The Bat that Flits Read online

  I was just coming away from the steriliser where I had been to collect another frame of test tubes when I saw that there was something inside one of them. It shouldn’t have been there, and I held it up against the light to see what it was. It was obviously a screw of paper. But the one thing that simply didn’t occur to me was that there would be any writing on it. Let alone that the writing would be intended for me.

  I removed the stopper of cotton-wool and shook out the little paper spill. The steriliser had been set a bit on the high side, and the paper like the cotton-wool was slightly charred. But not so charred that the words did not stand out plainly. The letters were all in good bold capitals. There in best office typing I read the message: KEEP AWAY. THIS MEANS YOU. It made even less sense than usual. And I spread it out on the bench in front of me, and sat there staring at it.

  There were several points about it that were odd. In the first place, all five of us went to the same oven for our sterilised tubes. And if that particular tube had really been intended for me the odds were precisely five to one against my ever getting it at all. Then there is a note of privacy and intimacy about a pillow-case that is distinctly lacking from a test tube that is going to be unstoppered in a busy laboratory. But that, I realised, could mean one of several things. It might be that I hadn’t taken as much notice as somebody wanted me to take of the messages that I had already received. This last one could have been intended as a sort of in-thy-bed-or-at-thy-work-bench-I-am-beside-you reminder. If so, it struck me as rather artistic and well conceived. The only difficulty was that if it really did mean ME, I still didn’t know what ME had to keep away from. There was a third possibility, viz., that someone, still for purposes that I couldn’t understand, wanted me to sound the tocsin on a bell-jar and announce at the top of my voice that I was being persecuted—and that, in turn, might be to provide a brief but effective distraction while something a good deal more important was going on elsewhere. Possibility number four was that the instruction might not have been intended for me at all and that I had been guilty of the offence of opening somebody else’s mail: for all I knew, the whole Institute might have been living under a snowstorm of these little bits of paper. It could all have been a game in which I was simply odd man out. . . .

  Before I had reached the nth variant, however, I was cut short by young Mellon. He was exactly opposite to me, and not more than six feet away.

  “Say, what is it—a date with a dame?” he asked.

  It struck me then that if it were variant Number Three, the tocsin-and-persecution device that had been intended, I could hardly have responded better. And I don’t like being made a stooge at any time. So I screwed up the little piece of paper and chucked it into the waste-bin at my feet.

  “They’re all after me,” I said. “When I don’t reply, they just go crazy. It’s something to do with the hair line.”

  That seemed to satisfy Mellon who went back to his blood-counts again. And it satisfied me, too. I meant to recover the piece of paper later on because I wanted it to add to my collection.

  2

  It was just then that the Old Man sent for me. i! though he was such a mild whiskery old thing he didn’t to be kept waiting. Moreover, as the hag secretary herself had come to collect me there was nothing for it but to go along. But I might have known it. There was nothing urgent or even important about the Old Man’s summons. It was simply that he wanted to find out if I’d give a lantion lecture on B. typhosus to the student nurses in the local isolation hospital.

  I could have done without that. Student nurses in the mass somehow lack the charm that they may or may not possess individually. But after my bad black over the one-day visa, I felt that I owed it to myself to show something of the charm side of my nature.

  “May I really?” I asked eagerly. “If they don’t mind something a bit elementary, I’d love to have a shot at it.”

  The Old Man was so pleased that I think, if the Government hadn’t been cutting down on everything, he would have recommended me for an increment on the spot. I learnt afterwards that I had been number nine on his list of candidates, and the other eight had all risked their careers by refusing.

  I waited long enough to inquire after Una. And immediately the Old Man gave one of his nervous starts that always reminded me of someone who has just reached the theatre and then finds that he has left the tickets at home.

  “That reminds me,” he said. “She was asking for you just now.”

  “For me?” I asked, keeping my voice as level-sounding as possible.

  “Probably wants to say thank you,” he went on. “After all, you did save her life, you know.”

  made the ordinary pooh-pounds. Then, so that you might have thought that I was simply talking in my sleep, I added: “Of course. I’d be delighted. It’s only because I thought she needed rest that I haven’t been bothering her.”

  Because Ma Clewes was out scouring the Bodmin market, it was he Clewes’s maid who showed me up to Una’s room. And because she was only the maid she withdrew as soon as she had knocked on the door. That, I considered, was very understanding of her. I registered her action for an extra shilling in the Christmas box. It occurred to me only afterwards that it might have been Una herself who had arranged it.

  “I wanted to see you alone,” was what she said.

  I told her that I thought that was nice of her, and took the chair that was drawn up alongside the bed. I have never denied that there is a lot to be said for really dark hair when it is cut rather short. That is when it is the kind of hair that reflects the light and takes on other colours as well. Una’s was that kind. And the pink bed-jacket was just right for it. Between the two of them, they showed her eyes up to perfection. And except for an occasional flicker that I kept waiting for because I liked it, the blinds weren’t drawn at all. For most of the time I was looking full into a pair of eyes that were so dark that I had to keep on taking another look just to make sure whether they were really violet or only an astonishingly deep blue.

  They didn’t waver once. Not even when she said: “I want you to do something for me.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’m getting up to-morrow,” she went on. “And I shall be back in the lab. on Monday.”

  Frankly, I was a bit disappointed. There didn’t seem to be much in this for me.

  “Isn’t that rather silly,” I said, “coming back before you’re really fit?”

  “But that’s why I’ve asked you,” she replied. “I want you to keep an eye on things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  Una’s face was turned full towards me. It was the best view of her eyes that I had been able to get so far.

  “Me mostly,” she said. “I’d just like it if you’d stay somewhere near me.”

  This was distinctly better. But I still remembered my manners.

  “Isn’t that Gillett’s job?”

  It is interesting the way certain things conform to a dull and rather obvious pattern. I knew Gillett’s first name all right; and she knew that I knew. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Not to her at least.

  “Michael doesn’t mind,” she said. “It’s his idea really, just as much as mine.”

  There was a sudden sweep of the lashes as she said it, and I knew that at this particular moment she wasn’t exactly speaking the truth. But I’ve never been a stickler about small things like that. And, in any case, Una hadn’t finished what she had to say.

  “There are bound to be times when Michael isn’t there,” she went on. “And I’d feel safer to-morrow if I knew that there was someone else around.”

  “There’ll be someone,” I told her.

  There was a pause. A long one. The interview had reached that awkward stage when all the bits and pieces begin falling apart. Una was quite as much aware of it as I was.

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose you’d better be going now. Otherwise, people will begin to wonder what’s happening.”

  �
��Not unless they’re psychic, they won’t,” I answered.

  And bending over the bed, I kissed her. When it was over Una didn’t attempt to say anything. If anyone was to speak, it was obviously my turn.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” I said, and left her.

  Chapter XXVI

  1

  The last few minutes had made me forget all about that little screw of paper in the waste-bin. But there was something else that I was forgetting, too. Young Mellon had simply been left there with nothing but his blood-counts and his curiosity. Before I had been out of the room five minutes he had come round to my side of the bench and begun routing about among the junk. And the idea of cryptic messages was evidently something that stirred up quite a lot inside him. He couldn’t have been more excited if he had found a blonde in the waste-bin.

  In the result, he was giving quite a party. They were all there gathered round him—Bansted and Rogers and Gillett. And Mellon had just passed the piece of paper over to Gillett, who was examining it. Dr. Smith had come into the room since I left. But he was getting on with his own work despite the chatter. He was even being rather self-consciously isolationist, I thought.

  Gillett appeared to be enjoying himself. He was in one of his aggressively efficient and fact-finding sort of moods.

  “Shouldn’t be difficult to establish the typewriter it was done on,” he said, with an air of having been engaged on typewriter detection cases ever since he had qualified.

  I pitied him. If it ever came to the point of accusation and counter-accusation between Gillett and the Director’s secretary, I was prepared to back the secretary. Those teeth could make nonsense of any profile that came within snapping distance.

  As soon as he saw me, Gillett came over.

  “Can you make head or tail of this?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Me no savee.”

  “Do you think it’s specially meant for you?”

  “Could be,” I said. “But it still doesn’t make sense.”

  “Then that would rather suggest that it isn’t for you at all,” Gillett went on. He broke off for a moment. “Have any of you chaps,” he went on, “ever received anything of the same sort as this”—here he waved my little slip of paper rather tantalisingly under their noses—“yourselves?”

  The technique of the questioning was very nearly perfect. Without the use of the word “chaps” it might have sounded just a shade too much like question time in the Army Education Corps. After all, Gillett wasn’t actually in charge of us. It only seemed that way.

  But apparently Bansted and Rogers both loved being asked questions. Or, at least, they appeared to like being able to say “no” to this one. It was only Mellon who wasn’t so sure.

  “I had a coupla post-cards from some dame I’d never heard of,” he said, unable to keep the note of regret out of his voice. “She didn’t give no address. Just asked why I’d cut the date with her. But that was last summer. Said she’d look me up here some time. Only she never came.”

  Gillett shook his head. It was obvious that he was in no mood for comforting young Mellon for his one lost opportunity.

  “Sorry,” he said. “She’s not the one we’re looking for.”

  As he said it, he turned and faced Dr. Smith. I may have been wrong. But it still seemed to me that Smith took an unnaturally long time to realise that he was being looked at.

  “Smith,” Gillett said finally in his clear hi-waiter kind of voice, “have you ever had one of these?”

  Even then Dr. Smith did not reply immediately. He finished what he was doing, or what he was pretending to be doing, and looked up wearing his G.C.M.G.-O.M.-F.R.S. expression.

  “One of what?” he asked.

  It was only then that I realised what an excellent pokerface all really young babies naturally have. The chubby folds and unwrinkled forehead of Dr. Smith revealed absolutely nothing. But at least he condescended to walk over towards us.

  “You have something to show me?” he asked, when he had finally got there.

  Gillett, I noticed, didn’t actually give him the piece of paper. He merely showed it to him. Not that Dr. Smith seemed to mind. Rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, he scarcely glanced at it.

  “Isn’t there being rather a lot of excitement about nothing?” he asked.

  That annoyed Gillett. The events of the past few weeks had rubbed quite a lot of the gloss off him already. I’d been watching him change before my eyes from French polish to ordinary fumed oak. And the way things were going he’d be antique finish before we were through with him.

  “You call this nothing?” he asked.

  Dr. Smith allowed his eyelids to fall for a moment.

  “Not exactly nothing,” he corrected himself. “Merely nothing of importance. It could, for example, merely be a mistake. Or a hoax. Or it might be intended as a perfectly straightforward and honest warning. I have seen similar notices exposed over switch-rooms in the States. The wording is—er—distinctly American.”

  “Say, what exactly do you mean by that?” Mellon demanded.

  Dr. Smith put up his round fat hands as if to protect himself.

  “Merely what I have said,” he replied. “I was not seeking to attach any particular significance to it. Indeed, I have hardly considered the matter. If our friend here” —Dr. Smith broke off long enough to indicate Gillett, and in this gesture he contrived somehow to make him look like the Institute’s No. 1 scare-monger—“hadn’t invited me, I wasn’t proposing to give an opinion at all. It is not a habit of mine to give opinions when I am totally ignorant of the facts.”

  “Would it alter your view in any way if I told you that this wasn’t the first that had been received?” Gillett asked.

  He had himself completely under control by now, and was fighting hard to regain his own position. No one with that jaw-line could possibly afford to have himself publicly debunked by a colleague who looked like a Glaxo advertisement.

  But Dr. Smith was fighting hard by now.

  “It might, or it might not,” Smith replied. “That would depend on the nature of the message. By whom received. And in what circumstances.” He paused. “Have you been asked to keep out, too?”

  This was Gillett’s opportunity. And he took it.

  “I don’t think that there is any need to go into what the messages——”

  “So you received more than one, did you?” Dr. Smith asked. “May we ask how many? Frequency could be almost as important as content.”

  “I am not saying how many I have received,” Gillett replied. “At least not here. Merely that an unknown correspondent has chosen an unusual means of getting in touch with me.”

  “Through a test tube?” Dr. Smith asked.

  Gillett smiled.

  “As a matter of fact, the particular message to which I am referring was left for me clipped under the blade-guard of my electric shaver.”

  “And have you still got the message?”

  Gillett shook his head.

  “I took it straight along to Wilton,” he said, getting out of his chair as he was speaking. “And that is where this one is going, too.”

  This was my cue.

  “Hi, mister,” I said. “That’s my message. How do you know I wasn’t expecting it?”

  He had got almost as far as the door when I caught up with him. And when we reached it I noticed a curious thing. The door was about six inches ajar. And disappearing down the corridor away from us was the figure of Dr. Mann. There was no other door at our end of the corridor, and something must have made Dr. Mann change his mind rather suddenly.

  He was almost running.

  2

  Gillett had noticed it, too, and for a moment his eyes caught mine.

  “Pardon me,” I said, as I removed the piece of paper from between his fingers. This is part of the Hudson bequest.”

  Gillett seemed reluctant to give it to me. But then he let go. It may have been simply that he didn’t want the paper t
o get torn. At any rate, we changed roles and I became bearer. We both understood the position perfectly. I was accompanying him to see whether he had really given Wilton any previous messages. And he was accompanying me to see whether I was going to hand over this one. From the mood of mutual confidence we might have been two Foreign Ministers walking into a Peace Conference together.

  But so far as I could see everything was open and above board. Gillett barged in on Wilton without even knocking and waiting for the “Come in.” As for Wilton, he was doing exactly what I had come to expect of him. That is precisely nothing. He was standing at the window looking at the clouds. From his interest in clouds he might have been thinking of drawing them, or writing a book about them, or even having a shot at making some of them. He didn’t turn round when we entered. Just went on sky-gazing.

  “Now Hudson’s had one of them,” Gillett said, without attempting to keep the note of jubilation out of his voice.

  “He’s got it here.”

  “One of what?” Wilton asked.

  He swivelled his head round as he said it, and I showed him the screwed-up piece of paper. I could see now why he hadn’t moved immediately when we came in. He was standing on only one leg like an Indian adjutant, and the other was hoisted up on to the window-sill. Getting himself facing in our direction was like resetting a pair of folding steps.

  “What’s it say this time?” he asked.

  “It says ‘KEEP OUT. THIS MEANS YOU,’” I told him.

  “Does it make sense?”

  “Not to me it doesn’t.”

  “Where d’you find it?”

  “Bunged down inside a test tube.”

  “Your test tube?”

  “Could have been anybody’s.”

  “Ever had one before?” he asked.

  I paused. This seemed to me to be a good opportunity for doing a little Gillett-reducing on my own account.