Unholy Dying Page 3

  He lay back in his chair and his snorts crashed like a thunder among the palm-trees and the alcoves of the lounge. Then he leaned forward and looked at me, grinning fiendishly, “I like the idea of Porter,” he remarked, “saying I was a thief of other men’s ideas. It’s Caliban seeing his face in the mirror. The man himself lives by what he steals. Of course, he’s never stolen anything from me, except my best remarks, and I can’t really object to that, though I do get annoyed when he spoils them. But he steals from his assistants and from Silver, his assistants are under him and they will remain anonymous just as long as he can keep them anonymous. Of course, in his way he’s a good teacher and he knows it and considers that any ideas that occur to those under him are his just reward for the things he is doing for them. Naturally, they can’t be expected to see things in this light and sooner or later they object to it and then there’s a hell of a row and out they go and they’ve no redress. But on the other hand there’s old Silver. He doesn’t mind what Porter steals and, in fact, I don’t think he even notices that Porter is stealing from him.”

  For a few minutes he lay back and smoked in silence, his barrel chest, bound with a thick gold watch chain like a hoop, rising and falling rhythmically. His eyes were shut and I wondered vaguely how he enjoyed smoking when he could not watch the smoke curling up. I had noticed this habit of smoking with closed eyes previously and knew that it was not just a trick, but that, somehow or other, Uncle John found that his thoughts became clearer with something in his mouth and his eyes shut.

  He opened one eye and looked at me and then he shut it again. For a full minute, by the clock behind him, he did not seem to breathe. Then he sat up and shook himself vigorously, knocking three-quarters of an inch of cigar ash over his waistcoat and trousers. With a blunt hand he made a gesture of sweeping the ash off himself, a gesture that merely served to rub the ash down in a long dirty white smear.

  “Humf,” he grunted. “What you tell me about young Peter worries me. I’ve always said that Porter will get his head knocked in for him some day, but I wouldn’t like one of my friends to be hanged for the deed. I’d rather do it myself than let that happen, for if I murdered him they wouldn’t know it was a murder. The old man’s got some tricks up his sleeve, but he hasn’t applied his talents to murder—not yet. I’d rather it was one of the others, though, that did Porter in and I can’t say that I’d blame anyone who did it. I’ve often felt I’d like to myself. But it’s his damn superiority gets me, not his stealin’ habits. However, he’d better watch out. It’s one thing to pick a man’s brain and another to try to steal his woman.”

  He heaved himself out of the easy chair and a small cascade of dead matches and cigar-ashes tumbled off him on to the floor of the lounge. He planted one of his wrinkled brown brogues firmly on the heap of debris and it crunched briskly. “If we’re going to that reception,” he remarked, “we’d better start.” He pulled heavily on his rat’s tail of a tie, making it look more like an unravelled bit of string than before, and ruffled his mop of grey hair into an untidy tangle. I sat beside him in the high front seats of the Bentley as we roared and rattled our way toward the university and the dance which was being given in the common room.

  I had hoped that Porter would not be at the dance but he was standing beside the bar with a glass of whisky in his hand, wearing a dinner jacket. My uncle turned to the bar and ordered a couple of Johnny Walker’s. Porter fixed his eyes on me. He was slightly drunk and his goldfish eyes were protuberant and looked as though they were made of misty glass or had developed some fungoid affliction. “Oh, hullo, Stubbs,” he said thickly, “and you too Mr. Whatsyername.” I looked at him as coldly as I could and barked at him. “The name’s Blake. B-L-A-K-E. Could you try to remember it, Mister Porter.”

  He growled at me and lobbed his fat body nearer. “What y’say?” he demanded, “Say’t again.” “I said my name was Blake, Mister Porter!” “’Re you looking for a fight,” he demanded again. “No,” I replied, “were you?” He leaned over me and stuck his nose within an inch of mine. “Well, then you be careful what you say, Mr. Whatsyername.” The smell of second-hand whisky was almost overpowering. “All right, Mister Porter,” I answered, soothingly. He lifted his hand and flicked me on the ear, sharply.

  I did not mean to hit him hard and merely tapped him on the solar-plexus. It must have been something to do with the amount he had drunk, for he just fell down and rolled over. I thought I had hurt him seriously and bent over him. My uncle John pushed me aside and lifted Porter’s eyelids. “Ha,” he said, laughing softly, “he’s fallen asleep. The best thing he could do.”

  In the background the voice of Silver was like the scraping of a double-bass, scratching away in the silence that had fallen upon the room. I looked round and got the impression that I had fallen into the middle of a Bateman drawing, the man who did something wrong; the eyes were like black paper discs and the open mouths seemed to have been frozen in the middle of an alleluia, by a hard snap which had turned the sounds to icicles. My uncle did not seem to be aware that he was doing anything out of the ordinary as he removed Porter’s black bow and unstudded the stiff front of his white shirt. He looked up at me over his shoulder and said, “Give me a hand with him, Andrew, and we’ll put him over by the door. A couple of hours’ sleep should make him all right, or as all right as he’ll ever be.”

  I took hold of Porter’s ankles and Uncle John gripped his shoulders. He was surprisingly light considering his flabby fatness, and we laid him in an armchair to the corncrake screeching of Silver. The band started and the open mouths clapped shut and the hanging arms were once more draped about their partners. We went back to the bar to get our drinks. My uncle chuckled deeply and roared, in a voice that seemed to make the dance band, with all its hot drummers and swinging saxophones, sound like a radio with a run-down battery. “Ha, you’ve done what a lot of people would’ve liked to do and you didn’t mean to do it.”

  One thing rather worried me and that was the behaviour of Professor Silver. He was running backward and forward between the comatose figure in the armchair and the bar, where he ordered double whiskies and drank them very fast. I felt rather sorry for him and moved toward him the next time he came to the bar, in order to tell him that I had not intended to knock Porter out and that I had no quarrel with him personally. However, when I opened my mouth he took his glass in his hand and zigzagged down the room, dodging between the dancers like a wounded woodcock.

  I stood looking after him and did not see Peter and Mary approaching until he tapped me on the shoulder. “Hullo, Andrew,” he said. “You’re looking as if you’d just seen a ghost. What’s the matter with you?” I tried to explain what had happened. My explanation was punctuated with grunts, chuckles and snorts from Uncle John, while Peter looked at me enviously. “My God,” he said, addressing an invisible audience, “here’s a chap whose just done what I’ve been restraining myself from doing all day and he has the nerve to suggest that he’s sorry he did it. I’d be sorry I hadn’t hit a lot harder and killed the swine.”

  In reply to this I pointed out that I personally had no quarrel with Porter except his inability or unwillingness to remember my name and that I had probably insulted him more than he had insulted me, by my insistence upon Mister rather than Doctor. I was willing to admit that Porter was an unpleasant specimen and that perhaps the world would be a better place for his absence than it was while honoured with his presence, but I deprecated the suggestion that I should be the instrument of his departure to tropical regions. I felt my neck and said that, so far as I could make out, it was already long enough and that, anyhow, it suited me without being stretched.

  When I paused for breath my uncle John, on whom the whisky was having a mellowing effect, started clapping loudly and shouting for an encore. The noise he made nearly deafened me and caused the band to stop abruptly in the middle of a waltz. He looked puzzled and in a whisper as loud as the growl of an enraged bear, “Why have they stoppe
d? Is anythin’ wrong?” The band apparently decided that there was nothing much the matter except that a member of their audience had gone mad, so, after the leader had turned a severe look in our direction, they started the waltz again.

  Uncle John appeared to be suffering some remorse for his interruption of the dancers, for his voice was no louder than a normal man’s shout as he turned to Mary. “Miss Lewis,” he said, bowing toward her, “in my youth I used to be able to waltz a little. Are you willing to risk it with an old man whose feet are perhaps not as nimble as they used to be?”

  Mary smiled at him and he took her hand and led her on to the floor. Peter and I watched them for a moment. The bulky figure of my uncle swung to the rhythm of the waltz with an ease that I would not have suspected him capable of. We turned toward the bar and I ordered beer, feeling that any further indulgence in Johnny Walker would have a definitely bad effect upon my sobriety and, as my uncle’s guest, I thought it was incumbent upon me to behave in a sober and proper manner. I smiled as I thought of the propriety of my evening’s behaviour. I had first insulted and then knocked out a scientific member of the Congress. Peter looked at me and said, “Look here, I’d like to thank you for this afternoon. Your silly ass act prevented me making a fool of myself, for I was just on the point of getting up and taking a swing at the swine and it wouldn’t have done any good.” He paused and sighed, “I’m afraid though that I’ll take a proper wallop at him one of these days and I won’t know where to stop. I’ll just go on banging at him till he falls apart or until they take me away and shut me up in a padded cell. I’d like to have been here when you hit him and to have seen him fall.” He looked serious as he went on, “I’m rather ashamed to admit it, for I thought I had my feelings under better control, but when I think of Porter I go blood-crazy. You know these stories about native tribes and how the drumming sends them mad and they’ll kill anything in their path? Well, that’s how the repetition of Porter’s name gets me. Just as the natives retain a verge of sanity which prevents them killing their own tribesmen, so I retain enough sanity to hate only Porter, but all my hate is focused upon him, my hate of other people seems to have been transferred to him. One of these days I’m afraid I’ll kill him and that’ll be the end of it.”

  I tried to look like an elder brother, one of those people who always understands, as I replied to him. “Peter, the trouble is Mary, isn’t it? Well, then, if she can manage to stand him and I don’t think you need be afraid of her having any deeper feeling than that of tolerance, why can’t you ignore his behaviour. After all you don’t need to see him very often. I know that you are working in Newcastle while she is one of his assistants in London, but even then you manage to get up to town fairly frequently, and she won’t go on working with him forever. If I were you I’d keep out of his way as much as possible.”

  This advice was, I knew, no more use than any friendly advice ever is, but I hoped that Peter would not cut loose at Porter, for the ensuing fracas would do neither of them any good professionally. The fact that I had knocked him out did not matter, for I was a crazy journalist, and as all journalists, on account of the films, have a reputation for perpetual drunkenness, it could be explained that I was roaring tight and had been looking for trouble. The waltz finished and Mary and Uncle John returned to the bar.

  We talked trivialities for a few minutes and then my uncle boomed, “Well, Andrew, your neck won’t be elongated this time. You haven’t killed him.” I turned round and saw Porter, his face the colour of the moon, weaving his way through the dancers and pushing aside the offers of assistance which he was receiving from Silver who was hopping along at his side like an excited parakeet. His tie was hanging loosely from the flapping wings of his collar and his blue silk underclothes were visible through the buckled starched front of his shirt. His eyes were fixed as though he had lost the power of moving them and his long white damp hands hung like rubber gloves filled with wet sand. His feet were splayed to take the swaying weight of his body.

  I wondered whether he was returning to hit me. I hoped not, for he did not look as though he was in any condition to fight anyone, even his own shadow, let alone a sober man such as I was. Half turning to Uncle John, but keeping the uncertain figure still in view, I asked him some silly question about the evening primrose, the plant he was an authority upon, and, obviously seeing what I was doing, he gave me a long and involved reply which I did not hear. Mary was whispering to Peter, and I guessed she was telling him not to make a fool of himself.

  Porter paid no attention to our group but laid himself limply against the bar and muttered, in a phlegm-clogged voice, “A large gin and tonic.” The barmaid looked at him doubtfully, but, as she had obviously received no instructions about refusing drinks to drunken scientists, she served him with the drink, diluting it thoroughly with the quinine. He sipped it slowly and as if he was imbibing the elixir of life his dead eyes came slowly to life again and swivelled round the room until they came to rest on us.

  I laid down my glass of beer as he moved along the bar, supporting himself on hands like dead starfish. He drew himself up as straight as he could and bowed slightly, but I could not tell if the bow was due to politeness or a sudden nausea. “Mr. Whats-er-Blake,” he corrected himself, “my friend, Professor Silver informs me that I owe you an apology. If that is so I wish to tender it.” I felt uncomfortable and mumbled, “Oh, that’s all right, Doctor Porter.” His body shook, like an immense jelly, under the impact of a hiccup as he turned away from me, apparently convinced that he had (in capitals) Done The Right Thing. His sway carried him over to Mary, who looked up as his shadow obscured the electric lights. “Mary,” he drawled, looking aside at Peter as if at a bit of dust on his sleeve, “will you dance with me?”

  Peter looked explosive and I saw my uncle John’s thick fingers tighten round his arm. I am not a very quick thinker but it occurred to me that Porter had received enough knocking around for one evening and I pushed myself forward. “Sorry, Doctor Porter,” I said, “Miss Lewis has promised me this dance and I heard my uncle ask her for the one after.”

  He looked at me without expression and said with drunken preciseness, “All right, Mr. Blake. I think I understand you.” He swung round so hard that I thought he was about to start revolving like a gyroscopic top and, collecting Silver like a burr, swayed once more toward the door.

  My uncle John’s fingers were still fastened like claws on Peter’s sleeve and he was rumbling away in an undertone, “It’s not worth it, boy. You’ll just cause yourself and Mary a great deal of trouble. Surely we’ve had enough trouble for one evening with my nephew here showing how tough he is.” I flushed and glared at him, but he closed one eye in a fantastic parody of a wink which contorted the whole of one side of his face.

  I danced my dance with Mary and we spent the rest of the evening in a manner that suited the lighter moments of serious people. I am afraid I got slightly drunk and told a great number of out-of-date ghost stories, most of them stolen from Monk Lewis and Una Ratcliffe, with a faint leavening of Walpole—Horace not Hugh.

  Chapter 3

  ’Twas Brillig

  AS MY UNCLE’S GUEST, I stayed at the White Lion, which suited me very well as it meant that any money I made from my reports on the Congress was sheer profit. I could not quite understand what the Daily Courier saw in the subject of genetics that would interest the general public, for I only could choose the subjects that interested me without any reference to the chance of their interesting others. I mentioned this to Uncle John over breakfast. He looked out from behind his Times and bellowed, “It’s all a racket, Andrew. The Daily Courier fancies ‘culture,’ and the other penny papers fancy something else. The Daily This likes the idea of the Englishman as a sportsman, so their pages give prominence to any sportin’ news, and the Evening That thinks that industry is the thing, so industrial news comes first. I like knowin’ what I’ll find in a paper and so I read them all. I like their silly childish little rackets. Of
course, it’s a good thing that one of the papers should be directed by culture-fanciers, or at least it seems to be good. It helps to support the scientist and the artist by popularisin’ their names and misquotin’ their words.”

  I told him about Peter’s remarks to me about his blood-lust for Porter and he looked serious for a moment. Then he stuck his stubby pipe under his moustache, wiped his glasses on the sleeve of his jacket and settled them carefully askew on his nose. “Harrumph,” he snorted, blowing his nose into his red bandana, “somethin’ll have to be done about this. I’ll have to speak to Alban about it and see if he can’t give the two of them a job in London, a job where they won’t need to see Porter unless they want to and I don’t think there’s much chance of their wantin’ to see him, do you, eh?”

  He levered himself out of his chair and started distributing the bundle of papers and books, which lay beside his plate, in his various pockets. The Dickson Carr detective story went into his jacket pocket, along with The Times and a bundle of letters. The rest of the daily papers were stowed in a poacher’s pocket in the inside, a pocket that already seemed to be stuffed to bursting point.

  After a fairly uneventful journey, during which the Bentley had only once showed any inclination to bicker with another road-user, a heavy steam tractor, we were more or less thrown into the centre of a group on the steps of the university. Peter was there, talking to a tall American whom he introduced as Dr. Swartz. Dr. Swartz, who was chewing an empty corn-cob pipe, shifted it with strong white teeth into the corner of his mouth and his long narrow head was broken in the middle as he smiled. “Well, Mr. Blake, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance after hearing what you did to our friend Porter last night. He once worked with me in the States—you know he comes from Canada?—and, well, I can’t say we liked him very much even in those days, and from what my friend, Dr. Hatton here, tells me I guess that time has not mellowed him any.”