Douglas Adams. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
страница №7
...f Richard's sofa slowly twisting and turning on thebig Macintosh screen, and he sat down at the keyboard.
He explored the program Richard had written for a short
while, but quickly realised that in its present form it was
less than self= explanatory and he learned little. He managed
at last to get the sofa unstuck and move it back down the
stairs, but he realised that he had had to turn part of the
wall off in order to do it. With a gnrnt of imtation he gave
up.
Another computer he looked at was displaying a steady sine
wave. Around the edges of the screen were the small images of
other waveforms which could be seIected and added to the main
one or used to modify it in other ways. He quickly discovered
that this enabled you to build up very complex waveforms from
simple ones and he played with this for a while. He added a
simple sine wave to itself, which had the effect of doubling
the height of the peaks and troughs of the wave. Then he slid
one of the waves half a step back with respect to the other,
and the peaks and troughs of one simply cancelled out the peaks
and troughs of the other, leaving a completely flat line. Then
he changed the frequency of one of the sine waves by a small
extent.
The result of this was that at some positions along the
combined waveform the two waves reinforced each other, and at
others they cancelled each other out. Adding a third simple
wave of yet another frequency resulted in a combined wave in
which it was hard to see any pattern at all. The line danced up
and down seemingly at random, staying quite low for some
periods and then suddenly building into very large peaks and
troughs as all three waves cante briefly into phase with each
other.
Dirk assumcd that there must be amongst this array of
equipment a means for translating the waveform dancing on the
Macintosh screen into an actual musical tone and hunted among
the menus available in the program. He found one menu item
which invited him to transfer the wave sample into an Emu.
This puzzled him. He glanced around the room in search of
a large flightless bird, but was unable to locate any such
thing. He activated the process anyway, and then traced the
cable which 1ed from the back of the Macintosh, down behind the
desk, along the floor, behind a cupboard, under a rug until it
fetched up plugged into the back of a large grey keyboard
called an Emulator II.
This, he assumed, was where his experimental waveform has
just arrived. Tentatively he pushed a key.
The nasty farting noise that surged instantly out of the
speakers was so loud that for a moment he didn't hear the words
"Svlad Cjelli!" that were barked simultaneously from the
doorway.
Richard sat in Dirk's office and threw tiny screwed-up
balls of paper at the wastepaper bin which was already full of
telephones. He broke pencils. He played major extracts from an
old Ginger Baker solo on his knees.
In a word, he fretted.
He had been trying to write down on a piece of Dirk's
notepaper all that he could remember of the events of the
previous evening and, as far as he could pinpoint them, the
times at which each had occurned. He was astonished at how
difficult it was, and how feeble his conscious memory seemed to
be in comparison with his unconscious memory, as Dirk had
demonstrated it to him.
"Damn Dirk," he thought. He wanted to talk to Susan.
Dirk had told him he must not do so on any account as
there would be a trace on the phone lines.
"Damn Dirk," he said suddenly, and sprang to his feet.
"Have you got any ten-pence pieces?" he said to the
resolutely glum Janice.
Dirk turned.
Framed in the doorway stood a tall dark figure.
The tall dark figure appeared to be not at all happy with
what it saw, to be rather cross about it, in fact. To be more
than cross. It appeared to be a talI dark figure who could very
easily yank the heads off half a dozen chickens and still be
cross at the end of it.
It stepped forward into the light and revealed itself to
be Sergeant Gilks of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary.
"Do you know," said Sergeant Gilks of the Cambridgeshire
Constabulary, blinking with suppressed emotion, "that when I
arrive back here to discover one police officer guarding a sofa
with a saw and another dismembering an innocent wastepapet
basket I have to ask myself certain questions? And I have to
ask them with the disquieting sense that I am not going to like
the answers when I find them.
"I then find myself mounting the stairs with a horrible
premonition, Svlad Cjelli, a very horrible premonition indeed.
A premonition, I might add, that I now find horribly justified.
I suppose you can't shed any light on a horse discovered in a
bathroom as well? That seemed to have an air of you about it."
"I cannot," said Dirk, "as yet. Though it interests me
strangely."
"I should think it bloody did. It would have interested
you strangely if you'd had to get the bloody thing down a
bloody winding staircase at one o'clock in the morning as well.
What the hell are you doing here?" said Sergeant Gilks,
wearily.
"I am here," said Dirk, "in pursuit of justice."
"Well, I wouldn't mix with me then," said Gilks, "and I
certainly wouldn't mix with the Met. What do you know of
MacDuff and Way?"
"Of Way? Nothing beyond what is common knowledge. MacDuff
I knew at Cambridge."
"Oh, you did, did you? Describe him."
"Tall. Tall and absurdly thin. And good-natured. A bit
like a preying mantis that doesn't prey - a non-preying mantis
if you like. A sort of pleasant genial mantis that's given up
preying and taken up tennis instead."
"Hmm," said Gilks gruffly, turning away and looking about
the room. Dirk pocketed the tape.
"Sounds like the same one," said Gilks.
"And of course," said Dirk, "completely incapable of
murder."
"That's for us to decide."
"And of couise a jury."
"Tchah! Juries! "
"Though, of course, it will not come to that, since the
facts will speak for themselves long before it comes to a court
of law for my client."
"Your bleeding client, eh? All right, Cjelli, where is
he?"
"1 haven't the faintest idea."
"I'll bet you've got a billing address."
Dirk shrugged.
"Look, Cjelli, this is a perfectly normal, harmless murder
enquiry, and I don't want you mucking it up. So consider
yourself wanred off as of now. If I see a single piece of
evidence being levitated I'll hit you so hard you won't koow if
it's tomorrow or Thursday. Now get out, and give me that tape
on the way." He held out his hand.
Dirk blinked, genuinely surprised. "What tape?"
Gilks sighed. "You're a clever man, Cjelli, I grant you
that," he said, "but you make the same mistake a lot of clever
people do of thinking everyone else is stupid. If I turn away
it's for a reason, and the reason was to see what you picked
up. I didn't need to see you pick it up, I just had to see what
was missing afterwards. We are trained you know. We used to get
half an hour Observation Training on Tuesday afternoons. Just
as a break after four hours solid of Senseless Brutality."
Dirk hid his anger with himself behind a light smile. He
fished in the pocket of his leather overcoat and handed over
the tape.
"Play it," said Gilks, "let's see what you didn't want us
to hear."
"It wasn't that I didn't want you to hear it," said Dirk,
with a shrug. "I just wanted to hear it first." He went over to
the shelf which carried Richard's hi-fi equipment and slipped
the tape into the cassette player.
"So do you want to give me a little introduction?"
"It's a tape," said Dirk, "from Susan Way's telephone
answering machine. Way apparently had this habit of leaving
long..."
"Yeah, I know about that. And his secretary goes round
picking up his prattlings in the morning, poor devil."
"Well, I believe there may be a message on the tape from
Gordon Way's car last night."
"I see. OK. Play it."
With a gracious bow Dirk pressed the Play button.
"Oh, Susan, hi, it's Gordon," said the tape once again.
"Just on my way to the cottage-"
"Cottage!" exclaimed Gilks, satirically.
"It's, er, Thursday night, and it's, er... 8.47. Bit misty
on the roads. Listen, I have those people from the States
coming over this weekend..."
Gilks raised his eyebrows, looked at his watch, and made a
note on his pad.
Both Dirk and the police sergeant experienced a chill as
the dead man's voice filled the room.
"- it's a wonder I don't end up dead in the ditch, that
would be something wouldn't it, leaving your famous last words
on somebody's answering machine, there's no reason- "
They listened in a tense silence as the tape played on
through the entire message.
"That's the problem with crunch-heads - they have one
great idea that actually works and then they expect you to
carry on funding them for years while they sit and calculate
the topographies of their navels. I'm sorry, I'm going to have
to stop and close the boot properly. Won't be a moment."
Next came the muffled bump of the telephone receiver being
dropped on the passenger seat, and a few seconds later the
sound of the car door being opened. In the meantime, the music
from the car's sound system could be heard burbling away in the
background.
A few seconds later still came the distant, muffled, but
unmistakable double blam of a shotgun.
"Stop the tape," said Gilks sharply and glanced at his
watch. "Three minutes and twenty-five seconds since he said it
was
8.47." He glanced up at Dirk again. "Stay here. Don't move.
Don't touch anything. I've made a note of the position of every
particle of air in this room, so I shall know if you've been
breathing."
He turned smartly and left. Dirk heard him saying as he
went down the stairs, "Tuckett, get on to WayForward's office,
get the details of Way's carphone, what number, which
network..." The voice faded away downstairs.
Quickly Dirk twisted down the volume control on the hi-fi,
and resumed playing the tape.
The music continued for a while. Dirk drummed his fingers
in frustration. Still the music continued.
He flicked the Fast Forward button for just a moment.
Still music. It occurred to him that he was looking for
something, but that he didn't know what. That thought stopped
him in his tracks.
He was very definitely looking for something.
He very definitely didn't know what.
The realisation that he didn't know exactly why he vtras
doing what he was doing suddenly chilled and electrified him.
He turned slowly like a fridge door opening.
There was no one there, at least no one that he could see.
But he knew the chi!! prickling through his skin and detested
it above all things.
He said in a low savage whisper, "If anyone can hear me,
hear this. My mind is my centre and everything that happens
there is my responsibility. Other people may believe what it
pleases them to believe, but I will do nothing without I know
the reason why and know it clearly. If you want something then
let me know, but do not you dare touch my mind."
He was trembling with a deep and old rage. The chill
dropped stowly and almost pathetically from him and seemed to
move off into the room. He tried to follow it with his senses,
but was instantly distracted by a sudde voice that seemed
to come at him on the edge of his hearing, on a distant howl of
wind.
It was a hollow, terrified, bewildered voice, no more than
an insubstantial whisper, but it was there, audible, on the
telephone= answering machine tape.
It said, "Susan! Susan, help me! Help me for God's sake.
Susan, I'm dead-"
Dirk whirled round and stopped the tape.
"I'm sorry," he said under his breath, "but I have the
welfare of my client to consider."
He wound the tape back a very short distance, to just
before where the voice began, twisted the Record Level knob to
zero and pressed Record. He left the tape to run, wiping off
the voice and anything that might follow it. If the tape was
going to establish the time of Gordon Way's death, then Dirk
didn't want any embarrassing examples of Gordon speaking to
turn up on the tape after that point, even if it was only to
confirm that he was, in fact, dead.
There seemed to be a grzat eruption of emotion in the air
near to him. A wave of something surged through the room,
causing the furniture to flutter in its wake. Dirk watched
where it seemed to go, towards a shelf near the door on which,
he suddenly realised, stood Richard's own telephone-answering
machine. The machine started to jiggle fitfully where it sat,
but then sat still as Dirk approached it. Dirk reached out
slowly and calmly and pushed the button which set the machine
to Answer.
The disturbance in the air then passed back through the
room to Richard's long desk where two old-fashioned rotary-dial
telephones nestled among the piles of paper and micro floppy
disks. Dirk guessed what would happen, but elected to watch
rather than to intervene.
One of the telephone receivers toppled off its cradle.
Dirk could hear the dialling tone. Then, slowly and with
obvious difficulty, the dial began to turn. It moved unevenly
round, further round, slower and slower, and then suddenly
slipped back.
There was a moment's pause. Then the receiver rests went
down and up again to get a new dialling tone. The dial began to
turn again, but creaking even more fitfully than the last time.
Again it slipped back.
There was a longer pause this time, and then the entire
process was repeated once more.
When the dial slipped back a third time there was a sudden
explosion of fury - the whole phone leapt into th air and
hurtled across the room. The receiver cord wrapped itself round
an Anglepoise lamp on the way and brought it crashing down in a
tangle of cables, coffee cups and floppy disks. A pile of books
erupted off the desk and on to the floor.
The figure of Sergeant Gilks stood stony-faced in the
doorway.
"I'm going to come in again," he said, "and when I do, I
don't want to see anything of that kind going on whatsoever. Is
that understood?" He turned and disappeared.
Dirk leapt for the cassette player and hit the Rewind
button. Then he turned and hissed at the empty air, "1 don't
know who you are, but 1 can guess. If you want my help, don't
you ever embarrass me like that again!"
A few moments later, Gilks walked in again. "Ah, there you
are," he said.
He surveyed the wreckage with an even gaze. "I'll pretend
I can't see any of this, so that I won't have to ask any
questions the answers to which would, I know, only irritate
me."
Dirk glowered.
In the moment or two of silence that followed, a slight
ticking whirr could be heard which caused the sergeant to look
sharply at the cassette player.
"What's that tape doing?"
"Rewinding."
"Give it to me."
The tape reached the beginning and stopped as Dirk reached
it. He took it out and handed it to Gilks.
"Irritatingly, this seems to put your client completely in
the clear," said the sergeant. "Cellnet have confirmed that the
last call made from the car was at 8.46 pm last night, at which
point your client was lightly dozing in front of several
hundred witnesses. I say witnesses, in fact they were mostly
students, but we will probably be forced to assume that they
can't all be lying."
"Good," said Dirk, "well, I'm glad that's all cleared up."
"We never thought he had actually done it, of course.
Simply didn't fit. But you know us - we like to get results.
Tell him we still want to ask him some questions, though."
"I shall be sure to mention it if I happen to run into
him."
"You just do that little thing."
"Well, I shan't detain you any longer, Sergeant," said
Dirk, airily waving at the door.
"No, but I shall bloody detain you if you're not out of
here in thirty seconds, Cjelli. I don't know what you're up to,
but if I can possibly avoid finding out I shall sleep easier in
my office. Out."
"Then I shall bid you good day, Sergeant. I won't say it's
been a pleasure because it hasn't."
Dirk swept out of the room, and made his way out of the
Hat, noting with sorrow that where there had been a large
chesterfield sofa wedged magnificently in the staircase, there
was now just a small, sad pile of sawdust.
With a jerk Michael Wenton-Weakes looked up from his book.
His mind suddenly was alive with purpose. Thoughts,
images, memories, intentions, all crowded in upon him, and the
more they seemed to contradict each other the more they seemed
to fit together, to pair and settle.
The match at last was perfect, the teeth of one slowly
aligned with the teeth of another.
A pull and they were zipped.
Though the waiting had seemed an eternity ofeternities
when it was filled with failure, with fading waves of weakness,
with feeble groping and lonely impotence, the match once made
cancelled it all. Would cancel it all. Would undo what had been
so disastrously done.
Who thought that? It did not matter, the match was made,
the match was perfect.
Michael gazed out of the window across the well-manicured
Chelsea street and did not care whether what he saw were slimy
things with legs or whether they were all Mr A. K. Ross. What
mattered was what they had stolen and what they would be
compelled to return. Ross now lay in the past. What he was now
concerned with lay still further in it.
His large soft cowlike eyes returned to the last few lines
of "Kubla Khan", which he had just been reading. The match was
made, the zip was pulled.
He closed the book and put it in his pocket.
His path back now was clear. He knew what he must do. It
only remained to do a little shopping and then do it.
Chapter Twenty-two...
"You? Wanted for murder? Richard what are you talking
about?"
The telephone wavered in Richard's hand. He was holding it
about half an inch away from his ear anyway because it seemed
that somebody had dipped the earpiece in some chow mein
recently, but that wasn't so bad. This was a public telephone
so it was clearly an oversight that it was working at all. But
Richard was beginning to feel as if the whole world had shifted
about half an inch away from him, like someone in a deodorant
commercial.
"Gordon," said Richard, hesitantly, "Gordon's been
murdered
- hasn't he?"
Susan paused before she answered.
"Yes, Richard" she said in a distressed voice, "but no one
thinks you did it. They want to question you of course, but-"
"So there are no police with you now?"
"No, Richard," insisted Susan, "Look, why don't you come
here?"
"And they're not out searching for me?"
"No! Where on earth did you get the idea that you were
wanted for - that they thought you had done it?"
"Er - well, this friend of mine told me."
"Who?"
"Well, his name is Dirk Gently."
"You've never mentioned him. Who is he? Did he say
anything else?"
"He hypnotised me and, er, made me jump in the canal, and,
er, well, that was it really-"
Thene was a terribly long pause at the other end.
"Richard," said Susan at last with the sort of calmness
that comes over people when they realise that however bad
things may seem to be, there is absolutely no reason why they
shouldn't simply get worse and worse, "come over here. I was
going to say I need to see you, but I think you need to see
me."
"I should probably go to the police."
"Go to the police later. Richard, please. A few hours
won't make any difference. I... I can hardly even think.
Richard, it's so awful. It would just help if you were here.
Where are you?"
"OK," said Richard, "I'll be with you in about twenty
minutes."
"Shall I leave the window open or would you like to try
the door?" she said with a sniff.
Chapter Twenty-three...
"No, please," said Dirk, restraining Miss Pearce's hand
from opening a letter from the Inland Revenue, "there are
wilder skies than these."
He had emerged from a spell of tense brooding in his
darkened office and there was an air of excited concentration
about him. It had taken his actual signature on an actual
salary cheque to persuade Miss Pearce to forgive him for the
latest unwarrantable extravagance with which he had returned to
the office and he felt that just to sit there blatantly opening
letters from the taxman was to take his magnanimous gesture in
entirely the wrong spirit.
She put the envelope aside.
"Come!" he said. "I have something I wish you to see. I
shall observe your reactions with the very greatest of
interest."
He bustled back into his own office and sat at his desk.
She followed him in patiently and sat opposite, pointedly
ignoring the new unwarrantable extravagance sitting on the
desk.
The flashy brass plaque for the door had stirred her up
pretty badly but the silly phone with big red push buttons she
regarded as being beneath contempt. And she certainly wasn't
going to do anything rash like smile until she knew for certain
that the cheque wouldn't bounce. The last time he signed a
cheque for her he cancelled it before the end of the day, to
prevent it, as he explained, "falling into the wrong hands".
The wrong hands presumably, being those of her bank manager.
He thrust a piece of paper across the desk.
She picked it up and looked at it. Then she turned it
round and looked at it again. She looked at the other side and
then she put it down.
"Well?" demanded Dirk. "What do you make of it? Tell me!"
Miss Pearce sighed.
"It's a lot of meaningless squiggles done in blue felt tip
on a piece of typing paper," she said. "It looks like you did
them yourself."
"No!" barked Dirk, "Well, yes," he admitted, "but only
because I believe that it is the answer to the problem!"
"What problem?"
"The problem," insisted Dirk, slapping the table, "of the
conjuring trick! I told you!"
"Yes, Mr Gently, several times. I think it was just a
conjuring trick. You see them on the telly."
"With this difference - that this one was completely
impossible!"
"Couldn't have been impossible or he wouldn't have done
it. Stands to reason."
"Exactly!" said Dirk excitedly. "Exactly! Miss Pearce, you
are a lady of rare perception and insight."
"Thank you, sir, can I go now?"
"Wait! I haven't finished yet! Not by a long way, not by a
bucketful! You have demonstrated to me the depth of your
perception and insight, allow me to demonstrate mine!"
Miss Pearce slumped patiently in her seat.
"I think," said Dirk, "you will be impressed. Consider
this. An intractable problem. In trying to find the solution to
it I was going round and round in little circles in my mind,
over and over the same maddening things. Clearly I wasn't going
to be able to think of anything else until I had the answer,
but equally clearly I would have to think of something else if
I was ever going to get the answer. How to break this circle?
Ask me how."
"How?" said Miss Pearce obediently, but without
enthusiasm.
"By writing down what the answer is!" exclaimed Dirk. "And
here it is!" He slapped the piece of paper triumphantly and sat
back with a satisfied smile.
Miss Pearce looked at it dumbly.
"With the result," continued Dirk, "that I am now able to
turn my mind to fresh and intriguing problems, like, for
instance..."
He took the piece of paper, covered with its aimless
squiggles and doodlings, and held it up to her.
"What language," he said in a low, dark voice, "is this
written in?"
Miss Pearce continued to look at it dumbly.
Dirk flung the piece of paper down, put his feet up on the
table, and threw his head back with his hands behind it.
"You see what I have done?" he asked the ceiling, which
seemed to flinch slightly at being yanked so suddenly into the
conversation. "I have transformed the problem from an
intractably difficult and possibly quite insoluble conundrum
into a mere linguistic puzzle. Albeit," he muttered, after a
long moment of silent pondering, "an intractably difficult and
possibly insoluble one."
He swung back to gaze intently at Janice Pearce.
"Go on," he urged, "say that it's insane - but it might
just work!"
Janice Pearce cleared her throat.
"It's insane," she said, "trust me."
Dirk turned away and sagged sideways off his chair, much
as the sitter for The Thinker probably did when Rodin went off
to be excused.
He suddenly looked profoundly tired and depressed.
"I know," he said in a low, dispirited voice, "that there
is something profoundly wrong somewhere. And I know that I must
go to Cambridge to put it right. But I would feel less fearful
if I knew what it was..."
"Can I get on now, please, then?" said Miss Pearce.
Dirk looked up at her glumly.
"Yes," he said with a sigh, "but just - just tell me -" he
flicked at the piece of paper with his fingertips - "what do
you think of this, then?"
"Well, I think it's childish," said Janice Pearce,
frankly.
"But - but - but!" said Dirk thumping the table in
frustration. "Don't you understand that we need to be childish
in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect
clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which
prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see?"
"Then why don't you go and ask one?"
"Thank you, Miss Pearce," said Dirk reaching for his hat,
"once again you have rendered me an inestimable service for
which I am profoundiy grateful."
He swept out.
Chapter Twenty-four...
The weather began to bleaken as Richard made his way to
Susan's flat. The sky which had started out with such verve and
spirit in the morning was beginning to lose its concentration
and slip back into its normal English condition, that of a damp
and rancid dish cloth. Richard took a taxi, which got him there
in a few minutes.
"They should all be deported," said the taxi driver as
they drew to a halt.
"Er, who should?" said Richard, who realised he hadn't
been listening to a word the driver said.
"Er- " said the driver, who suddenly realised he hadn't
been listening either, "er, the whole lot of them. Get rid of
the whole bloody lot, that's what I say. And their bloody
newts," he added for good measure.
"Expect you're right," said Richard, and hurried into the
house.
Arriving at the front door of her flat he could hear from
within the sounds of Susan's cello playing a slow, stately
melody. He was glad of that, that she was playing. She had an
amazing emotional self sufficiency and control provided she
could play her cello. He had noticed an odd and extraordinary
thing about her relationship with the music she played. If ever
she was feeling emotional or upset she could sit and play
sone music with utter concentration and emerge seeming
fresh and calm. ,
The next time she played the same music, however, it would
all burst from her and she would go completely to pieces.
He let himself in as quietly as possible so as not to
disturb her concentration.
He tiptoed past the small room she practised in, but the
door was open so he paused and looked at her, with the
slightest of signals that she shouldn't stop. She was looking
pale and drawn but gave him a flicker of a smile and continued
bowing with a sudden intensity.
With an impeccable timing of which it is very rarely
capable the sun chose that moment to burst briefly through the
gathering rainclouds, and as she played her cello a stormy
light played on her and on the deep old brown of the wood of
the instrument. Richard stood transfixed. The turmoil of the
day stood still for a moment and kept a respectful distance.
He didn't know the music, but it sounded like Mozart and
he remembered her saying she had some Mozart to learn. He
walked quietly on and sat down to wait and listen.
Eventually she finished the piece, and there was about a
minute of silence before she came through. She blinked and
smiled and gave him a long, trembling hug, then released
herself and put the phone back on the hook. It usually got
taken off when she was practising.
"Sorry," she said, "I didn't want to stop." She briskly
brushed away a tear as if it was a slight irritation. "How are
you Richard?"
He shrugged and gave her a bewildered look. That seemed
about to cover it.
"And I'm going to have to carry on, I'm afraid," said
Susan with a sigh "I'm sorry. I've just been..." She shook her
head. "Who would do it?"
"I don't know. Some madman. I'm not sure that it matters
who."
"No," she said. "Look, er, have you had any lunch?"
"No. Susan, you keep playing and I'll see what's in the
fridge. We can talk about it all over some lunch."
Susan nodded.
"All right," she said, "except..."
"Yes?"
"Well, just for the moment I don't really want to talk
about Gordon. Just till it sinks in. I feel sort of caught out.
It would be easier if I'd been closer to him, but I wasn't and
I'm sort of embarrassed by not having a reaction ready. Talking
about it would be all right except that you have to use the
past tense and that's what's..."
She clung to him for a moment and then quieted herself
with a sigh.
"There's not much in the fridge at the moment," she said,
"some yoghurt, I think, and a jar of roll-mop herrings you
could open. I'm sure you'll be able to muck it up if you try,
but it's actually quite straightforward. The main trick is not
to throw them all over the floor or get jam on them."
She gave him a hug, a kiss and a glum smile and then
retreated back to her music room.
The phone rang and Richard answered it.
"Hello?" he said. There was nothing, just a faint sort of
windy noise on the line.
"Hello?" he said again, waited, shrugged and put the phone
back down.
"Was there anybody there?" called Susan.
"No, no one," said Richard.
"That's happened a couple of times," said SusБn. "I think
it's a sort of minimalist heavy breather." She resumed playing.
Richard went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. He
was less of a health-conscious eater than Susan and was
therefore less than thrilled by what he found there, but he
managed to put some roll-mop herrings, some yoghurt, some rice
and some oranges on a tray without difficulty and tried not to
think that a couple of fat hamburgers and fries would round it
off nicely.
He found a bottle of white wine and carried it all through
to the small dining table.
After a minute or two Susan joined him there. She was at
her most calm and composed, and after a few mouthsful she asked
him about the canal.
Richard shook his head in bemusement and tried to explain
about it, and about Dirk.
"What did you say his name was?" said Susan with a frown
when he had come, rather lamely, to a conclusion.
"It's, er, Dirk Gently," said Richard, "in a way."
"In a way?"
"Er, yes," said Richard with a difficult sigh. He
reflected that just about anything you could say about Dirk was
subject to these kind of vague and shifty qualifications. There
was even, on his letter heading, a string of vague and
shifty-looking qualifications after his name. He pulled out the
piece of paper on which he had vainly been trying to organise
his thoughts earlier in the day.
"I...," he started, but the doorbell rang. They looked at
each other.
"If it's the police," said Richard, "I'd better see them.
Let's get it over with."
Susan pushed back her chair, went to the front door and
picked up the Entryphone.
"Hello?" she said.
"Who?" she said after a moment. She frowned as she
listened then swung round and frowned at Richard.
"You'd better come up," she said in a less than friendly
tone of voice and then pressed the button. She came back and
sat down.
"Your friend," she said evenly, "Mr Gently."
The Electric Monk's day was going tremendously well and he
broke into an excited gallop. That is to say that, excitedly,
he spurred his horse to a gallop and, unexcitedly, his horse
broke into it.
This world, the Monk thought, was a good one. He loved it.
He didn't know whose it was or where it had come from, but it
was certainly a deeply fulfilling place for someone with his
unique and extraordinary gifts.
He was appreciated. All day he had gone up to people,
fallen into conversation with them, listened to their troubles,
and then qwietly uttered those three magic words, "I believe
you."
The effect had invariably been electrifying. It wasn't
tbat people on this world didn't occasionally say it to each
other, but they rarely, it seemed, managed to achieve that deep
timbre of sincerity which the Monk had been so superbly
programmcd to reproduce.
On his own world, after all, he was taken for granted.
People would just expect him to get on and believe things for
them without bothering them. Someone would come to the door
with some great new ideП or proposal or even a new religion,
and the answer would be "Oh, go and tell that to the Monk." And
the Monk would sit and listen and patiendy believe it all, but
no one would take any further interest.
Only one problem seemed to arise on this otherwise
excellent world. Often, after he had uttered the magic words,
the subject would rapidly change to that of money, and the Monk
of course didn't have any - a shortcoming that had quickly
blighted a number of otherwise very promising encounters.
Perhaps he should acquire some - but where?
He reined his horse in for a moment, and the horse jerked
gratefully to a halt and started in on the grass on the
roadside verge. The horse had no idea what all this galloping
up and down was in aid of, and didn't care. All it did care
about was that it was being made to gallop up and down past a
seemingly perpetual roadside buffet. It made the best of its
moment while it had it.
The Monk peered keenly up and down the road. It seemed
vaguely familiar. He trotted a little further up it for another
look. The horse resumed its meal a few yards further along.
Yes. The Monk had been here last night.
He remembered it clearly, well, sort of clearly. He
believed that he remembered it clearly, and that, after all,
was the main thing. Here was where he had walked to in a more
than usually confused state of mind, and just around the very
next corner, if he was not very much mistaken, again, lay the
small roadsido establishment at which he had jumped into the
back of that nie man's car - the nice man who had
subsequently reacted so oddly to being shot at.
Perhaps they would have some money there and would let him
have it. He wondered. Well, he would find out. He yanked the
horse from its feast once again and galloped towards it.
As he approached the petrol station he noticed a car
parked there at an arrogant angle. The angle made it quite
clear that the car was not there for anything so mundane as to
have petrol put into it, and was much too important tµ park
itself neatly out of the way. Any other car that arrived for
petrol would just have to manoeuvre around it as best it could.
The car was white with stripes and badges and important looking
lights.
Amving at the forecourt the Monk dismounted and tethered
his horse to a pump. He walked towards the small shop building
and saw that inside it there was a man with his back to him
wearing a dark blue uniform and a peaked cap. The man was
dancing up and down and twisting his fingers in his ears, and
this was clearly making a deep impression on the man behind the
till.
The Monk watched in transfixed awe. The man, he believed
with an instant effortlessness which would have impressed even
a Scientologist, must be a God of some kind to arouse such
fervour. He waited with bated breath to worship him. In a
moment the man turned around and walked ot of the shop,
saw the Monk and stopped dead.
The Monk realised that the God must be waiting for him to
make an act of worship, so he reverently danced up and down
twisting his fingers in his ears.
His God stared at him for a moment, caught hold of him,
twisted him round, slammed him forward spreadeagled over the
car and frisked him for weapons.
Dirk burst into the flat like a small podgy tornado.
"Miss Way," he said, grasping her slightly unwilling hand
and doffing his absurd hat, "it is the most inexpressible
pleasure to meet you, but also the matter of the deepest regret
that the occasion of our meeting should be one of such great
sorrow and one which bids me extend to you my most profound
sympathy and commiseration. I ask you to believe me that I
would not intrude upon your private grief for all the world if
it were not on a matter of the gravest moment and magnitude.
Richard - I have solved the problem of the conjuring trick and
it's extraordinary."
He swept through the room and deposited himself on a spare
chair at the small dining table, on which he put his hat.
"You will have to excuse us, Dirk- " said Richard, coldly.
"No, I am afraid you will have to cxcuse me," returned
Dirk. "The puzzle is solved, and the solution is so astounding
that it took a seven-year-old child on the street to give it to
me. But it is undoubtedly the correct one, absolutely
undoubtedly. `What, then, is the solution? ' you ask me, or
rather would ask me if you could get a word in edgeways, which
you can't, so I will save you the bother and ask the question
for you, and answer it as well by saying that I will not tell
you, because you won't believe me. I shall instead show you,
this very afternoon.
"Rest assured, however, that it explains everything. It
explains the trick. It explains the note you found - that
should have made it perfectly clear to me but I was a fool. And
it explains what the missing third question was, or rather -
and this is the significant point - it explains what the
missing first question was!"
"What missing question?" exclaimed Richard, confused by
the sudden pause, and leaping in with the first phrase he could
grab.
Dirk blinked as if at an idiot. "The missing question that
George III asked, of course," he said.
"Asked who?"
"Well, the Professor," said Dirk impatiently. "Don't you
listen to anything you say? The whole thing was obvious!" he
exclaimed, thumping the table, "So obvious that the only thing
which prevented me from seeing the solution was the trifling
fact that it was completely impossible. Sherlock Holmes
observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I,
however, do not like to eliminate the impossible. Now. Let us
go."
"No."
"What?" Dirk glanced up at Susan, from whom this
unexpected
- or at least, unexpected to him - opposition had come.
"Mr Gently," said Susan in a voice you could notch a stick
with, "why did you deliberately mislead Richard into thinking
that he was wanted by the police?"
Dirk frowned.
"But he was wanted by the police," he said, "and still
is."
"Yes, but just to answer questions! Not because he's a
suspected murderer."
Dirk looked down.
"Miss Way," he said, "the police are interested in knowing
who murdered your brother. I, with the very greatest respect,
am not. It may, I concede, turn out to have a bearing on the
case, but it may just as likely turn out to be a casual madman.
I wanted to know, still need desperately to know, why
Richard climbed into this flat last night."
"I told you," protested Richard.
"What you told me is immaterial - it only reveals the
crucial fact that you do not know the reason yourself! For
heaven's sake I thought I had demonstrated that to you clearly
enough at the canat ! "
Richard simmered.
"It was perfectly clear to me watching you," pursued Dirk,
"that you had very little idea what you were doing, and had
absolutely no concern about the physical danger you were in. At
first I thought, watching, that it was just a brainless thug
out on his first and yuite possibly last burgle. But then the
figure looked back and I realised it was you - and I know you
to be an intelligent, rational, and moderate man. Richard
MacDuff? Risking his neck carelessly climbing up drainpipes at
night? It seemed to me that you would only behave in such a
reckless and extreme way if you were desperately worried about
something of terrible importance. Is that not true, Miss Way?"
He looked sharply up at Susan, who slowly sat down,
looking at him with an alarm in her eyes which said that he had
struck home.
"And yet, when you came to see me this morning you seemed
perfectly calm and collected. You argued with me perfectly
rationally when I talked a lot of nonsense about Schrжdinger's
Cat. This was not the behaviour of someone who had the previous
night been driven to extremes by some desperate purpose. I
confess that it was at that moment that I stooped to, well,
exaggerating your predicament, simply in order to keep hold of
you."
"You didn't. I left."
"With certain ideas in your head. I knew you would be
back. I apologise most humbly for having misled you, er,
somewhat, but I knew that what I had to find out lay far beyond
what the police would concern themselves with. And it was this
- if you were not quite yourself when you climbed the wall last
night... then who were you, - and why?"
Richard shivered. A silence lengthened.
"What has it got to do with conjuring tricks?" he said at
last.
"That is what we must go to Cambridge to find out."
"But what makes you so sure -?"
"It disturbs me," said Dirk, and a dark and heavy look
came into his face.
For one so garrulous he seemed suddenly oddly reluctant to
speak.
He continued, "It disturbs me very greatly when I find
that I know things and do not know why I know them. Maybe it is
the same instinctive processing of data that allows you to
catch a ball almost before you've seen it. Maybe it is the
deeper and less explicable instinct that tells you when someone
is watching you. It is a very great offence to my intellect
that the very things that I despise other people for being
credulous of actually occur to me. You will remember the...
unhappiness surrounding certain exam questions."
He seemed suddenly distressed and haggard. He had to dig
deep inside himself to continue speaking.
He said, "The ability to put two and two together and come
up instantly with four is one thing. The ability to put the
square root of five hundred and thirty-nine point seven
together with the cosine of twenty-six point four three two and
come up with... with whatever the answer to that is, is quite
another. And I... well, let me give you an example."
He leant forward intently. "Last night I saw you climbing
into this flat. I knew that something was wrong. Today I
got you to tell me every last detail you knew about what
happened last night. and already, as a result, using my
intellect alone, I have uncovered possibly the greatest secret
lying hidden on this planet. I swear to you that this is true
and that I can prove it. Now you must believe me when I tell
you that I know, I know that there is something terribly,
desperately. appallingly wrong and that we must find it. Will
you go with me now, to Cambridge?"
Richard nodded dumbly.
"Good," said Dirk. "What is this?" he added, pointing at
Richard's plate.
"A pickled herring. Do you want one?"
"Thank you, no," said Dirk, rising and buckling his coat.
"There is," he added as he headed towards the door, steering
Richard with him, "no such word as `herring' in my dictionary.
Good afternoon, Miss Way. wish us God speed."
Chapter Twenty-five. . .
There was a rumble of thunder, and the onset of that
interminable tight drizzle from the north-east by which so many
of the world's most momentous events seem to be accompanied.
Dirk turned up the collar of his leather overcoat against
the weather, but nothing could dampen his demonic exuberance as
he and Richard approached the great twelfth-century gates.
"St Cedd's College, Cambridge," he exclaimed, looking at
them for the first time in eight years. "Founded in the year
something or other, by someone I forget in honour of someone
whose name for the moment escapes me."
"St Cedd?" suggested Richard.
"Do you know, I think it very probably was? One of the
duller Northumbrian saints. His brother Chad was even duller.
Has a cathedral in Birmingham if that gives you some idea. Ah,
Bill, how good to see you again," he added, accosting the
porter who was just walking into the college as well. The
porter looked round.
"Mr Cjelli, nice to see you back, sir. Sorry you had a
spot of bother, hope that's all behind you now."
"Indeed, Bill, it is. You find me thriving. And Mrs
Roberts? How is she? Foot still troubling her?"
"Not since she had it off, thanks for asking, sir. Between
you and me, sir, I would've been just as happy to have had her
amputated and kept the foot. I had a little spot reserved on
the mantelpiece, but there we are, we have to take things as we
find them.
"Mr MacDuff, sir," he added, nodding curtly at Richard.
"Oh that horse you mentioned, sir, when you were here last
night, I'm afraid we had to have it removed. It was bothering
Professor Chronotis."
"I was only curious, er, Bill," said Richard. "I hope it
didn't disturb you."
"Nothing ever disturbs me, sir, so long as it isn't
wearing a dress. Can't abide it when the young fellers wear
dresses, sir."
"If the horse bothers you again, Bill," interrupted Dirk,
patting him on the shoulder, "send it up to me and I shall
speak with it. Now, you mention the good Professor Chronotis.
Is he in at the moment? We've come on an errand."
"Far as I know, sir. Can't check for you because his
phone's out of order. Suggest you go and look yourself. Far
left corner of Second Court."
"I know it well, Bill, thank you, and my best to what
remains of Mrs Roberts."
They swept on through into First Court, or at least Dirk
swept, and Richard walked in his normal heron-like gait,
wrinkling up his face against the measly drizzle.
Dirk had obviously mistaken himself for a tour guide.
"St Cedd's," he pronounced, "the college of Coleridge, and
the college of Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the
milled= edge coin and the catflap!"
"The what?" said Richard.
"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity
and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a... "
"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of
gravity."
"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissive shrug,
"yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of
course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered."
He took a penny out of his pocket and tossed it casually
on to the pebbles that ran alongside the paved pathway.
"You see?" he said, "They even keep it on at weekends.
Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap...
ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative
invention."
"I would have thought it was quite obvious. Anyone could
have thought of it."
"Ah," said Dirk, "it is a rare mind indeed that can render
the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry `I could
have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for
the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and
revealing fact it is too. This if I am not mistaken is the
staircase we seek. Shall we ascend?"
Without waiting for an answer he plunged on up the stairs.
Richard, following uncertainly, found him already knocking on
the inner door. The outer one stood open.
"Come in!" called a voice from within. Dirk pushed the
door open, and they were just in time to see the back of Reg's
white head as he disappeared into the kitchen.
"Just making some tea," he called out. "Like some? Sit
down, sit down, whoever you are."
"That would be most kind," returned Dirk. "We are two."
Dirk sat, and Richard followed his lead.
"Indian or China?" called Reg.
"Indian, please."
There was a rattle of cups and saucers.
Richard looked around the room. It seemed suddenly
humdrum. The fire was burning quietly away to itself, but the
light was that of the grey afternoon. Though everything about
it was the same, the old sofa, the table burdened with books,
there seemed nothing to connect it with the hectic strangeness
of the previous night. The room seemed to sit there with raised
eyebrows, innocently saying "Yes?"
"Milk?" called out Reg from the kitchen.
"Please," replied Dirk. He gave Richard a smile which
seemed to him to be half-mad with suppressed excitement.
"One lump or two?" called Reg again.
"One, please," said Dirk, "... and two spoons of sugar if
you would."
There was a suspension of activity in the kitchen. A
moment or two passed and Reg stuck his head round the door.
"Svlad Cjelli!" he exclaimed. "Good heavens! Well, that
was qui...
