"Here, have some more tea?" he suggested.
"No," I said, "no, I don't want anything."
"It just goes to prove what I'm always saying, Dick. The crime figures are mounting steadily, in every civilised country in the world. The authorities have just got to take things in hand. I mean, who would believe it happening here, off the map, down in Cornwall? A set of thugs, you say? Any idea where they came from? Were they local men?"
I shook my head. "No, I said, I don't think so. I've no idea who they were."
"And you're quite certain this other fellow saw, and was going to report to the police?"
"Yes, I saw him running. He was making straight for the nearest farmhouse. They'll have a telephone there."
"I hope to heaven you're right," he said.
We sat for a while in silence. He kept sighing, and shaking his head. "What an experience for you. What a damned awful experience."
I put my hands in my pockets so that he should not see them shaking. "Look, Bill," I said, "I think I'll go upstairs and lie down. I don't want Vita to know I've even been out. Or Diana either. I want this thing to remain absolutely private between ourselves. There's nothing you or I can do now. I want you to forget it."
"O.K.," he said, "about not saying anything. But I shan't forget what you've told me. And I'll listen for it on the news. By the way, we shall have to leave after breakfast if we're to catch that plane from Exeter. Is that all right by you?"
"Of course," I said. "I'm only sorry to have spoilt your morning."
"My dear Dick, I'm the one to be sorry, and for you. Yes, I should go upstairs, and try to get some sleep. And look here, don't bother to get up and say good-bye. You can always plead a hangover." He smiled, and held out his hand. "We loved yesterday," he said, "and a thousand thanks for everything. I only hope nothing else comes up to spoil your holiday. I'll write you from Ireland."
"Thanks, Bill," I said, "thanks a lot."
I went upstairs, undressed in the dressing-room, then retched violently for about five minutes down the lavatory. The sound must have woken Vita, for I heard her calling from the bedroom.
"Is that you?" she said. "What's the matter?"
"All that muscadet on top of bourbon," I said. "Sorry, I can hardly stand. I'm going to turn in on the divan here. It's still quite early — about half-past six."
I closed the dressing-room door and threw myself on the divan bed. I was back in the world of today, but God alone knew how long it would stay that way. One thing was certain. As soon as Bill and Diana had gone I should have to telephone Magnus.
The unconscious is a curious thing. I was deeply disturbed over this total confusion of thought that might have made me blab the truth to Bill about the experiment itself; but five minutes or so after I had lain down on the divan I was asleep and dreaming, not, strangely enough, about Bodrugan and his appalling fate, but of a cricket match at Stonyhurst when one of the team got hit on the head with a cricket-ball and died of haemorrhage of the brain twenty-four hours later. I had not thought about the incident for at least twenty-five years. When I awoke just after nine I was perfectly lucid and clear in the head, apart from a hell of a genuine hangover, and my right eye was more bloodshot than ever. I bathed and shaved, and could hear sounds of movement from our guests in the room next door. I waited until I heard Bill and Diana go downstairs, then I put a call through to Magnus. No luck. He was not at the fiat. So I left a message with his secretary at the University saying I wanted to speak to him very urgently, but it might be better if I put the call through to him rather than he to me. Then I stuck my head out of the dressing-room window overlooking the patio and shouted to Teddy to bring me up a cup of coffee. I would appear in the hall to bid our guests godspeed five minutes before departure, and not a moment before.
"What's wrong with your eye? You hit the floor or something? " asked my elder stepson as he brought coffee.
"No," I told him. "I think it's a back-lash from the wind on Monday."
"You were up early anyway," he said. "I heard you talking to Bill in the kitchen."
"I was making tea," I said. "We both of us had too much to drink at dinner."
"Guess that's what turned your eye all streaks and not the sea," he said, looking so like his mother in one of her more perceptive moods that I turned away, and then remembered that his room was above the kitchen and he could conceivably have overhead our conversation.
"Anyway," I asked before he left the dressing-room, "what were we talking about?"
"How should I know?" he replied. "Do you think I'd pull up the floorboards to listen?"
No, I reflected, but his mother might, if she heard a discussion going on between her husband and her guest at 6 a.m.
I finished dressing, drank down my coffee, and appeared at the top of the stairs just in time to help Bill down with the suitcases. He greeted me with a conspiratorial glance of enquiry — the girls were below us in the hall — and murmured, "Get any sleep?"
"Yes," I said, "yes, I'm fine." I saw him staring at my eye. "I know," I said, touching it, "no explanation for that. Must have been the bourbon. By the way," I added, "Teddy heard us talking this morning."
"I know," he said, "I heard him tell Vita. Everything's O.K. Don't worry." He patted me on the shoulder, and we clumped downstairs.
"Heavens!" cried Vita. "What have you done to your eye?"
"Bourbon allergy," I said, combined with shellfish. "It happens to some people."
Both girls insisted on examining me, suggesting alternative remedies from penicillin ointment to T.C.P.
"It can't be the bourbon," said Diana. "I don't want to be personal, but I noticed it yesterday as soon as we arrived. I said to myself; Whatever's Dick done to his eye?"
"You didn't say anything to me," said Vita.
Enough was enough. I put a hand on each of their shoulders and pushed them through the porch. "Neither one of you would win a beauty prize this morning," I said, "and it wasn't the bourbon that woke me at dawn, but Vita snoring. So shut up."
We had to instal ourselves on the steps for the inevitable picture-taking by Bill, and it was nearly half-past ten before they were finally off. Once again Bill's hand-clasp was that of a conspirator.
"Hope we get this fine weather in Ireland," he said. "I'll watch the papers and listen to the radio forecasts to see what's happening here in Cornwall." He looked at me, nodding imperceptibly. He meant that his eyes and ears would be alert for the first mention of a dastardly crime.
"Send us postcards," said Vita. "Wish we were coming with you."
"You always can," I said, "when you get fed-up here." It was not perhaps the most encouraging of remarks, and when we had finished waving and turned back towards the house Vita wore an abstracted air. "I really believe", she said, "you'd be glad if the boys and I had gone off with them. Then you'd have this place to yourself again."
"Don't talk nonsense," I said.
"Well, you made your feelings pretty clear last night, flinging off to bed directly we'd finished dinner."
"I flung off to bed, as you call it, because it bored me stiff to see you lolling about in Bill's arms and Diana waiting to do the same in mine. I'm just no good at party games, and you ought to know it by now."
"Party games!" she laughed. "What utter nonsense! Bill and Diana are my oldest friends. Where's your much-vaunted British sense of humour?"
"Not in tune with yours," I said. "I've a cruder sense of fun. If I pulled a mat from under your feet and you slipped up, I'd have hysterics." We wandered back into the house, and just at that moment the telephone rang. I went into the library to answer it, and Vita followed me. I was afraid it might be Magnus, and it was.
"Yes?" I said guardedly.
"I got your message," he said, "but I've a very full day. Is it an awkward moment?"