a lie, that he had no idea what Vickers did later that evening. After all, it was Vickers’s car; there need be nothing to link Desmond Ames with what had happened. Even if the café proprietor were to be traced, even if he should identify himself and Vickers, he could not say that Ames had left in Vickers’s car because Ames had, in fact, left the café after Vickers. It would have been very simple to tell the police a little story – if only he had the courage to do it. But he was much too afraid of Vickers and the people behind him. He was much too dependent on the money.

  And then something happened which reversed the picture in a particularly unpleasant way. He came into his office rather later than usual one morning to find the maintenance men moving a cabinet into his room, supervised by one of his colleagues.

  ‘I can’t have that thing in here. Smith,’ he objected petulantly. ‘There isn’t room.’

  ‘There will damn well have to be, old man.’

  When the maintenance men had gone, grumbling and sweating, Smith wiped his own brow with an exaggerated gesture and flopped down in a chair by Ames’s desk.

  ‘There was a bit in one of the papers last night that gave me quite a shock,’ he confided. ‘Kept me awake – and it has to be something to keep me awake thinking of this place.’

  ‘What has that got to do with filing cabinets?’ Ames asked irritably. He had a very thick head, and all that he could think of was the lunch hour when he would be able to cure it with the hair of the dog that bit him.

  ‘It was about a security office somewhere – I’ve forgotten whether it was the Foreign Office or the Admiralty, might even have been one of the consulates. But the point was this: they had one of their top secret files right out in the corridor where anyone could have got at it. And it suddenly occurred to me that that was just where ours was! I tell you, I couldn’t get in here quick enough.’ He grinned across at Ames. ‘Sorry old man; but you’ll have to put up with the thing until this scare blows over. And for God’s sake make sure you lock it each night.’

  ‘We lost the key,’ Ames pointed out.

  ‘Christ! When did that happen?’

  ‘I told you. A week ago.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to get another, damn quick.’

  ‘But how? It means bringing someone in to fit another one, and then they’ll want to know when it was lost and we shall have to tell them a week ago, and then they’ll want to know why we didn’t report it before.’

  They stared at one another. Ames began to wonder whether he could possibly get out for a drink at twelve o’clock; he didn’t think he could last out any longer than that.

  ‘I think we shall have to face the music,’ Smith was saying. ‘There’s a big security check starting up now and it will look much worse if we wait to be found out. We’ll have to say that we each thought the other had done something about it. After all, it’s very nearly true.’

  This was dreadful, Ames thought. The damnable thing was that the key was really lost. It was incredible that, with all the things that could happen, he should get into this fix through a genuine accident. The other
man was watching him with an expression Ames did not like.

  ‘You look as though you had a rough night,’ he said.

  ‘Little party,’ Ames murmured.

  ‘Sure you didn’t lose our key after a little party?’

  ‘I didn’t lose the key at all,’ Ames’s voice spiralled sharply, ‘I gave it to Miss Withers, You know that.’

  The other said nothing. Now he will go and ask Miss Withers, Ames thought desperately, and the old cow will lie because she will be in a panic, too. But Smith did not go away. He sat fidgeting with a paper-weight, his face stiff with unaccustomed seriousness. Finally, he said without looking up:

  ‘I should ease up on the night-life a bit, if I were you. For the next few months they’re going to expect us to live like a lot of monks.’

  ‘I haven’t been out for weeks apart from last night,’ Ames retorted.

  ‘You were in that club off Denman Street a couple of weeks ago. I saw you coming out of it about four in the morning. It’s got a bad name, so I’m told; the police raid it periodically and all that sort of thing. Not the kind of place that civil servants are supposed to know about, much less frequent.’ He saw the expression on Ames’s face and said hastily: ‘Sorry, old man – I’m not spying on you. But it was the wife’s birthday and we had been doing a bit of drinking ourselves.’

  If it was his wife’s birthday, Ames thought, he would remember the date.

  ‘Anyway, it’s not important,’ the other went on. ‘But, to be frank, you don’t carry your liquor all that well, do you?’

  He got to his feet, embarrassed and anxious to be off now that he had shot his bolt. Ames made no attempt to stop him. He sat hunched over his desk. He had forgotten about the little story that he had thought he might tell the police; all that he could think now was that he had jeopardized his own alibi. He had promised Vickers when he parted from him at three o’clock on that memorable morning that he would go back to his flat at once, but on the way he had experienced the familiar craving and he had drifted into the club. Suppose the police got hold of that and then questioned the girl? She might give him away, say that the alibi was a fake; worse than that, she might say that she was with Vickers, that the whole thing had been arranged in order to protect him, Ames. Vickers would be in the clear, while he . . . Suddenly he got up from his desk and stumbled across to the cupboard. Empty; he had thought it was, but it was worth checking. He put the bottle back and took out a telephone directory instead.

  The door opened and Miss Withers came in.

  ‘I’ve got to make a ’phone call – dental appointment,’ he said.

  ‘It’s about that key,’ she began in an ominous tone.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about the key,’ he said. ‘I’ve got toothache, raging toothache. I’ll see you later.’

  When she had gone out, he telephoned the office in Piccadilly where Paddy Brett worked as a telephone operator. Fortunately, she answered his call.

  ‘You’re not far from Westminster, are you?’ he said. ‘Come and have a drink with me in the lunch hour.’

  She was not very keen and he had to tell her that it was about their little party on April 20th. After that she agreed to come. By twelve o’clock when he left the Air Ministry nothing seemed to matter very much except his need for a drink. He hustled Paddy into the Red Lion and pushed his way to the bar; he drank a whisky quickly before he ordered for them both. By the time he joined her, things did not seem so urgent. It was a chance in a million that anyone would question Smith about his movements on that particular night; and the club proprietor could be relied on to cover up for him, it wouldn’t do his business any good if he helped the police with their enquiries. Nevertheless, it would be as well to make sure that Paddy would stand her ground.

  She took the whisky that he handed to her and glanced around the crowded bar.

  ‘What a lot of large men,’ she murmured.

  ‘Policemen,’ Ames explained. ‘Scotland Yard is just round the corner.’ He was so used to the place that he could not understand her amazement.

  ‘Are you mad?’ she whispered.

  ‘Safe as houses,’ he assured her, becoming jaunty now. ‘I do quite a few of my . . . transactions here.’

  She drank the whisky and reached for her handbag.

  ‘Come on. We can go somewhere else.’

  ‘But there’s nowhere else to go,’ he snapped, his fingers tightening around his glass. ‘All the places round here are full of them, and by the time we get to the other side of the bridge I shall be due back at the office for a meeting.’ He finished his whisky and went to refill their glasses.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he assured her as he sat down in their alcove again: ‘The police only come here to guzzle beer and tell one another dirty stories.’

  Unfortunately, this remark was overheard by one of the large men who was just about to embark on a dirty story. He was deeply offended. From that moment onwards, Ames had an audience of two.

  III

  At about the time that Ames was betraying himself in the Red Lion, Jessica received a telephone call from Anna Pevrik.

  ‘He said that I mustn’t get in touch with you.’ Anna was speaking softly and Jessica realized that Edward must be somewhere in her house. ‘But he looks so ill. My dear, if you could see him now, whatever has happened between you, you would forgive him. Please . . .’ She broke off suddenly, and then continued in an unnatural tone: ‘Please see that it is delivered soon.’

  Jessica said: ‘I’ll come at once. Keep him there.’

  She grabbed her coat and rushed out, and then had to go back for her handbag. The West Indian woman in the house next door was sun-bathing on the doorstep. She called out to Jessica that it was a beautiful day and two of the children scampered down to the gate. Jessica said that she was in a hurry and then wished that she had not sounded so dramatic. Lately, she was beginning to regret almost every word that she uttered.

  Vickers was in the shop as she went by. She saw him glance at her through the window. For a moment she was afraid that he was going to follow her and she had to steel herself not to glance behind her as she walked towards the main Holland Park Avenue. When she reached the tube station, she was so nervous that for a moment she could not remember where she was going. Vickers had not appeared, but now she was wondering whether he had sent someone else to follow her. By the time that she reached Anna’s house In Hampstead she had identified seven possible followers. Edward had gone out. Anna said that she had seen him turn in the direction of the High Street.

  If anyone had been following Edward they must have found the task easy, for Jessica soon spotted him sitting in the window of a small tea-shop facing the heath. He looked very thin and fine¬drawn, rather wraithlike, a man whose face it would be difficult to describe. She had often thought how anonymous he was; but now, something in the emptiness of the eyes made her see it as the anonymity of the fugitive. It was the face of a man worn to the nerve’s edge.

  On the journey she had gone over what she had to say to him; it had all seemed very clear and logical. Looking at him now, she realized how little he would be affected by logic. They had nothing in common, no ground on which they could meet. The hopelessness of persuading him to accompany her on the hazardous escape from nightmare filled her with despair. He had been living in a nightmare for so long that to him it had become the only world; that, at least, she was beginning to understand. The understanding sapped her strength. Was it possible that what seemed so right to her might be wrong for him?

  There was an elderly man standing outside a dress shop holding a newspaper in front of his face and on the edge of the heath a young girl was sitting on a bench reading a book. Jessica looked at the girl; she had her head bent over the book but she did not seem to be turning the pages. The girl looked so young, it was surely impossible that she should be involved in this. If only she would turn a page. Perhaps she was reading poetry? Jessica began to pace up and down. The dread of failure paralysed
thought. The elderly man outside the dress shop folded his newspaper and came towards her. She waited. If he causes trouble I shall bluff it out and threaten to call a policeman, she told herself. But he walked straight past her to greet a woman who had just come out of a hairdresser’s shop. While Jessica’s attention had been distracted, Edward had left the tea-shop and was crossing the road to the heath. She ran after him. The girl on the bench did not raise her head from the book as Jessica went past.

  ‘Anna!’ Edward said bitterly when Jessica reached him.

  ‘You mustn’t blame her. She thought we had had a lovers’ quarrel.’

  Only a few days ago that might have been true; now they dismissed the idea as though there had never been intimacy between them. They walked along the edge of the heath until they came to a bench and then sat stiffly, like people waiting in a hospital corridor. Jessica was too taut for subtlety.

  ‘I know everything,’ she said.

  He looked at her in a puzzled way and she said loudly:

  ‘I saw Vickers sending out a message.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Jessica, we can’t talk.’

  ‘There is no one around.’

  He seemed surprised, as though this particular thought had not occurred to him.

  ‘I meant, it is not possible for you and me to talk to one another.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘All right,’ he capitulated. ‘Talk.’

  She recognized the old avoidance of conflict. Argument, persuasion, reason would be useless. With what weapon could she attack him? For attack she must if she was to penetrate the frozen surface of his mind.

  ‘What good do you think this will do you?’ she said angrily. ‘If you’re going to run away, you’ll need to run much faster and further.’