"But the digging?" Digby asked. "You must have dreamed. . ."
"That tube. . . It was awful, old man. I hadn't really meant I wouldn't eat. I was just afraid of poison."
"Poison?"
"Treachery," the voice said. "Listen, Barnes. . ."
"I'm not Barnes."
Again there was a long sigh. "Of course. I'm sorry. It's getting me down. I am touched, you know. Perhaps they are right."
"Who's Barnes?"
"He was a good man. They got him on the beach. It's no good, Digby. I'm mad. Every day in every way I get worse and worse."
Somewhere from far away, through an open window on the floor below, came the sound of a car. Digby put his lips to the door and said, "I can't stay, Stone. Listen. You are not mad. You've got ideas into your head, that's all. It's not right putting you here. Somehow I'll get you out. Just stick it."
"You're a good chap, Digby."
"They've threatened me with this too."
"You," Stone whispered back. "But you're sane enough. By God, perhaps I'm not so touched after all. If they want to put you here, it must be treachery."
"Stick it."
"I'll stick it, old man. It was the uncertainty. I thought perhaps they were right."
The sound of the car faded.
"Haven't you any relations?"
"Not a soul," the voice said. "I had a wife, but she went away. She was quite right, old chap, quite right. There was a lot of treachery."
"I'll get you out. I don't know how, but I'll get you out."
"That island, Digby. . . you've got to watch it, old man. I can't do anything here, and I don't matter, anyway. But if I could just have fifty of the old bunch. . ."
Digby reassured him gently, "I'll watch the island."
"I thought the Hun had got hold of it. They don't let the grass grow. . . But I'm sometimes a bit confused, old man."
"I must go now. Just stick it."
"I'll stick it, old man. Been in worse places. But I wish you didn't have to go."
"I'll come back for you."
But he hadn't the faintest idea of how. A terrible sense of pity moved him; he felt capable of murder for the release of that gentle tormented creature. He could see him walking into the muddy pond. . . the very clear blue eyes and the bristly military moustache and the lines of care and responsibility. That was a thing you learned in this place: that a man kept his character even when he was insane. No madness would ever dim that military sense of duty to others.
His reconnaissance had proved easier than he had any right to expect: the doctor must be taking a long ride. He reached the green baize door safely, and when it sighed behind him, it was like Stone's weary patience asking him to come back. He passed quickly through the lounge and then more carefully up the stairs until he came again within sight of Johns' open door. Johns wasn't there: the clock on his desk had only moved on twelve minutes: the papers lay in the lamplight. He felt as though he had explored a strange country and returned home to find it all a dream -- not a single page of the calendar turned during all his wanderings.
3
He wasn't afraid of Johns. He went in and picked up one of the offending papers. Johns had arranged them in order and marked the passages. He must have been bitten by the passion for detection. The Ministry of Home Security, Digby read, had replied months ago to a question about a missing document in much the same terms as in the later case. It had never been missing. There had been at most a slight indiscretion, but the document had never left the personal possession of -- and there was the great staid respected name which Johns had forgotten. In the face of such a statement how could anyone continue to suggest that the document had been photographed? That was to accuse the great staid name not of an indiscretion but of treason. It was perhaps a mistake not to have left the document in the office safe overnight, but the great name had given his personal assurance to the Minister that not for one second had the document been out of his possession. He had slept with it literally under his pillow. . . The Times hinted that it would be interesting to investigate how the calumny had started. Was the enemy trying to sap our confidence in our hereditary leaders by a whisper campaign? After two or three issues there was silence.
A rather frightening fascination lay in these months-old newspapers. Digby had slowly had to relearn most of the household names, but he could hardly turn the page of any newspaper without encountering some great man of whom he had never heard, and occasionally there would crop up a name he did recognize -- someone who had been a figure twenty years ago. He felt like a Rip Van Winkle returning after a quarter of a century's sleep; the people of whom he had heard hardly connected better than he did with his youth. Men of brilliant promise had lapsed into the Board of Trade, and of course in one great case a man who had been considered too brilliant and too reckless ever to be trusted with major office was the leader of his country. One of Digby's last memories was of hearing him hissed by ex-servicemen from the public gallery of a law court because he had told an abrupt unpalatable truth about an old campaign. Now he had taught the country to love his unpalatable truths.
He turned a page and read casually under a photograph: "Arthur Rowe whom the police are anxious to interview in connection. . ." He wasn't interested in crime. The photograph showed a lean shabby clean-shaven man. All photographs of criminals looked much alike -- perhaps it was the spots, the pointilliste technique of the newspaper photograph. There was so much of the past he had to learn that he couldn't be bothered to learn the criminals, at any rate of the domestic kind.
A board creaked and he turned. Johns hovered and blinked in the doorway.
"Good evening, Johns," Digby said.
"What are you doing here?"
"Reading the papers," Digby said.
"But you heard the doctor say. . ."
"This isn't a prison, Johns," Digby said, "except for poor Stone. It's a very charming nursing home and I'm a private patient with nothing wrong except loss of memory due to a bomb. . ." He realized that Johns was listening to him with intensity. "Isn't that about it?" he asked.
"It must be, mustn't it," Johns said.
"So we must keep a sense of proportion, and there's no earthly reason why, if I don't feel like sleep, I shouldn't stroll down the passage to your room for a chat and to read. . ."
"When you put it like that," Johns said, "it sounds so simple."
"The doctor makes you see it differently, doesn't he?"
"All the same a patient ought to follow the treatment. . ."
"Or change his doctor. You know I've decided to change my doctor."
"To leave?" Johns asked. There was fear in his voice.
"To leave."
"Please don't do anything rash," Johns said. "The doctor's a great man. He's suffered a lot. . . and that may have made him a bit. . . eccentric. But you can't do better than stay here, really you can't."