him with a death curse unless he left the Station for a few hours to keep a rendezvous, thus leaving the field free for his double to move about the Station during that time, without fear of coming face to face with him, and to make off with a quantity of the fuel instead of its formula.
It was Barney who produced the idea that, owing to Otto's psychic link with Lothar, the former might be able to secure some clue to the latter's whereabouts. Otto who, since the discovery of the way they had been tricked, had hardly spoken, brightened at once, and said:
'That certainly is a possibility. Anyhow, I will do my utmost; but, for such an attempt, I must have solitude and silence, so I had better go back to my quarters.'
Forsby looked across at C.B. 'I ought to be moving, too. I've the unpleasant task in front of me of reporting this business to the Chief, and I don't want to leave it much longer, as he usually asks a few people along to drinks on Sunday evenings. Do you still wish to set off to London as soon as possible, or would you prefer to dine here first? ?
'Dine and sleep, I think,' Verney replied. 'I told the Air Ministry to report back here if they manage to trace Lothar's plane; and now Mr. Khune is going to have a cut at that too from the psychic angle. If either succeeded while Sullivan and I were on our way back to London, we'd lose hours of precious time in getting after him; so we will stay put for the night. We'll all go along to Sir Charles now, and I'll break the news to him for you.'
'That's damned decent of you, C.B. The old boy is bound to take it pretty badly - the actual theft, I mean - and what he'll say when told about the psychic angle, I can't imagine. If I tried to explain that part of it to him without support, he would probably think that I ought to be certified.'
They finished their drinks, returned to the car, dropped Khune at his bungalow, then drove to the Headquarters block, in which the Director of the Station had a flat overlooking the quadrangle. Forsby sent up his name and a few minutes later a man-servant showed them into a pleasant sitting-room.
Sir Charles Remmington-Rudd was a portly man in the middle fifties. He was nearly bald and had heavy sagging jowls, but an alert manner and a friendly smile. When Forsby had introduced his companions, C.B. reported the bare facts.
The eminent scientist said nothing for a moment, then he shook his head. 'This is a very serious matter. Sit down please, gentlemen, and give me full particulars.'
'Thank you, Sir.' Verney took a chair. 'It is an extraordinary story and, I'm afraid, a long one. May I ask to begin with whether you believe in psychic phenomena?'
Sir Charles raised his eyebrows. 'I can answer that only if you give me a precise definition of the meaning to yourself of the term you have used. However, it may help you if I say that science now admits the existence of certain faculties in the human mind which cannot be accounted for by normal processes. Before you go further, though, you say the story is a long one, and I am expecting a few friends in for drinks quite shortly. I take it everything possible is being done to trace these stolen drums of our special fuel?'
'Everything, Sir.'
'Very well, then.' Sir Charles stood up. 'It is now too late to put my friends off, but I can put off a couple who were to dine with me. If I can be of no immediate help this long story of yours will keep for an hour or two, so I suggest that the three of you should return at eight o'clock and tell it to me over dinner.'
They thanked him and took their leave, then repaired to Forsby's bungalow, where they again mulled over the shattering event of the day without getting any further. After a wash and brush up, they dined with Sir Charles, who at first found it difficult to believe what they were saying; but Forsby had brought along a copy of Otto's statement and, after the scientist had read it, he had to agree that the psychic bond between the twins must be accepted.
At half past ten they looked in on Otto. He had tried for an hour before dinner to get into touch with Lothar, then dined in the Mess and, since, tried again, but on both occasions without success. Forsby set the tape recorder in the hope that it might pick up a conversation between the twins during the night, then they all turned in.
On Monday morning the tape proved blank, but Otto reported that he had woken at about half past six after a vivid dream. In it he had seen Lothar getting into an aircraft, standing near which were a number of men in uniform, and he felt sure that these were Americans. He also had a feeling that the place was one of the air bases occupied by United States Forces in Eastern England.
Verney at once rang through to the Air Ministry and asked the senior officer in the Security Department there to take the matter up with his American opposite number and ask for exhaustive enquiries to be made.
This first earnest that Otto might succeed in helping them to trace his brother decided C.B. to take him to London, so that if he had further visions he could give full particulars of them with a minimum of delay. While the aircraft was being got ready to fly them back to Farnborough, Otto arranged with his number two to carry on with the experiments on which he was engaged, then Forsby ran the three of them along to the airstrip.
At Farnborough, Verney's car was waiting to meet them. On the way into central London they stopped at the little hotel in Chelsea and arrangements were made for Otto to stay there, then C.B. dropped Barney in Warwick Square and went on to his office.
In spite of his preoccupations over the week-end, Barney had several times thought of Mary, and he feared that she might have taken rather badly his having had to let her down on Saturday night. So the first thing he did on getting into his flat, was to ring her number. As it was just on lunch-time he hoped to catch her in but there was no reply, so he assumed that she was probably out for the day on one of her modelling jobs.
In the evening he considered buying more roses to take to her, but decided that might give the impression that he had been enjoying himself over the week-end and now had a guilty conscience ; so he arrived in the Cromwell Road at half past seven empty handed but armed with an elaborate story of a millionaire who had suddenly become interested in his Kenya travel project and had insisted on carrying him off to the country on Saturday to discuss putting money into it.
To his disappointment and annoyance, his ring at the front door of Mary's flat brought no response, so evidently she was still out. Hoping that something had detained her, he hung about for nearly an hour, but she did not put in an appearance; so he was forced to the conclusion that she was so annoyed with him that she had decided to ignore the invitation he had posted to her before setting off for Wales, and had already gone out for the evening either alone, or with someone else.
Consoling himself as best he could with the thought that having been up early that morning an 'early bed' would be welcome, he ate a solitary dinner at a little restaurant in Gloucester Road and returned to Warwick Square. But it was quite a time before he got off to sleep as thinking of Mary made him realize how much he had been looking forward to seeing her again and how much, in the past fortnight, she had, almost imperceptibly, come to mean to
