And then as a final touch of unreason, ludicrous and inexplicable, there had been the business with her television set. He had tinkered with the small controls at the back of the set until he had identified the vertical hold adjuster, then had shown it to her and had made her kneel down and grip the knurled projection. He had switched the set on, turned his back to it and covered his eyes with both hands, and had ordered her to rotate the control until the television picture was far out of adjustment, rolling upwards so quickly that it was almost impossible to guess what was on the screen.
Is it rolling? His voice had been timid. I’m afraid to look.
At that moment, and only for a moment, her pity for him had almost overcome the sense of fear that was yammering through the molecular corridors of her nervous system. He had looked and sounded bemused—as childishly vulnerable as she had sometimes known him to be when faced with an unexpected challenge—and she had dared hope that the dark shadow was lifting from his mind. But within a second of the set being switched off he had dragged her to the entrance of the flat and had thrown her on to the landing. His face had been distorted, inhuman.
Run, Leila! For God’s sake…for all our sakes…RUN!
As she gazed into the night-time stillness of the suburban road, at the receding row of gateway pillars and the trees whose leaves had been turned into Yuletide plastic by the intervening street lights, Leila began to wonder if she ought to have set off to Henry Nevison’s house. She had seen John struggling into his suede jacket and had concluded that he was about to leave—but was any logical deduction valid in his case? Several minutes had gone by since her escape and it appeared that he was still in the flat. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and had given the accelerator a tentative jab when there was a movement on the opposite side of the road.
John Redpath emerged into the light and turned in the direction of the town. He was walking slowly, like an elderly man, and had his left arm pressed to his side. In his right hand he was carrying a case-like object which she had to look at twice before recognising it as her portable television. With shoulders hunched and head lowered, apparently oblivious to his surroundings, Redpath made his way from one island of light to the next. The renewal of the pity she had felt earlier was like a physical pain to Leila. She watched Redpath’s diminishing figure until it was lost in the tunnel of perspective, then she drove across the road and parked outside the flats.
On reaching the first landing she discovered he had left the door open and the lights switched on inside her apartment. She locked the door behind her, went straight to the telephone and dialled Nevison’s number. The phone was answered immediately and she had begun to speak before realising it was a recording machine at the other end of the line. After stating her name and requesting a return call without delay, she hung up and stood by the phone for another minute, unsuccessfully trying to think of someone else to whom she might turn for help. Frank Pardey was unlikely to be in at that time, and even had he been she could not face the prospect of telling him that John was temporarily insane and had thrown her out of her own flat and stolen her television set, but that no charges were to be preferred.
Feeling tense and nervous, she slipped out of her coat and hung it up, and for the sake of the physical action tidied away the remains of the evening meal and washed the dishes. A profound sadness had settled over her by the time she finished, colouring all her thoughts and threatening to overwhelm her each time she considered the extent of the calamity which had overtaken Redpath. In only two days he had been transformed from an unremarkable, likeable i>flâneur with a certain desperate charm, whose main fault had been possessiveness, into an unpredictable stranger with a mind which appeared to have been sapped by the wildest outpourings of the super-nature cultists and flying saucer cranks.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the change was the air of utter, fanatical conviction with which he elaborated his fantasies. Leila had known a boy in Pangbourne who had drifted into a mental never-never land and who on occasion had talked for hours about the emissaries from the Kingdom of Orion who would descend from the skies some day and seek him out, but always there had been a lurking bafflement in his eyes. The reason for it was that he had retained some contact with reality and was struggling to reconcile two conflicting world-views. John, on the other hand, spoke with a dreadful certainty, was entirely convinced. She knew little about abnormal psychology, but she had a growing suspicion that delusions of such completeness and intensity were likely to have a lasting effect. Could it be that Compound 183 was not merely psychosomimetic, but had served as a trigger for permanent mental derangement?
The idea that the old John Redpath might be gone for ever brought with it the realization that she had unconsciously begun to accept him as a fixture in her life. Ruffled by the discovery that the part of her which romantic writers referred to as the heart—and which she had presumed to keep fully under control—was in fact a wilful organ, capable of hatching subversive schemes of its own, Leila made some coffee and retired to the living-room to await Nevison’s call. At midnight she thought of going to bed, but decided against it on the off-chance that what she had to say to Nevison might prompt him to come to the flat. She made herself comfortable on the settee, read the first two chapters of a paperback novel without getting into the story, and eventually relaxed into a light sleep.
The measured clamour of the phone bell shocked her into wakefulness at a few minutes past one. She sat up, feeling cold and apprehensive, ran into the hall and picked up the phone.
“Thank you, thank you for ringing, Henry,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for…”
“Pardon me.” The interruption came from an unfamiliar voice. “Am I calling the right number for Mr Redpath?”
Leila identified the accent as American and her sense of foreboding suddenly increased. “You’ve got the right number, but John isn’t at home at the moment.”
“Oh! When will he be available?”
“Not for some time,” she said, then yielded to an impulse she scarcely understood. “He was called away on an urgent matter, but he asked me to take your call. I’m Leila Mostyn and I work with John at the institute. I know why he telephoned you of course.”
“I was really hoping to speak to Mr Redpath.”
“Isn’t that Mr Knight of the Gilpinston Bugle?”
“Yes, indeed.” Apparently reassured by the foreknowledge of his name, Knight allowed a note of animation to enter his voice. “I’ve been down to 13th Avenue, Miss…Mizz…”
“Leila, please.”
“Thank you, Leila. As I was saying, I’ve been to the house_ and it’s all there! Every detail checks out as predicted—even the name of the owners. A Mr and Mrs T. E. Rodgers, I’m told, though nobody in the street has seen them around for quite some time. I thought Mr Redpath would want to know right off.”
“It was good of you to call,” Leila said numbly. She floundered for a moment, unable to make the orthodox logical connections which would prove that this, too, was spurious evidence, that no assessments of John Redpath needed to be revised.