Down Under (20 page)

“Then who knocked me out?” said Oliver.

Ernie got red about the ears.

“Well, as a matter of fact it was me.”

Oliver laughed.

“And who turned on the light?”

“Well, that was Fanny. You see, when you want to get in you've got to ring through. They don't open the door till they know who's there, so anyone that's all right has got to switch the light on and stand right under it. There's a spy-hole in the door, and when they're quite sure who it is they open, and not before. So when Fanny put on the light and I saw you standing there, well, I just naturally knocked you down—and I'm sure I hope you're none the worse for it. You see, it gave me a bit of a start to think we'd been followed.”

“Yes, it would. Well, thanks very much. You say it's all right for me to wander about?”

Ernie looked doubtful.

“Well, nothing's been said, but if you'll take my advice you'll go careful, and you won't do anything like trying to see Miss Rose Anne, which is bound to lead to trouble.” He paused, and added, “For her sake as well as for you.”

CHAPTER XXIII

Amos Rennard's feast was set. Except for the great cavern arching over head and stretching away in all directions the scene might have been a City banquet of the nineties, for the long table was covered with the finest of linen damask and ornamented by massive plate, gold or silver-gilt. Places were laid for twenty, and the service was of silver. “Nasty scratchy stuff,” as Dr Spenlow remarked at Oliver's ear.

“Well, it can't get broken,” said Oliver, “and I suppose that's a consideration down here.” He had had a hearty reception from Amos Rennard, who had exchanged his flannel trousers for black ones, and his patterned dressing-gown for a garment rather like a Lord Mayor's robe carried out in crimson velvet and dark fur. Some dozen people who had already collected were standing about silently at a discreet distance from the dictator's chair. Three of them were women. All had a dull and listless look. The men wore dinner jackets, and the women that kind of evening dress which is to be seen in hotels of the family type. One of the men wore a clerical collar and dark vest.

“Poor old Luke!” said Dr Spenlow. “Luke Simpson, you know. He's the only one who's been here longer than I have—beat me by a month, poor devil.”

Oliver looked at the Reverend Luke Simpson and wondered what had happened to the keen, eloquent young man described to him by Mr Benbow Smith. Had he died suddenly, or fallen to a gradual decay? This was a fat man with a pale, hairless face and dull, unhappy eyes. Oliver felt sorry for him. He lifted his eyebrows and allowed his lips to form the word “drugged.”

Dr Spenlow appeared to be amused.

“How angry he'd be. He has a very fierce sermon about drugging in general and the use of tobacco in particular, with excursions into the evil of strong drink. He preaches it at me once in three months or so. We attend his ministrations by order, you know, so he gets a good run for his money.”

“What about the others? They all look drugged to me,” said Oliver bluntly.

Dr Spenlow surveyed him reprovingly.

“A little bit free with the tongue, aren't you? Your affair of course, but in your place I should be careful—yes, very decidedly I—should—be—careful.” He strung the words out, laying a strong emphasis upon them. Then, with a sudden change of manner, “What's the odds? Why not be indiscreet?
Dulce est dissipere in loco
, and so forth and so on. We drug everyone here—a little. You'll be for it yourself. I don't know why you've been let off up till now. No, that's not true—I do know, and I expect you do too. You're Philip's bait. He's using you to fish with, or he's going to use you. Queer chap, Philip—and deep—
and
dangerous—and
quite, quite, quite
determined to cut you out with Miss Carew. But to get the full flavour out of the situation neither you nor she must be drugged. Philip's got to think well of Philip whatever happens. Anyone can take a drugged girl by force. That's not good enough. Anyone could disgust a girl with a drugged rival. That's not good enough either. He wants to be able to say ‘She chose me.' That puts Philip at the top of the tree. And at present he's not sure whether she's drugged or not. I believe he suspects me.” He laughed. “I've a conscience like the driven snow—I told him so just now. So there you are. Watch out—he'll be up to something pretty soon. Like to know who all these people are? You'd better—and we've talked long enough about Philip.”

Oliver said, “Yes, tell me.”

“The thin, dark woman in black is Mrs Simpson.”

“But he wasn't married.”

He got a keen look.

“Who told you that? Well, he wasn't, but he is. She was a girl he'd had a fancy for, and the Old Fox had her fetched down under to pacify him. Poor old Luke, she nags his head off.”

“What on earth does he want a parson for? He's not religious surely?”

He got Dr Harold Spenlow's reproving look again.

“I wouldn't let him hear that if I were you. He fairly oozes religion. You know—the sort which makes him feel quite sure that whatever he does is right. He can't be happy a minute unless he does feel sure, so that's what poor old Luke's here for, to bolster him up—make him feel good, and pious, and respectable. It's some job!” He laughed sardonically. “I'd rather have my own—and I'm not in love with that.”

“Who are the others?” said Oliver.

“The fat woman with the grey hair is my assistant's wife. He's the little man with the bald head. He does the routine work of the laboratory. They were supposed to have been killed in an aeroplane smash. They brought her along instead of scrapping her, because she once took a science degree. If they knew how completely useless she was they'd scrap her now, but I'm a humane man, so I hold my tongue—as a rule. The thin, melancholy man is a fiddler, and the one behind him with two chins and a lot of hair is a crooner, and the one beyond him is a jazz pianist—Philip's taste. And there's Fanny—you know her—and the earnest, valuable Ernie. And that's Mark just coming across the hall.”

Mark Rennard was taller than his brother Philip, and broader. In middle life he would almost certainly resemble his father. He had the ginger hair, the sandy lashes, and the heavy build, but he was pale where the Old Fox was florid. He wore a frowning look, and passed through the group on the dais without a word or a glance for anyone till he came to his father's chair and stood there bent down and talking low. Dr Spenlow gave his faint sarcastic laugh.

“A serious soul, Mark. He runs the commissariat, and it weighs on him like lead. A serious, efficient soul. That's why his father prefers Philip. Well, are you wise to our politics now?”

Oliver gave him a very direct look.

“I don't know where you stand.”

The dark face twitched with something which might have been amusement.

“And you'd like to?”

“Very much.”

“You won't miss anything for want of asking—will you?”

“I hope not.”

“And free with the tongue, as I said before. How do you know you can trust me?”

“I don't.”

Dr Spenlow laughed.

“Well, there's your answer in a nutshell—they're all in the same boat with you. They don't know if they can trust me, but they've got to, and sometimes it keeps them awake at night. You see, they can't do without me. The old man is as strong as a horse, but he thinks he's going to die if he gets a finger-ache, and he's quite sure he'd die if I wasn't there to keep the finger-aches away. Poor old Luke Simpson is his fire insurance, and I'm his life insurance, but he isn't sure he can trust me, and he daren't drug me, because nobody wants to be attended by a drugged doctor. Besides, the stuff is my own secret, and he needs me to keep the others quiet. Pretty, isn't it? Why, the only reason I'm here at all is because I treated him for an attack of gout just before the crash, and he's been obstinately convinced ever since that I saved his life.”

Oliver dropped his voice and said,

“It's damnable. Why don't you dope the lot of them and get away?”

Dr Spenlow smiled with a bitter twist of the mouth.

“My dear Loddon, if you are out for information, here's something you'd better get by heart—no one has ever got away from here, and no one ever will. If anything happened to the Rennards, the rest of us would be left to starve quietly to death behind steel doors which only they know how to open. I really prefer my present existence to death from starvation. There are compensations, you know. I have an excellent laboratory, and some day, perhaps, my notes may reach the world.” His eye kindled for a moment. Then he said in a different voice, “You probably won't want my advice, but here it is. Trying to get away is suicide. Trying to get Miss Carew away is suicide
cum
murder. If you've no objection to this, go ahead by all means, but you can take it from me that it's certain death. There's no way out. Do you suppose plenty of people haven't had a shot at it in the last ten years? Do you suppose I didn't have a shot at it myself? Some poor devils try the old mine-workings, and they starve or go mad. There's no way out there. No, all you can do is to make the best of it, and—there's always the drug.”

A surging revolt rendered Oliver speechless. He was to accept an existence without aim, without work, without hope, without Rose Anne. Every drop of natural blood in his body said no.

He turned abruptly from Dr Spenlow, and saw Rose Anne coming across the hall. She wore a white dress that glittered as she moved. Her neck and her arms sparkled with brilliants. Her bright hair was almost hidden by a diamond wreath. Philip Rennard walked beside her. They made, as Dr Spenlow murmured, a very handsome couple.

Everything had apparently been waiting for them, for as soon as they arrived on the dais a gong boomed and the guests took their places, with Amos Rennard at the head of the table and his son Mark at the foot. There was a name-card at each place, and whilst Oliver was looking for his own name he was touched on the shoulder, and turned to see Philip Rennard with a stranger on his arm.

“You are lower down—next to Miss Carew. You don't need an introduction to her, but let me introduce you to Mademoiselle Violette de Parme.” Voice and manner were those of the conventional host.

Oliver looked with interest at the lady as he acknowledged the introduction. She was very fair, very vivacious, very French. She wore her hair wreathed in the Medusa-like curls which he knew to be the latest fashion. Her black dress exposed a great deal of admirably modelled back, and was slit very nearly to the thigh to show a diamond garter, her only ornament. Her lips were as scarlet as her nails, her lashes as black as Mascara could make them. She hung on Philip's arm and looked at Oliver with a lazy allure. When she spoke her English was perfect except for the accent which no French woman ever loses. She said,

“Monsieur Loddon will be a great acquisition to our little society—
n'est-ce pas, Philippe?
”

To which Philip in his agreeable voice,

“I hope that will be a consolation to him.”

“A great consolation,” said Oliver.

He saw Mademoiselle Violette's grey-green eyes flicker sideways between their black lashes. There was some current running strongly here. He felt the pull of it, and wondered if it was dangerous. It might be—

Rose Anne was half way down the table. He wondered why he was to sit beside her, and what she would say to him, and he to her, under Philip's watching eyes, and what would be the outcome of it all.

A servant pulled back his chair and he sat down. Rose Anne's head turned towards him. The diamond wreath glittered above her smooth, white brow and candid, innocent eyes. Her look rested on him, blankly at first and then with a faint tinge of recognition.

“You are Oliver?”

And Oliver said, “Yes, Rose Anne.”

She turned with a little nod and tasted the small fanciful savoury which had been set before her. Having tasted it, she laid down her fork.

“Do you think I need eat it? I don't like it very much. You know, I never did like olives.”

Oliver's heart was wrung. She spoke like a confiding child. And she remembered that she disliked olives, but she had forgotten their love.

He looked across the table and saw Philip Rennard and the fair-haired French girl in the two opposite places. So that was Philip's game. Rose Anne and Oliver were to be under his microscope for an interminable hour. Not a word, not a look, not a quick-drawn breath, scarcely a beat of the pulse, but would be his to dissect, to weigh, to use.

The plates were changed. A mulligatawny soup was served to them. Rose Anne leaned back in her chair. Across the table Philip spoke to her.

“No soup, Rose?”

She shook her head and said, still in that childish tone,

“I don't like hot things.”

He had her plate taken away and a cup of bouillon brought instead. And there was a fuss about that, because Amos Rennard from the head of the table wanted to know why what was good enough for him wasn't good enough for his guests. He thumped the board and made a lot of noise about it, but Rose Anne sat there pale and smiling, and when the bouillon came she sipped from it and said, “Thank you, Philip,” and left most of it in the cup.

Mademoiselle Violette said in her sharp, high-pitched voice,

“And if I say that I do not like the fish, what will you do for me, Philippe? Will you serve me a fish of paradise in a gold dish,
mon ami?
”

Philip said without any attempt to lower his voice, “What a hope!”

The colour stung her cheeks, burning through the rouge that was there already. She said something quickly in French on a dropped note. And Philip, as loudly as before: