The Malady in Maderia Page 17

  “Yes I know, Mrs. H. And I had to start rather early this morning. How are you?”

  “Oh, very well. I put cotton-wool in my ears for my nap in the afternoon, if the children don’t go for a walk; it works beautifully” the old lady said. “But how are you? You look a little tired.”

  “Just a little short on sleep” Julia said, sitting down. “I’ve asked Madame Bonnecourt for a cup of your tilleul, or whatever she gives you; then I thought I’d have a shut-eye till dinner.”

  “A very good idea. I hope you don’t have to make another early start tomorrow?”

  “Well, I do, as a matter of fact—even earlier; I’ve got to be off at six,” Julia said. “Ah, merci bien, Madame” as the tisane was brought; she sipped it gratefully. Mrs. Hathaway looked at her.

  “Dear child, do you really have to start so early tomorrow? I hope nothing has gone wrong.”

  “No, everything is going marvellously” Julia said. “It’s just that rather a lot is happening, these few days. I’m quite all right, really—only sleepy. You know what a dormouse I am!”

  “Couldn’t Colin do some of this driving? How is he, by the way?”

  “Better than I’ve ever seen him!” Julia said, with sudden energy, the glow coming into her face again. “Oh, and talking of being better, the child is nearly well.”

  “Oh, what good news! I am so thankful” the old lady said. “This doctor must be a very clever man.”

  “Yes, he is” Julia agreed, with secret amusement. “Mrs. H., dear, do you think you could fix something for me with Pauline? You’re such a good fixer—and you ask no questions!” she added quickly.

  “I expect I can. What is it?”

  “Lunch for two, packed and ready in the hall, for me to take tomorrow” Julia said.

  “Oh, so you and Colin are going on a picnic—how nice” Mrs. Hathaway said.

  “Well, you could call it that.” Again Julia smiled with secret mirth.

  “But I should have thought Penelope would have wanted to do Colin’s lunch herself” the old lady pursued—“and Aglaia’s.”

  “Colin isn’t at the Quinta—he’s staying in Funchal; and Aglaia isn’t coming tomorrow” Julia said. She reflected that though Mrs. H. might not ask questions, she could push one quite a bit by her cheerful assumptions. “This is an official picnic” she went on, “and Aglaia can’t be in on it. I don’t know when I shall be able to tell you all about it, if ever; if I can, it will make you laugh.” She put down her cup and got up. “Bless you” she said, kissing the old lady. “I’m just going to see the Philipino, and then I’m for my bed.”

  “You’d better take some cotton-wool” Mrs. Hathaway said, handing her a small piece. “The children will be in the garden till their bed-time, because it’s Marta’s day out.” Julia thanked her, laughing, and went off to see her son.

  Colin saw, next morning, what Major Hartley had meant by saying that Sir Percy “liked a jaunt”. The scientist was in tremendous spirits as they drove down the coast road in the bright early sunshine, full of interest in everything he saw, and of questions about it. Julia, refreshed by her pre-dinner sleep and a reasonably early night, played up to him excellently—she paused to show him the dragon-tree. “Ah, I wondered if we should see one of those” he said, delighted; on paper he was perfectly familiar with the peculiarities of Madeiran vegetation. “When we get up into the mountains, shall we see Echium candicans?” he asked hopefully. Julia could not tell him; Colin, however, said that they would not see this particular wonder that day, “unless we get through in time to go up towards the Grande Curral on the way back.”

  Terence was waiting at the car-turn when they reached it, accompanied by a peasant with a bundle of stakes and battens, a crowbar and a sledge-hammer; they both looked rather startled as the apparatus for Sir Percy’s activities was unloaded from the car—the tripod for the camera, the camera itself, a knapsack, in fact containing the thermometer, and finally a wicker-work object looking more like a hamper in which one sends a cat on a journey than anything else. All this equipment was somehow distributed among the party. Sir Percy insisted on taking the camera himself; its tripod was tied to the bundle of stakes, which the peasant placed on his head, thus leaving his hands free for the hammer; Terence put on the knapsack—he, like Julia, already had a haversack of lunch slung round his shoulder; Colin carried the crowbar, and Julia was left to manage the wicker object. They set off up the ridge—Terence and Sir Percy were soon deep in talk; the cousins followed, the peasant brought up the rear.

  “I say, this is a most hellish thing to carry” Julia said almost at once. “Have you got any string?”

  “I think so—what for?”

  “To tie it to my haversack. It won’t go under one’s arm, it’s too big, and in the tunnel I shall want one hand for my torch.”

  “Damn! I forgot about the torches” Colin said, fumbling in the pockets of his shorts, from one of which he produced some lengths of string.

  “I expect Terence has brought some.”

  “We’d better make sure” he said, and shouted. “Hi, Terry, did you bring torches?”

  “Yes” Terence called back.

  Even when the wicker object was attached to Julia’s haversack, it proved a most awkward thing to walk with, the sharp corners bumping into her legs.

  “What a brute it is! What on earth is it for?” she asked.

  “To screen the thermometer. The air gets in, but not the sun. Look—“ he tilted the piece of basketry up—“two layers, a couple of inches apart, and you see it’s rather loosely woven; that’s to let the air in; and made of the split cane. He was very insistent on that—he said the round cane might let some sun in. You must have seen those white wooden boxes with slats in them, standing on posts, at Kew and Wisley and that sort of place; this is the local substitute.”

  “Yes, I believe I have, but I never knew what was in them.”

  “Well, they’re to hold recording thermometers—‘Stevenson’s screens’, the old boy calls them. He didn’t have time to collect one before his plane took off, so he counted on getting it here. That wasn’t too easy, so de Carvalho persuaded him to try wicker instead of wood, and we went round yesterday afternoon to one of those wicker-shops, and he showed them what he wanted, with a sketch, and they fixed this up in a couple of hours —two sizes of basket, held apart by little struts. He was as pleased as Punch.”

  “It was rather a bright idea” Julia said. “Our doctor is a bright boy.”

  When they reached the entrance to the tunnel Terence doled out torches, and they set off through that wet, noisy, echoing place. It enchanted Sir Percy—“So modestly simple, and so efficient” he pronounced; but when they reached the further end, and emerged into the lush, green, rich vegetation of the central range, his astonishment was extreme. He looked at his watch. “Barely half an hour’s walk!—quite fantastic!” he exclaimed. At the foot of the rock wall he cast an appraising eye over it—“Yes, there is hardly need for a fence” he said to Julia. He was slightly taken aback by the hammocks, but when Julia lay down in one he followed suit, clutching his camera to his chest, and was borne and slung aloft, still repeating that it was fantastic. The stakes and other impedimenta occupied the third hammock, but Terence carried the knapsack with the thermometer; he, Colin, and the peasant climbed. At the top, released from his net, Sir Percy stood and gazed about him—at the stretch of grass and bracken ahead, then at the pale sunbaked landscape below to the east, and on the other side the mountains and valleys, moist, green with woods and ringing with waterfalls.

  “You described it most exactly—it is between two climates” he said to Julia. He poked his stick into the short turf. “And would appear to enjoy a quite individual one of its own,” he added to Terence.

  “I think that is so, sir” Terence agreed.

  “Well now, let us see if we can find some of these sheep” Sir Percy said. As before, they walked to the first pool; this time there were no sheep near it,
but they deposited the heavier gear —the stakes, the haversacks, the rucksack with the thermometer, and, to Julia’s relief, the awkward wicker screen—all in the care of the peasant, who was instructed by Terence to be sure not to let any sheep approach them. Sir Percy asked about the pool —were there springs in it? Terence could not tell him. The scientist went over to the water’s edge and again poked the ground with his stick.

  “Would it be a dew-pond?” he speculated.

  “I should hardly think so—weren’t they constructed by Neolithic man?” Terence said. “Madeira has no pre-history.”

  Sir Percy turned a startled gaze on him.

  “Nor it has—barely mediaeval! I had forgotten for the moment. Oh well, never mind. Now the sheep.” He picked up his camera, Colin shouldered the tripod, and they walked forward. Terence soon spotted a group of sheep away to their right, and they went across to them; the animals were obligingly coughing, wheezing, and turning their heads about. Sir Percy stood and watched them for some moments.

  “Yes—vairy distinctive” he said at length. “Do you think we could get hold of one?” he asked Terence.

  “Oh yes, easily—they’re quite stupefied.” Terence walked up to the sheep, who as on the previous occasion took no notice of him till he was within a yard or two; even then they only moved slowly, in a dazed fashion—he caught hold of one by the fleece and held it. Sir Percy handed his camera to Colin, went to the sheep, and examined its eyes.

  “Yes, the pupils are markedly contracted. Vairy good!” he said in a tone of satisfaction. He pulled a small ophthalmoscope, such as oculists use, out of his pocket, and with it looked at the animal’s eyes again. “Oh botheration!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t used one of these things for years—I can make nothing of this contracted pupil!”

  Julia was standing beside Colin, a few yards away, watching these proceedings; she was startled to hear him give a sort of moan, and turned to him—he was standing with a look of horror on his face. “What is it? Are you ill?” she asked anxiously. As he did not answer—“Colin, what is it?” she urged, shaking his arm.

  “The whole people of England!” he said, under his breath, still staring at the bemused and helpless sheep.

  “No!” she said firmly. “It shan’t happen. We’ll stop it! It shall be all right, darling.” She was a good deal distressed by this sudden display of emotion in Colin. To distract him—“Here, let’s set up the tripod” she said briskly; “he’s sure to want to take a photograph.”

  Colin roused himself at that; he went across and asked the scientist if he wished to take a picture of the sheep?

  “Oh no, thank you. This isn’t a cine-camera; a still would tell one nothing” Sir Percy said. “One ought really to have a reel of film and a tape-recording, to be of much use. But have you got any atropine with you?”

  “No, sir—I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve got one syrette” Julia said; she unbuttoned the breastpocket of her dress and drew the small object out.

  “Vairy good” Sir Percy said, taking it. “Now, Mr. Armitage, can you—er—reverse this animal?”

  Terence deftly turned the sheep onto its back, and held its head; Sir Percy lifted one foreleg, and plunged the needle in— the sheep kicked wildly.

  “Shall I let it go?” Terence asked.

  “No, please hold it for a moment or two.” In fact the sheep soon stopped struggling, and lay passive; after a few minutes it ceased to cough and wheeze.

  “Now you can release it” the scientist said. Terence did so, and set the creature on its feet. It stood still for a moment or two; then it shook itself vigorously, looked round at the group of humans, and suddenly galloped off at top speed. Terence burst out laughing.

  “Fair enough!” he said.

  Sir Percy looked pleased. “An excellent result” he said. “Well now, let us go on.”

  As they walked on across the plateau Julia, following the other two with Colin, muttered in his ear that she wondered what the old boy wanted the camera for, if he wasn’t going to use it? However as they approached the farther end Sir Percy stopped, set up the tripod and took a series of photographs—back across the plateau by the way they had come, of the mountains to the east, and of the landscape to north and south of them; for these last he fitted a telephoto lens. On the way they had seen plenty of the doped sheep, and on the return walk they saw more still; at Sir Percy’s instance they took a route nearly a mile to the right of the track, so as to see a different part of the plateau. He walked very fast; he stopped twice to take more photographs, which would show the place at a right-angle to the first pictures. Most of the time he walked in silence—once he asked Terence when the mist might be expected to come up?

  “Any time now, if it’s coming; there are days when it doesn’t happen at all” Terence told him.

  It was nearly two when they got back to the pool, where the peasant still sat, patient and contented, cutting slices off a raw onion and a loaf of bread, and eating them. Terence produced a thermos flask containing Martinis from his haversack, and a leather-covered roll of tiny silver cups to drink them from. “Goodness, I wanted that!” Julia said, as she sat on the grass and sipped her drink.

  Over their belated meal Sir Percy, in reply to a question from Julia—who knew that Colin would have liked to ask it, but refrained out of an Intelligence notion of protocol—gave his opinion on the sheep.

  “I should say their condition is undoubtedly due to what you suspected” he said, with a glance at the peasant, who sat within earshot, taking swigs from a mug of red wine which Terence had handed to him. “Our medical friend expects to get a report from France any day now on the blood samples he sent which should confirm it beyond any possibility of mistake, one way or another, though seeing the behaviour of that sheep after the injection, I have few doubts left myself. What still troubles me a little is the means of distribution. I agree with you, Monro, that by bright moonlight it would be perfectly possible for ten men to cover the whole area, using knapsack sprayers; the terrain certainly permits of that. But it still leaves the boy unaccounted for.” He turned to Terence. “Mr. Armitage, do you think it would be possible to establish at precisely what time the young boy left his home?”

  Terence considered.

  “I should hardly think so” he said—“not precisely. You see he went off without his parents’ knowledge, as he often does; they don’t worry about him.”

  “Might he remember himself? He seemed an intelligent child.”

  “Oh, you saw him, did you? Yes, he’s as bright as a button. But I doubt whether he would be very accurate about times; these people live by the sun, and by their hunger! Why—if you don’t mind my asking—is it so important to know when he left home?”

  “To learn the earliest time he could possibly have been on the plateau.” Sir Percy explained again about the two-hour period of efficacy of nerve gases. “So if the gas was distributed during the hours of darkness, unless the boy was up here by sunrise, or an hour after it at latest, it is hard to understand how he could have been so seriously affected.”

  “Yes, I see. Well, he might possibly remember whether he got up here before sunrise. I should think it most improbable that he did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Manoel—his father, my steward—locks the door of the farm-house at night, and keeps the key under his pillow; he only opens it when he gets up in the morning.”

  “Which is at what hour?”

  “Daybreak” Terence said briefly, “and it would take two hours, at the very least, to get here from the Quinta on foot.”

  “Could the child have climbed out?” Julia asked.

  “I hardly think so.”

  “Might he at least remember if he had done this?” Sir Percy enquired, hopefully.

  “He might—but it doesn’t follow that he would admit it!” Terence said, with a faint grin.

  “Not if you asked him yourself, Terence, and told him it was really important?” Julia urged
.

  “I could try—it would probably be better to lay on the priest, if it is absolutely vital to know. Even then, I shouldn’t consider it hundred per cent certain” Terence stated firmly.

  “Really?” Sir Percy looked startled.

  “These people are rather like the Irish about trying to tell you what they imagine you want to hear” Terence said tolerantly. “However, when I get home I’ll have another go at the parents, willingly. But I shouldn’t like to base any firm conclusion on what we get either from the parents, or the priest, or the boy himself.”

  “H’m. That is unfortunate” Sir Percy said.

  “Yes. But it’s no good my raising false hopes, in a matter of this importance.”

  “No, I agree. Your personal knowledge of these people, and their characters, is of great value” Sir Percy said. He frowned. “In that case, we are thrown back on the possibility of some delayed-action means of distribution.”

  “Do you mean what Dr. de Carvalho suggested, some soluble form of container that would dissolve in sunlight and release the gas?” Colin asked.

  “Something of the sort—though as I said, I cannot think offhand of such a substance.”

  “Of course for the ultimate use of this gas, against a foreign country, that would have great advantages, wouldn’t it?” Terence put in. “Distributed by night, but coming into action by daylight, when the maximum number of people would be about, and exposed to it.”

  “True enough. They might well be working at something on those lines, as well as on the new gas, with its temporary qualities” Sir Percy said thoughtfully. He was silent for a few moments, obviously pondering; the others said nothing. At last he roused himself.

  “Well, we had better set up the thermograph” he said. “Where is that knapsack?”

  Sir Percy took a good deal of trouble about siting his instrument. He walked round for some time, asking Terence about the direction of the prevailing wind, and using a compass to get the exact point on the horizon where the sun would rise at that season of the year; finally he chose a spot a considerable distance away from both the pool and the track, to lessen the likelihood of the machine’s being noticed and interfered with. “One can’t lock this basket contraption, as one can a Stevenson’s screen” he said regretfully. The place chosen, the peasant brought over the bundle of stakes, and Terence, under the scientist’s direction, made four holes in the ground with the crowbar, drove in four stakes, and then hammered battens across their tops, making a small oblong platform—this Sir Percy checked carefully with a spirit-level, which with the hammer and nails had come up in one of the outer pockets of the knapsack. “Hammer this one in a shade more, Armitage—gently. Now let us see—” he used the spirit-level again. “Vairy good!” he said at last. Then from the knapsack he drew out an object wrapped in a cloth.