“I don’t want you to get upset,” Leila said unhappily.
“I’m not upset. I feel a lot better now I’ve got some idea of what’s been going on. It all makes sense of a kind when you think about it. A group like that, each member with one special talent, can really look after itself—and that’s why the house was empty when I got there this morning with Pardey. Wilbur would have known we were coming, you see. He gave the warning and Albert moved out all the people and Miss Connie moved out all the furniture and other stuff. And it wouldn’t have been hard for somebody like her to blanket the place with dust and make it look as though nobody had been there for ages.”
Leila made to stand up, but Redpath caught her wrist and continued to speak in an abstracted monotone. “I’ll bet you they’re all in the States at this very minute, living in that other house, the one with the same layout as the place in Raby Street—but what’s it all in aid of? What brought them all together in the first place, and what do they want with me? What makes them run?”
Have they ever sandpapered anybody to death?
“John, you’ve got to unwind and think things over calmly,“Leila said. “Why don’t you lie down again and perhaps have a doze? You must be tired out.”
Redpath considered the proposition. “I daresay it would be safe for me to go to sleep. If they’re thousands of miles away they probably won’t feed me any bad dreams.”
“The rest would be good for you.” Leila stood up, rearranged the pillows and gently pushed him down on to them. He eyed her appreciatively and, as she was leaning over to cover him with a sheet, lightly pinched the tiny roll of fat which had appeared just below her navel. She pushed his hand away, went to a wardrobe and selected a lime green dress which enhanced the colour of her hair. It was only when she had put on white sandals and was looking around for her purse that it dawned on Redpath that she had been preparing to go out. He found the idea strangely annoying.
“What are you doing, Leila?” He raised himself on one elbow. “You’re not going out, are you?”
“Just to get some butter and one or two other things—I wasn’t expecting a lodger.”
He glanced at his watch. “But it’s nearly eight o’clock.”
“The shops in Botanic Avenue will still be open.”
“I don’t want you to rush around getting food for me.”
“It’s no trouble. I can be back in…”
“I don’t want you to go out, Leila.” Redpath, now sitting upright, realised he had spoken too sharply and tried to make amends. “It’s selfish of me, I know, but…”
“It’s all right, darling,” she said quickly, “I can manage without going shopping—as long as you don’t mind margarine on your toast.”
Redpath nodded, mollified. “I don’t mind margarine.”
“It’s supposed to be better for your health, anyway,” Leila said in a subdued voice. She sat down at her dressing table and began to work on her cuticles with an orange stick.
Unable to suppress a feeling that something had gone wrong, Redpath stared at her in silence as he went over the events of 1 the previous ten minutes, like a hunter backtracking to pick up 1 a lost trail. The atmosphere had been harmonious up to the I moment when he had half-deduced and half-guessed the underlying facts about the house in Raby Street and its effect on his life, but since then…
“Leila,” he said gravely, “it has just occurred to me—you’ve really taken all this in your stride, haven’t you?”
She lowered her head, concentrating her attention on her fingernails. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean all that stuff I told you about those people up in Raby Street. It was pretty astonishing. In fact, it was very astonishing— but you don’t seem astonished.”
“I…Perhaps I haven’t fully taken it in.”
He weighed up her reply for several seconds. “You don’t believe any of it do you? You think I’m mad. You were trying to humour me.”
Leila’s shoulders slumped momentarily, then she turned to look at him with haunted eyes. “John, you’ve got one piece torn off a newspaper, and that’s all there is. One piece of a newspaper!”
“An American newspaper.”
“There might be half-a-dozen Gilpinstons in this country, and even if it is an American newspaper—what of it? Have you considered that it might be a weekly newspaper, printed days in advance?”
Redpath had not thought of that possibility, but he dismissed it as being irrelevant. “All that matters is that I was able to produce physical evidence for something that people said had only happened in my imagination. Can’t you see what that meant to me?”
“I saw what it did to you.”
“Fair comment.” Some quirk in Redpath’s mental make-up made him feel oddly uplifted by the challenge implicit in Leila’s remark. “You’re a rational person, and—not having experienced all that I experienced yesterday at first hand—you require more evidence. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all.” He spoke pleasantly, slipping into a near-imitation of Henry Nevison’s best professorial manner. “Now, what other evidence can I produce to strengthen my case? Intriguing little problem, isn’t it?”
Instead of being amused, Leila eyed him with something which could have been desperation. “John, do you realise what you’re saying? Do you remember what you told us in the office this morning, the part about finding two flayed bodies in the bath in that house? Are you going to try proving that really happened, as well?”
Redpath’s confidence wavered. “Was that not in the nightmare? It’s getting hard to keep track of what was real and what was…” He looked about him with narrowed eyes, fighting against the swarming sensation inside his head, and his gaze fixed itself on Leila’s bedside telephone. A strange idea was born in his mind, an idea which struck him as all the more bizarre in the context because it was entirely practical. He picked up the phone, dialled for the operator and asked to be put through to the international directory enquiry service.
Leila set her orange stick aside. “What are you doing?”
“It’s all right,” he said in sudden manic glee. “I’ll pay for the call. Give me a pen or something—quickly!” He took the eyebrow pencil she handed him and gestured for silence as the connection was made. In little more than a minute he had written the telephone number of the Gilpinston Bugle across the skin of his right knee.
“There we are,” he said triumphantly, indicating the dark sprawl of numerals. “You wanted proof, and proof is what you’re going to get.”
Leila came towards him. “I asked what you were doing.”
“Just listen to this—Illinois is five or six hours behind us, so it should be mid-afternoon there.” He dialled the international code for the United States, followed by the number of the Bugle, and the call was answered almost immediately. “My name is John Redpath and I’m calling from England,” he said in a businesslike voice. “Tell me, please—is the Bugle a daily newspaper?”
“Yes, sir. We publish six days a week.” The voice of the switchboard girl was clear in the bedroom. “Can I help you?”