Chapter Seventeen...


     The Electric Monk hardly knew what to believe any more.
     He had been through a bewildering number of belief systems
in the previous few hours, most of which had failed to  provide
him with the long-term spiritual solace that it was his bounden
programming eternally to seek.
     He was fed up. Frankly. And tired. And dispirited.
     And  furthermore,  which caught him by surprise, he rather
missed his horse. A dull and menial creature, to be  sure,  and
as  such  hardly  worthy of the preoccupation of one whose mind
was destined forever to concem itself with higher things beyond
the underst.anding of  a  simple  horse,  but  nevertheless  he
missed it.
     He  wanted to sit on it. He wanted to pat it. He wanted to
feel that it didn't understand.
     He wondered where it was.
     He dangled his feet disconsolately from the branch of  the
tree  in  which  he  had  spent the night. He had climbed it in
pursuit of some wild fantastic dream and then had got stuck and
had to stay there till the moming.
     Even now, by daylight, he wasn't certain how he was  going
to get down. He came for a moment perilously close to believing
that he could fly, but a quick-thinking error-checking protocol
cut in and told him not to be so silly.
     It was a problem though.
     Whatever  burning  fire of faith had bome him, inspired on
wings of hope, upwards through the branches,of the tree in  the
magic   hours   of  night,  had  not  also  provided  him  with
instructions  on  how  to  get  back  down  again  when,   like
altogether  too  many of these burning fiery night-time faiths,
it had deserted him in the morning.
     And speaking - or  rather  thinking  -  of  burning  fiery
things,  there  had  been  a major burning fiery thing a little
distance from here in the early pre-dawn hours.
     It lay, he thought, in the direction from which he himself
had come when he had been drawn by a deep spiritual  compulsion
towards  this  inconveniently high but otherwise embarrassingly
ordinary tree. He had longed to go and worship at the fire,  to
pledge  himself  eternally  to its holy glare, but while he had
been struggling hopelessly to find a way downwards through  the
branches,  fire engines had arrived and put the divine radiance
out, and that had been another creed out of the window.
     The sun had been up for some hours now, and though he  had
occupied  the  time  as  best as he could, believing in clouds,
believing in twigs, believing in a  peculiar  fornt  of  flying
beetle,  he  believed  now that he was fed up, and was utterlyХ
convinced, furthermore, that he was getting hungry.
     He wished he'd taken the precaution of  providing  himself
with  some  food  from the dwelling place he had visited in the
night, to which he had carried his sacred burden for entombment
in the holy broom cupboard, but he had left in the  grip  of  a
white passion, believing that such mundane matters as food-were
of no consequence, that the tree would provide.
     Well, it had provided.
     It had provided twigs.
     Monks did not eat twigs.
     In  fact,  now  he  came  to think of it, he felt a little
uncomfortable about some of the things  he  had  believed  last
night  and had found some of the results a little confusing. He
had been quite clearl instructed to "shoot off"  and  had  felt
strangely  compelled  to obey but perhaps he had made a mistake
in acting  so  precipitately  on  an  instruction  given  in  a
language  he had learned only two minutes before. Certainly the
reaction of the person he had shot off at had seemed  a  little
extreme.
     In  his  own world when people were shot at like that they
came back next week for another episode, but  he  didn't  think
this person would be doing that.
     A  gust  of  wind  blew  through  the tree, making it sway
giddily. He climbed down a  little  way.  The  first  part  was
reasonably  easy,  since  the  branches  were  all fairly close
together.  It  was  the  last  bit  that  appeared  to  be   an
insuperable  obstacle  -  a  sheer  drop  which could cause him
severe internal damage or rupture and might in turn  cause  him
to start believing things that were seriously strange.
     The  sound of voices over in a distant corner of the field
suddenly caught his attention. A lorry had  pulled  up  by  the
side  of  the  road.  He  watched  carefully  for a moment, but
couldn't see anything particular to believe in and so  returned
to his introspection.
     There  was, he remembered, an odd function call he had had
last night, which he hadn't encountered before, but  he  had  a
feeling  that  it  might  be  something  he'd  heard  of called
remorse. He hadn't felt at all comfortable about  the  way  the
person  he had shot at had just lain there, and after initially
walking away the Monk had returned to have another look.  There
was  definitely an expression on the person's face which seemed
to suggest that something was up, that this didn't fit in  with
the scheme of things. The Monk worried that he might have badly
spoiled his evening.
     Still,  he reflected, so long as you did what you believed
to be right, that was the main thing.
     The next thing he had believed to be right was that having
spoiled this person's evening he shouId at least convey him  to
his  home,  and  a  quick search of his pockets had produced an
address, some maps and some keys. The trip had been an  arduous
one, but he had been sustained on the way by his faith.
     The word "bathroom" floated unexpectedly across the field.
     He  looked  up  again  at  the lorry in the distant comer.
Thene  wa  a  man  in  a  dark  blue  uniform  explaining
something  to  a  man  in  rough  working clothes, who seemed a
little disgruntled about whatever it was. The words  "until  we
trace  the owner" and "completely batty, of course" were gusted
over on the wind. The man in the working clothes clearly agreed
to accept the situation, but with bad grace.
     A few moments later, a horse was led out of  the  back  of
the  lorry  and  into the field. The Monk blinked. His circuits
thrilled and surged with astonishment. Now  here  at  last  was
something  he  could  believe  in,  a truly miraculous event, a
reward  at  last  f¦r  his  unstinting  if  rather  promiscuous
devotion.
     The  horse  walked  with a patient, uncomplaining gait. It
had tong grown used to being wherever it was put, but for  once
it  felt  it didn't mind this. Here, it thought, was a pleasant
field. Here was grass. Here was a hedge it could look at. There
was enough space that it could go for a trot  later  on  if  it
felt  the  urge.  The  humans  drove off and left it to its own
devices, to which it was quite content to be left. It went  for
a  little  amble,  and  then,  just for the hell of it, stopped
ambling. It could do what it liked.
     What pleasure.
     What very great and unaccustomed pleasure.
     It slowly surveyed the whole field, and  then  decided  to
plan out a nice relaxed day for itself. A little trot later on,
it  thought,  maybe  around threeish. After that a bit of a lie
down over on the east side of the field  where  the  grass  was
thicker.  It  looked like a suitable spot to think about supper
in.
     Lunch, it rather fancied, could be taken at the south  end
of  the  field where a small stream ran. Lunch by a stream, for
heaven's sake. This was bliss.
     It also quite liked the notion of spending  half  an  hour
walking  alternately a little bit to the left and then a little
bit to the right,  for  no  apparent  reason.  It  didn't  know
whether  the  time  between  two  and three would be best spent
swishing its tail or mulling things over.
     Of course. it could always do both, if it so  wished,  and
go  for  its  trot a little later. And it had just spotted what
looked like a fine piece of hedge for watching things over, and
that would easily while away apleasant pre-prandial  hour
or two.
     Good.
     An excellent plan.
     And  the  best  thing about it was that having made it the
horse eould now completely  and  utterly  ignore  it.  It  went
instead for a leisurely stand under the only tree in the field.
     From  out  of its branches the Electric Monk dropped on to
the horse's back, with a cry which  sounded  suspiciously  like
"Geronimo".

Chapter Eighteen...


     Dirk  Gently  briefly ran over the salient facts once more
while Richard MacDuff's world crashed slowly and silently  into
a  dark,  freezing  sea  which  he hadn't even known was there,
waiting inches beneath his feet. When Dirk had finished for the
second time the room fell quiet while Richard stared fixedly at
his face.
     "Where did you hear this?" said Richard at last.
     "The radio," said Dirk, with a slight shrug, "at least the
main points. It's all over the news  of  course.  The  details?
Well.  discreet  enquiries among contacts here and there. There
are one or two  people  I  got  to  know  at  Cambridge  police
station, for reasons which may occur to you."
     "I  don't  even know whether to believe you," said Richard
quietly. "May I use the phone?"
     Dirk courteously picked a telephone receiver  out  of  the
wastepaper  bin  and  handed it to him. Richard dialled Susan's
number.
     The phone was answered almost immediately and a frightened
voice said, "Hello?"
     "Susan, it's Ri -"
     "Richard! Where are you? For God's sake, where  are
you? Are you all right?"
     "Don't tell her where you are," said Dirk.
     "Susan, what's happened?"
     "Don't you -?"
     "Somebody  told  me  that  something's happened to Gordon,
but..."
     "Something's happened -? He's dead, Richard,
he's been murdered- "
     "Hang up," said Dirk.
     "Susan, listen. I - "
     "Hang up," repeated Dirk, and then Ieaned forward  to  the
phone and cut him off.
     "The  police  will  probably have a trace on the line," he
explained. He took the receiver and chucked it back in the bin.
     "But I have to go to the police," Richard exclaimed.
     "Go to the police?"
     "What else can I do? I have to go to the police  and  tell
them that it wasn't me."
     "Tell  them  that it wasn't you?" said Dirk incredulously.
"Well I expect that will probably make it all right, then. Pity
Dr Crippen didn't think of that. Would have saved him a lot  of
bother."
     "Yes, but he was guilty!"
     "Yes,  so  it would appear. And so it would appear, at the
moment, are you."
     "But I didn't do it, for God's sake!"
     "You are talking to someone who has spent time  in  prison
for   something  he  didn't  do,  remember.  I  told  you  that
coincidences are strange and dangerous things. Believe  me,  it
is  a  great  deal  better  to find cast-iron proof that you're
innocent, than to languish in a cell  hoping  that  the  police
-who already think you're guilty= will find it for you."
     "I  can't  think straight," said Richard, with his hand to
his forehead. "Just stop for a moment and let me think this out
- "
     "If I may - "
     "Let me think - !"
     Dirk  shrugged  and  turned  his  attention  back  to  his
eigarette, which seemed to be bothering him.
     "It's  no good," said Richard shaking his head after a few
moments,  "I  can't  take  it  in.  It's  like  trying  to   do
trigonometry when someone's kicking your head. OK, tell me what
you think I should do."
     "Hypnotism."
     "What?"
     "It  is  hardly  surprising  in the circumstances that you
should be unable to gather your thoughts clearly.  However,  it
is  vital  that  somebody gathers them. It will be much simpler
for both of us if  you  will  allow  me  to  hypnotise  you.  I
strongly suspect that there is a very great deal of information
jumbled  up  in  your  head  that will not emerge while you are
shaking it up so - that might not emerge at all because you  do
not  realise  its  significance.  With  your  permission we can
short-cut all that."
     "Well, that's decided then," said  Richard,  standing  up,
"I'm going to the police."
     "Very  well,"  said  Dirk,  leaning back and spreading his
palms on the desk, "I wish you the very best of  luck.  Perhaps
on your way out you would be kind enough to ask my secretary to
get me some matches."
     "You haven't got a secretary," said Richard, and left.
     Dirk sat and brooded for a few seconds, made a valiant but
vain attempt  to  fold  the  sadly  empty  pizza  box  into the
wastepaper bin, and then went to look in  the  cupboard  for  a
metronome.

     Richard  emerged  blinking  into the daylight. He stood on
the top step rocking slightly, then plunged off down the street
with an odd kind of dancing walk which reflected  the  whirling
dance  of  his mind. On the one hand he simply couldn't believe
that the evidence  wouldn't  show  perfectly  clearly  that  he
couldn't have committed the murder; on the other hand he had to
admit that it all looked remarkably odd.
     He  found  it  impossible  to  think clearly or rationally
about it. The idea that Gordon had been murdered  kept  blowing
up  in  his  mind  and  throwing  all other thoughts into total
confusion and disruption.
     It occurred to him for a moment that whoever did  it  must
have  been  a  damn  fast shot to get the trigger pulled before
being totally overwhelmed by waves of guilt, but  instantly  he
regretted  the thought. In fact he was a little appalled by the
general quality of the thoughts that sprang into his mind. They
seemed inappropriate and unworthy and mostly had to do with how
it would affect his projects in the company.
     He looked about inside himself for any  feeling  of  great
sorrow  or regret, and assumed that it must be there somewhere,
probably hiding behind the huge wall of shock.
     He arrived back within sight of  Islington  Green,  hardly
noticing  the  distance  he had walked. The sudden sight of the
police squad car parked outside his house hit him like a hammer
and he swung on his heel and stared with furious  concentration
at the menu displayed in the window of a Greek restaurant.
     "Dolmades," he thought, frantically.
     "Souvlaki," he thought.
     "A  small  spicy Greek sausage," passed hectically through
his mind. He tried to reconstruct the scene in his  mind's  eye
without  turning  round.  There  had  been a policeman standing
watching the street, and as far as he  could  recall  from  the
brief  glance  he  had,  it  looked  as if the side door of the
building which led up to his flat was standing open.
     The police were in his flat. In his flat.  Fassolia
Plaki!  A  filling bowl of haricot beans cooked in a tomato and
vegetable sauce!
     He tried to shift his eyes  sideways  and  back  over  his
shoulder.  The policeman was looking at him. He yanked his eyes
back to the menu and tried to fill his mind with finely  ground
meat  mixed  with  potato, breadcrumbs, onions and herbs rolled
into small balls and fried. The policeman must have  recognised
him and was at that very moment dashing acruss the road to grab
him  and  lug him off in a Black Maria just as they had done to
Dirk all those years ago in Cambridge.
     He braced his shoulders against the  shock,  but  no  hand
came  to grab him. He glanced back again, but the policeman was
looking unconcernedly in another direction. Stifado.
     It was very apparent to him that  his  behaviour  was  not
that  of  one  who  was  about to go and hand himself in to the
police.
     So what else was he to do?
     Trying in a stiff,  awkward  way  to  walk  naturally,  he
yanked  himself away from the window, strolled tensely down the
road a few yards, and then  ducked  back  down  Camden  Passage
again,  walking  fast and breathing hard. Where could he go? To
Susan? No - the police would be there or watching. To  the  WFT
offices  in  Primrose Hill? No - same reason. What on earth, he
screamed silently at  himself,  was  he  doing  suddenly  as  a
fugitive?
     He  insisted  to himself, as he had insisted to Dirk, that
he should not be running away from the police. The  police,  he
told  himself,  as  he  had been taught when he was a boy, were
there to help and protect the innocent. This thought caused him
instantly to break into a run and he nearly collided  with  the
proud new owner of an ugly Edwardian floor lamp.
     "Sorry,"  he  said,  "sorry."  He was startled that anyone
should want such a thing,  and  slowed  his  pace  to  a  walk,
glancing  with sharp hunted looks around him. The very familiar
shop fronts full of old polished brass, old polished  wood  and
pictures  of Japanese fish suddenly seemed very threatening and
aggressive.
     Who could possibly have wanted to kill  Gordon?  This  was
the  thought  that  suddenly  hammered at him as he turned down
Charlton Place. All that had concerned him so far was  that  he
hadn't.
     But who had?
     This was a new thought.
     Plenty  of people didn't care for him much, but there is a
huge  difference  between  disliking  somebody  -  maybe   even
disliking  them  a lot - and actually shooting them, strangling
them, dragging them through the fields and setting their  house
on  fire.  It  was a difference which kept the vast majority of
the population alive from day to day.
     Was it just theft? Dirk hadn't  mentioned  anything  being
missing but then he hadn't asked him.
     Dirk.  The image of his absurd but oddly commanding figure
sitting like a large toad, brooding in his shabby office,  kept
insisting  itself  upon Richard's mind. He realised that he was
retracing the way he had come, and  deliberately  made  himself
turn right instead of left.
     That way madness lay.
     He just needed a space, a bit of time to think and collect
his thoughts together.
     All  right  -  so  where  was  he  going? He stopped for a
moment, turned around and  then  stopped  again.  The  idea  of
dolmades suddenly seemed very attractive and it occurred to him
that  the  cool, calm and collected course of action would have
been simply to walk in and have some.  That  would  have  shown
Fate who was boss.
     Instead,  Fate  was  engaged on exactly the same course of
action. It wasn't actually sitting in a Greek restaurant eating
dolmades, but it might  as  well  have  been,  because  it  was
clearly in charge. Richard's footsteps drew him inexorably back
through the winding streets, over the canal.
     He stopped, briefly, at a corner shop, and then hurried on
past the  council  estates,  and into developer territory again
until he was standing once more outside 33,  Peckender  Street.
At  about  the same time as Fate would have been pouring itself
the last of the retsina, wiping its mouth and wondering  if  it
had  any  room  left for baklavas, Richard gazed up at the tall
ruddy Victorian building with its soot-darkened  brickwork  and
its heavy, forbidding windows. A gust of wind whipped along the
street and a small boy bounded up to him.
     "Fuck off," chirped the little boy, then paused and looked
at him again.
     "'Ere, mister," he added, "can I have your jacket?"
     "No," said Richard.
     "Why not?" said the boy.
     "Er, because I like it," said Richard.
     "Can't see why," muttered the boy. "Fuck off." He slouched
off moodily down the street, kicking a stone at a cat.
     Richard entered the building once more, mounted the stairs
uneasily and looked again into the office.
     Dirk's  secretary was sitting at her desk, head down, arms
folded.
     "I'm not here," she said.
     "I see," said Richard.
     "I only came back," she said, without looking up from  the
spot  on  her  desk  at which she was staring angrily, "to make
sure he  notices  that  I've  gone.  Otherwise  he  might  just
forget."
     "Is he in?" asked Richard.
     "Who  knows?  Who  cares? Better ask someone who works for
him, because I don't."
     "Show him in!" boomed Dirk's voice.
     She glowered for a moment, stood up,  went  to  the  inner
door,  wrenched  it  open, said "Show him in yourself," slammed
the door once more and returned to her seat.
     "Er, why don't I just show myself in?" said Richard.
     "I can't even hear you," said Dirk's ex-secretary, staring
resolutely at her desk. "How do you expect me to  hear  you  if
I'm not even here?"
     Richard  made  a placatory gesture, which was ignored, and
walked through and opened the door to Dirk's office himself. He
was startled to find the room in  semi-darkness.  A  blind  was
drawn  down  over the window, and Dirk was lounging back in his
seat, his face bizarrely lit  by  the  strange  arrangement  of
objects  sitting  on  the desk. At the forward edge of the desk
sat an old grey bicycle lamp, facing backwards  and  shining  a
feeble  light  on a metronome which was ticking softly back and
forth, with a highly polished silver teaspoon strapped  to  its
metal rod.
     Richard  tossed  a  couple  of  boxes of matches on to the
desk.
     "Sit down, relax, and keep looking  at  the  spoon,"  said
Dirk, "you are already feeling sleepy..."

     Another  police  car pulled itself up to a screeching halt
outside Richard's flat, and a grim-faced man  climbed  out  and
strode  over to one of the constables on duty outside, flashing
an identity card.
     "Detective Inspector Mason, Cambridgeshire CID," he  said.
"'This the MacDuff place?"
     The  constable  nodded  and  showed  him  to the side-door
entrance which opened on to the long narrow  staircase  leading
up  to the top flat. Mason bustled in and then bustled straight
out again.
     "There's a sofa  halfway  up  the  stairs,"  he  told  the
constable. "Get it moved."
     "Some  of the lads have already tried, sir," the constable
replied anxiously. "It seems to be stuck. Everyone's having  to
climb over it for the moment, sir. Sorry, sir."
     Mason gave him another grim look from a vast repertoire he
had developed  which ranged from very, very blackly grim indeed
at the bottom of the scale, all the way up to tiredly  resigned
and  only  faintly  grim,  which he reserved for his children's
birthdays.
     "Get it moved," he repeated  grimly,  and  bustled  grimly
back  through  the door grimly hauling up his trousers and coat
in preparation for the grim ascent ahead.
     "No sign of him yet?" asked the driver of the car,  coming
over  himself.  "Sergeant  Gilks,"  he  introduced  himself. He
looked tired.
     "Not as far as I know," said the constable,  "but  no  one
tells me anything."
     "Know  how  you  feel,"  agreed  Gilks. "Once the CID gets
involved you just get relegated to driving them about. And  I'm
the  only one who knows what he looked like. Stopped him in the
road last night. We just came from Way's house. Right mess."
     "Bad night, eh?"
     "Varied. Everything from murder to hauling horses  out  of
bathrooms.  No,  don't  even  ask. Do you have the same cars as
these?" he added, pointing at his own. "This one's been driving
me crazy all the way up. Cold even  with  the  heater  on  full
blast, and the radio keeps turning itself on and off."

Chapter Twenty...


     The  blind  rolled  up  with  a  sharp  rattle and Richard
blinked.
     "A fascinating evening you appear  to  have  spent,"  said
Dirk  Gently,  "even  though the most interesting aspects of it
seem to have escaped your curiosity entirely."
     He returned to his seat and lounged back  in  it  pressing
his fingertips together.
     "Please,"  he said, "do not disappoint me by saying `where
am I?' A glance will suffice."
     Richard looked around him in slow puzzlement and  felt  as
if  he  were  returning  unexpectedly  from  a  long sojourn on
another planet where all was peace and  light  and  music  that
went  on  for ever and ever. He felt so relaxed he could hardly
be bothered to breathe.
     The wooden toggle on the end of the blind cord  knocked  a
few times against the window, but otherwise all was now silent.
The  metronome  was still. He glanced at his wateh. It was just
after one o'clock.
     "You have been under hypnosis for a little  less  than  an
hour " said Dirk, "during which I have learned many interesting
things  and  been puzzled by some others which I would now like
to discuss with you. A Iittle  fresh  air  will  probably  help
revive  you  and I suggest a bracing stroll along the canal. No
one will be looking for you there. Janice!"
     Silence.
     A lot of things were still not clear to  Richard,  and  he
frowned to himself. When his immediate memory returned a moment
later,  it  was  like  an elephant suddenly barging through the
door and he sat up with a startled jolt.
     "Janice!" shouted  Dirk  again.  "Miss  Pearce!  Damn  the
girl."
     He  yanked  the  telephone receivers out of the wastepaper
basket and replaced them. An old and battered leather briefcase
stood by the desk, and he picked this  up,  retrieved  his  hat
from  the  floor and stood up, screwing his hat absurdly on his
head.
     "Come," he said, sweeping through the door to  where  Miss
Janice Pearce sat glaring at a pencil, "let us go. Let us leave
this  festering  hellhole. Let us think the unthinkable, let us
do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with  the  ineffable
itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. Now, Janice- "
     "Shut up."
     Dirk shrugged, and then picked off her desk the book which
earlier  she  had  mutilated when trying to slam her drawer. He
Ieafed through it, frowning, and then replaced it with a  sigh.
Janice  returned to what she had clearly been doing a moment or
two earlier, which was writing a long note with the pencil.
     Richard regarded all this in silence, still  feeling  only
semi= present. He shook his head.
     Dirk  said to him, "Events may seem to you to be a tangled
mass  of  confusion  at  the  moment.  And  yet  we  have  some
interesting  threads to pull on. For of all the things you have
told me that have happened, only two  are  actually  physically
impossible."
     Richard spoke at last. "Impossible?" he said with a frown.
     "Yes," said Dirk, "completely and utterly impossible."
     He smiled.
     "Luckily," he went on, "you have come to exactly the right
place  with your interesting problem, for there is no such word
as  `impossible'  in  my  dictionary.  In  fact,"   he   added,
brandishing  the abused book, "everything between `herring' and
`marmalade' appears to be missing. Thank you, Miss Pearce,  you
have once again rendered me sterling service, for which I thank
you  and  will,  in  the  event of a successful outcome to this
endeavour, even attempt to pay you. In  the  meantime  we  have
much  to  think on, and I leave the office in your very capable
hands."
     The phone rang and Janice answered it.
     "Good afternoon," she said, "Wainwright's Fruit  Emporium.
Mr  Wainwright  is not able to take calls at this time since he
is not right in the head and thinks he is a cucumber. Thank you
for calling."
     She slammed the phone down. She looked up again to see the
door closing softly behind her ex-employer  and  his  befuddled
client.

     "Impossible?" said Richard again, in surprise.
     "Everything  about  it,"  insisted  Dirk,  "completely and
utterly= well, let us say inexplicable. There is  no  point  in
using  the  word  `impossible'  to  describe something that has
clearly happened. But it cannot be  explained  by  anything  we
know."
     The  briskness  of the air along the Grand Union Canal got
in among Richard's senses and sharpened them up again.  He  was
restored  to  his  normal  faculties,  and  though  the fact of
Gordon's death kept jumping at him all  over  again  every  few
seconds,  he  was at least now able to think more clearly about
it. Oddly enough, though, that seemed for the moment to be  the
last thing on Dirk's mind. Dirk was instead picking on the most
trivial  of  the night's sequence of bizarre incidents on which
to cross= examine him.
     A jogger going one way and a cyclist going the other  both
shouted  at  each  other  to  get  out of the way, and narrowly
avoided hurling each other into the murky,  slow-moving  waters
of the canal. They were watched carefully by a very slow-moving
old lady who was dragging an even slower-moving old dog.
     On  the  other bank large empty warehouses stood startled,
every window shattered and glinting. A burned-out barge  lolled
brokenly  in the water. Within it a couple of detergent bottles
floated on the brackish water. Over the nearest  bridge  heavy=
goods lorries thundered, shaking the foundations of the houses,
belching  petrol  fumes  into  the air and frightening a mother
trying to cross the road with her pram.
     Dirk and Richard were walking along from  the  fringes  of
South  Hackney,  a  mile  from  Dirk's office, back towards the
heart of Islington, where Dirk knew the nearest lifebelts  were
positioned.
     "But  it  was  only a conjuring trick, for heaven's sake,"
said Richard. "He does them all the time. It's just sleight  of
hand.  Looks  impossible  but  I'm  sure if you asked any
conjurer he'd say it's easy once you know how these things  are
done. I once saw a man on the street in New York doing -"
     "I know how these things are done," said Dirk, pulling two
lighted  cigarettes  and a large glazed fig out of his nose. He
tossed the fig up in to the air, but it somehow failed to  land
anywhere.  "Dexterity, misdirection, suggestion. All things you
can learn if you have a little time to waste. Excuse  me,  dear
lady,"  he  said  to the elderly, slow-moving dog-owner as they
passed her. He bent down to the dog and pulled a long string of
brightly coloured flags from its bottom. "I think he will  move
more  comfortably  now," he said, tipped his hat courteously to
her and moved on.
     "These things, you see," he said to a  flummoxed  Richard,
"are easy. Sawing a lady in half is easy. Sawing a lady in half
and then joining her up together again is less easy, but can be
done  with  practice.  The  trick  you described to me with the
two-hundred= year-old vase and the college salt cellar is -" he
paused for emphasis - "completely and utterly inexplicable."
     "Well there was probably  some  detail  of  it  I  missed,
but... "
     "Oh,  without  question.  But  the  benefit of questioning
somebody under hypnosis is that it allows the questioner to see
the scene in much greater detail  than  the  subject  was  even
aware  of  at  the  time.  The girl Sarah, for instance. Do you
recall what she was wearing?"
     "Er, o," said Richard, vaguely,  "a  dress  of  some
kind, I suppose "
     "Colour? Fabric?"
     "Well,  I  can't  remember,  it  was dark. She was sitting
several places away from me. I hardly glimpsed her."
     "She was wearing a dark blue cotton velvet dress  gathered
to  a  dropped  waist.  It  had  raglan sleeves gathered to the
cuffs, a white Peter Pan collar and  six  small  pearl  buttons
down  the front - the third one down had a small thread hanging
off it. She had long dark hair pulled back with a red butterfly
hairgrip."
     "If you're going to tell me you know all that from looking
at a scuff mark on my shoes, like  Sherlock  Holmes,  then  I'm
afraid I don't believe you."
     "No,  no,"  said  Dirk,  "it's much simpler than that. You
told me yourself under hypnosis."
     Richard shook his head.
     "Not true," he said, "I don't even know what a  Peter  Pan
collar is. "
     "But I do and you described it to me perfectly accurately.
As you did the conjuring trick. And that trick was not possible
in the  form in which it occurred. Believe me. I know whereof I
speak. There are some other things I  would  like  to  discover
about  the  Professor, like for instance who wrote the note you
discovered on the table  and  how  many  questions  George  III
actually asked, but -"
     "What?"
     "-  but  I  think I would do better to question the fellow
directly.  Except..."  He  frowned  deeply  in   concentration.
"Except,"  he added, "that being rather vain in these matters I
would prefer to know the answers before I asked the  questions.
And  I do not. I absolutely do not." He gazed abstractedly into
the distance, and made a rough  calculation  of  the  remaining
distance to the nearest lifebelt.
     "And  the  second  impossible  thing,"  he  added; just as
Richard was about to get a word in edgeways, "or at least,  the
next  completely inexplicable thing, is of course the matter of
your sofa."
     "Dirk," exclaimed Richard in exasperation, "may  I  remind
you  that  Gordon  Way  is  dead, and that I appear to be under
suspicion of his murder! None of these things have the remotest
connection with that, and I- "
     "But I am extremely inclined  to  believe  that  they  are
connected."
     "That's absurd!"
     "I believe in the fundamental inter- "
     "Oh, yeah, yeah," said Richard, "the fundamental intercon=
nectedness of all things. Listen, Dirk, I am not a gullible old
lady and  you  won't be getting any trips to Bermuda out of me.
lf you're going to help me then let's stick to the point."
     Dirk bridled at this.  "I  believe  that  all  things  are
fundamentally   interconnected,   as  anyone  who  follows  the
principles of  quantum  mechanics  to  their  logical  extremes
cannot, if they are honest, help but accept. But I also believe
that  some  things  are  a  great deal more interconnected than
others.  And  when  two  apparently  impossible  events  and  a
sequence  of highly peculiar ones all occur to the same person,
and when that person suddenly becomes the suspect of  a  highly
peculiar  murder,  then  it seems to me that we should look for
the solution in the connection between these  events.  You  are
the connection, and you yourself have been behaving in a highly
peculiar and eccentric way."
     "I  have  not,"  said  Richard. "Yes, some odd things have
happened to me, but I-"
     "You were last night observed, by me, to climb the outside
of a building and break into the flat of your girlfriend, Susan
Way."
     "It may have been unusual," said Richard, "it may not even
have been wise. But it was perfectly logical  and  rational.  I
just  wanted  to undo something I had done before it caused any
damage."
     Dirk thought for a  moment,  and  slightly  quickened  his
pace.
     "And  what  you  did was a perfectly reasonable and normal
response to the problem of the message  you  had  left  on  the
tape=  yes,  you told me all about that in our little session -
it's what anyone would have done?"
     Richard frowned as if to say that he couldn't see what all
the fuss was about. "I don't say anyone would have  clone  it,"
he  said,  "I probably have a slightly more logical and literal
turn of mind than  many  people,  which  is  why  I  can  write
computer software. It was a logical and literal solution to the
problem."
     "Not a little disproportionate, perhaps?"
     "It  was  very important to me not to disappoint Susan yet
again."
     "So you are absolutely satisfied with your own reasons for
doing what you did?"
     "Yes," insisted Richard angrily.
     "Do you know," said Dirk, "what my  old  maiden  aunt  who
lived in Winnipeg used to tell me?"
     "No,"  said  Richard.  He quickly took off all his clothes
and dived into the canal. Dirk leapt  for  the  lifebelt,  with
which  they  had  just drawn level, yanked it out of its holder
and flung it to Richard, who was floundering in the  middle  of
the canal looking completely lost and disoriented.
     "Grab hold of this," shouted Dirk, "and I'll haul you in."
     "it's all right," spluttered Richard, "I can swim-"
     "No, you can't," yelled Dirk, "now grab it."
     Richard tried to strike out for the bank, but quickly gave
up in  consternation  and  grabbed  hold  of the lifebelt. Dirk
pulled on the rope till Richard reached the edge, and then bent
down to give him a hand out. Richard came up out of  the  water
puffing and spitting, then turned and sat shivering on the edge
with his hands in his lap.
     "God,  it's  foul  in there!" he exclaimed and spat again.
"It's absolutely disgusting. Yeuchh. Whew. God. I'm  usually  a
pretty  good  swimmer.  Must have got some kind of cramp. Lucky
coincidence we were so close to the lifebelt. Oh thanks."  This
last  he  said in response to the large towel which Dirk handed
him.
     He rubbed himself down briskly,  almost  scraping  himself
with  the towel to get the filthy canal water off him. He stood
up and looked about. "Can you find my pants?"
     "Young man," said the old lady with the dog, who had  just
reached  them. She stood looking at them sternly, and was about
to rebuke them when Dirk interrupted.
     "A thousand apologies,  dear  lady,"  he  said,  "for  any
offence  my  friend may inadvertently have caused you. Please,"
he added, drawing a  slim  bunch  of  anemones  from  Richard's
bottom "accept these with my compliments."
     The  lady  dashed  them out of Dirk's hand with her stick,
and hurried off, horror-struck, yanking her dog after her.
     "That wasn't very nice of you," said Richard,  pulling  on
his   clothes   underneath   the  towel  that  was  now  draped
strategically around him.
     "I don't think she's a very  nice  woman,"  replied  Dirk,
"she's  always  down  here,  yanking  her  poor  dog around and
telling people off. Enjoy your swim?"
     "Not much, no," said Richard, giving his hair a quick rub.
"I hadn't realised how filthy it would be in there.  And  cold.
Here," he said, handing the towel back to Dirk, "thanks. Do you
always carry a towel around in your briefcase?"
     "Do you always go swimming in the afternoons?"
     "No, I usualIy go in the mornings, to the swimming pool on
Highbury  Fields,  just to wake myself up, get the brain going.
It just occurred to me I hadn't been this morning."
     "And, er - that was why you just dived into the canal?"
     "Well, yes. I just thought that getting a bit of  exercise
would pinbably help me deal with all this."
     "Not  a  little  disproportionate,  then, to strip off and
jump into the canal."
     "No," he said, "it may not have been wise given the  state
of the water, but it was perfectly-"
     "You  were  perfectly  satisfied with your own reasons for
doing what you did."
     "Yes-"
     "And it was nothing to do with my aunt, then?"
     Richard's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What on  earth  are
you talking about?" he said.
     "I'll  tell  you,"  said Dirk. He went and sat on a nearby
bench and opened his case again. He folded the towel away  into
it  and   took out instead a small Sony tape recorder. He
beckoned Richard over and then pushed the Play  button.  Dirk's
own  voice floated from the tiny speaker in a lilting sing-song
voice. It said, "In a minute I will click my  fingers  and  you
will  wake and forget all of this except for the instructions I
shall now give you.
     "In a little while we will go for a walk along the  canal,
and  when  you  hear  me  say the words `my old maiden aunt who
lived in Winnipeg'-"
     Dirk suddenly grabbed Richard's arm to restrain him.
     The tape continued, "You will take off  all  your  clothes
and  dive  into the canal. You will find that you are unable to
swim, but you will not panic or sink,  you  will  simply  tread
water until I throw you the lifebelt... "
     Dirk  stopped  the tape and looked round at Richard's face
which for the second time that day was pale with shock.
     "I would be interested to know exactly what  it  was  that
possessed  you  to climb into Miss Way's flat last night," said
Dirk, "and why."
     Richard didn't respond - he was continuing to stare at the
tape recorder in some confusion. Then  he  said  in  a  shaking
voice,"There  was  a  message  from  Gordon on Susan's tape. He
phoned from the car. The tape's in my flat. Dirk, I'm  suddenly
very frightened by all this."

Chapter Twenty-one...


     Dirk  watched the police officer on duty outside Richard's
house from behind a van parked a few yards away.  He  had  been
stopping  and questioning everyone who tried to enter the small
side alley down which Richard's door was  situated,  including,
Dirk  was  pleased  to  note,  other  policemen  if  he  didn't
immediately recognise them. Another police car  pulled  up  and
Dirk started to move.
     A police officer climbed out of the car carrying a saw and
walked  towards the doorway. Dirk briskly matched his pace with
him, a step or two behind, striding authoritatively.
     "It's all right, he's with me," said Dirk,  sweeping  past
at  the  exact  moment  that the one police officer stopped the
other.
     And he was inside and climbing the stairs.
     The officer with the saw followed him in.
     "Er, excuse me, sir," he called up after Dirk.
     Dirk had just reached the point where the sofa  obstructed
the stairway. He stopped and twisted round.
     "Stay  here," he said, "guard this sofa. Do not let anyone
touch it, and I mean anyone. Understood?"
     The officer seemed flummoxed for a moment.
     "I've had orders to saw it up," he said.
     "Countermanded," barked Dirk. "Watch it  like  a  hawk.  I
shalI want a full report."
     He  turned back and climbed up over the thing. A moment or
two later he emerged into a large open area. This was the lower
of the two floors that comprised Richard's flat.
     "Have you searched that?" snapped Dirk at another  officer
who  was sitting at Richard's dining table looking through some
notes. The officer looked up in surprise and started  to  stand
up. Dirk was pointing at the wastepaper basket.
     "Er, yes-"
     "Search it again. Keep searching it. Who's here?"
     "Er, well-"
     "I haven't got all day."
     "Detective Inspector Mason just left, with- "
     "Good,  I'm having him pulled off. I'll be upstairs if I'm
needed, but I don't want any  interruptions  unless  it's  very
important. Understood?"
     "Er, who-"
     "I don't see you searching the wastepaper basket."
     "Er, right, sir. I'll- "
     "I want it deep-searched. You understand?"
     "Er- "
     "Get  cracking." Dirk swept on upstairs and into Richard's
workroom.
     The tape was lying exactly where Richard had told  him  it
would  be,  on  the long desk on which the six Macintoshes sat.
Dirk was about to pocket it when his curiosity  was  caught  by
the  image of Richard's sofa slowly twisting and turning on the
big Macintosh screen, and he sat down at the keyboard.
     He explored the program Richard had written  for  a  short
while,  but  quickly  realised  that in its present form it was
less than self= explanatory and he learned little.  He  managed
at  last  to  get  the  sofa  unstuck and move it back down the
stairs, but he realised that he had had to  turn  part  of  the
wall  off  in  order to do it. With a gnrnt of imtation he gave
up.
     Another computer he looked at was displaying a steady sine
wave. Around the edges of the screen were the small  images  of
other  waveforms  which could be seIected and added to the main
one or used to modify it in other ways. He  quickly  discovered
that  this  enabled you to build up very complex waveforms from
simple ones and he played with this for a  while.  He  added  a
simple  sine  wave  to itself, which had the effect of doubling
the height of the peaks and troughs of the wave. Then  he  slid
one  of  the  waves half a step back with respect to the other,
and the peaks and troughs of one simply cancelled out the peaks
and troughs of the other, leaving a completely flat line.  Then
he  changed  the  frequency of one of the sine waves by a small
extent.
     The result of this was that at some  positions  along  the
combined  waveform  the two waves reinforced each other, and at
others they cancelled each other out.  Adding  a  third  simple
wave  of  yet  another frequency resulted in a combined wave in
which it was hard to see any pattern at all. The line danced up
and down seemingly  at  random,  staying  quite  low  for  some
periods  and  then  suddenly building into very large peaks and
troughs as all three waves cante briefly into phase  with  each
other.
     Dirk  assumcd  that  there  must  be amongst this array of
equipment a means for translating the waveform dancing  on  the
Macintosh  screen  into an actual musical tone and hunted among
the menus available in the program.  He  found  one  menu  item
which invited him to transfer the wave sample into an Emu.
     This  puzzled him. He glanced around the room in search of
a large flightless bird, but was  unable  to  locate  any  such
thing.  He  activated  the  process anyway, and then traced the
cable which 1ed from the back of the Macintosh, down behind the
desk, along the floor, behind a cupboard, under a rug until  it
fetched  up  plugged  into  the  back  of a large grey keyboard
called an Emulator II.
     This, he assumed, was where his experimental waveform  has
just arrived. Tentatively he pushed a key.
     The  nasty  farting noise that surged instantly out of the
speakers was so loud that for a moment he didn't hear the words
"Svlad  Cjelli!"  that  were  barked  simultaneously  from  the
doorway.

     Richard  sat  in  Dirk's  office and threw tiny screwed-up
balls of paper at the wastepaper bin which was already full  of
telephones.  He broke pencils. He played major extracts from an
old Ginger Baker solo on his knees.
     In a word, he fretted.
     He had been trying to write down  on  a  piece  of  Dirk's
notepaper  all  that  he  could  remember  of the events of the
previous evening and, as far as he  could  pinpoint  them,  the
times  at  which  each  had  occurned. He was astonished at how
difficult it was, and how feeble his conscious memory seemed to
be in comparison with  his  unconscious  memory,  as  Dirk  had
demonstrated it to him.
     "Damn Dirk," he thought. He wanted to talk to Susan.
     Dirk  had  told  him  he  must not do so on any account as
there would be a trace on the phone lines.
     "Damn Dirk," he said suddenly, and sprang to his feet.
     "Have you got  any  ten-pence  pieces?"  he  said  to  the
resolutely glum Janice.

     Dirk turned.
     Framed in the doorway stood a tall dark figure.
     The  tall dark figure appeared to be not at all happy with
what it saw, to be rather cross about it, in fact. To  be  more
than cross. It appeared to be a talI dark figure who could very
easily  yank  the  heads off half a dozen chickens and still be
cross at the end of it.
     It stepped forward into the light and revealed  itself  to
be Sergeant Gilks of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary.
     "Do  you  know," said Sergeant Gilks of the Cambridgeshire
Constabulary, blinking with suppressed emotion,  "that  when  I
arrive back here to discover one police officer guarding a sofa
with  a  saw  and  another  dismembering an innocent wastepapet
basket I have to ask myself certain questions? And  I  have  to
ask them with the disquieting sense that I am not going to like
the answers when I find them.
     "I  then  find  myself mounting the stairs with a horrible
premonition, Svlad Cjelli, a very horrible premonition  indeed.
A premonition, I might add, that I now find horribly justified.
I  suppose  you can't shed any light on a horse discovered in a
bathroom as well? That seemed to have an air of you about it."
     "I cannot," said Dirk, "as yet.  Though  it  interests  me
strangely."
     "I  should  think  it bloody did. It would have interested
you strangely if you'd had to  get  the  bloody  thing  down  a
bloody winding staircase at one o'clock in the morning as well.
What  the  hell  are  you  doing  here?"  said  Sergeant Gilks,
wearily.
     "I am here," said Dirk, "in pursuit of justice."
     "Well, I wouldn't mix with me then," said  Gilks,  "and  I
certainly  wouldn't  mix  with  the  Met.  What  do you know of
MacDuff and Way?"
     "Of Way? Nothing beyond what is common knowledge.  MacDuff
I knew at Cambridge."
     "Oh, you did, did you? Describe him."
     "Tall.  Tall  and  absurdly  thin. And good-natured. A bit
like a preying mantis that doesn't prey - a non-preying  mantis
if  you  like. A sort of pleasant genial mantis that's given up
preying and taken up tennis instead."
     "Hmm," said Gilks gruffly, turning away and looking  about
the room. Dirk pocketed the tape.
     "Sounds like the same one," said Gilks.
     "And  of  course,"  said  Dirk,  "completely  incapable of
murder."
     "That's for us to decide."
     "And of couise a jury."
     "Tchah! Juries! "
     "Though, of course, it will not come to  that,  since  the
facts will speak for themselves long before it comes to a court
of law for my client."
     "Your  bleeding  client,  eh?  All right, Cjelli, where is
he?"
     "1 haven't the faintest idea."
     "I'll bet you've got a billing address."
     Dirk shrugged.
     "Look, Cjelli, this is a perfectly normal, harmless murder
enquiry, and I don't  want  you  mucking  it  up.  So  consider
yourself  wanred  off  as  of  now.  If I see a single piece of
evidence being levitated I'll hit you so hard you won't koow if
it's tomorrow or Thursday. Now get out, and give me  that  tape
on the way." He held out his hand.
     Dirk blinked, genuinely surprised. "What tape?"
     Gilks  sighed.  "You're  a clever man, Cjelli, I grant you
that," he said, "but you make the same mistake a lot of  clever
people  do  of thinking everyone else is stupid. If I turn away
it's for a reason, and the reason was to see  what  you  picked
up. I didn't need to see you pick it up, I just had to see what
was missing afterwards. We are trained you know. We used to get
half  an  hour Observation Training on Tuesday afternoons. Just
as a break after four hours solid of Senseless Brutality."
     Dirk hid his anger with himself behind a light  smile.  He
fished  in  the  pocket of his leather overcoat and handed over
the tape.
     "Play it," said Gilks, "let's see what you didn't want  us
to hear."
     "It  wasn't that I didn't want you to hear it," said Dirk,
with a shrug. "I just wanted to hear it first." He went over to
the shelf which carried Richard's hi-fi equipment  and  slipped
the tape into the cassette player.
     "So do you want to give me a little introduction?"
     "It's  a  tape,"  said  Dirk,  "from Susan Way's telephone
answering machine. Way apparently had  this  habit  of  leaving
long..."
     "Yeah,  I  know  about  that. And his secretary goes round
picking up his prattlings in the morning, poor devil."
     "Well, I believe there may be a message on the  tape  from
Gordon Way's car last night."
     "I see. OK. Play it."
     With a gracious bow Dirk pressed the Play button.
     "Oh,  Susan,  hi,  it's Gordon," said the tape once again.
"Just on my way to the cottage-"
     "Cottage!" exclaimed Gilks, satirically.
     "It's, er, Thursday night, and it's, er... 8.47. Bit misty
on the roads. Listen, I  have  those  people  from  the  States
coming over this weekend..."
     Gilks raised his eyebrows, looked at his watch, and made a
note on his pad.
     Both  Dirk  and the police sergeant experienced a chill as
the dead man's voice filled the room.
     "- it's a wonder I don't end up dead in  the  ditch,  that
would  be something wouldn't it, leaving your famous last words
on somebody's answering machine, there's no reason- "
     They listened in a tense silence as  the  tape  played  on
through the entire message.
     "That's  the  problem  with  crunch-heads  - they have one
great idea that actually works and  then  they  expect  you  to
carry  on  funding  them for years while they sit and calculate
the topographies of their navels. I'm sorry, I'm going to  have
to stop and close the boot properly. Won't be a moment."
     Next came the muffled bump of the telephone receiver being
dropped  on  the  passenger  seat,  and a few seconds later the
sound of the car door being opened. In the meantime, the  music
from the car's sound system could be heard burbling away in the
background.
     A  few  seconds later still came the distant, muffled, but
unmistakable double blam of a shotgun.
     "Stop the tape," said Gilks sharply  and  glanced  at  his
watch.  "Three minutes and twenty-five seconds since he said it
was
8.47." He glanced up at Dirk again. "Stay here. Don't move.
Don't touch anything. I've made a note of the position of every
particle of air in this room, so I shall know if you've been
breathing."
     He turned smartly and left. Dirk heard him  saying  as  he
went  down the stairs, "Tuckett, get on to WayForward's office,
get  the  details  of  Way's  carphone,  what   number,   which
network..." The voice faded away downstairs.
     Quickly Dirk twisted down the volume control on the hi-fi,
and resumed playing the tape.
     The  music continued for a while. Dirk drummed his fingers
in frustration. Still the music continued.
     He flicked the Fast Forward  button  for  just  a  moment.
Still  music.  It  occurred  to  him  that  he  was looking for
something, but that he didn't know what. That  thought  stopped
him in his tracks.
     He was very definitely looking for something.
     He very definitely didn't know what.
     The  realisation  that he didn't know exactly why he vtras
doing what he was doing suddenly chilled and  electrified  him.
He turned slowly like a fridge door opening.
     There was no one there, at least no one that he could see.
But he  knew  the chi!! prickling through his skin and detested
it above all things.
     He said in a low savage whisper, "If anyone can  hear  me,
hear  this.  My  mind  is my centre and everything that happens
there is my responsibility. Other people may  believe  what  it
pleases  them  to believe, but I will do nothing without I know
the reason why and know it clearly. If you want something  then
let me know, but do not you dare touch my mind."
     He  was  trembling  with  a  deep  and old rage. The chill
dropped stowly and almost pathetically from him and  seemed  to
move  off into the room. He tried to follow it with his senses,
but was instantly distracted by a sudde voice that seemed
to come at him on the edge of his hearing, on a distant howl of
wind.
     It was a hollow, terrified, bewildered voice, no more than
an insubstantial whisper, but it was  there,  audible,  on  the
telephone= answering machine tape.
     It  said,  "Susan! Susan, help me! Help me for God's sake.
Susan, I'm dead-"
     Dirk whirled round and stopped the tape.
     "I'm sorry," he said under his breath,  "but  I  have  the
welfare of my client to consider."
     He  wound  the  tape  back  a very short distance, to just
before where the voice began, twisted the Record Level knob  to
zero  and  pressed  Record. He left the tape to run, wiping off
the voice and anything that might follow it. If  the  tape  was
going  to  establish  the time of Gordon Way's death, then Dirk
didn't want any embarrassing examples  of  Gordon  speaking  to
turn  up  on  the tape after that point, even if it was only to
confirm that he was, in fact, dead.
     There seemed to be a grzat eruption of emotion in the  air
near  to  him.  A  wave  of  something surged through the room,
causing the furniture to flutter  in  its  wake.  Dirk  watched
where  it seemed to go, towards a shelf near the door on which,
he suddenly realised, stood Richard's  own  telephone-answering
machine.  The  machine started to jiggle fitfully where it sat,
but then sat still as Dirk  approached  it.  Dirk  reached  out
slowly  and  calmly and pushed the button which set the machine
to Answer.
     The disturbance in the air then passed  back  through  the
room to Richard's long desk where two old-fashioned rotary-dial
telephones  nestled  among  the piles of paper and micro floppy
disks. Dirk guessed what would happen,  but  elected  to  watch
rather than to intervene.
     One  of  the  telephone  receivers toppled off its cradle.
Dirk could hear  the  dialling  tone.  Then,  slowly  and  with
obvious  difficulty,  the dial began to turn. It moved unevenly
round, further round, slower  and  slower,  and  then  suddenly
slipped back.
     There  was  a moment's pause. Then the receiver rests went
down and up again to get a new dialling tone. The dial began to
turn again, but creaking even more fitfully than the last time.
     Again it slipped back.
     There was a longer pause this time, and  then  the  entire
process was repeated once more.
     When the dial slipped back a third time there was a sudden
explosion of fury - the whole phone leapt into th air and
hurtled across the room. The receiver cord wrapped itself round
an Anglepoise lamp on the way and brought it crashing down in a
tangle of cables, coffee cups and floppy disks. A pile of books
erupted off the desk and on to the floor.
     The  figure  of  Sergeant  Gilks  stood stony-faced in the
doorway.
     "I'm going to come in again," he said, "and when I  do,  I
don't want to see anything of that kind going on whatsoever. Is
that understood?" He turned and disappeared.
     Dirk  leapt  for  the  cassette  player and hit the Rewind
button. Then he turned and hissed at the empty  air,  "1  don't
know  who  you are, but 1 can guess. If you want my help, don't
you ever embarrass me like that again!"
     A few moments later, Gilks walked in again. "Ah, there you
are," he said.
     He surveyed the wreckage with an even gaze. "I'll  pretend
I  can't  see  any  of  this,  so  that I won't have to ask any
questions the answers to which would,  I  know,  only  irritate
me."
     Dirk glowered.
     In  the  moment  or two of silence that followed, a slight
ticking whirr could be heard which caused the sergeant to  look
sharply at the cassette player.
     "What's that tape doing?"
     "Rewinding."
     "Give it to me."
     The tape reached the beginning and stopped as Dirk reached
it. He took it out and handed it to Gilks.
     "Irritatingly, this seems to put your client completely in
the clear," said the sergeant. "Cellnet have confirmed that the
last call made from the car was at 8.46 pm last night, at which
point  your  client  was  lightly  dozing  in  front of several
hundred witnesses. I say witnesses, in fact  they  were  mostly
students,  but  we  will probably be forced to assume that they
can't all be lying."
     "Good," said Dirk, "well, I'm glad that's all cleared up."
     "We never thought he had  actually  done  it,  of  course.
Simply  didn't  fit.  But you know us - we like to get results.
Tell him we still want to ask him some questions, though."
     "I shall be sure to mention it if I  happen  to  run  into
him."
     "You just do that little thing."
     "Well,  I  shan't  detain  you any longer, Sergeant," said
Dirk, airily waving at the door.
     "No, but I shall bloody detain you if you're  not  out  of
here in thirty seconds, Cjelli. I don't know what you're up to,
but if I can possibly avoid finding out I shall sleep easier in
my office. Out."
     "Then I shall bid you good day, Sergeant. I won't say it's
been a pleasure because it hasn't."
     Dirk  swept  out  of the room, and made his way out of the
Hat, noting with sorrow that  where  there  had  been  a  large
chesterfield  sofa wedged magnificently in the staircase, there
was now just a small, sad pile of sawdust.

     With a jerk Michael Wenton-Weakes looked up from his book.
     His  mind  suddenly  was  alive  with  purpose.  Thoughts,
images,  memories, intentions, all crowded in upon him, and the
more they seemed to contradict each other the more they  seemed
to fit together, to pair and settle.
     The  match  at  last  was perfect, the teeth of one slowly
aligned with the teeth of another.
     A pull and they were zipped.
     Though the waiting had  seemed  an  eternity  ofeternities
when it was filled with failure, with fading waves of weakness,
with  feeble  groping and lonely impotence, the match once made
cancelled it all. Would cancel it all. Would undo what had been
so disastrously done.
     Who thought that? It did not matter, the match  was  made,
the match was perfect.
     Michael  gazed out of the window across the well-manicured
Chelsea street and did not care whether what he saw were  slimy
things  with  legs or whether they were all Mr A. K. Ross. What
mattered was what they  had  stolen  and  what  they  would  be
compelled  to return. Ross now lay in the past. What he was now
concerned with lay still further in it.
     His large soft cowlike eyes returned to the last few lines
of "Kubla Khan", which he had just been reading. The match  was
made, the zip was pulled.
     He closed the book and put it in his pocket.
     His  path  back now was clear. He knew what he must do. It
only remained to do a little shopping and then do it.

Chapter Twenty-two...


     "You? Wanted for murder?  Richard  what  are  you  talking
about?"
     The telephone wavered in Richard's hand. He was holding it
about  half  an inch away from his ear anyway because it seemed
that somebody  had  dipped  the  earpiece  in  some  chow  mein
recently,  but  that wasn't so bad. This was a public telephone
so it was clearly an oversight that it was working at all.  But
Richard was beginning to feel as if the whole world had shifted
about  half  an inch away from him, like someone in a deodorant
commercial.
     "Gordon,"  said  Richard,   hesitantly,   "Gordon's   been
murdered
- hasn't he?"
     Susan paused before she answered.
     "Yes, Richard" she said in a distressed voice, "but no one
thinks you did it. They want to question you of course, but-"
     "So there are no police with you now?"
     "No,  Richard,"  insisted Susan, "Look, why don't you come
here?"
     "And they're not out searching for me?"
     "No! Where on earth did you get the  idea  that  you  were
wanted for - that they thought you had done it?"
     "Er - well, this friend of mine told me."
     "Who?"
     "Well, his name is Dirk Gently."
     "You've  never  mentioned  him.  Who  is  he?  Did  he say
anything else?"
     "He hypnotised me and, er, made me jump in the canal, and,
er, well, that was it really-"
     Thene was a terribly long pause at the other end.
     "Richard," said Susan at last with the  sort  of  calmness
that  comes  over  people  when  they  realise that however bad
things may seem to be, there is absolutely no reason  why  they
shouldn't  simply  get  worse and worse, "come over here. I was
going to say I need to see you, but I think  you  need  to  see
me."
     "I should probably go to the police."
     "Go  to  the  police  later.  Richard, please. A few hours
won't make any  difference.  I...  I  can  hardly  even  think.
Richard,  it's  so  awful. It would just help if you were here.
Where are you?"
     "OK," said Richard, "I'll be  with  you  in  about  twenty
minutes."
     "Shall  I  leave  the window open or would you like to try
the door?" she said with a sniff.

Chapter Twenty-three...


     "No, please," said Dirk, restraining  Miss  Pearce's  hand
from  opening  a  letter  from  the  Inland Revenue, "there are
wilder skies than these."
     He had emerged from a  spell  of  tense  brooding  in  his
darkened  office  and there was an air of excited concentration
about him. It had taken  his  actual  signature  on  an  actual
salary  cheque  to  persuade Miss Pearce to forgive him for the
latest unwarrantable extravagance with which he had returned to
the office and he felt that just to sit there blatantly opening
letters from the taxman was to take his magnanimous gesture  in
entirely the wrong spirit.
     She put the envelope aside.
     "Come!"  he  said.  "I have something I wish you to see. I
shall  observe  your  reactions  with  the  very  greatest   of
interest."
     He bustled back into his own office and sat at his desk.
     She  followed him in patiently and sat opposite, pointedly
ignoring the new  unwarrantable  extravagance  sitting  on  the
desk.
     The  flashy  brass  plaque for the door had stirred her up
pretty badly but the silly phone with big red push buttons  she
regarded  as  being  beneath contempt. And she certainly wasn't
going to do anything rash like smile until she knew for certain
that the cheque wouldn't bounce. The  last  time  he  signed  a
cheque  for  her  he cancelled it before the end of the day, to
prevent it, as he explained, "falling into  the  wrong  hands".
The wrong hands presumably, being those of her bank manager.
     He thrust a piece of paper across the desk.
     She  picked  it  up  and  looked at it. Then she turned it
round and looked at it again. She looked at the other side  and
then she put it down.
     "Well?" demanded Dirk. "What do you make of it? Tell me!"
     Miss Pearce sighed.
     "It's a lot of meaningless squiggles done in blue felt tip
on a piece  of  typing paper," she said. "It looks like you did
them yourself."
     "No!" barked Dirk, "Well, yes,"  he  admitted,  "but  only
because I believe that it is the answer to the problem!"
     "What problem?"
     "The  problem," insisted Dirk, slapping the table, "of the
conjuring trick! I told you!"
     "Yes, Mr Gently, several times. I  think  it  was  just  a
conjuring trick. You see them on the telly."
     "With  this  difference  -  that  this  one was completely
impossible!"
     "Couldn't have been impossible or he  wouldn't  have  done
it. Stands to reason."
     "Exactly!" said Dirk excitedly. "Exactly! Miss Pearce, you
are a lady of rare perception and insight."
     "Thank you, sir, can I go now?"
     "Wait! I haven't finished yet! Not by a long way, not by a
bucketful!  You  have  demonstrated  to  me  the  depth of your
perception and insight, allow me to demonstrate mine!"
     Miss Pearce slumped patiently in her seat.
     "I think," said Dirk, "you  will  be  impressed.  Consider
this. An intractable problem. In trying to find the solution to
it  I  was  going round and round in little circles in my mind,
over and over the same maddening things. Clearly I wasn't going
to be able to think of anything else until I  had  the  answer,
but  equally clearly I would have to think of something else if
I was ever going to get the answer. How to break  this  circle?
Ask me how."
     "How?"   said   Miss   Pearce   obediently,   but  without
enthusiasm.
     "By writing down what the answer is!" exclaimed Dirk. "And
here it is!" He slapped the piece of paper triumphantly and sat
back with a satisfied smile.
     Miss Pearce looked at it dumbly.
     "With the result," continued Dirk, "that I am now able  to
turn  my  mind  to  fresh  and  intriguing  problems, like, for
instance..."
     He took the piece  of  paper,  covered  with  its  aimless
squiggles and doodlings, and held it up to her.
     "What  language,"  he  said in a low, dark voice, "is this
written in?"
     Miss Pearce continued to look at it dumbly.
     Dirk flung the piece of paper down, put his feet up on the
table, and threw his head back with his hands behind it.
     "You see what I have done?" he asked  the  ceiling,  which
seemed  to flinch slightly at being yanked so suddenly into the
conversation.  "I  have  transformed  the   problem   from   an
intractably  difficult  and  possibly quite insoluble conundrum
into a mere linguistic puzzle. Albeit," he  muttered,  after  a
long  moment of silent pondering, "an intractably difficult and
possibly insoluble one."
     He swung back to gaze intently at Janice Pearce.
     "Go on," he urged, "say that it's insane -  but  it  might
just work!"
     Janice Pearce cleared her throat.
     "It's insane," she said, "trust me."
     Dirk  turned  away and sagged sideways off his chair, much
as the sitter for The Thinker probably did when Rodin went  off
to be excused.
     He suddenly looked profoundly tired and depressed.
     "I  know," he said in a low, dispirited voice, "that there
is something profoundly wrong somewhere. And I know that I must
go to Cambridge to put it right. But I would feel less  fearful
if I knew what it was..."
     "Can I get on now, please, then?" said Miss Pearce.
     Dirk looked up at her glumly.
     "Yes," he said with a sigh, "but just - just tell me -" he
flicked  at  the  piece of paper with his fingertips - "what do
you think of this, then?"
     "Well,  I  think  it's  childish,"  said  Janice   Pearce,
frankly.
     "But  -  but  -  but!"  said  Dirk  thumping  the table in
frustration. "Don't you understand that we need to be  childish
in  order  to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect
clarity, because it hasn't developed all  those  filters  which
prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see?"
     "Then why don't you go and ask one?"
     "Thank  you, Miss Pearce," said Dirk reaching for his hat,
"once again you have rendered me  an  inestimable  service  for
which I am profoundiy grateful."
     He swept out.

Chapter Twenty-four...


     The  weather  began  to bleaken as Richard made his way to
Susan's flat. The sky which had started out with such verve and
spirit in the morning was beginning to lose  its  concentration
and slip back into its normal English condition, that of a damp
and rancid dish cloth. Richard took a taxi, which got him there
in a few minutes.
     "They  should  all  be  deported," said the taxi driver as
they drew to a halt.
     "Er, who should?" said Richard,  who  realised  he  hadn't
been listening to a word the driver said.
     "Er-  "  said  the driver, who suddenly realised he hadn't
been listening either, "er, the whole lot of them. Get  rid  of
the  whole  bloody  lot,  that's  what  I say. And their bloody
newts," he added for good measure.
     "Expect you're right," said Richard, and hurried into  the
house.
     Arriving  at the front door of her flat he could hear from
within the sounds of Susan's  cello  playing  a  slow,  stately
melody.  He  was glad of that, that she was playing. She had an
amazing emotional self sufficiency  and  control  provided  she
could  play  her cello. He had noticed an odd and extraordinary
thing about her relationship with the music she played. If ever
she was feeling emotional or  upset  she  could  sit  and  play
sone  music  with  utter concentration and emerge seeming
fresh and calm. ,
     The next time she played the same music, however, it would
all burst from her and she would go completely to pieces.
     He let himself in as quietly as  possible  so  as  not  to
disturb her concentration.
     He  tiptoed  past the small room she practised in, but the
door was open  so  he  paused  and  looked  at  her,  with  the
slightest  of  signals that she shouldn't stop. She was looking
pale and drawn but gave him a flicker of a smile and  continued
bowing with a sudden intensity.
     With  an  impeccable  timing  of  which  it is very rarely
capable the sun chose that moment to burst briefly through  the
gathering  rainclouds,  and  as  she  played her cello a stormy
light played on her and on the deep old brown of  the  wood  of
the  instrument.  Richard  stood transfixed. The turmoil of the
day stood still for a moment and kept a respectful distance.
     He didn't know the music, but it sounded like  Mozart  and
he  remembered  her  saying  she  had  some Mozart to learn. He
walked quietly on and sat down to wait and listen.
     Eventually she finished the piece, and there was  about  a
minute  of  silence  before  she  came through. She blinked and
smiled and gave  him  a  long,  trembling  hug,  then  released
herself  and  put  the  phone  back on the hook. It usually got
taken off when she was practising.
     "Sorry," she said, "I didn't want to  stop."  She  briskly
brushed  away a tear as if it was a slight irritation. "How are
you Richard?"
     He shrugged and gave her a bewildered  look.  That  seemed
about to cover it.
     "And  I'm  going  to  have  to carry on, I'm afraid," said
Susan with a sigh "I'm sorry. I've just been..." She shook  her
head. "Who would do it?"
     "I  don't  know. Some madman. I'm not sure that it matters
who."
     "No," she said. "Look, er, have you had any lunch?"
     "No. Susan, you keep playing and I'll see  what's  in  the
fridge. We can talk about it all over some lunch."
     Susan nodded.
     "All right," she said, "except..."
     "Yes?"
     "Well,  just  for  the  moment I don't really want to talk
about Gordon. Just till it sinks in. I feel sort of caught out.
It would be easier if I'd been closer to him, but I wasn't  and
I'm sort of embarrassed by not having a reaction ready. Talking
about  it  would  be  all right except that you have to use the
past tense and that's what's..."
     She clung to him for a moment  and  then  quieted  herself
with a sigh.
     "There's  not much in the fridge at the moment," she said,
"some yoghurt, I think, and a  jar  of  roll-mop  herrings  you
could  open.  I'm sure you'll be able to muck it up if you try,
but it's actually quite straightforward. The main trick is  not
to throw them all over the floor or get jam on them."
     She  gave  him  a  hug,  a  kiss and a glum smile and then
retreated back to her music room.
     The phone rang and Richard answered it.
     "Hello?" he said. There was nothing, just a faint sort  of
windy noise on the line.
     "Hello?" he said again, waited, shrugged and put the phone
back down.
     "Was there anybody there?" called Susan.
     "No, no one," said Richard.
     "That's  happened a couple of times," said SusБn. "I think
it's a sort of minimalist heavy breather." She resumed playing.
     Richard went into the kitchen and opened  the  fridge.  He
was  less  of  a  health-conscious  eater  than  Susan  and was
therefore less than thrilled by what he  found  there,  but  he
managed  to put some roll-mop herrings, some yoghurt, some rice
and some oranges on a tray without difficulty and tried not  to
think  that a couple of fat hamburgers and fries would round it
off nicely.
     He found a bottle of white wine and carried it all through
to the small dining table.
     After a minute or two Susan joined him there. She  was  at
her most calm and composed, and after a few mouthsful she asked
him about the canal.
     Richard  shook his head in bemusement and tried to explain
about it, and about Dirk.
     "What did you say his name was?" said Susan with  a  frown
when he had come, rather lamely, to a conclusion.
     "It's, er, Dirk Gently," said Richard, "in a way."
     "In a way?"
     "Er,   yes,"  said  Richard  with  a  difficult  sigh.  He
reflected that just about anything you could say about Dirk was
subject to these kind of vague and shifty qualifications. There
was even,  on  his  letter  heading,  a  string  of  vague  and
shifty-looking qualifications after his name. He pulled out the
piece  of  paper on which he had vainly been trying to organise
his thoughts earlier in the day.
     "I...," he started, but the doorbell rang. They looked  at
each other.
     "If  it's the police," said Richard, "I'd better see them.
Let's get it over with."
     Susan pushed back her chair, went to the  front  door  and
picked up the Entryphone.
     "Hello?" she said.
     "Who?"  she  said  after  a  moment.  She  frowned  as she
listened then swung round and frowned at Richard.
     "You'd better come up," she said in a less  than  friendly
tone  of  voice  and then pressed the button. She came back and
sat down.
     "Your friend," she said evenly, "Mr Gently."

     The Electric Monk's day was going tremendously well and he
broke into an excited gallop. That is to say  that,  excitedly,
he  spurred  his  horse to a gallop and, unexcitedly, his horse
broke into it.
     This world, the Monk thought, was a good one. He loved it.
He didn't know whose it was or where it had come from,  but  it
was  certainly  a  deeply fulfilling place for someone with his
unique and extraordinary gifts.
     He was appreciated. All day he  had  gone  up  to  people,
fallen into conversation with them, listened to their troubles,
and  then  qwietly  uttered those three magic words, "I believe
you."
     The effect had invariably  been  electrifying.  It  wasn't
tbat  people  on  this world didn't occasionally say it to each
other, but they rarely, it seemed, managed to achieve that deep
timbre of  sincerity  which  the  Monk  had  been  so  superbly
programmcd to reproduce.
     On  his  own  world,  after all, he was taken for granted.
People would just expect him to get on and believe  things  for
them  without  bothering  them.  Someone would come to the door
with some great new ideП or proposal or even  a  new  religion,
and the answer would be "Oh, go and tell that to the Monk." And
the  Monk would sit and listen and patiendy believe it all, but
no one would take any further interest.
     Only  one  problem  seemed  to  arise  on  this  otherwise
excellent  world.  Often, after he had uttered the magic words,
the subject would rapidly change to that of money, and the Monk
of course didn't have any -  a  shortcoming  that  had  quickly
blighted a number of otherwise very promising encounters.
     Perhaps he should acquire some - but where?
     He  reined his horse in for a moment, and the horse jerked
gratefully to a halt  and  started  in  on  the  grass  on  the
roadside  verge.  The horse had no idea what all this galloping
up and down was in aid of, and didn't care.  All  it  did  care
about  was  that it was being made to gallop up and down past a
seemingly perpetual roadside buffet. It made the  best  of  its
moment while it had it.
     The  Monk  peered  keenly  up and down the road. It seemed
vaguely familiar. He trotted a little further up it for another
look. The horse resumed its meal a few yards further along.
     Yes. The Monk had been here last night.
     He remembered  it  clearly,  well,  sort  of  clearly.  He
believed  that  he  remembered it clearly, and that, after all,
was the main thing. Here was where he had walked to in  a  more
than  usually  confused state of mind, and just around the very
next corner, if he was not very much mistaken, again,  lay  the
small  roadsido  establishment  at which he had jumped into the
back of that nie  man's  car  -  the  nice  man  who  had
subsequently reacted so oddly to being shot at.
     Perhaps they would have some money there and would let him
have it.  He  wondered.  Well, he would find out. He yanked the
horse from its feast once again and galloped towards it.
     As he approached the  petrol  station  he  noticed  a  car
parked  there  at  an  arrogant  angle. The angle made it quite
clear that the car was not there for anything so mundane as  to
have  petrol  put  into  it, and was much too important t¦ park
itself neatly out of the way. Any other car  that  arrived  for
petrol would just have to manoeuvre around it as best it could.
The car was white with stripes and badges and important looking
lights.
     Amving  at  the forecourt the Monk dismounted and tethered
his horse to a pump. He walked towards the small shop  building
and  saw  that  inside  it there was a man with his back to him
wearing a dark blue uniform and  a  peaked  cap.  The  man  was
dancing  up  and down and twisting his fingers in his ears, and
this was clearly making a deep impression on the man behind the
till.
     The Monk watched in transfixed awe. The man,  he  believed
with  an instant effortlessness which would have impressed even
a Scientologist, must be a God of  some  kind  to  arouse  such
fervour.  He  waited  with  bated  breath  to worship him. In a
moment the man turned around and walked ot of  the  shop,
saw the Monk and stopped dead.
     The  Monk realised that the God must be waiting for him to
make an act of worship, so he reverently  danced  up  and  down
twisting his fingers in his ears.
     His  God  stared  at him for a moment, caught hold of him,
twisted him round, slammed him forward  spreadeagled  over  the
car and frisked him for weapons.

     Dirk burst into the flat like a small podgy tornado.
     "Miss  Way," he said, grasping her slightly unwilling hand
and doffing his absurd  hat,  "it  is  the  most  inexpressible
pleasure to meet you, but also the matter of the deepest regret
that  the  occasion  of our meeting should be one of such great
sorrow and one which bids me extend to  you  my  most  profound
sympathy  and  commiseration.  I  ask  you to believe me that I
would not intrude upon your private grief for all the world  if
it  were  not  on a matter of the gravest moment and magnitude.
Richard - I have solved the problem of the conjuring trick  and
it's extraordinary."
     He swept through the room and deposited himself on a spare
chair at the small dining table, on which he put his hat.
     "You will have to excuse us, Dirk- " said Richard, coldly.
     "No,  I  am  afraid  you will have to cxcuse me," returned
Dirk. "The puzzle is solved, and the solution is so  astounding
that it took a seven-year-old child on the street to give it to
me.   But   it  is  undoubtedly  the  correct  one,  absolutely
undoubtedly. `What, then, is the solution? '  you  ask  me,  or
rather  would ask me if you could get a word in edgeways, which
you can't, so I will save you the bother and ask  the  question
for  you,  and answer it as well by saying that I will not tell
you, because you won't believe me. I shall  instead  show  you,
this very afternoon.
     "Rest  assured,  however,  that it explains everything. It
explains the trick. It explains  the  note  you  found  -  that
should have made it perfectly clear to me but I was a fool. And
it  explains  what  the missing third question was, or rather -
and this is the  significant  point  -  it  explains  what  the
missing first question was!"
     "What  missing  question?"  exclaimed Richard, confused by
the sudden pause, and leaping in with the first phrase he could
grab.
     Dirk blinked as if at an idiot. "The missing question that
George III asked, of course," he said.
     "Asked who?"
     "Well, the Professor," said Dirk impatiently.  "Don't  you
listen  to  anything  you say? The whole thing was obvious!" he
exclaimed, thumping the table, "So obvious that the only  thing
which  prevented  me  from seeing the solution was the trifling
fact  that  it  was  completely  impossible.  Sherlock   Holmes
observed  that  once  you  have eliminated the impossible, then
whatever remains, however improbable, must be  the  answer.  I,
however,  do  not like to eliminate the impossible. Now. Let us
go."
     "No."
     "What?"  Dirk  glanced  up  at  Susan,  from   whom   this
unexpected
- or at least, unexpected to him - opposition had come.
     "Mr Gently," said Susan in a voice you could notch a stick
with,  "why  did you deliberately mislead Richard into thinking
that he was wanted by the police?"
     Dirk frowned.
     "But he was wanted by the police,"  he  said,  "and  still
is."
     "Yes,  but  just  to  answer questions! Not because he's a
suspected murderer."
     Dirk looked down.
     "Miss Way," he said, "the police are interested in knowing
who murdered your brother. I, with the very  greatest  respect,
am  not.  It  may, I concede, turn out to have a bearing on the
case, but it may just as likely turn out to be a casual madman.
I wanted to  know,  still  need  desperately  to  know,  why
Richard climbed into this flat last night."
     "I told you," protested Richard.
     "What  you  told  me  is  immaterial - it only reveals the
crucial fact that you do not  know  the  reason  yourself!  For
heaven's  sake I thought I had demonstrated that to you clearly
enough at the canat ! "
     Richard simmered.
     "It was perfectly clear to me watching you," pursued Dirk,
"that you had very little idea what you  were  doing,  and  had
absolutely no concern about the physical danger you were in. At
first  I  thought,  watching, that it was just a brainless thug
out on his first and yuite possibly last burgle. But  then  the
figure  looked  back and I realised it was you - and I know you
to be an  intelligent,  rational,  and  moderate  man.  Richard
MacDuff?  Risking his neck carelessly climbing up drainpipes at
night? It seemed to me that you would only  behave  in  such  a
reckless  and extreme way if you were desperately worried about
something of terrible importance. Is that not true, Miss Way?"
     He looked sharply  up  at  Susan,  who  slowly  sat  down,
looking at him with an alarm in her eyes which said that he had
struck home.
     "And  yet, when you came to see me this morning you seemed
perfectly calm and collected.  You  argued  with  me  perfectly
rationally  when I talked a lot of nonsense about Schrжdinger's
Cat. This was not the behaviour of someone who had the previous
night been driven to extremes  by  some  desperate  purpose.  I
confess  that  it  was  at that moment that I stooped to, well,
exaggerating your predicament, simply in order to keep hold  of
you."
     "You didn't. I left."
     "With  certain  ideas  in  your  head. I knew you would be
back. I apologise  most  humbly  for  having  misled  you,  er,
somewhat, but I knew that what I had to find out lay far beyond
what  the police would concern themselves with. And it was this
- if you were not quite yourself when you climbed the wall last
night... then who were you, - and why?"
     Richard shivered. A silence lengthened.
     "What has it got to do with conjuring tricks?" he said  at
last.
     "That is what we must go to Cambridge to find out."
     "But what makes you so sure -?"
     "It  disturbs  me,"  said  Dirk, and a dark and heavy look
came into his face.
     For one so garrulous he seemed suddenly oddly reluctant to
speak.
     He continued, "It disturbs me very  greatly  when  I  find
that I know things and do not know why I know them. Maybe it is
the  same  instinctive  processing  of  data that allows you to
catch a ball almost before you've seen  it.  Maybe  it  is  the
deeper and less explicable instinct that tells you when someone
is  watching  you.  It  is a very great offence to my intellect
that the very things that I  despise  other  people  for  being
credulous  of  actually  occur  to me. You will remember the...
unhappiness surrounding certain exam questions."
     He seemed suddenly distressed and haggard. He had  to  dig
deep inside himself to continue speaking.
     He said, "The ability to put two and two together and come
up instantly  with  four  is  one thing. The ability to put the
square  root  of  five  hundred  and  thirty-nine  point  seven
together with the cosine of twenty-six point four three two and
come  up  with... with whatever the answer to that is, is quite
another. And I... well, let me give you an example."
     He leant forward intently. "Last night I saw you  climbing
into this flat. I knew that something was wrong. Today I
got  you  to  tell  me  every  last  detail you knew about what
happened last  night.  and  already,  as  a  result,  using  my
intellect  alone, I have uncovered possibly the greatest secret
lying hidden on this planet. I swear to you that this  is  true
and  that  I  can prove it. Now you must believe me when I tell
you that I know, I  know  that  there  is  something  terribly,
desperately.  appallingly  wrong and that we must find it. Will
you go with me now, to Cambridge?"
     Richard nodded dumbly.
     "Good," said Dirk. "What is this?" he added,  pointing  at
Richard's plate.
     "A pickled herring. Do you want one?"
     "Thank  you, no," said Dirk, rising and buckling his coat.
"There is," he added as he headed towards  the  door,  steering
Richard  with him, "no such word as `herring' in my dictionary.
Good afternoon, Miss Way. wish us God speed."

Chapter Twenty-five. . .


     There was a rumble of  thunder,  and  the  onset  of  that
interminable tight drizzle from the north-east by which so many
of the world's most momentous events seem to be accompanied.
     Dirk  turned up the collar of his leather overcoat against
the weather, but nothing could dampen his demonic exuberance as
he and Richard approached the great twelfth-century gates.
     "St Cedd's College, Cambridge," he exclaimed,  looking  at
them  for  the  first time in eight years. "Founded in the year
something or other, by someone I forget in  honour  of  someone
whose name for the moment escapes me."
     "St Cedd?" suggested Richard.
     "Do  you  know,  I  think it very probably was? One of the
duller Northumbrian saints. His brother Chad was  even  duller.
Has  a cathedral in Birmingham if that gives you some idea. Ah,
Bill, how good to see  you  again,"  he  added,  accosting  the
porter  who  was  just  walking  into  the college as well. The
porter looked round.
     "Mr Cjelli, nice to see you back, sir.  Sorry  you  had  a
spot of bother, hope that's all behind you now."
     "Indeed,  Bill,  it  is.  You  find  me  thriving. And Mrs
Roberts? How is she? Foot still troubling her?"
     "Not since she had it off, thanks for asking, sir. Between
you and me, sir, I would've been just as happy to have had  her
amputated  and  kept  the foot. I had a little spot reserved on
the mantelpiece, but there we are, we have to take things as we
find them.
     "Mr MacDuff, sir," he added, nodding  curtly  at  Richard.
"Oh  that  horse  you  mentioned,  sir, when you were here last
night, I'm afraid we had to have it removed. It  was  bothering
Professor Chronotis."
     "I  was  only curious, er, Bill," said Richard. "I hope it
didn't disturb you."
     "Nothing ever disturbs  me,  sir,  so  long  as  it  isn't
wearing  a  dress.  Can't  abide it when the young fellers wear
dresses, sir."
     "If the horse bothers you again, Bill," interrupted  Dirk,
patting  him  on  the  shoulder,  "send it up to me and I shall
speak with it. Now, you mention the good  Professor  Chronotis.
Is he in at the moment? We've come on an errand."
     "Far  as  I  know,  sir.  Can't  check for you because his
phone's out of order. Suggest you go  and  look  yourself.  Far
left corner of Second Court."
     "I  know  it  well,  Bill,  thank you, and my best to what
remains of Mrs Roberts."
     They swept on through into First Court, or at  least  Dirk
swept,  and  Richard  walked  in  his  normal  heron-like gait,
wrinkling up his face against the measly drizzle.
     Dirk had obviously mistaken himself for a tour guide.
     "St Cedd's," he pronounced, "the college of Coleridge, and
the college of Sir  Isaac  Newton,  renowned  inventor  of  the
milled= edge coin and the catflap!"
     "The what?" said Richard.
     "The  catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity
and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a... "
     "Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small  matter  of
gravity."
     "Gravity,"  said  Dirk  with  a slightly dismissive shrug,
"yes, there was that  as  well,  I  suppose.  Though  that,  of
course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered."
     He  took  a penny out of his pocket and tossed it casually
on to the pebbles that ran alongside the paved pathway.
     "You see?" he said, "They even keep  it  on  at  weekends.
Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap...
ah,  there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative
invention."
     "I would have thought it was quite obvious.  Anyone  could
have thought of it."
     "Ah," said Dirk, "it is a rare mind indeed that can render
the hitherto  non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry `I could
have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for
the fact is that  they  didn't,  and  a  very  significant  and
revealing  fact  it  is  too.  This if I am not mistaken is the
staircase we seek. Shall we ascend?"
     Without waiting for an answer he plunged on up the stairs.
Richard, following uncertainly, found him already  knocking  on
the inner door. The outer one stood open.
     "Come  in!"  called  a  voice from within. Dirk pushed the
door open, and they were just in time to see the back of  Reg's
white head as he disappeared into the kitchen.
     "Just  making  some  tea,"  he called out. "Like some? Sit
down, sit down, whoever you are."
     "That would be most kind," returned Dirk.  "We  are  two."
Dirk sat, and Richard followed his lead.
     "Indian or China?" called Reg.
     "Indian, please."
     There was a rattle of cups and saucers.
     Richard   looked  around  the  room.  It  seemed  suddenly
humdrum. The fire was burning quietly away to itself,  but  the
light  was  that of the grey afternoon. Though everything about
it was the same, the old sofa, the table burdened  with  books,
there  seemed nothing to connect it with the hectic strangeness
of the previous night. The room seemed to sit there with raised
eyebrows, innocently saying "Yes?"
     "Milk?" called out Reg from the kitchen.
     "Please," replied Dirk. He  gave  Richard  a  smile  which
seemed to him to be half-mad with suppressed excitement.
     "One lump or two?" called Reg again.
     "One,  please," said Dirk, "... and two spoons of sugar if
you would."
     There was a suspension  of  activity  in  the  kitchen.  A
moment or two passed and Reg stuck his head round the door.
     "Svlad  Cjelli!"  he  exclaimed. "Good heavens! Well, that
was quick work, young MacDuff, well done. My dear  fellow,  how
very excellent to see you, how good of you to come."
     He  wiped  his  hands  on  a  tea towel he was canying and
humied over to shake hands.
     "My dear Svlad."
     "Dirk, please, if you would," said Dirk, grasping his hand
warmly, "I prefer it. It has more of a sort of Scottish  dagger
feel  to it, I think. Dirk Gently is the name under which I now
trade. There are certain events in the past, I'm  afraid,  from
which I would wish to disassociate myself."
     "Absolutely,  I  know how you feel. Most of the fourteenth
century, for instance, was pretty grim," agreed Reg earnestly.
     Dirk was about to correct the misapprehension, but thought
that it might be somewhat of a long trek and left it.
     "So how have you heen, then, my dear Professor?"  he  said
instead,  decorously  placing his hat and scarf upon the arm of
the sofa.
     "Well," said Reg, "it's been an interesting time recently,
or rather, a dull time. But dull for interesting reasons.  Now,
sit down again, warm yourselves by the fire, and I will get the
tea  and  endeavour  to explain." He bustled out again, humming
busily, and left them to settle  themselves  in  front  of  the
fire.
     Richard leant over to Dirk. "I had no idea you knew him so
well," he said with a nod in the direction of the kitchen.
     "I  don't," said Dirk instantly. "We met once by chance at
some dinner, but there was an immediate sympathy and rapport."
     "So how come you never met again?"
     "He studiously avoided me, of course. Close rapports  with
people  are  dangerous  if  you  have  a secret to hide. And as
secrets go, I fancy that this is somewhat of a biggie. If there
is a bigger secret anywhere in the  world  I  would  very  much
care," he said quietly, "to know what it is."
     He  gave Richard a significant look and held his hands out
to the fire. Since Richard had tried before without success  to
draw him out on exactly what the secret was, he refused to rise
to  the bait on this occasion, but sat back in his armchair and
looked about him.
     "Did I ask you," said Reg, returning at that  moment,  "if
you wanted any tea?"
     "Er,  yes,"  said Richard, "we spoke about it at length. I
think we agreed in the end that we would, didn't we?"
     "Good," said Reg, vaguely, "by a happy chance there  seems
to  be  some ready in the kitchen. You'll have to forgive me. I
have a memory like a... like a... what  are  those  things  you
drain rice in? What am I talking about?"
     With   a   puzzled  look  he  turned  smartly  roound  and
disappeared once more into the kitchen.
     "Very interesting," said Dirk quietly, "I wondered if  his
memory might be poor."
     He  stood, suddenly, and prowled around the room. His eyes
fell on the abacus which stood on the only clear space  on  the
large mahogany table.
     "Is  this  the  table,"  he  asked Richard in a Iow voice,
"where you found the note about the salt cellar?"
     "Yes," said Richard, standing, and  coming  over,  "tucked
into  this  book."  He picked up the guide to the Greek islands
and flipped through it.
     "Yes, yes, of course," said Dirk,  impatiently.  "We  know
about  all  that. I'm just interested that this was the table."
He ran his fingers along its edge, curiously.
     "If you think it was  some  sort  of  prior  collaboration
between  Reg and the girl," Richard said, "then I must say that
I don't think it possibly can have been."
     "Of course it wasn't," said Dirk testily,  "I  would  have
thought that was perfectly clear."
     Richard shrugged in an effort not to get angry and put the
book back down again.
     "Well,  it's  an odd coincidence that the book should have
been..."
     "Odd coincidence!" snorted Dirk. "Ha!  We  shall  see  how
much  of  a coincidence. We shall see exactly how odd it was. I
would like you, Richard, to ask our friend how he performed the
trick."
     "I thought you said you knew already."
     "I do," said  Dirk  airily.  "I  would  like  to  hear  it
confirmed."
     "Oh, I see," said Richard, "yes, that's rather easy, isn't
it? Get  him  to explain it, and then say, `Yes, that's exactly
what I thought it was!' Very good, Dirk. Have we come  all  the
way up here in order to have him explain how he did a conjuring
trick? I think I must be mad."
     Dirk bridled at this.
     "Please  do as I ask," he snapped angrily. "You saw him do
the trick, you must ask how he did it. Believe me, there is  an
astounding  secret  hidden within it. I know it, but I want you
to hear it from him."
     He spun round as Reg re-cntered, bearing a tray, which  he
camed  round  the  sofa and put on to the low coffee table that
sat in front of the fire.
     "Professor Chronotis. . . " said Dirk.
     "Reg," said Reg; "please."
     "Very, well," said Dirk, "Reg. . ."
     "Sieve!" exclaimed Reg.
     "What?"
     "Thing you drain  rice  in.  A  sieve.  I  was  trying  to
remember  the  word,  though  I  forget  now the reason why. No
matter. Dirk, dear fellow, you look as  if  you  are  about  to
explode  about  something.  Why  don't  you  sit  down and make
yourself comfortable?"
     "Thank you, no, I would rather feel free to  pace  up  and
down fretfully if I may. Reg. . . "
     He  turned  to  face  him  square  on, and raised a single
finger.
     "I must tell you," he said, "that I know your secret."
     "Ah, yes, er - do you indeed?" mumbled Reg,  looking  down
awkwardly and fiddling with the cups and teapot. "I see."
     The  cups  rattled violently as he moved them. "Yes, I was
afraid of that."
     "And there are some questions that we would  like  to  ask
you.  I  must  tell  you that I await the answers with the very
greatest apprehension."
     "Indeed, indeed," Reg muttered. "Well, perhaps  it  is  at
last  time.  I hardly know myself what to make of recent events
and am ... fearful myself. Very well. Ask what  you  will."  He
looked up sharply, his eyes glittering.
     Dirk  nodded  curtly  at  Richard,  turned, and started to
pace, glaring at the floor.
     "Er," said Richard, "well. I'd be. . . interested to  know
how  you  did  the  conjuring  trick  with the salt cellar last
night."
     Reg seemed surprised and rather confused by the  question.
"The conjuring trick?" he said.
     "Er, yes," said Richard, "the conjuring trick."
     "Oh,"  said Reg, taken aback, "well, the conjuring part of
it, I'm not sure I should - Magic Circle rules, you know,  very
strict  about  revealing these secrets. Very strict. Impressive
trick, though, don't you think?" he added slyly.
     "Well, yes," said Richard, "it seemed very natural at  the
time, but now that I... think about it, I have to admit that it
was a bit dumbfounding."
     "Ah, well," said Reg, "it's skill. you see. Practice. Make
it look natural."
     "It did look very natural." continued Richard, feeling his
way, "I was quite taken in."
     "You liked it?"
     "It was very impressive."
     Dirk  was  getting  a  little impatient. He shot a look to
that effect at Richard.
     "And I can quite see,"  said  Richard  firmly,  "why  it's
impossible  for  you  to tell me. I was just interested, that's
all. Sorry I asked."
     "Well," said Reg in a sudden seizure of doubt, "I suppose.
. well, so long as you absolutely promise not  to  tell  anyone
else."  he carried on, "I suppose you can probably work out for
yourself that I used two of the salt cellars on the  table.  No
one was going to notice the difference between one and another.
The  quickness  of  the  hand,  you  know,  deceives  the  eye,
particularly some of the eyes around that table.  While  I  was
fiddling  with my woolly hat, giving, though l say so myself, a
very cunning simulation of  clumsiness  and  muddle,  I  simply
slipped the salt cellar down my sleeve. You see?"
     His  earlier  agitation  had been swept away completely by
his pleasure in showing off his craft.
     "It's  the  oldest  trick  in  the  world,  in  fact,"  he
continued,  "but  nevertheless  takes a great deal of skill and
deftness. Then a little later, of course, I returned it to  the
table with the appearance of simply passing it to someone else.
Takes  years  of  practice, of course, to make it look natural,
but I much prefer it to simply slipping the thing down  to  the
floor.  Amateur  stuff  that.  You  can't  pick  it up, and the
cleaners never notice it for at least a fortnight. l once had a
dead thrush under my seat for a month. No trick involved there,
of course. Cat killed it."
     Reg beamed.
     Richard felt he had done his bit, but hadn't the  faintest
idea  where  it  was  supposed  to have got them. He glanced at
Dirk, who gave  him  no  help  whatsoever,  so  he  plunged  on
blindly.
     "Yes,"  he  said, "yes, I understand that that can be done
by sleight of hand. What I don't understand  is  how  the  salt
cellar got embedded in the pot."
     Reg looked puzzled once again, as if they were all talking
at cross  purposes.  He  looked at Dirk, who stopped pacing and
stared at him with bright, expectant eyes.
     "Well, that's...  perfectly  straightforward,"  said  Reg,
"didn't  take  any  conjuring skill at all. I nipped out for my
hat, you remember?"
     "Yes," said Richard, doubtfully.
     "Well," said Reg, "while I was out of the room I  went  to
find the man who made the pot. Took some time, of course. About
three  weeks  of  detective  work to track him down and another
couple of days  to  sober  him  up,  and  then  with  a  little
difficulty I persuaded him to bake the salt cellar into the pot
for  me.  After  that  I  briefly stopped off somewhere to find
some, er, powder to disguise the suntan, and of course I had to
time the return a little carefully so as to make  it  all  look
natural.  I bumped into myseIf in the ante-room, which I always
find embarrassing, I never know where to look,  but,  er.  .  .
well, there you have it."
     He smiled a rather bleak and nervous smile.
     Richard tried to nod, but eventually gave up.
     "What on earth are you talking about?" he said.
     Reg looked at him in surprise.
     "I thought you said you knew my secret," he said.
     "I  do,"  said  Dirk, with a beam of triumph. "He, as yet,
does not, though he furnished all the information I  needed  to
discover  it.  Let  me,"  he added, "fill in a couple of little
blanks. In order to help disguise the fact that you had in fact
been away for weeks when as far as anyone sitting at the  table
was  concerned you had only popped out of the door for a couple
of seconds, you had to write down for your  own  reference  the
last thing you said, in order that you could pick up the thread
of  conversation  again  as naturally as possible. An important
detail if your memory is not what it once was. Yes?"
     "What it once was," said Reg,  slowly  shaking  his  white
head, "I can hardly remember what it once was. But yes, you are
very sharp to pick up such a detail."
     "And then there is the little matter," continued Dirk, "of
the questions that George III asked. Asked you."
     This seemed to catch Reg quite by surprise.
     "He   asked  you,"  continued  Dirk,  consulting  a  small
notebook he had  pulled  from  his  pocket,"if  there  was  any
particular  reason  why one thing happened after another and if
there was any way of stopping it. Did he not also ask you,  and
ask  youfirst, if it was possible to move backwards in time, or
something of that kind?" . Reg gave Dirk a long and  appraising
look.
     "I  was  right  about  you,"  he  said,  "you  have a very
remarkable mind, young man."  He  walked  slowly  over  to  the
window  that  looked out on to Second Court. He watched the odd
figures scuttling through it hugging themselves in the  drizzle
or pointing at things.
     "Yes,"  said  Reg  at  last  in  a subdued voice, "that is
precisely what he said."
     "Good," said Dirk, snapping shut his notebook with a tight
little smile which said that he lived for  such  praise.  "then
that  explains why the answers were yes, no and maybe - in that
order. Now. Where is it?"
     "Where is what?"
     "The time machine."
     "You're standing in it." said Reg.

Chapter Twenty-six...


     A party of noisy people spilled into the train at Bishop's
Stortford. Some were  wearing  morning  suits  with  carnations
looking  a  little  battered by a day's festivity. The women of
the party were in smart dresses and hats, chattering  excitedly
about  how preny Julia had looked in all that silk taffeta, how
Ralph still looked like a smug oaf even  done  up  in  all  his
finery, and generally giving the whole thing about two weeks.
     One of the men stuck his head out of the window and hailed
a passing  railway  employee  just  to  check that this was the
right train and was stopping at Cambridge. The porter confirmed
that of course it bloody was. The  young  man  said  that  they
didn't  all  want  to  find  they  were  going off in the wrong
direction, did they, and made a sound a little like that  of  a
fish  barking,  as  if  to indicate that this was a pricelessly
funny remark, and then pulled his head back in, banging  it  on
the way.
     The alcohol content of the atmosphere in the carriage rose
sharply.
     There  seemed  to be a general feeling in the air that the
best way of getting  themselves  in  the  right  mood  for  the
post-wedding  reception  party that evening was to make a foray
to the bar so that any  members  of  the  party  who  were  not
already completely drunk could finish the task. Rowdy shouts of
acclamation  greeted  this  notion,  the train restarted with a
jolt and a lot of those still standing fell over.
     Three young men dropped into the three empty  seats  round
one  table,  of which the fourth was already taken by a sleekly
overweight man in an old-fashioned suit. He  had  a  lugubrious
face  and  his large, wet, cowlike eyes gazed into some unknown
distance.
     Very slowly his eyes began to refocus  all  the  way  from
infinity  and  gradually  to  home  in  on  his  more immediate
surroundings, his new and intrusive  companions.  There  was  a
need he felt, as he had felt before.
     The  three  men  were discussing loudly whether they would
all go to the bar, whether some of them would go to the bar and
bring back drinks for the others, whether the ones who went  to
the  bar would get so excited by all the drinks there that they
would stay put and forget to bring any back for the others  who
would  be  sitting  here  anxiously  awaiting their return, and
whether even if they did remember to come back immediately with
the drinks they would actually be capable of carrying them  and
wouldn't  simply  throw  them  all over the carriage on the way
back, incommoding other passengers.
     Some sort of consensus seemed to be  reached,  but  almost
immediately  none  of  them  could remember what it was. Two of
them got up, then sat down again as the third one got up.  Then
he  sat down. The two other ones stood up again, expressing the
idea that it might be simpler if they just  bought  the  entire
bar.
     The  third was about to get up again and follow them, when
slowly, but with unstoppable purpose, the cow-eyed man  sitting
opposite  him  leant  across,  and  gripped  him  firmly by the
forearm.
     The young man in his morning suit looked up as sharply  as
his  somewhat  bubbly  brain  would  allow and, startled, said,
"What do you want?"
     Michael Wenton-Weakes gazed into his  eyes  with  terrible
intensity, and said, in a low voice, "I was on a ship. . . "
     "What?"
     "A ship. . " said Michael.
     "What  ship,  what  are you talking about? Get off me. Let
go!"
     "We  came,"  continued  Michael,  in   a   quiet,   almost
inaudible, but compelling voice, "a monstrous distance. We came
to build a paradise. A paradise. Here."
     His  eyes  swam briefly round the carriage, and then gazed
briefly out through the  spattered  windows  at  the  gathering
gloom  of a drizzly East Anglian evening. He gazed with evident
Ioathing. His grip on the other's forearm tightened.
     "Look, I'm going for a drink,"  said  the  wedding  guest,
though feebly, because he clearly wasn't.
     "We  left  behind  those who would destroy themselves with
war," murmured Michael. "Ours was to be a world  of  peace,  of
music,  of  art, of enlightenment. All that was petty, all that
was mundane, all that was contemptible would have no  place  in
our world. . . "
     The  stilled  reveller  looked  at Michael wonderingly. He
didn't look like an old hippy. Of course, you never could tell.
His own elder brother had once spent a couple of  years  living
in  a Druidic commune, eating LSD doughnuts and thinking he was
a tree, since when he had gone on to become  a  director  of  a
merchant  bank.  The  difference, of course, was that he hardly
ever still thought he was a tree, except just occasionally, and
he had long ago learnt to avoid  the  particular  claret  which
sometimes triggered off that flashback.
     "There  were  those  who  said  we  would fail," continued
Michael  in  his  low  tone  that  carried  clearly  under  the
boisterous  noise  that filled the camage, "who prophesied that
we too carried in us the seed of  war,  but  it  was  our  high
resolve  and  purpose that only art and beauty should flourish,
the highest art, the highest beauty= music.  We  took  with  us
only those who believed, who wished it to be true."
     "But  what are you talking about?" asked the wedding guest
though not challengingly, for he  had  fallen  under  Michael's
mesmeric spell. "When was this? Where was this?"
     Michael  breathed hard. "Before you were born " he said at
last, "be still, and I will tell you."

Chapter Twenty-seven...


     There was a long startled silence during which the evening
gloom outside seemed to darken appreciably and gather the  room
into its grip. A trick of the light wreathed Reg in shadows.
     Dirk  was,  for  one  of  the  few  times  in  a  life  of
exuberantly prolific loquacity, wordless. His eyes shone with a
child's wonder as they passed anew over  the  dull  and  shabby
furniture  of  the  room,  the  panelled  walls, the threadbare
carpets. His hands were trembling.
     Richard frowned faintly to himself for a moment as  if  he
was  trying  to  work  out  the square root of something in his
head, and then looked back directly at Reg.
     "Who are you?" he asked.
     "I have absolutely no idea," said Reg brightly,  "much  of
my   memory's   gone  completely.  I  am  very  old,  you  see.
Startlingly old. Yes, I think if I were to tell you how  old  I
was  it  would  be fair to say that you would be startled. Odds
are that so would I, because I can't  remember.  I've  seen  an
awful  lot,  you know. Forgotten most of it, thank God. Trouble
is, when you start getting to my  age,  which,  as  I  think  I
mentioned  earlier,  is  a  somewhat  startling one - did I say
that?"
     "Yes, you did mention it."
     "Good. I'd forgotten whether I had or not.  The  thing  is
that  your memory doesn't actually get any bigger, and a lot of
stuff just falls out. So you see, the major difference  between
someone  of my age and someone of yours is not how much I know,
but how much I've forgotten. And after a while you even  forget
what  it  is  you've  forgotten, and after that you even forget
that there was something to remember. Then you tend to  forget,
er, what it was you were talking about."
     He stared helplessly at the teapot.
     "Things you remember... " prompted Richard gently.
     "Smells and earrings."
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "Those  are things that linger for some reason," said Reg,
shaking his head in a puzzled way. He sat down  suddenly.  "The
earrings  that Queen Victoria wore on her Silver Jubilee. Quite
startling objects. Toned down in the pictures of the period, of
course. The smell of the streets  before  there  were  cars  in
them. Hard to say which was worse. That's why Cleopatra remains
so  vividly  in  the  memory,  of  course.  A quite devastating
combination of earrings and smell. I think that  will  probably
be  the last thing that remains when all else has finally fled.
I shall sit  alone  in  a  darkened  room,  sans  teeth,
sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything but
a  little  grey  old  head,  and in that little grey old head a
peculiar vision  of  hideous  blue  and  gold  dangling  things
flashing  in  the  light,  and  the smell of sweat, catfood and
death. I wonder what I shall make of it..."
     Dirk was scarcely breathing as he  began  to  move  slowly
round  the room, gently brushing his fingertips over the walls,
the sofa, the table.
     "How long," he said, "has this been- "
     "Here?" said Reg. "Just  about  two  hundred  years.  Ever
sinee I retired."
     "Retired from what?"
     "Search  me. Must have been something pretty good, though,
what do you think?"
     "You mean you've been in  this  same  set  of  rooms  here
for...  two  hundred  years?"  murmured  Richard.  "You'd think
someone would notice, or think it was odd."
     "Oh, that's one of the delights  of  the  older  Cambridge
colleges,"  said  Reg, "everyone is so discreet. If we all went
around mentioning what was odd about each other  we'd  be  here
till  Christmas. Svlad, er - Dirk, my dear fellow, please don't
touch that just at the moment."
     Dirk's hand was reaching out to touch the abacus  standing
on its own on the only clear spot on the big table.
     "What is it?" said Dirk sharply.
     "It's just what it looks like, an old wooden abacus," said
Reg. "I'll  show you in a moment, but first I must congratulate
you on your powers of perception. May I ask how you arrived  at
the solution?
     "I  have  to admit," said Dirk with rare humility, "that I
did not. In the end I asked a child. I told him  the  story  of
the trick and asked him how he thought it had been done, and he
said and I quote, `It's bleedin' obvious, innit, he must've 'ad
a  bleedin' time machine.' I thanked the little fellow and gave
him a shilling for his trouble. He kicked me rather sharply  on
the  shin  and  went about his business. But he was the one who
solved it. My only contribution to the matter was to  see  that
he  must  be  right.  He had even saved me the bother of
kicking myself."
     "But you had the perception to think of asking  a  child,"
said Reg. "Well then; I congratulate you on that instead."
     Dirk was still eyeing the abacus suspiciously.
     "How...  does  it  work?" he said, trying to make it sound
like a casual enquiry.
     "Well, it's really terribly simple," said Reg,  "it  works
any way you want it to. You see, the computer that runs it is a
rather  advanced  one. In fact it is more powerful than the sum
total of all the computers on this planet including - and  this
is the tricky part
- including itself. Never really understood that bit myself, to
be honest with you. But over ninety-five per cent of that power
is used in simply understanding what it is you want it to do. I
simply  plonk my abacus down there and it understands the way I
use it. I think I must have been brought up to  use  an  abacus
when I was a... well, a child, I suppose.
     "Richard, for instance, would probably want to use his own
personal  computer.  If you put it down there, where the abacus
is the machine's computer would simple take charge  of  it  and
offer  you  lots of nice user-friendly time-travel applications
complete with pull-down menus and desk accessories if you like.
Except that you point to 1066 on the screen and you've got  the
Battle  of  Hastings  going on outside your door, er, if that's
the sort of thing you're interested in."
     Reg's tone of voice suggested that his own  interests  lay
in other areas.
     "It's,  er,  really  quite  fun in its way," he concluded.
"Certainly better than television and a great  deal  easier  to
use  than  a  video  recorder. If I miss a programme I just pop
back in time and watch it. I'm hopeless fiddling with all those
buttons."
     Dirk reacted to this revelation with horror.
     "You have a time machine and you use  it  for...  watching
television?"
     "Well, I wouldn't use it at all if I could ge1 the hang of
the video recorder. It's a very delicate business. time travel,
you know.  Full  of  appalling traps and dangers, if you should
change the wrong thing in the past, you could entirely  disrupt
the course of history.
     "Plus,  of  course, it mucks up the telephone. I'm sorry,"
he said to Richard a little sheepishly, "that you  were  unable
to  phone  your  young  lady  last  night.  There  seems  to be
something  fundamentally   inexplicable   about   the   British
telephone  system, and my time machine doesn't like it. There's
never any problem with the plumbing, the electricity,  or  even
the  gas.  The  connection interfaces are taken care of at some
quantum level I don't entirely understand, and it's never  been
a problem.
     "The  phone  on  the  other  hand is definitely a problem.
Every time I use the time machine, which is, of course,  hardly
at all, partly because of this very problem with the phone, the
phone  goes  haywire and I have to get some lout from the phone
company to come  and  fix  it,  and  he  starts  asking  stupid
questions the answers to which he has no hope of understanding.
     "Anyway.  the point is that I have a very strict rule that
I must not change anything in the past at all "  Reg  sighed  -
"whatever the temptation."
     "What temptation?" said Dirk, sharply.
     "Oh,  it's  just  a  little, er, thing I'm interested in,"
said Reg, vaguely, "it is perfectly harmless  because  I  stick
very strictly to the rule. It makes me sad, though."
     "But you broke your own rule!" insisted Dirk. "Last night!
You changed something in the past- "
     "Well,  yes,"  said Reg, a little uncomfortably, "but that
was different. Very different. If you had seen the look on  the
poor  child's  face. So miserable. She thought the world should
be a marvellous place, and all those appalling  old  dons  were
pouring  their  withering  scorn  on her just because it wasn't
marvellous for them anymore.
     "I  mean,"  he  added,  appealing  to  Richard,  "remember
Cawley.  What  a  bloodless  old  goat. Someone should get some
humanity into him even if they have  to  knock  it  in  with  a
brick. No, that was perfectly justifiable. Otherwise, I make it
a very strict rule "
     Richard   looked   at  him  with  dawning  recognition  of
something.
     "Reg," he said politely, "may I give you a little advice?"
     "Of course you may, my dear fellow,  I  should  adore  you
to," said Reg.
     "If our mutual friend here offers to take you for a stroll
along the banks of the River Cam, don't go."
     "What on earth do you mean?"
     "He means," said Dirk earnestly, "that he thinks there may
be something   a   little  disproportionate  between  what  you
actually did, and your stated reasons for doing it."
     "Oh. Well, odd way of saying it-"
     "Well,  he's  a  very  odd  fellow.  But  you  see,  there
sometimes  may be other reasons for things you do which you are
not necessarily aware of.  As  in  the  case  of  post-hypnotic
suggestion= or possession."
     Reg turned very pale.
     "Possession-" he said.
     "Professor  -Reg-  I  believe  there  was  some reason you
wanted to see me. What exactly was it?"

     "Cambridge! this is... Cambridge!" came the lilting squawk
of the station public address system.
     Crowds of noisy revellers spewed out on  to  the  platform
barking and honking at each other.
     "Where's   Rodney?"  said  one,  who  had  clambered  with
difficulty from the carriage in which the bar was situated.  He
and his companion looked up and down the platform, totteringly.
The  large figure of Michael Wenton-Weakes loomed silently past
them and out to the exit.
     They jostled their way down the side of the train, looking
in through the dirty carriage windows. They suddenly saw  their
missing  companion  still  sitting, trance-like, in his seat in
the now almost empty compartment. They banged on the window and
hooted at him. For a moment or two he didn't react, and when he
did he woke suddenly in a puzzled way as if seeming not to know
where he was.
     "He's pie-eyed!" his companions bawled  happily,  bundling
themselves on to the train again and bundling Rodney back off.
     He  stood woozily on the platform and shook his head. Then
glancing up he saw through  the  railings  the  large  bulk  of
Michael  Wenton-Weakes  heaving  himself  and a large heavy bag
into a taxi= cab, and he stood for a moment transfixed.
     "Straordinary thing," he said, "that  man.  Telling  me  a
long story about some kind of shipwreck."
     "Har  har,"  gurgled  one  of his two companions, "get any
money off you?"
     "What?" said Rodney, puzzled. "No. No, I don't  think  so.
Except it wasn't a shipwreck, more an accident, an explosion -?
He seems to think he caused it in some way. Or rather there was
an  accident, and he caused an explosion trying to put it right
and killed everybody. Then he said there was an  awful  lot  of
rotting  mud  for  years  and years, and then slimy things with
legs. lt was all a bit peculiar."
     "Trust Rodney! Trust Rodney to pick a madman!"
     "I think he must have been mad. He suddenly went off on  a
tangent about some bird. He said the bit about the bird was all
nonsense. He wished he could get rid of the bit about the bird.
But  then  he  said  it would be put right. It would all be put
right. For some reason I didn't like it when he said that."
     "Should have come along  to  the  bar  with  us.  Terribly
funny, we-"
     "I also didn't like the way he said goodbye. I didn't like
that at all."