by Джеффри Лорд
MacMurdo looked up sharply, then sat back with a sigh, chewing his food with the air of a wistful cow. At last he said softly, «So you guessed it, eh? You’re a clever bunch up at Copra House. I should have known you’d keep rutting about until you came up with the whole truth. But how did you know?»
«One of my associates, a certain Dr. Ferguson, noticed something odd.»
«Ferguson. Of course. A good mind, though one cannot call him a gentleman. Those shirts…» MacMurdo shuddered. «You see, we all know each other in the psychiatric fraternity. You’ve heard the term ‘global village’?»
«Please, doctor,» J said gently. «Don’t try to change the subject.»
MacMurdo ran nervous fingers through his disheveled white hair. «Was old Colby involved in witchcraft? Up to his neck, I should say.» He took a hasty swallow of his dinner wine, as if to bolster his courage.
«But when we were investigating him, you said nothing about it.»
«No, I didn’t. No one on the staff did. We get rather clannish up here all by ourselves, cut off from the outside world. We protect each other as much as we can. It seemed to us Colby might eventually live down a reputation as a swinging single, but a warlock is another matter. It’s not an image that inspires confidence.»
«So you all covered up for him?»
The doctor nodded slowly. «We did. And it was worth it, I think, though now I suppose you’ll can the lot of us.»
«No, your jobs are safe enough. Loyalty means something to me, too. Team spirit and all that. But I must know all you can tell me about Colby and this witchcraft business. It’s become beastly important all of a sudden. To begin with, how did Colby manage to conceal his interest in the subject when we were investigating him for his security clearance?»
«Well, that investigation took place before he got into it. You found nothing because there was nothing to find. It was here at the sanitarium he first started mucking about in the Black Arts. One week he was as straight a man as you or I. The next week he was studying to be a second Merlin. The human mind is my business, old boy, and I can’t begin to explain such a complete transformation.»
«So it happened suddenly, eh? When was that?»
«I can’t recall the date without consulting my files, but it was right about the time you sent us that poor soul Mr. Dexter.»
«Dexter?» J said sharply.
«I see you remember him. I’m not surprised. He was a prize, that one. Most of the time he sat around looking at the wall, but now and again, without warning, he’d explode into a screaming fit, kicking down doors and howling about some worm that had a thousand heads. He was a big strong lad, at least when he first got here, and it took four or five of us to subdue him. Once he damn near strangled one of our orderlies to death.»
«What was Dr. Colby’s diagnosis?»
«Diagnosis? You know the old saying, ‘When in doubt, diagnose schizophrenia.’ In that sense, your Mr. Dexter was a schizo of the paranoid persuasion, but between us, sir, that was no more than a label we stuck on the case to cover up our own total bafflement. One thing we were sure of. Dexter was afraid. He was literally insane with fear. What was he afraid of? I haven’t a clue.»
«And what was the treatment?»
«Treatment? Why, we protected ourselves from him as best we could. That was the treatment. After the first day or two, Mr. Dexter was kept doped to the gills, and after a couple of weeks we eased off on the sedation bit by bit to see what would happen, finally cutting him off altogether. He was a regular sweetie after that. Sat on the edge of the bed staring at the wall and said, when he said anything at all, that same damn phrase about the worm with the thousand heads. In short, the man was little better than a vegetable. Colby felt somewhat guilty about how we handled Dexter. Said it would have been better not to dope him up so. sometimes you can reach a man that’s angry, but once he switches off the world, you can set fire to his clothes and he won’t notice. But you’ve got to understand this Dexter was a giant, a regular King Kong. He was afraid of something. Who knows what? But we were afraid of him!»
J mused thoughtfully, «Dexter was a very special man, Dr. MacMurdo. There’s only one other like him in the world.»
MacMurdo lowered his voice. «Dexter was being trained for something, wasn’t he? And there was an accident, wasn’t there? Colby never told me anything, but I guessed that much. It was so long ago. Surely you can tell me now.»
J shook his head. «No, I can’t. It’s still classified information, and besides, if I told you I’m afraid you’d lock me in here and never let me out.» He laughed raggedly.
MacMurdo recommenced eating, obviously annoyed. «Keep your little secrets,» he muttered, speaking with his mouth full. «See if I care. Anyway, Dexter had nothing to do with Colby taking up witchcraft. There were plenty of other things happening around here about that time. Dexter was the least of our worries.»
«What do you mean?»
«As you probably know, no old house in Scotland is complete without one or more ghosts. This sanitarium is no exception. MI6 has owned the manor since World War II, but the family ghosts don’t seem to realize that. They lie low for years, then suddenly they stage a grand comeback, howling and swinging chains and throwing the furniture around just like old times. If you ask me, that’s what set Colby off. The ghosts. For about two weeks this place was a madhouse in more ways than one. Crashing. Banging. Funny lights. Voices muttering things in foreign languages out of thin air. Strange faces in the mirrors. Even a fire that started, so they say, by spontaneous combustion! It burned up four rooms in the east wing before we could put it out. Could have brought the whole place blazing down around our ears! I can’t say who was seeing more things that weren’t there, the inmates or the staff. I saw a few things myself. I swear I did.»
«I don’t doubt it,» J said, thinking of the heavy dresser that had crashed against the wall in Blade’s room. «And Colby’s interest in witchcraft began during this period of haunting?»
«After the haunting,» the psychiatrist corrected.
«After? I don’t understand.»
There was a long uncomfortable pause, then MacMurdo reluctantly began, «First I have to tell you Colby had once had a daughter, back before his divorce, when he was finishing his schooling at the University of California in Berkeley.»
«A daughter?» J prompted, puzzled.
MacMurdo nodded gravely. «Jane was her name. She was about ten years old when she died, there in her bedroom looking out over the San Francisco Bay. Colby used to tell me about her again and again, about the view the poor child had had of the Golden Gate Bridge and all. Jane took an overdose of sleeping pills and died by that window. Nobody could say whether it was suicide or an accident. She didn’t leave a note.»
J broke in, «But what’s that got to do with. «
«The witchcraft business? Well, along with all those traditional Scottish spooks and ghosties and things that go bump in the night… along with all of them came Jane Colby. Dr. Colby saw her. He talked to her. He went for long walks with her in the hills.»
«You mean he said he did all that.»
«No! He did it! I swear. I saw the lass myself.» His Scottish accent became more pronounced when he was excited.
«Are you sure?»
«I never saw her close up, but once, in broad daylight, I saw Dr. Colby on a far-off hillside, walking hand in hand with somebody or something, and when he came back to the manor, he told me who it was. I had to believe him. Wouldn’t a man know his own daughter?»
«Are you saying you saw a ghost in the daytime?»
«These weren’t ordinary ghosts. Daytime or nighttime, it was all the same to them. That’s why, for two weeks, we hardly slept for two hours out of the twenty-four. There was always something happening. Toward the end, though, the haunting tapered off.»
«Why was that?»
«How should I know? All I can do is pass on to you what little Jane Colby told her father.»
J leane
d forward expectantly. «Yes? Yes?»
«She said she could only come through from the other side for a short time. She said she was cut off from her roots, and that a flower cut off from its roots must die.»
«By Jove!» J thumped his fist on the table. «So even a ghost has limitations!»
«Wait. There’s more. She said it was up to Colby to open up the gate and keep it open. Then she’d return to him and stay with him forever.»
«And he turned to witchcraft, thinking that witchcraft could open the gate to the other world!» J was triumphant. At last the whole unthinkable mess was beginning to form some sort of pattern, incomplete yet with an otherworldly logic of its own.
«You’ve guessed it,» MacMurdo admitted ruefully. «Witchcraft was very much alive in those days around here. It still is, as a matter of fact. Last month, while I was in town for supplies, I saw a witch on the telly being interviewed by a reporter, as if she was a bloody film star! But poor Dr. Colby was losing faith in them before your man came nosing about here and caught him with his pants off at a ruddy Witches’ Sabbath. They’d promised him a lot, but hadn’t given him anything but a bad head cold.»
«So that’s the story?» J stroked his chin thoughtfully.
«That’s the story. I know Copra House retired him into private practice after that, but I have no idea where he went. Do you?»
«No, but from what you’ve told me I can make a good guess.»
«Wherever it is, I’m sure he has continued his quest for a gateway to the other world. He was a strongly motivated man, sir. A very strongly motivated man.»
J agreed. «Yes. Guilt plus love equals compulsion.»
«Well said!» MacMurdo pushed back his chair and stood up. «If you’ve no more questions, I must say good night. I have to be up early tomorrow, as usual. We’re somewhat understaffed.»
«I understand.»
«The night man in the hall will show you to your room.» The psychiatrist turned to leave.
«Wait.» J raised his hand. «I do have one more question. I doubt if it will do any good, but could you let me see Dexter tomorrow morning?»
MacMurdo halted in the doorway, surprised. «Of course not.»
«Why not?»
«I thought you knew. Dexter is dead.»
It was J’s turn to be surprised. «You don’t say! When did he die?»
«Last Friday. After years of sitting around like a stuffed animal, he suddenly started screaming again and smashing things. Caught the night staff completely off guard. Before they could do anything either for him or to him, the poor chap died of convulsions. We did an autopsy, but except for the fact that he was dead, your Mr. Dexter appeared to be in excellent health. Now if you’ll excuse me… «
«Did you say Friday, doctor? What time Friday?»
«As I recall, the time of death was exactly one-forty A.M. Friday morning. I can check the records.»
«Never mind. I’m sure you have it right.»
«Good night then, and as pleasant dreams as could be expected under the circumstances.»
«Good night, Dr. MacMurdo.»
Dexter had died within minutes after Blade’s return from Dimension X.
J stared numbly at his half-empty plate. The only sound was the steady drumming of the rain on the windowpane.
Chapter 3
London that morning was gray under the diffuse light from the featureless overcast sky. The pavements were wet and hissed as the motorcars and lorries passed. Colors were muted; even the normally bright red of the double-decker buses. A cold unfriendly wind sent skirts whipping and hats flying.
J stood at the second floor window of Lord Leighton’s ancestral home at 391/2 Prince’s Gate, Kensington, puffing morosely on one of his beloved pipes-in defiance of his doctor’s orders-and staring down at the leafless trees in Prince’s Gate Crescent. From where he stood he could see hardly anything that had not been there when he was young, yet he knew Kensington had changed. Little by little its quiet residential streets had been invaded by a ragtag army of tradesmen; their antique markets and garish mod «boutiques» were everywhere, particularly along the once-respectable High Street and Kensington Church Street.
The antiques, in J’s opinion, were mostly trash, but it was the human trash attracted by the boutiques that depressed him. Boys who dressed like girls, girls who looked like boys, shadowy vague androgynous young people who cowered in doorways, sucking on marijuana cigarettes like babies sucking pacifiers. They’d been called different things at different times. Teddy Boys. Mods and Rockers. Even, borrowing a term from the Yanks, Hippies. Their names changed, yes, but always there were more of them, and with numbers they grew steadily bolder until now armed children in packs hunted through the streets day and night, hunted women, hunted the old, the handicapped, the helpless. The crimes of Jack the Ripper had horrified Victorian England; now they would probably pass unnoticed, too commonplace even for journals like The Sun.
On Tower Hill, across from the Tower of London, J had sometimes paused of late to listen to ranting apocalyptic evangelists call London a new Gomorrah, and in certain moods he’d slowly nodded agreement, thinking, Yes, we’re ripe for destruction, the whole bloody gang of us.
At such times Armageddon had seemed, if not inevitable, at least dreadfully desirable. The only question remaining to be debated was, «What form will the avenging angels of destruction take?»
Standing at the window, J thought, Will they be the ghosts of little girls who killed themselves? Or will they be invisible giants who throw the furniture around?
Behind him, in the dim interior of the old house, Lord Leighton was on the phone to Number Ten Downing Street.
«No more experiments? But sir, don’t be a damned idiot!» The hunchback’s voice was outraged, irascible.
In spite of his depression, J smiled. Few indeed were men with the gall to call the Prime Minister of England a damned idiot as openly as that. Lord Leighton had never been the sort to vent his spleen in anonymous letters to the Times, and the older he got the less he seemed to care about etiquette and «The Proper Forms.»
Leighton managed somehow to calm himself, though his mottled face turned dull red with the effort. «Yes, sir. I understand perfectly. It is you who hold the purse strings.» He paused, then, «Be good enough to save your platitudinous political slogans for the electorate, sir. It is they who hold your purse strings.» Another pause. «As always, your merest whim is my most imperious command, sir.» The sarcasm was harsh and unconcealed. «And good day to you, too, sir.»
Leighton hung up, banging down the receiver.
J, who had turned away from the window, said mildly, «I gather the PM is unhappy.»
Leighton flung himself into a tall-backed Chippendale chair. «We should never have told him what happened to Blade.»
«He would have found out sooner or later, and he would have been even more miffed if we’d kept it from him.»
Leighton glared up through his heavy glasses. «Things were different when Harry was PM.»
J sighed. «Quite.» The man they called Harry had held the reins of power when the project had begun, and had been behind it wholeheartedly, laying out the seed money with a marvelously open hand. His successors had been harder to please, each one more «economy-minded» than the last, particularly since the project, after years of work, seemed no nearer than at the beginning to reaching any firm conclusions about the nature of the X dimensions.
Leighton regarded his own blurred reflection in the polished surface of his desk, grimacing with distaste. «We don’t look very attractive to these young chaps that try to fill the Prime Minister’s shoes these days. Tell me, J, are they getting younger or are we getting older?»
«A bit of both, I expect.»
A brooding silence fell, during which the only sounds were the distant rumble and beep of the traffic and the faint pop and crackle of the low-burning coals in the grate. Leighton’s gaze turned moodily toward the tall narrow window that looked out on Prin
ce’s Gate Crescent.
Finally Leighton said quietly, «He gave us an ultimatum.»
J answered lightly, «Either we shape up or he trims our budget. I know that story by heart by now.»
«This time he’s not talking about trimming. This time he’s talking about shutting up shop altogether.»
«Good Lord,» J whispered.
«Yes, he’s talking about putting an end to Project Dimension X, once and for all. If we can’t bring Richard Blade back to normal within two weeks, he’ll lock us out of the Tower of London complex and throw away the key.»
J felt a curious numbness. A thousand times he’d hoped, he’d almost prayed-and he was not a praying man-that something would happen to terminate the project that put Richard, the nearest thing to a friend J had ever had, repeatedly into danger. Now it seemed J would get his wish. Why wasn’t he happy? He shuffled over to the grate, picked up a poker and began aimlessly rooting around in the fire. He muttered tonelessly, «All that time, energy and money wasted. All Richard’s risks gone for nothing.» He looked up suddenly. «But we still have two weeks, you say. We can bring in one of those boys we’ve been training and send him through the machine. Maybe he’ll make it through. Whatever happened to Richard, it happened over there, in that other world. That’s where the secret lies, so…»
Leighton raised a restraining hand. «The PM thought of that. He has forbidden us to send anyone else through.»
«The devil you say! How in the bloody blazes are we supposed to cure Richard if we can’t find out what happened to him? The answer is there, on the other side, and we have to be able to go looking for it!»
«So you think the PM is a fool?»
«Worse than a fool! I can’t find a word…»
«It may surprise you, but I can see his logic. That’s the curse of imagination! One can see the opponent’s logic every time. Damn near paralyzes a man! Here’s how he reasons. Blade is the only chap who ever went through into the X dimensions and returned alive and sane. Now Blade is out of the picture. Ergo we have no one we can safely send through, and moreover if we have no one we can safely send through, we actually have no project. We’re all done and we might as well go home.»
