by Jack Gerson
'God! What is that smell?' she exclaimed.
Crane broke his silence. 'Like... like corruption, isn't it?'
He realised he hadn't known why he should have described it that way. He looked down at the foot of the door. Anne was right. Light filtered out dimly. He pushed the door open.
Halfway open the door hit an obstacle and stuck. Crane pushed harder and was aware of a moaning sound. The obstacle, whatever it was, seemed yielding and he pushed the door harder. There was a thump and the door came full} open.
The light they had seen under the door came from one guttering black candle on a side table. Set in a cracked candlestick it dripped hot wax onto the table on which a large volume was open. Beyond the table was a couch, its covers disarrayed as if from the pressure of a heavy body. On the floor beside the couch was the telephone, the receiver off the hook. The walls of the room were lined with books, all of them begrimed with dust.
The odour which had assailed them in the hall was now all around them and so strong that Anne who had come into the room behind Crane had to withdraw back to the hall, her face ashen.
Crane found Oliphant. The fat man was lying behind the door and indeed his body had been the obstacle to opening the door. Crane knelt beside the great hulk of the man.
'Is he dead?' Anne whispered from the door, not with fear but with almost clinical aloofness.
'No. He's still breathing.'
Anne was at once beside Crane. 'Let's get him onto the couch. And for God's sake switch on the electric light.'
A struggle ensued to carry Oliphant's large bulk onto the couch. The old man's face was pale and streaked with perspiration. Once on the couch he started to breath heavily as if every breath might be his last.
Crane stood back as Anne examined him, loosening his collar. Oliphant was dressed in a shirt buttoned to his neck, no tie, a pair of slacks marked by ash and food stains and held by a tie in place of a belt around his middle.
After her peremptory examination Anne stood back with a puzzled look on her face.
'What's the matter with him?' Crane asked. 'Heart attack?'
She shook her head. 'His heart's going like a bomb. It's not that. He's sweating profusely but I don't think he's running a temperature. I think we'd better get hold of his doctor.'
'No! No doctor. Don't do any good.' The words came from Oliphant, each word seemingly an enormous effort.
'What is the matter with you?' Anne asked kneeling beside the couch. 'Something you've had before?'
A grim twisting of the face represented an attempt on the old man's face to smile.
'No, not before. But I know what it is.'
Crane sat on the edge of the couch. 'Can you tell us?'
'Oh, yes, I could tell you...' Oliphant gasped and then started to shiver. The large body trembled, the flesh wobbling, the face contorted again.
'Ah, God,' he gasped. 'I'm burning all over... burning up... and the pain... the pain...'
Anne looked at Crane. She shrugged. 'No temperature. He's shivering but he feels he's burning up.'
As quickly as it had started the shivering stopped. Oliphant licked his dry cracked lips.
'Brandy! Please...' He indicated a corner table covered with tins of food, some of them open and half used, some of them empty. In the midst of this debris was a half bottle of brandy. Crane found and rinsed a glass and poured out a liberal brandy. Anne put it to Oliphant's lips and he swallowed it greedily. Brandy ran down from the side of his mouth forming rivulets and deltas on his heavy jowls.
The brandy seemed to relax him. He lay for a moment unmoving and then stirred, raising himself until he was half leaning on the back of the couch.
'Better,' he murmured. 'Much better. For a while.'
'I'm going to get a doctor...' Anne was insistent.
Oliphant shook his head, his jowls shaking with the effort. 'It won't make any difference. You see, I'm a dead man.'
'Don't be insane!' Crane interjected. 'Whatever it is can be treated.'
'No. There is no treatment for this. You see, Drexel learned I'd been in touch with you... oh, don't ask me how, but he knew. This is his method of getting rid of me.'
Anne looked at Crane. 'Some kind of poison..?'
'Not poison!' Oliphant insisted. 'He sent... something.'
There was a long moment's silence. Anne and Crane stood motionless looking down at the fat man on the couch.
Anne broke the silence. 'I don't believe this! Some kind of auto-suggestion? Hypnosis?'
'You can call it that. You can call it anything you like. But it's real and it's happening to me.' As if to prove his point Oliphant's face again contorted in pain.
'It's... it's creeping back,' his voice was strained and trembling again.
'What the hell is it?' Crane demanded as if the forcefulness of the demand would somehow bring the old man back to a kind of sanity.
The reply was faint and broken as Oliphant's face became diffused with blood. 'One of... one of the more deadly entities. It burns, God, how it burns... I... can't fight it. Drexel's power is too strong.'
'It's only in your mind, Oliphant, that's all...'
'It's... it's indeed in my mind, Crane. And it's burning it out'
Anne leaned forward and grabbed Oliphant's shoulders. 'Look at me!' she shouted. 'Look at me! It's not happening, Oliphant! Once you accept that, you'll be all right.'
The force of her grip on his shoulders seemed to rally the old man. 'Ask Crane! Ask him to look into my mind. He can do it. He can...'
Again Anne shot Crane a look. He shrugged and then stared at Oliphant, forcing himself to concentrate. Nothing happened.
Oliphant waved a plump hand at him feebly. 'Don't try so hard, my boy... don't try... let it happen...'
Crane allowed the tension he had created in himself to dissipate. Blackness suddenly swirled around his consciousness, the same blackness he had experienced when he had telephoned Oliphant. And inside the blackness were shapes moving, sliding, slithering.
He knew he was only on the threshold of Oliphant's mind but mentally he recoiled.
'Come through... come through...' The old man gasped.
And he was through. He could feel the heat course through his mind and down into his body; and the heat was increasing, becoming more agonising every second. And there was an awareness of something else there.
Something else.
Something.
Black, twisted, unclean; something writhing in the centre of the man's being; an entity without size but gross and ugly and deadly.
Crane pulled himself back. If he hadn't done so, he knew he might well not be able to pull himself back. He knew he might burn inside himself with an agony that would quickly destroy him.
Crane came away from Oliphant's mind.
Anne was holding him by the shoulders now, supporting him and he knew that without her strong hands he would have collapsed.
'Tom!' she was almost shaking him. 'Tom, are you all right?'
'I saw, Anne, I saw... something. It's killing him.'
He straightened up and she loosened her grip on him. She turned back to Oliphant and stared down at him, her face baffled.
'I have to get an ambulance, Tom. While you were standing there I checked pulse and heart beat. Now they're both going wild. It's as if his whole metabolism is haywire. Hardly a medical description but I don't know how to describe it.' She ran her hand through her hair. 'Then I turned to you and for a few seconds you looked like a reflection of him. It's beyond me.'
Oliphant was shivering again, shuddering and moaning. Crane turned away feeling exhausted and helpless.
'Get your ambulance. Not that I think it'll do much good.'
Anne picked up the telephone. She rattled the bar anxiously and then slammed the receiver back. 'It's dead. I'll have to find a phone.'
'I'll wait with him.'-
She went out quickly with one puzzled clinical look at the old man on the couch. Crane looked around, found an anc
ient wicker chair in a corner of the room and pulled it over to the couch. Apart from slight shudders and whimpers, Oliphant was lying back his eyes open, staring at Crane.
'I have to tell you... have to before... before it comes back. It... attacks... then goes, then comes back. What you can call a demon... if... if you believe in demons.'
'I don't know what I believe in any more,' Crane said wearily, more to himself than to Oliphant.
'Listen to me, Crane,' Oliphant coughed and then reached out, gripping Crane's arm, as if drawing strength from the younger man. 'Listen! All I said to you on the telephone. It was true. Drexel... he was responsible for the crash that killed your wife...'
'I've known it all the time.'
'Yes... yes, but he wanted to kill your wife. You asked about the computer, didn't you?'
'I asked...'
'That was Drexel's real task... to break into Department Seven...'
"You know about Department Seven?' Crane was surprised.
. 'At the beginning I worked for them. For Scott-Erskine. Oh, I had bits of knowledge that were useful at the beginning. But I was too old to be of real use. In those... those days they were just starting. And they were building the computer for the Department. Scott-Erskine wouldn't tell you but it's not simply a computer for storing information. The damn thing's like a brain. Not just cross references but... but deductions. The sum of all knowledge gathered by the Department. With deductions, conclusions, everything. Your wife took over as operator a few years ago. She knew, you see, she knew...'
Again his body twisted in pain and he tensed, his nails digging deep into Crane's arm.
'No... no... not yet, you haven't finished me yet!' he shouted, and then seemed to relax again.
'I'm all right... I'm all right, for now,' he said, struggling to gain breath. 'I have to tell you, Crane. Your wife was trusted by Scott-Erskine, and she wouldn't betray that trust. But she knew something was wrong... Drexel had found a way of getting into the computer.'
'I don't understand,' Crane found himself murmuring ineffectually.
Oliphant went on, ignoring the interruption.
'He has to use people... psychics to project... the woman in Musselburgh... the others he... he destroyed or ruined. He uses anyone with ability that he can control. Even a mute, lost child...'
'Morag?'
Oliphant nodded. 'She's his medium. Whether she wants to be or not, he uses her. And he was finding a way of projecting into the computer. Of learning what's stored there.'
'It's not possible. It's a machine...!'
'It's a brain. Ask your cybernetics people. Ask Scott-Erskine.'
'But, even if he can do what you say, what use is it?'
'The... the greatest accumulation of detailed knowledge of the paranormal assembled and analysed in... in one place. It's power, Crane, power and knowledge that goes further than anything in its field. And... Drexel himself is being used... being paid to obtain that information.'
Crane was involved now. He could sense that Oliphant was telling the truth and he felt a shiver of apprehension at what he was hearing.
'Who's paying Drexel? Some kind of espionage operation?'
'Oh, the Russians and the Americans would be very interested. But they're going their own way in studying the paranormal. No, this is something else. Something nearer.'
Oliphant was almost sitting up now, as if the need to tell Crane was greater than the pain which was still intermittently racking his body.
'Have you ever heard of Omega?' he went on.
'Scott-Erskine once described the function of Department Seven as an investigation of the Omega factor. The final problem...'
'Yes, he could describe it like that in the early days. I think a man called Raglan, a senior civil servant, called it that. Raglan was in at the beginning of Department Seven. Unlike most civil servants involved who were sceptical, Raglan believed in the Department. The others, they thought, a government department to look into the occult, ESP, magic, it was insane. But... but then they began to see the results and they were interested. Too interested. The government made the whole operation top secret and they put in the computer.'
He stopped, momentarily breathless. The pain spasms seemed to have passed but he was weak from their ravages.
Crane rubbed his hands over his eyes, trying to hold on to all that Oliphant was saying but finding himself confused.
'What has the beginnings of Department Seven to do with the word, Omega?' he asked.
'When the government made the project top secret certain people formed a group called Omega or simply the Organisation. They wanted to obtain and use the results coming from Department Seven. You see, these people, my dear Crane, they believed what was happening was too important to leave to... to elected democratic governments. If they could have access to the results of the Department's work they believed they would be amassing power. And they are right, aren't they? Department Seven is mining unknown areas of power.'
Crane shifted uneasily in the wicker chair. He believed all that he was being told; he felt he should be more sceptical but his mind's contact with Oliphant's told him that the old man was speaking the truth.
'Of course these Omega people,' Oliphant went on. 'They have their spies within the Department. But that was never enough. It is never enough. Only a very few people have access to the computer. And that's where the knowledge is. And that is why they were using Drexel.'
'How could Drexel reach the computer?'
'With his ability they hoped he could reach the minds of those who knew how to use the computer. But Drexel has other ideas. He believes he can find a way into the computer.'
'Into it? How the hell..?'
'The computer is like a mind. As I said he believes he can project into that mind. And if he does that, Department Seven will be working for Omega without even knowing it.'
There was a pause. Oliphant moved his bulk on the couch, his face now chalk white.
'Who are these people in this Organisation?' Crane asked the question he was dying to ask.
'I don't suppose there is a membership list. But there are people in high places... civil servants, industrialists, high-ranking members of the armed forces, politicians, and not just in one party. An establishment within the establishment. A loose freemasonry of people concerned with manipulating power... you young people might call them fascists. And yet they would deny the title. They would consider themselves an elite who believe they have a God-given right to rule.' He laughed suddenly, a deep rolling laugh more like the old Oliphant when Crane had first met him.
'God given! That's funny. Perhaps Satanically endowed.' A glance at Crane. 'Of course you don't believe, you young people today, in Satan as an entity. Well, you may be right. Not simply one entity. Many entities within all of us. And... and without... outside...'
He shuddered again. 'You see how fearful I am. And you should be. Like the phrase written on the old maps. "Here be demons". There are demons, Crane. You saw them in, my mind.'
He leaned forward suddenly and this time grasped Crane's hand. 'Stop Omega, Crane! Stop them by stopping Drexel!'
'Where can I find Drexel?'
The old man tried to mouth words. But pain was creeping back into his body. The sounds from his mouth became unintelligible.
Outside there was the distant sound of an ambulance
'Where is he?' Crane insisted. 'You have to tell me...'
Oliphant made some kind of enormous effort. 'Anscott... Anscott Lodge... in... in Buckinghamshire. But... but remember... nothing is what it seems.'
He sank back on the couch. The trembling was starting again. Outside Crane could hear voices and the slam of the ambulance door.
'Anne got an ambulance,' he told Oliphant. 'You'll be all right soon.'
'No, old man,' Oliphant gasped. You see... it... it comes and it goes. But... each... each time it gathers more strength. Feeds off one's own kinetic energy and becomes stronger until it kills one... burns out the
body as well as the soul.'
The thought was in Crane's mind; he's delirious, wandering in pain. Yet he had been inside the old man's mind and he knew there was more than that.
The door opened and Anne came in with two ambulance men carrying a stretcher.
'I've been in touch with a friend at the London Clinic. He'll take care of Oliphant. He's waiting there now,' she explained. 'I... I even told him there were some unusual features about this case.'
Oliphant was on the stretcher now. As he was carried out he reached out once again to Crane.
"You... you can beat Drexel but... but you'll need more than your own strength. Don't be afraid to draw your strength from the past as well as the future...'
'I don't understand that.'
'You will, in time. But I say again... remember, nothing is what it seems.'
They carried him out of the flat on the stretcher. Anne looked questioningly at Crane.
'I'll tell you about it later,' he said, feeling exhausted.
They went back to Crane's flat. On the way he told her all that Oliphant had told him. An hour later she was pacing his living room, glass of whisky in her hand.
'I know it's a cliché, but I don't know what to believe now.'
He sat in the deep armchair staring up at her, trying to fight off sleep. 'Whether you believe it or not, Oliphant believes it,' he replied.
'All this about an organisation called Omega..?'
'Anne, let's just say it's possible. Meanwhile I can go after Drexel. And I intend to do.so.'
Anne gave a humourless smile. 'Revenge?'
'Yes.'
'I think we should see Scott-Erskine again.'
'No. Not until I find Drexel. And until we know more. This is between us, Anne. It's better that it should be that-way.'
She nodded. 'All right. For now.'
She seemed to relax then. It was something he was beginning to admire in Anne; one of many things, this ability to make decisions and stick to them. He admired too her strength and competence, no matter what the situation. And at the same time she was a very feminine woman.
