'Because if it's the worst, we've got to face it – not bury our heads in the sand until it's too late.'
'You think that this ridiculous mumbo jumbo works? These trances and spells and cock sacrifices and all the bag of tricks?'
'Something works,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop. 'That's what we've got to face. A lot of it, most of it, I think, is trappings. It's just to create atmosphere – atmosphere is important. But concealed amongst the trappings, there must be the real thing – the thing that does work.'
'Something like radio activity at a distance?'
'Something of that kind. You see, people are discovering things all the time – frightening things. Some variation of this new knowledge might be adapted by some unscrupulous person for their own purposes – Thyrza's father was a physicist, you know -'
'But what? What? That damned box! If we could get it examined? If the police -'
'Police aren't very keen on getting a search warrant and removing property without a good deal more to go on than we've got.'
'If I went round there and smashed up the damned thing?'
Mrs Dane Calthrop shook her head.
'From what you told me, the damage, if there has been damage, was done that night.'
I dropped my head in my hands and groaned.
'I wish we'd never started this damned business.'
Mrs Dane Calthrop said firmly: 'Your motives were excellent. And what's done is done. You'll know more when Ginger rings back after the doctor has been. She'll ring Rhoda's, I suppose.'
I took the hint.
'I'd better get back.'
'I'm being stupid,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop suddenly as I left. 'I know I'm being stupid. Trappings! We're letting ourselves be obsessed by trappings. I can't help feeling that we're thinking the way they want us to think.'
Perhaps she was right. But I couldn't see any other way of thinking.
Ginger rang me two hours later.
'He's been,' she said. 'He seemed a bit puzzled, but he says it's probably flu. There's quite a lot about. He's sent me to bed and is sending along some medicine. My temperature is quite high. But it would be with flu, wouldn't it?'
There was a forlorn appeal in her hoarse voice, under its surface bravery.
'You'll be all right,' I said miserably. 'Do you hear? You'll be all right. Do you feel very awful?'
'Well – fever – and aching, and everything hurts, my feet and my skin. I hate anything touching me… nd I'm so hot.'
'That's the fever, darling. Listen, I'm coming up to you! I'm leaving now – at once. No, don't protest.'
'All right. I'm glad you're coming, Mark. I dare say – I'm not so brave as I thought…'
II
I rang up Lejeune.
'Miss Corrigan's ill,' I said.
'What?'
'You heard me. She's ill. She's called her own doctor. He says perhaps flu. It may be. But it may not. I don't know what you can do. The only idea that occurs to me is to get some kind of specialist on to it.'
'What kind of specialist?'
'A psychiatrist – or psychoanalyst, or psychologist. A psycho something. A man who knows about suggestion and hypnotism and brainwashing and all that kind of thing. There are people who deal in that kind of thing?'
'Of course there are. Yes. There are one or two Home Office men who specialize in it. I think you're dead right. It may be just flu – but it may be some kind of psychobusiness about which nothing much is known. Lord, Easterbrook, this may be just what we've been hoping for!'
I slammed down the receiver. We might be learning something about psychological weapons – but all that I cared about was Ginger, gallant and frightened. We hadn't really believed, either of us – or had we? No, of course we hadn't. It had been a game – a cops and robbers game. But it wasn't a game.
The Pale Horse was proving itself a reality.
I dropped my head into my hands and groaned.
Chapter 21
I
I doubt if I shall ever forget the next few days. It appears to me now as a kind of bewildered kaleidoscope without sequence or form. Ginger was removed from the flat to a private nursing home. I was allowed to see her only at visiting hours.
Her own doctor, I gather, was inclined to stand on his high horse about the whole business. He could not understand what the fuss was all about. His own diagnosis was quite clear – bronchopneumonia following on influenza, though complicated by certain slightly unusual symptoms, but that, as he pointed out, 'happens all the time. No case is ever 'typical.' And some people don't respond to antibiotics.'
And, of course, all that he said was true. Ginger had bronchopneumonia. There was nothing mysterious about the disease from which she was suffering. She just had it – and had it badly.
I had one interview with the Home Office psychologist. He was a quaint little cock robin of a man, rising up and down on his toes, with eyes twinkling through very thick lenses.
He asked me innumerable questions, half of which I could see no point in whatever, but there must have been a point, for he nodded sapiently at my answers. He entirely refused to commit himself, wherein he was probably wise. He made occasional pronouncements in what I took to be the jargon of his trade. He tried, I think, various forms of hypnotism on Ginger, but by what seemed to be universal consent, no one would tell me very much. Possibly because there was nothing to tell.
I avoided my own friends and acquaintances, yet the loneliness of my existence was insupportable.
Finally, in an excess of desperation, I rang up Poppy at her flower shop. Would she come out and dine with me. Poppy would love to do so.
I took her to the Fantasie. Poppy prattled happily and I found her company very soothing. But I had not asked her out only for her soothing qualities. Having lulled her into a happy stupor with delicious food and drink, I began a little cautious probing. It seemed to me possible that Poppy might know something without being wholly conscious of what it was she knew. I asked her if she remembered my friend Ginger. Poppy said, 'Of course,' opening her big blue eyes, and asked what Ginger was doing nowadays.
'She's very ill,' I said.
'Poor pet.' Poppy looked as concerned as it was possible for her to look, which was not very much.
'She got herself mixed up with something,' I said. 'I believe she asked your advice about it. Pale Horse stuff. Cost her a terrible lot of money.'
'Oh,' exclaimed Poppy, eyes wider still. 'So it was you!'
For a moment or two I didn't understand. Then it dawned upon me that Poppy was identifying me with the man whose invalid wife was the bar to Ginger's happiness. So excited was she by this revelation of our love life that she quite failed to be alarmed by the mention of the Pale Horse.
