“I don’t believe a word you’ve told me,” he said, “but I love all the circumstantial detail. You say these day-trippers from Hades are only visible through low-light glasses?”
“Yes—and that’s your solution to the whole problem. Issue instructions that every man has to turn in his Amplites and the ghosts won’t be seen again.”
“But how would the men see to work?”
Snook shrugged. “You’d have to install full-scale lighting the way they did before magniluct was invented. It would be expensive—but a lot cheaper than closing down the mine.”
Freeborn raised his cane, in an absent-minded gesture, and its gold head slid naturally into the depression on his skull. “I’ve got news for you. Snook. There isn’t the remotest possibility of the mine being closed down, but I’m still fascinated by this story you’ve dreamed up. Now, about those cameras -1 presume you didn’t think of using self-developing film?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
“Open them up and let me see what you got.”
“Suits me.” Snook began opening the cameras and removing the spools. “I’m not too happy about the polarised or the infrared, but the one with the magniluct filter should show something if we’re in luck.” Snook unrolled the spool in question, held it up to the light, and clucked with disappointment. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything here.”
Freeborn tapped Murphy on the shoulder with his cane. “You’re a good man, Murphy,” he said evenly, “and that’s why I’m not going to have you punished for wasting my time today. Now get this lunatic and his cameras out of my office, and never bring him near me again. Have you got that?”
Murphy looked apprehensive, but stood his ground. “I saw something down there, too.”
Freeborn flicked his cane. Its weighty head travelled only a short distance, but when it collided with the back of Murphy’s hand there was a sound like that of a twig being snapped. Murphy drew breath sharply and gnawed his lower Up. He did not look down at his hand.
“You’re dismissed,” Freeborn said. “And, from now on, anybody who contributes to the mass hysteria that’s been going on here will be regarded as a traitor to Barandi. You know what that means.”
Murphy nodded, turned quickly and walked to the door. Snook got to it first, turned the handle for him and they went outside together. The miners’ meeting was still in progress and had grown even noisier than before. Murphy raised his right hand and Snook saw that it had already begun to swell.
He said, “You’d better get that seen to -1 think you’ve got a broken bone.”
“I know I’ve got a broken bone, but it can wait.” Murphy caught Snook’s shoulder with his good hand and stopped him walking. “What was all that meant to be about? I thought you had an idea you were going to try out on the Colonel.”
“I tried it. Full lighting in the mine…no magniluct glasses…no ghosts.”
“Is that all?” Murphy’s face showed his disappointment. “I thought you were going to prove to him that the ghosts were real. You and your bloody box of tricks!”
Snook paused thoughtfully. The more people who knew about his plan the greater the risks would be, and yet he had forged a rare link with Murphy and had no wish to endanger it. He decided to take the chance.
“Look, George.” Snook pressed his fingers against the side pocket of his jacket, outlining the film spool within. “When I went into the toilets a while ago I took this film out of one of the cameras and put a new one in its place. This one shows our ghost.”
“ What?” Murphy tightened his grip on Snook’s shoulder. “That’s what we needed! Why didn’t you show it to the Colonel?”
“Calm down.” Snook twisted free of the other man’s grasp. “You’ll ball the whole thing up if you make too much fuss. Trust me, will you?”
“To do what?” Murphy’s brown face was rigid with anger.
“To change the situation. That’s your only hope. Freeborn’s on top right now because this is his private little universe where he can order a massacre if he wants, and get away with it. If he had seen the evidence that ghosts really exist he would have buried it, and probably us too.
“You saw the interest he took in the cameras. He didn’t believe what we told him, but he wanted to look at the film -just in case. It suits people like Freeborn to keep things the way they are, with nobody in the outside world giving a damn about Barandi or anything that happens in it.”
“What can you do about that?” Murphy said.
“If I can reach the Press Association man in Kisumu with this film, I promise you that by this time tomorrow the whole world will be looking over Freeborn’s shoulder. He’ll have to call off his Leopards—and there’ll be a chance to find out what our ghosts really are.”
Chapter Five
The day began to go wrong while Boyce Ambrose was having breakfast.
His fiancee, Jody Ferrier, had stayed at his family home near Charleston all week-end, which had been fine with Ambrose except that—in deference to his mother’s famous Puritanism—they had had separate bedrooms. The arrangement meant that he had spent more than two days in Jody’s company without being able to indulge in any of the love games at which she was so naturally and deliciously good. Ambrose was not oversexed and had not been particularly disturbed by the two days and three nights of abstinence, but the experience had focused his attention on an alarming fact.
Jody Ferrier—the girl he had promised to marry—talked a great deal. Not only did she talk a great deal, but none of the subjects which engaged her attention was of the slightest interest to him. Furthermore, each time he had tried to divert the conversation towards more fruitful grounds, she—with masterly ease—had brought it back at once to fashion trends, local real estate values, and the genealogies of important Charleston families. These were the points at which, had they been alone in one of their apartments, he would have silenced her with a bout of old-fashioned physical grappling—and, during the week-end, Ambrose had come to suspect that what he had been regarding as a richly sexual relationship had, in fact, been a prolonged struggle to keep Jody quiet.
By Sunday night his forebodings about his planned marriage had reached the pitch at which he had become morose and withdrawn. He had gone to bed quite early, and in the morning had found himself actually looking forward to the day’s work at the planetarium. There had, however, been an unexpected development. Jody was clever, as well as rich and beautiful, and it appeared that during the night she had correctly deduced his frame of mind. At breakfast she had announced, for the first time since they had met, that she had always possessed a burning curiosity about all things astronomical and was proposing to gratify it by spending the day at the planetarium. The idea, once it had germinated, seemed to blossom in her mind.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” she had said to Ambrose’s mother, “if there was some way I could help Boyce with his vocation? On a purely voluntary basis, of course—perhaps for two or three afternoons a week. Some tiny little job. I wouldn’t care how unimportant it was as long as I was helping to make people aware of the wonders of the universe.”
Ambrose’s mother had been impressed with the scheme and thought it was splendid that her son and her future daughter-in-law shared the same intellectual interests. She was certain Jody could find something useful to do at the planetarium, perhaps on the public relations side. For his part, Ambrose had been disappointed in Jody. He regarded himself as a leading expert on every aspect of pretence—after all, he had made a career of it—and he had previously felt a grudging respect for his fiancee’s honesty in openly not giving a damn about his work. All right, he had thought, I’ll go along with this thing…provided she never says ‘light years in the future’.