"Yes," she replied with simple gravity. "It comes from Rome. Would you like to touch it?"
Naturally, Maybury would have liked, but, equally naturally, was held back by the presence of the watchful lad.
"Touch it," she commanded in a low voice. "G.o.d, what are you waiting for? Touch it." She seized his left hand again and forced it against her warm, silky breast. The lad seemed to take no more and no less notice than of anything else.
"Forget. Let go. What is life for, for G.o.d"s sake?" There was a pa.s.sionate earnestness about her which might rob any such man as Maybury of all a.s.sessment, but he was still essentially outside the situation. As a matter of fact, he had never in his life lost all control, and he was pretty sure by now that, for better or for worse, he was incapable of it.
She twisted round until her legs were extended the length of the sofa, and her head was on his lap, or more precisely on his thighs. She had moved so deftly as not even to have disordered her skirt. Her perfume wafted upwards.
"Stop glancing at Vincent," she gurgled up at him. "I"ll tell you something about Vincent. Though you may think he looks like a Greek G.o.d, the simple fact is that he hasn"t got what it takes, he"s impotent."
Maybury was embarra.s.sed, of course. All the same, what he reflected was that often there were horses for courses, and often no more to be said about a certain kind of situation than that one thing.
It did not matter much what he reflected, because when she had spoken, Vincent had brusquely left the room through what Maybury supposed to be the service door.
"Thank the Lord," he could not help remarking naively.
"He"s gone for reinforcements," she said. "We"ll soon see."
Where were the other guests? Where, by now, could they be? All the same, Maybury"s spirits were authentically rising. and he began caressing her more intimately.
Then, suddenly, it seemed that everyone was in the room at once, and this time all talking and fussing.
She sat herself up, none too precipitately, and with her lips close to his ear, said, "Come to me later. Number 23."
It was quite impossible for Maybury to point out that he was not staying the night in The Hospice.
Falkner had appeared.
"To bed, all," he cried genially, subduing the crepitation on the instant.
Maybury, unentangled once more, looked at his watch. It seemed to be precisely ten o"clock. That, no doubt, was the point. Still it seemed very close upon a heavy meal.
No one moved much, but no one spoke either.
"To bed, all of you," said Falkner again, this time in a tone which might almost be described as roguish. Maybury"s lady rose to her feet.
All of them filtered away, Maybury"s lady among them. She had spoken no further word, made no further gesture.
Maybury was alone with Falkner.
"Let me remove your cup," said Falkner courteously.
"Before I ask for my bill," said Maybury, "I wonder if you could tell me where I might possibly find some petrol at this hour?"
"Are you out of petrol?" enquired Falkner.
"Almost."
"There"s nothing open at night within twenty miles. Not nowadays. Something to do with our new friends, the Arabs, I believe. All I can suggest is that I syphon some petrol from the tank of our own vehicle. It is a quite large vehicle and it has a large tank."
"I couldn"t possibly put you to that trouble." In any case, he, Maybury, did not know exactly how to do it. He had heard of it, but it had never arisen before in his own life.
The lad, Vincent, reappeared, still looking pink, Maybury thought, though it was difficult to be sure with such a glowing skin. Vincent began to lock up, a quite serious process, it seemed, rather as in great-grandparental days, when prowling desperadoes were to be feared.
"No trouble at all, Mr Maybury," said Falkner. "Vincent here can do it easily, or another member of my staff."
"Well," said Maybury, "if it would be all right..."
"Vincent," directed Falkner, "don"t bolt and padlock the front door yet. Mr Maybury intends to leave us."
"Very good," said Vincent, gruffly.
"Now if we could go to your car, Mr Maybury, you could then drive it round to the back. I will show you the way. I must apologise for putting you to this extra trouble, but the other vehicle takes some time to start, especially at night."
Vincent had opened the front door for them.
"After you, Mr Maybury," said Falkner.
Where it had been excessively hot within, it duly proved to be excessively cold without. The floodlight had been turned off. The moon had "gone in", as Maybury believed the saying was; and all the stars had apparently gone in with it.
Still, the distance to the car was not great. Maybury soon found it in the thick darkness, with Falkner coming quietly step by step behind him.
"Perhaps I had better go back and get a torch?" remarked Falkner.
So there duly was a torch. It brought to Maybury"s mind the matter of the office file with his name on it, and, as he unlocked the car door, there the file was, exactly as he had supposed, and, a.s.suredly, name uppermost. Maybury threw it across to the back seat.
Falkner"s electric torch was a heavy service object which drenched a wide area in cold, white light.
"May I sit beside you, Mr Maybury?" He closed the offside door behind him.
Maybury had already turned on the headlights, torch or no torch, and was pushing at the starter, which seemed obdurate.
It was not, he thought, that there was anything wrong with it, but rather that there was something wrong with him. The sensation was exactly like a nightmare. He had of course done it hundreds of times, probably thousands of times; but now, when after all it really mattered, he simply could not manage it, had, quite incredibly, somehow lost the simple knack of it. He often endured bad dreams of just this kind. He found time with part of his mind to wonder whether this was not a bad dream. But it was to be presumed not, since now he did not wake, as we soon do when once we realize that we are dreaming.
"I wish I could be of some help," remarked Falkner, who had shut off his torch, "but I am not accustomed to the make of car. I might easily do more harm than good." He spoke with his usual bland geniality.
Maybury was irritated again. The make of car was one of the commonest there is: trust the firm for that. All the same, he knew it was entirely his own fault that he could not make the car start, and not in the least Falkner"s. He felt as if he were going mad. "I don"t quite know what to suggest," he said; and added: "If, as you say, there"s no garage."
"Perhaps Cromie could be of a.s.sistance," said Falkner. "Cromie has been with us quite a long time and is a wizard with any mechanical problem."
No one could say that Falkner was pressing Maybury to stay the night, or even hinting towards it, as one might expect. Maybury wondered whether the funny place was not, in fact, full up. It seemed the most likely answer. Not that Maybury wished to stay the night: far from it.
"I"m not sure," he said, "that I have the right to disturb anyone else."
"Cromie is on night duty," replied Falkner. "He is always on night duty. That is what we employ him for. I will fetch him."
He turned on the torch once more, stepped out of the car, and disappeared into the house, shutting the front door behind him, lest the cold air enter.
In the end, the front door reopened, and Falkner re-emerged. He still wore no coat over his dinner suit, and seemed to ignore the cold. Falkner was followed by a burly but shapeless and shambling figure, whom Maybury first saw indistinctly standing behind Falkner in the light from inside the house.
"Cromie will soon put things to rights," said Falkner, opening the door of the car. "Won"t you, Cromie?" It was much as one speaks to a friendly retriever.
But there was little, Maybury felt, that was friendly about Cromie. Maybury had to admit to himself that on the instant he found Cromie alarming, even though, what with one thing and another, there was little to be seen of him.
"Now what exactly seems wrong, Mr Maybury?" asked Falkner. "Just tell Cromie what it is."
Falkner himself had not attempted to re-enter the car, but Cromie forced himself in and was sprawling in the front seat, next to Maybury, where Angela normally sat. He really did seem a very big, bulging person, but Maybury decisively preferred not to look at him, though the glow cast backwards from the headlights provided a certain illumination.
Maybury could not acknowledge that for some degrading reason he was unable to operate the starter, and so had to claim there was something wrong with it. He was unable not to see Cromie"s huge, badly misshapen, yellow hands, both of them, as he tugged with both of them at the k.n.o.b, forcing it in and out with such violence that Maybury cried out: "Less force. You"ll wreck it."
"Careful, Cromie," said Falkner from outside the car. "Most of Cromie"s work is on a big scale," he explained to Maybury.
But violence proved effective, as so often. Within seconds, the car engine was humming away.
"Thank you very much," said Maybury.
Cromie made no detectable response, nor did he move.
"Come on out, Cromie," said Falkner. "Come on out of it."
Cromie duly extricated himself and shambled off into the darkness.
"Now," said Maybury, brisking up as the engine purred. "Where do we go for the petrol?"
There was the slightest of pauses. Then Falkner spoke from the dimness outside. "Mr Maybury, I have remembered something. It is not petrol that we have in our tank. It is, of course, diesel oil. I must apologise for such a stupid mistake."
Maybury was not merely irritated, not merely scared: he was infuriated. With rage and confusion he found it impossible to speak at all. No one in the modern world could confuse diesel oil and petrol in that way. But what could he possibly do?
Falkner, standing outside the open door of the car, spoke again. "I am extremely sorry, Mr Maybury. Would you permit me to make some amends by inviting you to spend the night with us free of charge, except perhaps for the dinner?"
Within the last few minutes Maybury had suspected that this moment was bound to come in one form or another.
"Thank you," he said less than graciously. "I suppose I had better accept." "We shall try to make you comfortable," said Falkner.
Maybury turned off the headlights, climbed out of the car once more, shut and, for what it was worth, locked the door, and followed Falkner back into the house. This time Falkner completed the locking and bolting of the front door that he had instructed Vincent to omit.
"I have no luggage of any kind," remarked Maybury, still very much on the defensive.
"That may solve itself," said Falkner, straightening up from the bottom bolt and smoothing his dinner jacket. "There"s something I ought to explain. But will you first excuse me a moment?" He went out through the door at the back of the lounge.
Hotels really have become far too hot, thought Maybury. It positively addled the brain.
Falkner returned. "There is something I ought to explain," he said again. "We have no single rooms, partly because many of our visitors prefer not to be alone at night. The best we can do for you in your emergency, Mr Maybury, is to offer you the share of a room with another guest. It is a large room and there are two beds. It is a sheer stroke of good luck that at present there is only one guest in the room, Mr Bannard. Mr Bannard will be glad of your company, I am certain, and you will be quite safe with him. He is a very pleasant person, I can a.s.sure you. I have just sent a message up asking him if he can possibly come down, so that I can introduce you. He is always very helpful, and I think he will be here in a moment. Mr Bannard has been with us for some time, so that I am sure he will be able to fit you up with pyjamas and so forth."
It was just about the last thing that Maybury wanted from any point of view, but he had learned that it was of a kind that is peculiarly difficult to protest against, without somehow putting oneself in the wrong with other people. Besides he supposed that he was now committed to a night in the place, and therefore to all the implications, whatever they might be, or very nearly so.
"I should like to telephone my wife, if I may," Maybury said. Angela had been steadily on his mind for some time.
"I fear that"s impossible, Mr Maybury," replied Falkner. "I"m so sorry."
"How can it be impossible?"
"In order to reduce tension and sustain the atmosphere that our guests prefer, we have no external telephone. Only an internal link between my quarters and the proprietors."
"But how can you run an hotel in the modern world without a telephone?"
"Most of our guests are regulars. Many of them come again and again, and the last thing they come for is to hear a telephone ringing the whole time with all the strain it involves."
"They must be half round the bend," snapped Maybury, before he could stop himself.
"Mr Maybury," replied Falkner, "I have to remind you of two things. The first is that I have invited you to be our guest in the fuller sense of the word. The second is that, although you attach so much importance to efficiency, you none the less appear to have set out on a long journey at night with very little petrol in your tank. Possibly you should think yourself fortunate that you are not spending the night stranded on some motorway."
"I"m sorry," said Maybury, "but I simply must telephone my wife. Soon she"ll be out of her mind with worry."
"I shouldn"t think so, Mr Maybury," said Falkner smiling. "Concerned, we must hope; but not quite out of her mind."
Maybury could have hit him, but at that moment a stranger entered.
"Ah, Mr Bannard," said Falkner, and introduced them. They actually shook hands. "You won"t mind, Mr Bannard, if Mr Maybury shares your room?"
Bannard was a slender, bony little man, of about Maybury"s age. He was bald, with a rim of curly red hair. He had slightly glaucous grey-green eyes of the kind that often go with red hair. In the present environment, he was quite perky, but Maybury wondered how he would make out in the world beyond. Perhaps, however, this was because Bannard was too shrimp-like to look his best in pyjamas.
"I should be delighted to share my room with anyone," replied Bannard. "I"m lonely by myself."
"Splendid," said Falkner coolly. "Perhaps you"d lead Mr Maybury upstairs and lend him some pyjamas? You must remember that he is a stranger to us and doesn"t yet know all our ways."
"Delighted, delighted," exclaimed Bannard.
"Well, then," said Falkner. "Is there anything you would like, Mr Maybury, before you go upstairs?"
"Only a telephone," rejoined Maybury, still recalcitrant. He simply did not believe Falkner. No one in the modern world could live without a telephone, let alone run a business without one. He had begun uneasily to wonder if Falkner had spoken the whole truth about the petrol and the diesel fuel either.
"Anything you would like that we are in a position to provide, Mr Maybury?" persisted Falkner, with offensive specificity.
"There"s no telephone here," put in Bannard, whose voice was noticeably high, even squeaky.
"In that case, nothing," said Maybury. "But I don"t know what my wife will do with herself."
"None of us knows that," said Bannard superfluously, and cackled for a second.
"Good-night, Mr Maybury. Thank you, Mr Bannard."
Maybury was almost surprised to discover, as he followed Bannard upstairs, that it seemed a perfectly normal hotel, though overheated and decorated over-heavily. On the first landing was a full-size reproduction of a chieftain in scarlet tartan by Raeburn. Maybury knew the picture, because it had been chosen for the firm"s calendar one year, though ever since they had used girls. Bannard lived on the second floor, where the picture on the landing was smaller, and depicted ladies and gentlemen in riding dress taking refreshments together.
"Not too much noise," said Bannard. "We have some very light sleepers amongst us."
The corridors were down to half-illumination for the night watches, and distinctly sinister. Maybury crept foolishly along and almost stole into Bannard"s room.