The Unbegotten (4 page)

He went downstairs and into the kitchen, then out and towards the garden shed, and as he neared the shed, he saw a man; one of those who had been among the trees at the hospital. The man ducked out of sight and did not reappear. Maddern felt a creepy feeling running up and down his spine and gritted his teeth.

Was he one of Palfrey's men?

If so, why was he watching this house?

And did the girl work for Palfrey, too?

Maddern went into the toolshed, selected a pair of secateurs and strolled into the garden. Between shed and orchard was a little rose bed, and a lot of the old, dying bloom wanted taking off, while there were a few scarlet roses. Old Josiah loved red roses.

As he clipped and snipped, Maddern looked about him. As far as he could judge there was no one else in the garden; and if he hadn't seen the other two he would never have suspected that anyone was here. It was pleasantly warm. Tall beech trees and spreading chestnut trees from parkland adjoining the house sheltered him from the hot sun. He did not search, but once or twice looked up. There was the girl, legs drawn up, body pressed very tightly against the trunk, as if she were scared.

Then, Maddern saw a remarkable thing.

She took her hand from her pocket, and he caught a glimpse of a small pistol. She levelled it, and his heart began to thump, but she was levelling it at someone at least five yards to his right. He turned his head, very cautiously, and saw the man who had ducked out of sight.

If he, Maddern, was any judge, the girl was waiting until the man drew within range; and the moment he was, she would shoot.

 

 

A cry hovered in Maddern's throat, and the sound would not come. He stood in cold stillness. The girl sat in ambush and the man drew within a dangerously close range. Then, as Maddern broke the tension and began to shout a warning, a man he had not seen before appeared beneath the tree, behind the girl, and spoke in the most casual of voices.

‘That's enough, Susie. Down you come.'

He stepped beneath the girl and held his arms upwards and outwards, as if to catch her when she jumped. Instead of jumping, she stood up and stretched out for a higher branch, then with a dazzlingly swift movement pointed the gun towards the man and fired. There was a bark of sound. The man dodged to one side, just in time. The girl then dropped until she swung on the branch where she had been crouching, kicking out at the first man who was now close to the tree.

‘Watch her,' the other called. ‘Little vixen!'

‘That's enough, Sue,' the other reproved. ‘Drop that pistol and—'

Instead, she let one hand go, levelled the gun, and fired again. The speaker swayed to one side. The girl dropped to the grass, and straightened up, light as a bird. Then she began to race towards the house, her beautiful fair hair streaming back from her head.

There was only one expression on her face:
terror
.

It showed in her eyes, in the way her lips were turned back, in the way her hands were clenched.
Terror.
She did not look behind her and did not seem to know that Maddern was there. Both men spun round and began to follow, but she had ten or twelve yards start, and she ran like the wind.

‘Stop her!' one man called.

It was too late, even had Maddern been inclined. She was past him in a flash, and the men, running as fast as they were able, seemed lumbering by comparison. The second one, indeed, lost his balance and pitched into Maddern's precious roses. He gasped, as thorns clawed at him. Maddern, torn between fear for the girl and alarm for his roses, was still rooted to the ground. He could not decide whether he wanted the girl to get away, or whether he wanted to quieten her. In his mind's eye he could still see the terror on her face.

Suddenly, she crumpled up. He did not know what she had fallen over, but it was something in the grass. The man closed on her softly, but before he could reach her she sprang to her feet again.

He grabbed her.

She struck at him savagely, kicked and kneed him; she was a maelstrom of violence and he fought desperately to control her. There was froth at her lips, and her teeth showed, she even tried to bite. As Maddern drew up, knowing she must be quietened, he could hear the rasping of her breath down her throat. Soon, she would surely collapse.

And she did so on the very instant the thought entered his head. The man saved her from falling but only took her weight against his body. He himself was gasping for breath, and blood began to ooze from a long scratch on his cheek.

Maddern said, ‘I'll take her.' He stood behind the girl named Sue or Susie, and turned her round, then hoisted her over his left shoulder with surprisingly little effort. A bee settled on her hair. He carried her towards the back of Hallows End through the kitchen to the surgery, laid her on the examination couch, then turned to the cabinet where he kept his drugs. He had a hypodermic already loaded, for emergency use, with morphine. He unlocked this and took out the syringe, as the man who had caught her came in.

‘What are you giving her?' he asked.

‘Ephregen,' answered Maddern shortly.

‘How long will it put her out?'

Maddern did not answer but unstopped a bottle of alcohol, dipped in a swab, pushed up a loose-fitting sleeve and then cleaned a spot on the girl's arm. Next, he picked up the syringe and held the needle under some sterilised water in a steaming pan.

The man's hand touched his wrist, a lean, strong, browned hand.

‘How long?' he repeated.

‘Long enough for me to call the police and charge you with assault.'

‘This isn't a game, Dr. Maddern. How
long
?'

Maddern was seething with anger. There was something at the back of his mind which told him these men were only doing their job, but that did not still his fury. They seemed to act as if they were a law unto themselves and talked with an arrogance he would take from no man, and while the girl had been the assailant, they had dealt with her as if she were a puppet; made of plastic rather than flesh and blood.

How
dare
they behave like this anywhere; more particularly, how
dare
they in his house?

The brown fingers tightened round his wrist, as if to make sure Maddern could not thrust the needle into the girl's arm. He stared at Maddern, accusingly. Maddern, almost choking with anger, let his arm go slack, and then with the other's grip easing, he pulled himself free and jabbed the needle into the lower part of the man's forearm.

The man caught his breath. Maddern jammed the plunger home and then withdrew the needle.

‘You'll soon find out how long,' he said harshly.

The man stared at him in utter disbelief. His colleague, just behind him, called out, ‘What's going on?' The man whom Maddern had jabbed tried to speak, but suddenly crumpled up. Maddern, syringe in hand, found himself looking into the gap where he had been; and into the face of the other, who was at one side.

Maddern growled, ‘This girl needs sedation, her pulse is far too high and she was hysterical before she flopped out. I am going to give her an injection of Ephregen. Don't try to stop me.'

He recognised the man whom he had thrown with judo that morning, lean-faced, with glittering grey eyes. Maddern himself, looked angry, dangerous. He was quivering all over, suffering from a kind of shock.

The sleeve had fallen over the girl's arm, and he pushed it up, noticing how light it was; more like a skin than a fabric. He cleaned the spot again, plunged the needle into the ampoule and drew half of the contents into the syringe. The moment he turned towards the girl, he expected the man to stop him.

Instead, the other asked, ‘Is that what you gave Childers?'

‘Who?'

‘My colleague.'

‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

‘Because he tried to prevent me from giving this girl an injection.' With his left hand Maddern pinched the flesh above the spot he had cleansed and plunged in the needle. The girl showed no sign of feeling or awareness. He pulled the sleeve down and then drew a blanket up from the foot of the couch. ‘She can stay there until my housekeeper comes,' he stated with a clear finality and turned to face the second man.

He was surprised by a faint smile at the other's eyes.

‘You make up your mind what you want to do and go ahead and do it, don't you?'

‘If I think it's the right thing,' Maddern replied flatly.

‘How long will Childers be out?'

‘Five or six hours, I should imagine.'

‘My goodness! Dr. Palfrey
will
be pleased!'

‘Do you work for Dr. Palfrey?' remarked Maddern.

‘In a way. Yes.'

‘Surely you either do or you don't.'

‘I have been assigned to help and protect him,' the other answered. ‘I'm Special Branch, C.I.D.' He drew a card from his ticket pocket and handed it to Maddern, who read:

 

James Arthur Smith

Criminal Investigation Department,

New Scotland Yard, S.W. 1.

(Special Branch)

 

Maddern lowered the card.

‘May I keep this?'

‘As a souvenir, yes. Did you realise that you had given knock-out drops to a policeman?'

‘I do now. And I would again in the same circumstances.'

The other's eyes positively glowed.

‘I'd better watch out!' He glanced at the girl and went on in a wondering tone, ‘She really is a little beauty, isn't she?'

Maddern thought, yes. He looked at her again, and marvelled at the perfection of her features, so small and gentle-seeming, pale cheeks swept by lashes a little darker than the fairness of her hair. Her clothes were of some shiny material, sheathlike on her provocative figure. She was breathing now, easily and softly, completely relaxed.

In a very gentle voice, he asked, ‘Who is she?'

‘Susan We-don't-know-who,' answered Smith.

‘Why should she attack your colleague?'

‘I'm sure Palfrey will tell you all he wants you to know,' interrupted Smith. ‘He's coming here at half past two, and it's two fifteen now. Should we stay in here, or can we leave our Sue?'

Maddern led the way out of the surgery across the hall and into a long, narrow room with an inglenook fireplace and massive oak beams.

‘I'll let him in when he comes,' he said pointedly.

Smith laughed.

‘I can take a hint!' He moved towards the door, and then went on, ‘I'll be outside with several others, but first, with your permission, I'll search the house. May I?'

‘I'm damned if you may!'

‘I do have a search warrant,' said Smith mildly. ‘But it would be much nicer if you didn't make me use it.'

‘Why on Earth do you want to search my house?'

‘Because Dr. Palfrey is coming here,' answered Smith simply. ‘And my colleagues and I are Dr. Palfrey's bodyguards. He is living under constant threat of assassination, you see. Sue was going to try to kill him. Other young women have tried, and I would hate one of Sue's little friends to be lurking upstairs ready to shoot the great Palfrey. Wouldn't you?'

Heavily, Maddern said, ‘I hope Palfrey will make sense out of this nonsense for me. Do whatever you like.'

‘Thanks,' said Smith warmly, and stepped into the hall.

Suddenly, Maddern thought: But why should I trust him? He strode out, said, ‘I'll come with you,' pushed past Smith and led the way. He opened every cupboard, every wardrobe, every place where a man or even a child could possibly hide and then went upstairs. Everywhere the brasses and the copper shone and the woodwork had the soft glow of centuries of polishing, while there was no dust, no place which needed cleaning.

‘Beautiful place,' Smith remarked. ‘A real gem.'

‘Thank you.'

‘I'll leave you in peace now,' Smith went on with that faint smile. ‘You have a whole five minutes on your own!'

He went downstairs and let himself out by the front door. Maddern bent down and looked out of a tiny window into the front garden. Only a few fading pink blooms were left on the ramblers, but the dahlias, in small round beds, were at their best. On one side was a shrubbery, and from this height he saw the heads of two men, lurking.

Neither was Smith.

He straightened up and went downstairs, frowning. So many things had happened that it was difficult to see them all in the right perspective. He did what he always did when he could not make up his mind about the diagnosis of a patient: he dropped the secondary things out of his mind and considered the major ones.

Two stood far out above the others: first, the barrenness of women in three different areas of Great Britain, and second, the threat against Palfrey's life.

It didn't take a genius to realise that Palfrey was in danger because he was investigating the fertility phenomenon, nor to realise that he knew much more than he had yet admitted. Maddern sat back in a winged armchair and delved with his mind for what he knew of Palfrey. He had a particularly retentive mind, especially about things and people who particularly interested him, and Palfrey had always been one of these.

That was hardly surprising.

The world they lived in, Maddern thought sourly, was a strange one; in fact for several generations past mankind had lived in a state of crisis. War among nations, civil wars, threats from nuclear weapons, threats from bacteriological warfare, famine and natural pestilence and—in the opinion of many people, the most serious—the population explosion, threatened life on Earth. These threats were often made by individuals or groups of individuals who had acquired some single weapon with which they could attack the world.

If one looked back over the newspapers of the past ten years, stories of such threats had been legion. And in these stories the name of Dr. ‘Sap' Palfrey—what were his Christian names? Maddern paused in his thoughts, making his mind almost a vacuum until the answer filled the vacuum. Ah: Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey, or Sap for short. Every kind of absurd joke and pun had been made around that nickname.
Never mind the trivia
, Maddern rebuked himself. Palfrey was due to arrive at any moment.

What time
was
it?

He glanced at his wristwatch, saw that it was three minutes after two thirty and reflected that three minutes was hardly late.
Back to Palfrey.
There had been a great variety of such threats, from megalomaniacs who saw the world as theirs, to idealists who believed only they could guide mankind to happiness. And Palfrey had been the one who organised the resistance to such threats. He had this organisation called Z5, a kind of supra-national espionage department which served not one country nor any group of countries but the world. Suddenly, Maddern had a mental picture of Palfrey on television at the end of a particularly frightening crisis. He had said, in that quiet, matter-of-fact voice, ‘Every nation, without exception, contributes funds to Z5. Every nation, not just one, demands and receives our loyalty. Every nation helps when help is needed. There are so many dangers today, dangers which can confront one, or many, or all, nations at the same time. The task of my organisation is to co-ordinate all defences against such dangers. Nation may fight nation, and although I may deplore and, as an individual, condemn, my task is not to interfere or to help in such conflicts. To do either would be to lessen each nation's confidence in Z5. My task—our task—is to protect all nations and so all humankind against threats which may come from all corners of the globe—'