Echo

misquoting Dr. Johnson,' he murmured nervously, as if fearing he was about to make a fool of himself. ' 'If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,' he used to say, 'then theism is the last refuge of the weak.' I could be wrong, of course, but-' He hesitated, glanced at Terry, and fell silent.

'Go on,' Deacon encouraged him.

'It's not fair to speak ill of the dead, Mike, particularly in front of their friends.'

'Billy was a murderer,' said Deacon evenly, 'and it was Terry who told me about it. I doubt he could have shown a greater weakness than that, could he?''

Barry replaced his glasses and peered at them both with a look of immense satisfaction. 'I thought it must be something like that. You see, his character was flawed. He ran away. He was a drunk. He killed himself. These are not the attributes of a strong man. Strong men face their problems and resolve them.'

'He might have been ill. Terry describes him as a nutter.'

'You told me he'd been living as Billy Blake for a minimum of four years.'

'So?'

'How could a mentally ill man maintain a false identity for four years? He would forget the rationale behind it every time he hit rock-bottom.'

It was a good point, Deacon admitted. And yet... 'Doesn't the same logic apply to a drunk?'

Barry turned to Terry. 'What did he say when he'd been drinking?''

'Not much. He usually passed out. I reckon that's why he did it.'

I define happiness as intellectual absence...

'You told me he used to rant and rave when he was drunk,' Deacon reminded him sharply. 'Now you're saying he passed out. Which was it?''

The boy's expression was pained. 'I'm doing my best here, okay? He ranted when he was half-cut, and passed out when he was paralytic. But half-cut doesn't mean he didn't know what he was saying. That's when he got going on the poetry and the day sex machine crap-'

'The what?' demanded Deacon.

'Day-sex-machine,' repeated Terry with slow emphasis.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'How the hell should I know?'

Deacon frowned while his mind tried to make sense of the sounds. 'Deus ex machina?' he queried.

'That's it.'

'What else did he say?''

'A load of bull usually.'

'Can you remember his exact words and how he said them?''

Terry was becoming bored. 'He said hundreds of things. Can't we go and have a drink? I'll remember better once I've had a pint. Barry wants one, too, don't you, mate?'

'Well-' the little man cleared his throat. 'I'd need to put things away first.'

Deacon looked at his watch. 'And I need to make a photocopy of this piece on de Vriess. How about giving us ten minutes' worth of Billy in a rant, Terry, while Barry and I finish off? Then we'll go pubbing and forget about it for the rest of the evening.'

'Is that a promise?''

'That's a promise.'

Terry's performance was a tour deforce which Deacon captured on a tape cassette. The youngster had an extraordinary talent for sustaining a different voice from his own but whether it sounded anything like Billy was impossible to tell. He assured Deacon it was a perfect imitation until Deacon replayed the first thirty seconds and Terry collapsed in heaps of laughter because he sounded like an 'upper-class twit.' The content of the speech was largely irrelevant, insofar as it was a repetition of Billy's belief in gods and retribution together with the few snippets of poetry that Terry had already recalled for Deacon. Also, and disappointingly, Terry left out any reference to deus ex machina because, as he said afterwards, he'd never really understood what Billy was talking about so it made it more difficult to remember the words he'd used.

Deacon, who had been thoroughly entertained by the entire proceedings, gave him a friendly punch on the arm and told him not to worry about it. However, Barry, to whom most of it was new, had listened with grave attention, and rewound the tape to isolate a small passage which followed a listing of gods.

'...and the most terrible of all is Pan, the god of desire. Close your ears before his magical playing drives you insane, and the angel comes with the key to the bottomless pit and casts you down forever. You will wait in vain for the one who descends in clouds to raise you up. Only Pan is real...'

'Couldn't 'the one who descends in clouds to raise you up' be Billy's deus ex machina?' he suggested. 'Think of pantomimes and the good fairy emerging from dry ice vapor to wave her wand and effect a happy ending.'

'And if it is?'' Deacon prompted him.

'Well-' Barry marshaled his thoughts-'Pan was a Roman god, but if I remember correctly 'the angel with the key to the bottomless pit' comes from the Book of Revelation which is of Judaeo-Christian inspiration. So Billy seems to have believed that it was the pagan gods who ensnared men into sin, but the Judaeo-Christian gods who exacted punishment. Which must have left him very confused about where salvation lay. Should he placate the pagan gods, as he seems to have done with this business of