Lizzie this time. Dear God, once you started thinking of spies, how conspiratorial everyone looked!
“Yes. An idea. But nothing of that yet. I want more time to work things out.”
“This could be the beginning of a break-through,” said Ernst. “You remember what I suggested about Percy’s death, that this might be in the way of a warning? And things have been made progressively tougher for you, in the North in particular, in the past couple of years. Perhaps we’ve been making more progress than we thought.”
“With the kind of attendances we get, that hardly seems likely. Two members of the police-force for every member of the public!” said Colin.
Ernst snapped back, “Well, you explain why Matt has become important enough to warn off, to threaten, to bribe.”
“No one has threatened me, have they?” said Matlock mildly.
“Of course not,” said Colin. “Look Ernst, I can’t explain it. All I am saying is that if we’ve made progress in the North or anywhere, it’s been invisible progress, not measurable in any terms I can understand yet.”
Matlock looked at Colin and nodded his head as though in agreement. What he was thinking about was a coincidence of wording. ‘Invisible progress’ had been the very phrase the Abbot had used.
“You see,” he had explained, “it cut two ways, this pleasant scheme of Browning’s to keep you out of harm’s way. He very efficiently shut you off from public view and shut the public’s views off from you. But oddly enough, by decreasing your influence and authority on a public, political level, he increased it in another way. He cut off your power, but your charismatic value increased enormously. Charisma. Yes, that’s the word. That attracting force which bears little relationship to objective factors. Don’t feel too proud, Mr. Matlock. This cult was not altogether spontaneous, not altogether due to your own many virtues and attractions. No, like the cult of Guevara in the late sixties of the last century, it was a controlled spontaneity. It was in the interests of certain factions that there should be a leader, a focal point, beyond the reach of internal squabblings and politics. You were that man.”
“Why? Why me? After all, Abbot, I was the man who created the Unirads and the Age Law.”
“All the more reason, my dear Mr. Matlock. The convert, or the apostate, depending on how you look at it, is very frequently the most useful and respected member of his new-found faith. One does not have to look much further than the case of Saul of Tarsus. Or Lucifer.”
“That’s quite a bit further.”
“I meant nothing personal in either instance. The point is this, Mr. Matlock, that you are possibly the single most influential name in the extra-Parliamentary opposition group which is at its strongest in the Northern counties.”
Matlock had listened with growing disbelief.
“No,” he burst out now, “no. This can’t be true. I have gone up there to meeting after meeting. I would have seen some sign. Instead, the attendance has grown steadily smaller.”
“You could have had thousands there, Mr. Matlock, thousands, had you not given the word that you did not yet desire a show of strength.”
“I gave the word?”
“It was given for you, I’m afraid. Just as your followers were also informed that these pathetic meetings which always degenerated into brawls followed by your ejection back to London, were merely covers for the passing by you of information and instructions to your lieutenants. It was a plan much admired.”
Matlock had taken a few moments to sort this welter of assertion into some kind of acceptable order.
“All right,” he said finally. “Suppose I accept this. Suppose I accept that I am the revered leader of an underground movement, why at this particular time have I become so popular with Browning? I presume he knows all you tell me. Why not just have me arrested?”
“You are determined to be naive, Mr. Matlock. Browning’s intelligence service has, of course, penetrated this underground of yours. He knows much, though by no means all. He is not really certain how much you know. And he is not yet ready for a confrontation. But he knows that Budget Day will bring matters to a climax. Yet he is a man of insight and of cunning. He has seen how his own plan for your suppressal has been turned against him. To arrest you now would be to martyr you. But he hopes to be able to turn the tables once more. Your charisma has been so carefully cultivated that it is now self-propagating. It has gone far beyond the original intentions of the Underground organizers. It could not be killed with your death or disappearance. Only by your betrayal. If you join the Government before Budget Day, the effect on morale and internal discipline within the movement will be so disruptive that his new measures will pass with no more than a whimper of protest.”
“And this is what you have come to tell me. You have come to tell me that unwittingly I have been used in a battle I would willingly have joined had I known it was being fought? You have come now to invite my blind co-operation in plans I know nothing of? Why this is almost as bad as Browning’s threats.”
“Worse, Mr. Matlock. He does not want your death. We don’t mind. In fact certain elements in our midst feel that your influence should be given the permanence of heroic memory. They have been outvoted. But be sure, Mr. Matlock, that if you show any signs of capitulating to Browning’s request, you will be killed instantly. It will look like Browning’s handiwork, of course. But you will be dead. That’s the burden of my message.”
The two men had sat and stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, both mask-like in their expressions. Then the Abbot had relaxed, leaned forward, tapped him familiarly upon the knee and said in a much more ordinary everyday kind of voice, “Well, that’s the official business. Now let’s have a little unofficial chat, shall we? There’s plenty of time. After all, your job is best done from a position of invisibility, eh? You’re making invisible progress all the time!”
“Invisible progress.” Matlock realized he had spoken the words out loud. The others were looking at him. He would have to make a greater effort to control these fits of abstraction. More and more he was withdrawing in upon himself lately. It must be age. Or the awareness of age entailed in the Age Law.
“You’re right, Colin,” he said. “We must have made some kind of progress, it seems, but in what direction I’m not sure. But I apparently have some value. Great value if it is to be judged by Browning’s offer, though we must remember that what he can so easily give, he can as easily take away. In many ways, I am tempted to accept.”
He sipped at the new drink Ernst had brought him and watched their reactions once more.
He saw in Colin’s face a look of blank bewilderment, turning to indignation.
Ernst too looked puzzled, but some other emotion — certainly not anger — was there too.
Only in Lizzie’s face did he see the brightening of hope and he closed his eyes at the sight of it. He longed to ask her how much was hope for Browning and how much a woman’s hope for some years of peace with the man she loved.
Matlock was suddenly very tired of all three of them. Or rather, he was tired with the events of the day and could not face the thought that here where he should have been most at ease, he had to be most on his guard.
“Look,” he said. “Of course I’ll do nothing without discussion. But I must be my own master. I do not claim to be yours, Colin, or yours Ernst, or yours Lizzie. Now I’m rather tired. Let’s leave this till tonight, shall we?”
“Anything you say, Matt,” said Ernst with his ready smile.
“Not tonight, Matt,” said Lizzie. “You’re suddenly in demand. A late invitation to a little ‘do’ at the Scottish Embassy. With a most cordial handwritten ‘do hope you can make it’ from the Ambassador himself.”