"They went prowling with microscopes. The oil and broken hair were still evident on the edge of the basin. And the skull injury was consistent with a backwards fall against just such an object."
Cullen calmed down at this, but he looked disorientated.
"How do you know all this?" he asked, vaguely; and then with growing suspicion, "How did you come to see him anyway?"
"When I was on my way out, I came across the sleeping-car attendant trying to rouse him. The man thought he was just sleeping it off, because the whisky bottle had rolled all over the floor, and the compartment smelt as if he had been making a night of it."
This did not satisfy Cullen. "You mean that was the only time you saw him? Just for a moment, lying—lying dead there, and you could recognise him from a snapshot —a not very good snapshot—weeks later?"
"Yes. I was impressed by his face. Faces are my business, and in a way my hobby. I was interested in the way the slant of the eyebrows gave the face a reckless expression, even—even as it was, without any real expression whatever. And the interest was intensified in a way that was quite accidental."
"What was that?" Cullen was not giving an inch.
"When I was having breakfast, in the Station Hotel at Scoone, I found that I had picked up by accident a newspaper that had been tumbled off the berth when the Press —the blank space, you know—someone had been pencilling some lines of verse. 'The beasts that talk, the streams that stand, the stones that walk, the singing sand—' then two blank lines, and then, 'that guard the way to Paradise.' "
"That was what you advertised about," Cullen said, his face growing momentarily blacker. "What was it to you that you went to the trouble of advertising about it?"
"I wanted to know where the lines came from if they were lines from some book. If they were lines in the process of being made into a poem, then I wanted to know what the subject was."
"Why? What should you care?"
"I had no choice in the matter. The thing ran round and round in my head. Do you know anyone called Charles Martin?"
"No, I don't. And don't change the subject."
"I'm not changing the subject, oddly enough. Do me the kindness to think of it seriously for a moment. Have you ever, at any time, heard of or known a Charles Martin?"
"I've told you, no! I don't have to think. And of course you're changing the subject! What has Charles Martin got to do with this?"
According to the police, the man who was found dead in Compartment B Seven was a French mechanic called Charles Martin."
After a moment Cullen said: "Look, Mr. Grant, maybe I'm not very bright, but you're not making sense. What you're saying is that you saw Bill Kenrick lying dead in a compartment of a train, but he wasn't Bill Kenrick at all; he was a man called Martin."
"No, what I'm saying is that the police believe him to be a man called Martin."
"Well, I take it they have good grounds for their belief."
"Excellent grounds. He had letters, and identity papers. Even better, his people have identified him."
"They did! Then what have you been stringing me along for! There isn't any suggestion that that man was Bill! If the police are satisfied that the man was a Frenchman called Martin, why in thunder should you decide that he wasn't Martin at all but Bill Kenrick!"
"Because I'm the only person in the world who has seen both the man in B Seven and that snapshot." Grant nodded at the photograph where it lay on the dressing-table.
This gave Cullen pause. Then he said: "But that's a poor photograph. It can't convey much to someone who has never seen Bill."
"It may be a poor photograph in the sense that it is a mere snapshot, but it is a very good likeness indeed."
"Yes," Cullen said slowly, "it is."
"Consider three things, three facts. One: Charles Martin's people had not seen him for years, and then they saw only a dead face; if you are told that your son
has died, and no one suggests that there is any doubt as to identity, you see the face you expected to see. Two: the man known as Charles Martin was found dead on a train on the same day as Bill Kenrick was due to join you in Paris. Three: in his compartment there was a pencilled jingle about talking beasts and singing sands, a subject that on your own showing had interested Bill Kenrick."
"Did you tell the police about the paper?"
"I tried to. They weren't interested. There was no mystery, you see. They knew who the man was, and how he died, and that was all that concerned them."
"It might have interested them that he was writing verse in English."
"Oh, no. There is no evidence that he wrote anything, or that the paper belonged to him at all. He may have picked it up somewhere."
"The whole thing's crazy," Cullen said, angry and bewildered.
"It's fantastic. But at the heart of all the whirling absurdity there is a small core of stillness."
"Yes?"
"Yes. There is one small clear space on which one can stand while taking one's bearings."
"What is that?"
"Your friend Bill Kenrick is missing. And out of a crowd of strange faces, I pick Bill Kenrick as a man I saw dead in a sleeping-compartment at Scoone on the morning of the 4th of March."
Cullen thought this over. "Yes," he said drearily, "I suppose that makes sense. I suppose it must be Bill. I suppose I knew all the time that something—something awful had happened. He would never have left me without word. He would have written or telephoned or something to say why he hadn't turned up on time. But what was he doing on a train to Scotland? What was he doing on a train anyhow?"
"How: anyhow?"
"If Bill wanted to go somewhere, he would fly. He wouldn't take a train."
"Lots of people take a night train because it saves time. You sleep and travel at the same time. The question is: why as Charles Martin?"
"I think it's a case for Scotland Yard."
"I don't think the Yard would thank us."
"I'm not asking for their thanks," Cullen said tartly.
"I'm instructing them to find out what happened to my buddy."
"I still don't think they would be interested."
"They'd better be!"
"You have no evidence at all that Bill Kenrick didn't duck of his own accord; that he isn't having a goodtime on his own until it is time to go back to OCAL."
"But he was found dead in a railway compartment!" Cullen said in a voice that was nearly a howl.
"Oh, no. That was Charles Martin. About whom there is no mystery whatever."
"But you can identify Martin as Kenrick!"
"I can say, of course, that in my opinion that face in the snapshot is the face I saw in Compartment B Seven on the morning of March the 4th. Scotland Yard will say that I am entitled to my opinion, but that I am without doubt misled by a resemblance, since the man in Compartment B Seven is one Charles Martin, a mechanic, and a native of Marseilles, in the suburbs of which his parents still live."
"You're very smooth in the part of Scotland Yard, aren't you? All the same—"
"I ought to be. I've worked there for more years than I care to think about. I shall be going back there a week Monday, as soon as my holiday is over."
"You mean that you are Scotland Yard?"
"Not the whole of it. One of its minor props. Props in the support sense. I don't carry cards in my fishing clothes, but if you come up to my host's house with me he will vouch for my genuineness."
"Oh. No. No, of course I believe you, Mr.—er—"
"Inspector. But we'll stick to Mr., since I'm off duty."
"I'm sorry if I was fresh. It just didn't occur to me— You see, you don't expect to meet Scotland Yard in real life. It's just something you read about. You don't expect them to—to—"
"To go fishing."
"No, I guess you don't, at that. Only in books."
"Well, now that you have accepted me as genuine, and you know that my version of Scotland Yard's reaction is not only accurate but straight from the horse's mouth, what are we g
oing to do?"
When Laura heard next morning that Grant intended to go in to Scoone instead of spending the day on the river, she was indignant.
"But I've just made up a wonderful luncheon for you and Zoë," she said. He was left with the impression that her dismay was rooted in some cause more valid than a miscalculated meal, but his mind was too busy with more important matters to analyse trivialities.
"There's a young American staying at Moymore who has come to ask my help about something. I thought that he might take my place on the river, if no one has any objection. He has fished quite a bit, he tells me. Perhaps Pat would like to show him the ropes."
Pat had come to breakfast in a state so radiant that the glow of it could be felt clear across the table. It was the first day of the Easter holidays. He looked with interest when he heard his cousin's suggestion. There were few things in life that he enjoyed so much as showing someone something.
"What's his name?" he asked.
"Tad Cullen."
"What's Tad'?"
"I don't know. Short for Theodore, perhaps." "M-m-m," said Pat doubtfully. "He's a flyer."
"Oh," said Pat, his brow clearing. "I thought maybe with a name like that he was a professor." "No. He flies to and fro across Arabia." "Arabia!" said Pat, rolling the r so that the mundane Scots breakfast table scintillated with reflections of the jewelled East. Between modern transport and ancient Bagdad, Tad Cullen seemed to have satisfactory credentials. Pat would "show him" with pleasure.
"Of course Zoë gets first choice of places to fish," Pat said.
If Grant had imagined that Pat's infatuation would take the form of blushing silences and a mooning adoration, he was wrong. Pat's only sign of surrender was the constant interjection of "me and Zoë" into his conversation; and it was to be observed that the personal pronoun still came first.
Grant borrowed the car after breakfast and went down to Moymore to tell Tad Cullen that a small boy with red hair and a green kilt would be waiting for him, with all appliances and means to boot, by the swing bridge across the Turlie. He himself would be back from Scoone in time to join them on the river some time in the afternoon, he hoped.
"I'd like to come with you, Mr. Grant," Cullen said. "Have you got a line on this thing? Is that why you're going in to Scoone this morning?"
"No. It's to look for a line that I'm going in. There's not a thing you can do just now, so you might as well have a day on the river."
"All right, Mr. Grant. You're the boss. What's your young friend's name?"
"Pat Rankin," Grant said, and drove away to Scoone. He had spent most of last night lying awake with his eyes on the ceiling, letting the patterns in his mind slip and fade into each other like trick camera work in a film. Constantly the patterns materialised and broke and dissolved, never the same for two moments together. He lay supine and let them dance their endless slow interlacing; taking no part in their gyrations, as detached as if they were a display of Northern Lights.
It was that way his mind worked best. It would also work the other way, of course. Work very well. In problems involving a time-place sequence, for instance. In matters where A was at a spot X at 5:30 P.M, on the umpteenth inst., Giant's mind worked with the tidiness of a calculating machine. But in an affair where motive was all, he sat back and let his mind loose on the problem. Presently, if he left it alone, it would throw up the pattern that he needed.
He still had no idea why Bill Kenrick had journeyed to the north of Scotland when he should have been travelling to Paris to meet his friend, still less had he any idea why he should have been travelling with another man's papers. But he was beginning to have an idea as to why Bill Kenrick developed his sudden interest in Arabia. Cullen, looking at the world from his limited, flyer's point of view, had thought of that interest in terms of flying routes. But Grant was sure that the interest had other origins. On Cullen’s own showing, Kenrick had exhibited none of the usual signs of "nerves." It was unlikely that his obsession with the route he flew had anything to do with weather in any of its forms. Somewhere, some time, on one of those flights over that "damned dreary" route, Kenrick had found something that interested him. And that interest had begun on an occasion when he had been blown far off his course by one of the dust-storms that haunted the interior of Arabia. He had come back from that experience "concussed," "not listening to what was said to him," "still back there."
So this morning Grant was going in to Scoone to find out what might possibly have interested Bill Kenrick in the interior of that bleak and stony immensity, in the desert and forbidding half-continent that was Arabia. And for that, of course, he was going to Mr. Tallisker. Whether it was the rateable value of a cottage or the composition of lava that one wanted to be enlightened about, one went to Mr. Tallisker.
The public library in Scoone was deserted at that hour of the morning, and he found Mr. Tallisker having a doughnut and a cup of coffee. Grant thought the doughnut an endearingly childish and robust choice for a man who looked as though he lived on gaufrettes and China tea with lemon. Mr. Tallisker was delighted to see Grant, asked how his study of the Islands was progressing, listened with interest to Grant's heretic account of that Paradise, and was helpful about his new search. Arabia? Oh, yes, they had a whole shelf of books about the country. Almost as many people wrote books about Arabia as about the Hebrides. There was, too, if Mr. Tallisker might be permitted to say so, the same tendency to idealise the subject in its devotees.
"You think that, boiled down to plain fact, they are both just windy deserts."
Oh, no; not entirely. That was being a little—wholesale. Mr. Tallisker had had much happiness and beauty from the Islands. But the tendency to idealise a primitive people was perhaps the same in each case. And here was the shelf of books on the subject, and he would leave Mr. Grant to study them at his leisure.
The books were in a reference room, and there was no other reader there. The door closed on the silence and he was left with his search. He went through the row of books very much as he had gone through the row about the Hebrides in the sitting-room at Clune, gutting each book with a swift, practised eye. The range was much the same as it had been in the earlier case: all the way from the sentimentalists to the scientists. The only difference was that in this case some of the books were classics, as befitted a classic subject.
If Grant had had any last lingering doubt that the man in B Seven was Bill Kenrick, it went when he found that the desert part of south-eastern Arabia, the Empty Quarter, was called the Rub'al-Khali.
So that was what "robbing the Caley" had been!
After that he devoted his interest to the Empty Quarter, picking each book from the shelf, flipping through the pages on this one region, and putting it back again to go on to the next. And presently a phrase caught his eye: "Inhabited by monkeys." Monkeys, said his mind. Talking beasts. He turned the page back to see what the paragraph had been talking about.
It was talking about Wabar.
Wabar, it seemed, was the Atlantis of Arabia. The fabled city of Ad ibn Kin'ad. Somewhere in the time between legend and history it had been destroyed by fire for its sins. For it had been rich and sinful beyond the power of words to express. Its palaces had housed the most beautiful concubines and its stables the most perfect horses in the world, the one no less finely decked than the other. It stood in country so fertile that one had only to reach out a hand to pluck the fruits of the soil. There was infinite leisure to sin old sins and devise new ones. So destruction had come on the city. It had come in a night, with cleansing fire. And now Wabar, the fabled city, was a cluster of ruins guarded by the shifting sands, by cliffs of stone that forever changed place and form; and inhabited by a monkey race and by evil jinns. No one could approach the place because the jinns blew dust-storms in the faces of those who sought it.
That was Wabar.
And no one, it seemed, had ever found the ruins, although every Arabian explorer had looked for them, openly or secretly. Indeed, no two exp
lorers agreed as to which part of Arabia the legend referred to. Grant went back through the various volumes, using the magic key, the word Wabar, and found that each authority had his own pet theory, and that the argued sites lay as far apart as Oman and the Yemen. None of the writers, he noticed, attempted to belittle or discount the legend as palliation of their failure; the story was universal in Arabia and constant in its form, and sentimentalist and scientist alike believed that it had its basis in fact. It had been every explorer's dream to be the discoverer of Wabar, but the sands and the jinns and the mirages had guarded it well.
"It is probable," wrote one of the greatest, "that when the fabled city is at last found it will be by no striving or calculation but by accident."
By accident.
By a flyer blown off his course by a dust-storm?
Was that what Bill Kenrick had seen when he came out of the solid brown cloud of sand that had blinded and buffeted him? Empty palaces in the sand? Was that what he had gone out of his way to look for—perhaps to look at— when he "began to come in late as a habit?"
He had said nothing after that first experience. And that, if what he had seen was a city in the sand, was understandable. He would have been teased about it: teased about mirages, and one over the eight, and what not. Even if any of the OCAL boys had ever heard the legend—and in so shifting, so easy-come a crowd it was unlikely—they would still have teased him about wish-fathered ideas. So Bill, who wrote those tight-closed ms and us and was "just a bit cagey," said nothing and went back to have another look. Went back again and again. Either because he wanted to find the place he had seen, or to look at a place he had already pin-pointed.
He studied maps. He read books about Arabia. And then—
Then he decided to come to England.
He had arranged to go to Paris with Tad Cullen. But instead he wanted to little time by himself in England. He had no people in England. He had not been in England for years, and according to Cullen had never seemed homesick for the place nor written to anyone there in any kind of regular correspondence. He had been brought up by an aunt when his parents were killed, and she too was now dead. He had never until then had any desire to go back to England.