have to telephone Magnus.
The unconscious is a curious thing. I was deeply disturbed over this total confusion of thought that might have made me blab the truth to Bill about the experiment itself; but five minutes or so after I had lain down on the divan I was asleep and dreaming, not, strangely enough, about Bodrugan and his appalling fate, but of a cricket match at Stonyhurst when one of the team got hit on the head with a cricket-ball and died of haemorrhage of the brain twenty-four hours later. I had not thought about the incident for at least twenty-five years. When I awoke just after nine I was perfectly lucid and clear in the head, apart from a hell of a genuine hangover, and my right eye was more bloodshot than ever. I bathed and shaved, and could hear sounds of movement from our guests in the room next door. I waited until I heard Bill and Diana go downstairs, then I put a call through to Magnus. No luck. He was not at the fiat. So I left a message with his secretary at the University saying I wanted to speak to him very urgently, but it might be better if I put the call through to him rather than he to me. Then I stuck my head out of the dressing-room window overlooking the patio and shouted to Teddy to bring me up a cup of coffee. I would appear in the hall to bid our guests godspeed five minutes before departure, and not a moment before.
'What's wrong with your eye? You hit the floor or something? ' asked my elder stepson as he brought coffee.
'No,' I told him. 'I think it's a back-lash from the wind on Monday.'
'You were up early anyway,' he said. 'I heard you talking to Bill in the kitchen.'
'I was making tea,' I said. 'We both of us had too much to drink at dinner.'
'Guess that's what turned your eye all streaks and not the sea,' he said, looking so like his mother in one of her more perceptive moods that I turned away, and then remembered that his room was above the kitchen and he could conceivably have overhead our conversation.
'Anyway,' I asked before he left the dressing-room, 'what were we talking about?'
'How should I know?' he replied. 'Do you think I'd pull up the floorboards to listen?'
No, I reflected, but his mother might, if she heard a discussion going on between her husband and her guest at 6 a.m.
I finished dressing, drank down my coffee, and appeared at the top of the stairs just in time to help Bill down with the suitcases. He greeted me with a conspiratorial glance of enquiry — the girls were below us in the hall — and murmured, 'Get any sleep?'
'Yes,' I said, 'yes, I'm fine.' I saw him staring at my eye. 'I know,' I said, touching it, 'no explanation for that. Must have been the bourbon. By the way,' I added, 'Teddy heard us talking this morning.'
'I know,' he said, 'I heard him tell Vita. Everything's O.K. Don't worry.' He patted me on the shoulder, and we clumped downstairs.
'Heavens!' cried Vita. 'What have you done to your eye?'
'Bourbon allergy,' I said, combined with shellfish. 'It happens to some people.'
Both girls insisted on examining me, suggesting alternative remedies from penicillin ointment to T.C.P.
'It can't be the bourbon,' said Diana. 'I don't want to be personal, but I noticed it yesterday as soon as we arrived. I said to myself; Whatever's Dick done to his eye?'
'You didn't say anything to me,' said Vita.
Enough was enough. I put a hand on each of their shoulders and pushed them through the porch. 'Neither one of you would win a beauty prize this morning,' I said, 'and it wasn't the bourbon that woke me at dawn, but Vita snoring. So shut up.'
We had to instal ourselves on the steps for the inevitable picture-taking by Bill, and it was nearly half-past ten before they were finally off. Once again Bill's hand-clasp was that of a conspirator.
'Hope we get this fine weather in Ireland,' he said. 'I'll watch the papers and listen to the radio forecasts to see what's happening here in Cornwall.' He looked at me, nodding imperceptibly. He meant that his eyes and ears would be alert for the first mention of a dastardly crime.
'Send us postcards,' said Vita. 'Wish we were coming with you.'
'You always can,' I said, 'when you get fed-up here.' It was not perhaps the most encouraging of remarks, and when we had finished waving and turned back towards the house Vita wore an abstracted air. 'I really believe', she said, 'you'd be glad if the boys and I had gone off with them. Then you'd have this place to yourself again.'
'Don't talk nonsense,' I said.
'Well, you made your feelings pretty clear last night, flinging off to bed directly we'd finished dinner.'
'I flung off to bed, as you call it, because it bored me stiff to see you lolling about in Bill's arms and Diana waiting to do the same in mine. I'm just no good at party games, and you ought to know it by now.'
'Party games!' she laughed. 'What utter nonsense! Bill and Diana are my oldest friends. Where's your much-vaunted British sense of humour?'
'Not in tune with yours,' I said. 'I've a cruder sense of fun. If I pulled a mat from under your feet and you slipped up, I'd have hysterics.' We wandered back into the house, and just at that moment the telephone rang. I went into the library to answer it, and Vita followed me. I was afraid it might be Magnus, and it was.
'Yes?' I said guardedly.
'I got your message,' he said, 'but I've a very full day. Is it an awkward moment?'
Yes, I said.
'You mean Vita is in the room?'
'I understand. You can answer yes or no. Anything turned up?'
'Well, we've had visitors. They arrived yesterday, and have just left.' Vita was lighting up a cigarette. 'If it's your Professor — and I can't think who else it would be — give him my regards.'
'I will. Vita sends her regards,' I told Magnus.
'Return them. Ask her if it would be convenient for me to come for the weekend, arriving Friday evening.'
My heart leapt. Whether with excitement or the reverse I couldn't say. In any case with relief. Magnus would take over.
'Magnus wants to know if he can come on Friday for the weekend,' I said to her.
'Surely,' she answered. 'It's his house, after all. You'll have more fun entertaining your friend than you had putting up with mine.'
'Vita says of course,' I repeated to Magnus.
'Splendid. I'll let you know the train later. About your urgent call. Does it concern the other world?'
'Yes,' I said.
You went on a trip?
'Yes.'
'With ill-effect?'
I paused a moment, with a glance at Vita. She had made no attempt to leave the room. 'As a matter of fact I'm feeling pretty lousy,' I said. Something I ate or drank disagreed with me. I've been violently sick and have a peculiar bloodshot eye. It may be due to drinking bourbon before lobster.'
'Combined with taking a trip, you may well be right,' he answered. 'What about confusion?'
'That also. I could hardly think straight when I awoke.'
'I see. Anyone notice?'
I took another glance at Vita. 'Well, we were all pretty high last night,' I said, 'so the males of the party woke early. I had suffered a very vivid nightmare, and told Vita's friend Bill about it over a morning cup of tea.'
'How much did you tell?'
'About the nightmare? Just that. It was very real, you know what nightmares are. I thought I saw someone set on by thugs and drowned.'
'Serves you right,' said Vita. 'And it sounds more like the two helpings of lobster than the bourbon.'
'Was it one of our friends?' asked Magnus.
'Yes,' I answered. 'You know that chap who used to keep a boat years ago over at Chapel Point, and was always sailing round to Par? Well, the nightmare was about him. I dreamt his ship was dismasted in a storm, and when he finally came ashore he was murdered by a jealous husband who thought he was after his wife.'
Vita laughed. 'If you ask me, she said, a dream of that sort means an uneasy conscience. You thought I was getting off with Bill and your vivid nightmare resulted from that. Here, let me talk to your Professor.' She crossed
