little jealousy she was entitled to as his wife, and there was also the suspicion that his lack of interest extended to her too. Now she felt doubly betrayed.
'You'd think he'd be far too worried about the children,' she went on. 'They're downstairs and there he is up in the flat with that creature...' Eva broke down and wept openly.
'What you need is a bath and then a good sleep,' said Betty, and Eva allowed herself to be led upstairs to the bathroom. But as she lay in the hot water, instinct and thought combined again. She was going home. She had to, and this time she would go in broad daylight. She got out of the bath, dried herself, and put on the maternity dress which was the only thing Betty Braintree had been able to find that would fit her, and went downstairs. She had made up her mind what to do.
In the temporary conference room which had once been Major-General de Frackas' private den, Inspector Flint, the Major and the members of the Psycho-Warfare team sat looking at a television set which had been placed incongruously in the middle of the Battle of Waterloo. The late Major-General's obsession with toy soldiers and their precise deployment on a large ping-pong table where they had been gathering dust since his death added a surrealist element to the extraordinary sights and sounds being relayed by the TV camera in the field telephone next door The Wilt alternative had entered a new phase, one in which he had apparently gone clean off his rocker.
'Mad as a March hare,' said the Major as Wilt, horribly distorted by the fish-eye lens, loomed and dwarfed as he strode about the attic mouthing words that made no sense at all. Even Flint found it hard not to accept the verdict.
'What the hell does 'Life is prejudicial to Infinity' mean?' he asked Dr Felden, the psychiatrist.
'I need to hear more before I express a definite opinion,' said the doctor.
'I'm damned if I do,' muttered the Major, 'it's like peering into a padded cell.'
On the screen Wilt could be seen shouting something about fighting for the religion of Allah and death to all unbelievers. He then made some extremely disturbing noises which suggested a village idiot having trouble with a fishbone, and disappeared into the kitchen. There was a moment's silence before he began chanting, 'The bells of hell go tingalingaling for you but not for me,' in a frightening falsetto. When he reappeared he was armed with a bread knife and yelling, 'There's a crocodile in the cupboard, mother, and it's eating up your coat. Bats and lizards braving blizzards keep the world afloat.' Finally he lay on the bed and giggled.
Flint leant across the sunken road and switched the set off. 'Much more of that and I'll go off my head too,' he muttered. 'All right, you've seen and heard the sod, and I want to know your opinion as to the best way of handling him.'
'Looked at from the standpoint of a coherent political ideology,' said Professor Maerlis, 'I must confess that I find it hard to express an opinion.'
'Good,' said the Major, who still harboured the suspicion that the professor shared the views of the terrorists.
'On the other hand the transcripts of the tapes made last night indicate definite evidence that Mr Wilt has a profound knowledge of terrorist theory and was apparently engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate the Queen. What I don't understand is where the Israelis come in.'
'That could easily be a symptom of paranoia,' said Dr Felden. 'A very typical example of persecution mania.'
'Never mind about the 'could be',' said Flint, 'is the bugger mad or not?'
'Difficult to say. In the first place the subject may well be suffering the after-effects of the drugs he was given yesterday before entering the house. I have ascertained from the so-called medical officer who administered it that the concoction consisted of three parts valium, two sodium amytal, a jigger of bromide and what he chose to call a bouquet of laudanum. He couldn't specify the actual quantities involved, but in my opinion it says something for Mr Wilt's
