But before I finished the pipe and turned into the guest house, I turned over and over what she’d said – and surely it had been almost forced out of her by the doomsday music – about her ‘Eight men’, my Wavy Eight. What she said ran back and connected up with what I’d felt when I’d seen what was left of Joe Farne, a good scientist and a decent quiet man who’d never done anybody any harm, carrying a tray into that dining-room. By God! – whatever these people were up to, I was now and evermore against it.
There was still nearly an hour and a half to kill. As I climbed the two flights to my room, I decided I’d go through Joe’s list again, item by item, to see if I could make any more sense out of it. I also decided, though I didn’t know why, that I’d take another look at young Rosalia’s letter, just to see how my memory of that petulant and whimsical wench was standing the wear-and-tear of events. Not a bad plan for killing an hour and a half in my room. But it didn’t work out.
As I entered, Otto and another young man, even bigger, grabbed an arm each. One of them kicked the door shut behind me. Sitting on the only two chairs in the room were von Emmerick and Merlan-Smith. I shook off the South American SS and cried angrily: ‘What’s this all about?’
‘You are going to tell us, Mr Bedford,’ said von Emmerick, in his best icy court-martial style. ‘Sir Reginald Merlan-Smith and I have had some difference of opinion about you. He thinks you may be important. I think you are a clumsy fool. You hear what I say, Bedford.’ He was shouting now; they must be taught this trick. ‘A clumsy fool.’
‘I’d say you’re both wrong. I’m not important, except to me, but I’m not quite a clumsy fool. But go on.’
He went back to the clipped dry-ice manner. ‘We knew of course that you were looking for Farne. We had been warned by the Arnaldos Institute. And if you imagine I am now revealing a great secret, that there is a link between the Institute and Osparas, you are still a fool. This fact is well known in Lima and Santiago. The Institute has a financial interest in Osparas. We make use of their research chemists. All this is common knowledge. You have been wasting your time discovering nothing.’ His contempt was enormous, intended to reduce me to a height of about three inches.
‘I suppose it’s also common knowledge – and perhaps the banks and chambers of commerce have it in print – that the Institute can ship you a scientist who doesn’t know what’s happening to him, that you can disguise him as an Indian waiter any night when it amuses you, and that any visitor is liable to be given a Prussian court martial in his bedroom. Look – I may be a fool, but I didn’t come as far as this to listen to that nonsense. I know too much already. And I haven’t kept all of it to myself. And though I came here alone, other people know I’m here.’ I looked at Merlan-Smith, who glanced anxiously from me to von Emmerick. ‘But I’ll do a deal with you. Let me take Farne away – and I’ll leave in the morning, or tonight if you like – and never come back.’
Merlan-Smith was about to say something, but von Emmerick, from his high horse, checked him. ‘I am in charge here at Osparas,’ said von Emmerick to both of us. ‘I do no deals. I refuse to be bluffed. And you are not negotiating from strength, Bedford. You were not invited here. We know nothing about you, if necessary. No more insolence.’ He was back to shouting again, but this time I think he couldn’t help it. Probably most of these icy lid-on types are boiling inside when the rest of us are only lukewarm.
I yawned, just to annoy him still more. ‘How long does this go on? I started early this morning – ’
‘Farne is not here,’ von Emmerick shouted.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true, Bedford,’ said Merlan-Smith, who didn’t seem to me to have completely recovered from the sight of that gold badge. What happened next might have been thought transference, but I don’t think so. Von Emmerick must have been working up to it all along.
He held out a hand. ‘Now you will give me the thing you showed to Sir Reginald after dinner.’ It was an order, not a request: we were on parade. I knew in my bones it wouldn’t work with him, but I saw no point in refusing to let him see it.
He gave each side of the badge one close rapid look, then turned contemptuously to Merlan-Smith. ‘Kitsch! As I thought. All bluff.’ Now he turned to me, bouncing the badge on his palm. ‘It is quite new – this thing. Where was it made for you? And why did you have it made?’
Instead of answering him I dived for the badge. Otto grabbed hold of me, to pull me back. Any temper I’d left I lost then, and, breaking his hold, I jabbed with my left and then hit him with everything my right had. I don’t know what the other fellow, behind me, hit me with, perhaps half a guest house, but the room exploded into stars and then darkness through which I fell. . . . Ragnarök . . .
12
There were no gemütlich Black Forest touches about that concrete hut where I found myself next morning, after a lot of wild dreams and a hell of a headache. It took me a long time to work out where I was. I was lying, fully dressed, just with a blanket over me, on a low hard cot. My brown canvas bag was in with me. The place was as bare as a cell, which was probably what it was. There was one small barred window, high up the wall. A single bulb hung down from the ceiling for evening illumination. In a recess, without a door or curtain, were two pails of water and an Elsan kind of lav. No soap, no towel, nothing fancy like that, just some squares of German newspaper for all purposes. The one door, a very solid job, was locked on the other side, of course. If I wasn’t a prisoner, then somebody had picked the wrong hut. It was clean enough but there was a smell suggesting the last two fellows who’d been in there had been drunks who’d used it as a urinal. And although bright sunlight was coming in through the window, making a shadow pattern of bars on the opposite wall, the place was still cold, as if the night refused to leave it. Here the night differed from T. Bedford, who was ready to leave it the moment full consciousness came back.
That was roughly about nine o’clock, my watch told me. I moved around a bit, not without difficulty, for I felt stiff as well as half-blinded with headache. Then I found enough energy to move the cot under the window, but when I stood on it and tried to look out, all I could see was a tantalising patch of blue sky. So I moved the cot back, sat on it, and wondered what happened next. I was beginning to feel badly in need of some breakfast, not bacon and egg or kippers but at least a hunk of bread and a hot drink. I tried smoking – I had plenty of pipe tobacco in my bag – but it didn’t taste right. A greenish semi-transparent insect about two inches long suddenly arrived from nowhere, but though I felt I was almost greenish and semi-transparent too, it took no interest in me. The interest I took in myself wasn’t enthusiastically appreciative. I blamed myself even more than I did von Emmerick and his boys. But this didn’t last long.
Then the door was unlocked, half-opened quickly, but then shut and locked again before I’d time to see who’d done it. However, breakfast or lunch had arrived – bread, butter, two slices of boiled horse, and – thank God! – coffee. All on a cobalt-blue plastic tray meant for nothing better than sliding across a concrete floor. There was a knife of sorts included, but I couldn’t have done any damage to anybody or anything with it, couldn’t have scratched my initials on the wall. However, when I’d cleared the tray, I felt better, and my pipe tasted all right. Of course I asked myself a lot of questions, but as I’d no answers to any of them, they aren’t worth any individual mention. I also did what I’d planned to do the night before – I read once more that letter young Rosalia Arnaldos had left behind, when she bolted. So you must go on with your search and perhaps you will think about me and feel something deep, or perhaps you won’t. I tried to think about her, to see if anything deep came of it, but nothing did. It was easier to think about Mr Jones, especially between eleven and half-past, when he’d be waiting by that rock. There was just a chance that Nadia might have gone to meet him, but it was more likely that she was still furious, a woman scorned, because I’d never turned up in her room. As for p
oor Joe Farne, I couldn’t help feeling that von Emmerick and Merlan-Smith had told me the truth when they’d declared he wasn’t here any longer. So you must go on with your search. And that’s what I did, ducky, I told a wavering unsatisfactory image of the girl. And now Ace Bedford, that solitary intrepid investigator, one man against the whole Wavy Eight, is locked in a concrete hut, like the clot he undoubtedly is.
That mood lasted an hour or so, then suddenly I found myself in a hell of a rage. I banged on the door. I shouted. I behaved like a maniac. After that I felt silly but better, had a careful cold shave, washed the top half of me with shaving soap and half a pail of water, and combed my hair as if something was about to happen. Then I waited for it to happen. It didn’t. I’d a sketchbook in my bag, but nothing to read. I fooled about a bit with the names on Joe’s list, even drew some of the types. Nothing happened except that by this time, early afternoon, the hut warmed up a bit. Perhaps out of sheer boredom, perhaps out of a kind of exhaustion, I fell asleep. I dare say that deep down I was beginning to feel some real fear, and rather than admit to myself it was there, I found it easy to retreat into sleep. There’d been times like that in the war.
I awoke about six, feeling hungry. The sunlight had vanished from the window. Soon it would be cold again, and a long evening and what might easily be a sleepless night were on their way. Even so, and hungry as I was, I decided against any more shouting and banging around. Bedford had his pride. So I sat on the cot, enjoying my pride. There was nothing else to do. Dusk began creeping up the walls. I switched on my solitary bulb, turned it off for no sensible reason, then after counting a hundred in the deeper dusk, I switched it on again. But you can’t make much of a pastime out of a single light switch.
Then soon after seven, just when I was beginning to feel that nothing would ever happen again, the big production started. The door was flung open, and in came a gun, pointing straight at me, followed by a tough-looking young German who was obviously ready to use any weapon he might be holding. He stood to one side, still keeping the gun on me, while two dark waiter types brought in a small table and three light chairs. The gunman sat down on one of these chairs. The two dark types departed, but within a minute a third came in, bringing with him a wonderful savoury smell and a covered tray, which he set down on the table. Dinner was served. When this third man had gone, the young German with the gun hastily locked the door on the inside, pocketed the key, and sat down again, his chair against the wall now, to keep guard while I ate. There was nothing wrong with the dinner, which was similar to the one I’d eaten the night before among the top Osparas people, except that the food was rather heavily salted and there was nothing to drink, no wine, not even any water.
But of course I felt much better, not only because I was now stoking up for the night but also because these fairly elaborate arrangements proved that I hadn’t been forgotten. Indeed, I guessed this sudden change of treatment was part of a plan. I tried to learn something from the gun holder but the bit of German I knew wasn’t enough to draw him out of his sullen and watchful silence, and the only thing I did discover was that he couldn’t speak English. I tried to imagine what he’d been told I’d done, or attempted to do, perhaps wreck the whole hi-fi equipment; but whatever he’d been told, he’d certainly not come on duty here in any friendly spirit. I felt he’d blow my kneecap off, at the very least, if I made any hostile move. In any case, I was far more interested at the moment in that dinner.
Then I filled and lit a pipe over the empty plates and dishes, pushed my chair back and stretched out my legs, and I was coming to the end of that pipe, the best of the day, when the next item on the programme began. The door was unlocked to admit the same waiter, who was now carrying a tray loaded with liquid refreshment – a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of pisco, soda, water, a bowl of ice cubes and several glasses. This replaced the dinner tray on the table, and was a most welcome sight because by this time I had worked up a tremendous thirst. But just as the waiter was carrying out the dinner tray, another visitor arrived, to be locked in with me by the sulky and suspicious guard.
He looked like a highly intellectual oldish gnome. He was small and misshapen in some way; he carried his impressive head, high and bald in front with a frill of grey curls round the ears, very much to one side; his eyes, magnified by thick spectacles, looked enormous, two sepia tarns with the sun on them. Though essentially, I felt, a serious character, he smiled all the time, as if his face had to wear a smile like a badge. He gave the impression, perhaps deliberately, of being slow-moving and clumsy, but I soon noticed that the movements of his hands were as quick and deft as those of a conjuror, perhaps doing an act as an absent-minded professor.
‘Mr Bedford, I am Dr Rother.’ He spoke quietly and rapidly. ‘First I must ask you to trust me. Otherwise we can do nothing. Will you trust me, Mr Bedford? It is our only chance.’ He looked hard at me, then held out his hand. I gripped it and gave it a shake, and was about to say something when he checked me. ‘Not yet, please. There may be a microphone installed here.’ He looked round smilingly, as if only idly curious, then made a rapid tour of the whole place, toilet recess and all, before he spoke again.
‘It is okay. No microphone. I asked for this young man to act as guard. He understands no English and is very stupid. But you will feel happier, I think, if I make him stupider. Drinks,’ he cried in a loud clear tone. ‘Now we have drinks.’
He turned, with a broad smile, to the young German, who’d been eyeing the pisco bottle greedily. After a quick exchange in German he evidently persuaded the young man that it would be safe for him to have a drink. Then he pushed the table to one side, away from both the young German and me, turned his back on us as he began pouring out the drinks, but continued talking to me quietly and quickly again. ‘You would like some whisky, I think. So would I. It is also necessary. Soon I will explain. I am a chemist. Our friend, Countess Slatina, told you, I think. I have with me a little box of chemical tricks. The pisco I will give this stupid young man will make him stupider almost at once. I will give you an honest whisky, Mr Bedford. But in the bottom of this other glass – you will see – will be a little whisky mixed with a certain drug. This you are supposed to have been drinking. That is why I have been sent here. And now – drinks,’ he cried again, as before, all smiles. He handed me my whisky, gave the young German his glass of pisco, then returned to the table for his own whisky. Then he and I made a production out of it, with glass-raising and Cheers and Prosit.
Now he sat down, ignoring our guard, and talked to me in the same quiet rapid fashion. ‘Soon you can ask questions and I will try to answer them, Mr Bedford. But first I must warn you. It would be easy soon to take the gun and the key from the guard. But I ask you not to do this and to have patience for tonight. First, no plans have been made yet for you to escape from Osparas. And without such plans this would be difficult. Also I wish to come too, but not tonight. Second – if you work with me tonight, you will learn something important. It is useful for me, also. You are an artist, I am told, so probably you know nothing about chemistry and all the new developments in drugs – ’
I had to admit I neither knew nor cared.
‘It is a pity,’ he said, almost mournfully. ‘These new developments are quite fascinating. They are also being used now all the time by this organisation. It is scientific and – what – zeitgenössisch – up-to-date – in its techniques. That is why I am here, they think. Tonight I give you the first dose of a relaxing drug that will make you sleep. After a second dose tomorrow you would freely answer any questions – ’
‘Tell all I know,’ I put in. ‘What I’ve found out. Who else knows. The whole works. That’s what I thought happened.’
‘Later tonight, after I have reported progress, one of them, probably von Emmerick himself, will come to have a look at you. So you must give a performance, as if you had already taken the drug. But they will not question you tonight. It is too soon. Tomorrow night is the time, and before then
you must have gone from here. I also.’
Rother brought his chair closer. The young German’s head was now tilted back against the wall, and he was snoring hard. ‘Now for your questions, Mr Bedford,’ said Rother. ‘I know you came from the Arnaldos Institute here to look for Joe Farne.’
‘And they let me look at him last night,’ I said angrily. ‘Then told me later he wasn’t here. What happened?’
‘I can only guess. A truck left here last night for Argentina. A regular service has been organised by Osparas. By truck, motor-boat, road or rail, first to San Carlos and then across Argentina to Viedma and Bahia Blanca. I think Farne was taken away on that truck. So there would be no chance of you meeting him, Mr Bedford. But where he was taken to, I do not know. I work for this organisation. I am now one of their trusted research men. But I am not a member of it, like von Emmerick or Sir Reginald Merlan-Smith.’
‘Look – Dr Rother’ – and I probably sounded as baffled as I felt – ‘I wish you’d start by explaining this whole Farne business, because it doesn’t make any sense to me. I know he was brought here from the Institute in bad shape – probably doped up – but then somehow he wrote a letter to his wife – I saw it – in fact she gave me the last sheet of it, which he’d obviously written in a great hurry – ’
‘That was because of me, Mr Bedford. I was going down to Peulla, to check some supplies the Osparas boat was bringing. So I had a chance to post this letter for him. He had no such chance himself. He was closely watched. I had been here three months when he was brought here. They had to find out how much he knew. He had told them something but not all. He was very stubborn – very much an English bulldog – and had not responded well to the drug treatment Schneider had given him – not openly of course but introduced into his food and drink. When he came here, I said I would try a different treatment. So I did of course but only so he could recover. And that is when he wrote to his wife. You know about his wife?’
Saturn Over the Water Page 17
