The door pulled easily open. It was only the cover for another door, to deaden sound and leave the doctor in his study undisturbed. But that door, too, had been left unlocked, unbolted. As he passed into the passage beyond, the green baize swung to behind him with a long sigh.
2
He stood stone still and listened. Somewhere a clock ticked with a cheap tinny sound, and a tap had been left dripping. This must once have been the servants' quarters: the floor was stone, and his bedroom slippers pushed up a little smoke of dust. Everything spoke of neglect; the woodwork when he reached the stairs had not been polished for a very long time and the thin drugget had been worn threadbare. It was an odd contrast to the spruce nursing home beyond the door; everything around him shrugged its shoulders and said, "We are not important. Nobody sees us here. Our only duty is to be quiet and not disturb the doctor." And what could be quieter than dust? If it had not been for the clock ticking he would have doubted whether anyone really lived in this part of the house -- the clock and the faintest tang of stale cigarette smoke, of Caporal, that set his heart beating again with apprehension.
Where the clock ticked Poole must live. Whenever he thought of Poole he was aware of something unhappy, something imprisoned at the bottom of the brain trying to climb out. It frightened him in the same way as birds frightened him when they beat up and down in closed rooms. There was only one way to escape -- the fear of another creature's pain. That was to lash out until the bird was stunned and quiet or dead. For the moment he forgot Major Stone, and smelt his way towards Poole's room.
It was at the end of the passage where the tap dripped, a large square, comfortless room with a stone floor divided in half by a curtain -- it had probably once been a kitchen. Its new owner had lent it an aggressive and squalid masculinity as if he had something to prove; there were ends of cigarettes upon the floor, and nothing was used for its right purpose. A clock and a cheap brown teapot served as book-ends on a wardrobe to prop up a shabby collection -- Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship, lives of Napoleon and Cromwell, and numbers of little paper-covered books about what to do with Youth, Labour, Europe, God. The windows were all shut, and when Digby lifted the drab curtain he could see the bed had not been properly made -- or else Poole had flung himself down for a rest and hadn't bothered to tidy it afterwards. The tap dripped into a fixed basin and a sponge-bag dangled from a bedpost. A used tin which once held lobster paste now held old razor-blades. The place was as comfortless as a transit camp; the owner might have been someone who was just passing on and couldn't be bothered to change so much as a stain on the wall. An open suitcase full of soiled underclothes gave the impression that he hadn't even troubled to unpack.
It was like the underside of a stone: you turned up the bright polished nursing home and found beneath it this.
Everywhere there was the smell of Caporal, and on the beds there were crumbs, as though Poole took food to bed with him. Digby stared at the crumbs a long while: a feeling of sadness and disquiet and dangers he couldn't place haunted him -- as though something were disappointing his expectations -- as though the cricket match were a frost, nobody had come to the half-term holiday, and he waited and waited outside the King's Arms for a girl who would never turn up. He had nothing to compare this place with. The nursing home was something artificial, hidden in a garden. Was it possible that ordinary life was like this? He remembered a lawn and afternoon tea and a drawing-room with water-colours and little tables, a piano no one played and the smell of eau-de-Cologne; but was this the real adult life to which we came in time? Had he, too, belonged to this world? He was saddened by a sense of familiarity. It was not of this last he had dreamed a few years back at school, but he remembered that the years since then were not few but many.
At last the sense of danger reminded him of poor imprisoned Stone. He might not have long before the doctor and Poole returned, and though he could not believe they had any power over him, he was yet afraid of sanctions he couldn't picture. His slippers padded again up the passage and up the dingy stairs to the first floor. There was no sound here at alclass="underline" the tick of the clock didn't reach as far: large bells on rusty wires hung outside what might have been the butler's pantry. They were marked Study, Drawing-Room, 1st Spare Bedroom, 2nd Spare Bedroom, Day Nursery. . . The wires sagged with disuse and a spider had laid its scaffolding across the bell marked Dining-Room.
The barred windows he had seen over the garden wall had been on the second floor, and he mounted unwillingly higher. He was endangering his own retreat with every step, but he had dared himself to speak to Stone, and if it were only one syllable he must speak it. He went down a passage calling softly, "Stone. Stone."
There was no reply and the old cracked linoleum creaked under his feet and sometimes caught his toes. Again he felt a familiarity -- as if this cautious walking, this solitary passage, belonged more to this world than the sleek bedroom in the other wing. "Stone," he called, "Stone," and heard a voice answer, "Barnes. Is that you, Barnes?" coming startlingly from the door beside him.
"Hush," he said, and putting his lips close to the key-hole, "It's not Barnes. It's Digby."
He heard Stone sigh. "Of course," the voice said, "Barnes is dead. I was screaming. . ."
"Are you all right, Stone?"
"I've had an awful time," Stone said, so low that Digby could hardly hear him, "an awful time. I didn't really mean I wouldn't eat. . ."
"Come to the door so that I can hear you better."
Stone said, "They've got me in one of these strait-jackets. They said I was violent: I don't think I was violent. It's just the treachery. . ." He must have got nearer the door, because his voice was much clearer. He said, "Old man, I know I've been a bit touched. We all are in this place, aren't we? But I'm not mad. It just isn't right."
"What did you do?"
"I wanted to find a room to enfilade that island from. They'd begun to dig, you see, months ago. I saw them one evening after dark. One couldn't leave it at that. The Hun doesn't let the grass grow. So I came through into this wing and went to Poole's room. . ."
"Yes?"
"I didn't mean to make them jump. I just wanted to explain what I was after."
"Jump?"
"The doctor was there with Poole. They were doing something in the dark. . ." The voice broke: it was horrible hearing a middle-aged man sobbing invisibly behind a locked door.