"Then that's our chance," he said. "When the sirens go, we go too with the crowd."
"We are at the end of the passage. Perhaps there won't be a crowd. How do you know there is anyone left in this passage? They've thought of so much. Don't you think they'll have thought of that? They've probably booked every room."
"We'll try," he said. "If we had any weapon at all -- a stick, a stone." He stopped and let her hand go. "If those aren't books," he said, "perhaps they are bricks. Bricks." He felt one of the catches. "It isn't locked," he said. "Now we'll see. . ." But they both looked at the suitcase doubtfully. Efficiency is paralysing. They had thought of everything, so wouldn't they have thought of this too?"
"I wouldn't touch it," she said.
They felt the inertia a bird is supposed to feel before a snake: a snake too knows all the answers.
"They must make a mistake some time," he said.
The dark was dividing them. Very far away the guns grumbled.
"They'll wait till the sirens," she said, "till everybody's down there, out of hearing."
"What's that?" he said. He was getting jumpy himself,
"What?"
"I think someone tried the handle."
"How near they are getting," she said.
"By God," he said, "we aren't powerless. Give me a hand with the couch." They stuck the end of it against the kitchen door. They could hardly see a thing now; they were really in the dark. "It's lucky," Miss Hilfe said, "that the stove's electric."
"But I don't think it is. Why?"
"We've shut them out of here. But they can turn on the gas."
He said, "You ought to be in the game yourself. The things you think of. Here. Give me a hand again. We'll push this couch through into the kitchen." But they stopped almost before they started. He said, "It's too late. Somebody's in there." The tiniest click of a closing door was all they had heard.
"What happens next?" he asked. Memories of The Little Duke came incongruously back. He said, "In the old days they always called on the castle to surrender."
"Don't," she whispered. "Please. They are listening."
"I'm getting tired of this cat and mouse act," he said. "We don't even know he's in there. They are frightening us with squeaking doors and the dark." He was moved by a slight hysteria. He called out, "Come in, come in. Don't bother to knock," but no one replied.
He said angrily, "They've chosen the wrong man. They think they can get everything by fear. But you've checked up on me. I'm a murderer, aren't I? You know that. I'm not afraid to kill. Give me any weapon. Just give me a brick." He looked at the suitcase.
Miss Hilfe said, "You're right. We've got to do something, even if it's the wrong thing. Not just let them do everything. Open it!"
He gave her hand a quick nervous pressure and released it. Then, as the sirens took up their nightly wail, he opened the lid of the suitcase. . .
BOOK TWO
The Happy Man
Chapter 1
CONVERSATIONS IN ARCADY
"His guardians would fain have
had it supposed that the castle
did not contain any such guest."
The Little Duke
1
THE sun came into the room like pale green underwater light. That was because the tree outside was just budding. The light washed over the white clean walls of the room, over the bed with its primrose yellow cover, over the big arm-chair and the couch, and the bookcase which was full of advanced reading. There were some early daffodils in a vase which had been bought in Sweden, and the only sounds were a fountain dripping somewhere in the cool out-of-doors and the gentle voice of the earnest young man with rimless glasses.
"The great thing, you see, is not to worry. You've had your share of the war for the time being, Mr Digby, and you can lie back with an easy conscience."
The young man was always strong on the subject of conscience. His own, he had explained weeks ago, was quite clear. Even if his views had not inclined to pacifism, his bad eyes would have prevented him from being of any active value -- the poor things peered weakly and trustfully through the huge convex lenses like bottle-glass; they pleaded all the time for serious conversation.
"Don't think I'm not enjoying myself here. I am. You know it's a great rest. Only sometimes I try to think -- who am I?"
"Well, we know that, Mr Digby. Your identity card. . ."
"Yes, I know my name's Richard Digby, but who is Richard Digby? What sort of life do you think I led? Do you think I shall ever have the means to repay you all. . . for this?"
"Now that needn't worry you, Mr Digby. The doctor is repaid all he wants simply by the interest of your case. You're a very valuable specimen under his microscope."
"But he makes life on the slide so very luxurious, doesn't he?"
"He's wonderful," the young man said. "This place -- he planned it all, you know. He's a very great man. There's not a finer shell-shock clinic in the country. Whatever people may say," he added darkly.
"I suppose you have worse cases than mine. . . violent cases."
"We've had a few. That's why the doctor arranged the sick bay for them. A separate wing and a separate staff. He doesn't want even the attendants in this wing to be mentally disturbed. . . You see it's essential that we should be calm too."
"You're certainly all very calm."
"When the time's ripe I expect the doctor will give you a course of psychoanalysis, but it's really much better, you know, that the memory should return of itself -- gently and naturally. It's like a film in a hypo bath," he went on, obviously drawing on another man's patter. "The development will come out in patches."
"Not if it's a good hypo bath, Johns," Digby said. He lay back smiling lazily in the arm-chair, lean and bearded and middle-aged. The angry scar on his forehead looked out of place -- like duelling cuts on a professor.
"Hold on to that," Johns said -- it was one of his favourite expressions. "You went in for photography then?"
"Do you think that perhaps I was a fashionable portrait photographer?" Digby asked. "It doesn't exactly ring a bell, though of course it goes -- doesn't it? -- with the beard. No, I was thinking of a darkroom on the nursery floor at home. It was a linen cupboard too, and if you forgot to lock the door, a maid would come in with clean pillow slips and bang went the negative. You see, I remember things quite clearly until say, eighteen."
"You can talk about that time," Johns said, "as much as you like. You may get a clue and there's obviously no resistance -- from the Freudian censor."
"I was just wondering in bed this morning which of the people I wanted to become I did in fact choose. I remember I was very fond of books on African exploration -- Stanley, Baker, Livingstone, Burton, but there doesn't seem much opportunity for explorers nowadays."