The super was supremely courteous, beautifully tailored and impressive — senior police officers are the smartest dressed men in the country, thought Butty, who was not the smartest-dressed science fiction editor in the country.
The super said, “There was an incident in the High Street yesterday. Can any of you tell me anything about it?”
Dickie began with enthusiasm. Then the publisher joined in after a hesitant start but became almost as voluble as Dickie. As if deciding that the morning would be wasted, anyway, so he might just as well get his share of pleasure from it as anyone else.
And Butty listened and after a while marveled at Dickie and the boss, but said nothing. Once, noticing his silence, the super turned to him and asked, “Weren’t you here, yesterday?”
“Oh, I was here, all right,” said Butty, giving a sniff. Cold almost better but still there, running down his nose. “But I didn’t witness anything.”
Large smile from the super. “Well, you’re the only person on the High Street who didn’t. Never had so many witnesses.” He frowned, as if that was puzzling. And then his brow corrugated tiredly, as if he had been up all night.
“Witnesses?” He ruminated. “They saw a bus drive over a pram containing two kids. Saw them crushed beneath the wheels. Saw others killed. The bus driver laughing his head off as if it was a great joke.”
He looked at them. “You’ve seen the morning’s papers? All those people saw it happen, but no one found any bodies. What happened to them? He looked bewildered. “Too many people tell the same, identical story. They saw it all happen, on the zebra crossing by the Co-op. All right, but we can’t trace any woman with two kids…or anyone missing. And no bodies. Just a lot of people dropping down in faints because of shock. What happened?”
He was a helpless man.
The publisher sat with his eyes downcast. Dickie fídgeted. Then said, “Well, I saw it happen. Or thought I did.”
“So did I.” The publisher. “Saw it with my own eyes.”
Butty said, “You couldn’t have,” and they all swung round on him, though Dickie was nodding and smiling brightly.
The publisher was indignant. “What d’you mean, I couldn’t have? I saw it, I tell you.” His face was a truculent threat.
Butty rubbed his glasses ferociously. He said, “You were in this office here with me when it happened. Dickie shot out and might have seen something—” Even so, his manner conveyed doubt about the possibility. “But you took time to follow. You shut the safe. We went to the door an stood together. I saw nothing, so you couldn’t have seen more than I did. Then you shot off to join the mob. But whatever had happened had happened by then. You couldn’t have — couldn’t have seen what you say you saw.”
The publisher rose slowly. His controlled movement was to convey the utmost in threat to his employee. His voice was soft, which is yet another w of projecting malignancy.
“Are you telling me I’m making up a story? Can you sit there and tell me I’m lying, that I didn’t see what I saw? Are you mad, Butteridge?”
Butty took courage. “Not mad, but you didn’t see what you thought yoi saw.”
And at that Dickie leapt in with his wonderful theory, the superintendent and the detective-sergeant swinging their heads from one speaker to another.
Dickie said, “It didn’t happen. It couldn’t have happened, even though hundreds of people swore they saw it happen. If you run over people there must be bodies. There weren’t any. So it didn’t happen. It only happened in our minds.”
The superintendent said, tiredly, “That’s what the M.O. said. Mass hallucination followed by mass hysteria.”
The publisher protested. “Oh, come now, that’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it? I mean, here’s a street full of people, and all at once everyone sees something and now we’re told it happened only in their minds. I mean—” Butty wished he would stop saying, ‘I mean’, “I mean, well, people don’t all go bonkers at once, not without cause.”
The superintendent agreed with him. “That’s what we’re here to try to find out. What happened to cause all those people to imagine they saw one certain picture at precisely the same moment, a picture — an event — which by the evidence demonstrably did not happen.” He leaned forward, eyes weary. “What did it? What triggered off this hallucination, if it was that? Something did it, because in this world nothing happens without a cause.” A policeman speaking. Find the motive.
Dickie spoke, young voice very confident, very clear. “There are two recorded cases in history of mass hallucination like this.” They all turned on Dickie. Butty thought the remarkable thing was that Dickie should quite willingly, openly, admit that what he said he saw yesterday was a figment of his imagination. Not everyone could do that. The publisher, for instance.
Dickie said, “Some time in the 1890s there was an incident in a canton in Eastern Switzerland. A tiny village, with a big wooden hotel. It set on fire. One moment there was no fire, the next it was an inferno. The whole village saw it and were shocked by the suddenness of events.”
Butty nodded, but no one noticed. Dickie was reminding him.
“An entire village bore witness to that fire, and to the people who leapt to their death from the blazing upper rooms. I remember, they even saw a mother throw her child down to be caught, but it was missed and died. The whole village saw that tragedy. Yet next day the hotel was there. When they woke up, the hotel was there and so were all the guests. Nobody hurt.”
“And the other similar event?” Was the superintendent really interested in young Dickie and his stories? Dickie was enthralled to recite them. Butty took off his glasses and screwed up his eyes. Beginning of a headache again. Yes, he should have stayed away another day and blow the boss.
“That was later,” Dickie, reveling in their attentions. “Just before World War I. It was on the Rhine. September, I think it was, the time of the wine festival. A lot of the villagers had gone on a steamer up the Rhine as part of the celebrations. They came back in the evening, and the rest of the village was down at the landing stage to serenade their return with a band. All told the same story.
“The steamer was only a few hundred yards from the bank, when there was an explosion—”
“And also a fire.” Butty spoke.
Dickie looked a mite disappointed. “Oh, you know the story?”
Butty nodded. “It’s been told often enough. It seems to get more precise and detailed the longer in time it is from the event. But do go on, this is your story.”
Slightly subdued, Dickie continued. “Horrified villagers saw people running about the decks on fire. They saw people jumping into the water, drowning before their eyes, before they could run for rowing boats to save then. There was another violent explosion and almost at once the ship sank, taking down with it over a hundred men, women and children. They saw it, close on two hundred villagers, including the German band. It was a night of horror for them.
“Yet next morning when they stirred, there was the steamer tied to the landing stage, not in the least harmed. And no one was missing from the village.”
The superintendent looked at the detective-sergeant, then he rose and absent-mindedly brushed the editorial dust from his well-pressed trousers.
“Yes, yes,” he said. Then again, “Yes.” He drew on a great breath and said, “Well, thank you, gentlemen. Very interesting, I must say.”
Why did you say it? thought Butty. You know your time is being wasted, why don’t you come out with it?
“We must go and interview others,” said the super, but his tone said he didn’t think it would do much good. He said, using that now slightly old-fashioned term, “Good day, gentlemen,” and they went.
Dickie was a bit hurt, his rampaging enthusiasm snubbed. When they were through the door his indignation burst out. “That’s the trouble, they’ve no imagination, so they can’t see. They can’t explain yesterday’s mass hallucination, but they haven’t time to listen.”