“In a surfeit of joy I made myself visible to him, wishing to express my gratitude,” Mary said. “You can imagine how quickly my gratitude turned to fear and loathing when I discovered the kind of creature Mr Haggle is. Not only has he continued to keep me prisoner here, but he has made me the object of his base and carnal lusts.”
“I’ll kill him,” Barney gritted, quivering with rage. “I’ll go up there now and tear him from limb to…” He paused in mid-vow as certain practical difficulties in what he had just heard presented themselves to his mind. “Um …if it’s not too delicate a question… what exactly did he do to you?”
The violet radiance of Mary’s face deepened to magenta. “He asked me to disrobe for his vile pleasure.”
Barney gave a relieved sigh. “At least he isn’t able to…”
“Not yet,” Mary said in a tragic voice.
“Not yet?” Barney frowned at her in bafflement. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see…”
“He is not a well man. His heart is not strong, and that is why he spends most of his time in this room. Some day, perhaps quite soon, he will die, then he and I will be locked in here for ever – and I will not be able to escape him.”
Barney gave a low whistle, words failing him as one part of his mind took in the full extent of Haggle’s nastiness, while another was swamped with speculations about the sexual proclivities of disembodied spirits. Mary had certainly retained all the externals of a nubile female, but Barney found it difficult to envisage, for example, the production of spectral hormones. A possibly vital clue lay in the fact that Mary, who had been a ghost for rather a long time, still thought like a woman and apparently was confident that Haggle’s ghost would act like a predatory male. It was a subject to which Barney had never devoted any thought and he found it intriguing.
“Mr Seacombe!” Mary silently stamped her foot. “Are you going to help me, or are you content to stand there dreaming?”
“I’ll help you, of course,” Barney said fervently. “I’ll get you out of here in no time – all I have to do is open the door.”
“How will you do that ?”
“Nothing to it! I’ll just grab the handle and…” Barney’s voice faltered as he noticed that the inner face of the door was a smooth sheet of metal, devoid of any manual controls.
Mary toyed with one of her tresses. “Mr Haggle always opens it with a magic box.”
“There’s nothing magic about it,” Barney explained. “It’s a remote control device operating on radio or ultrasonic frequencies. Very common. Very simple.”
“Have you got one?”
“Ah… no.”
“Can you make one?”
“No, not in here.”
“In that case,” Mary said, ‘it cannot be as common or as simple as you appear to think.”
“You don’t understand,” Barney replied, suddenly aware that seventeenth century girls could be as irritatingly illogical as their space age counterparts. He took out his nail-file, went to the door and – trying to look as though he knew what he was doing – inserted the sliver of metal into the hairline crack at the door’s edge and wiggled it up and down. The door swung open immediately.
Barney’s delight at this unexpected development was tempered, however, by the discovery that Haggle was framed in the narrow aperture, holding his remote controller in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other. He advanced quickly into the laboratory and the door swung shut behind him.
“I’ve brought you a drink,” Haggle said, looking almost affable. “Something to pick you up a bit.”
Barney checked discreetly to confirm that Mary had vanished, then accepted the mug. “This is most kind.”
“Think nothing of it. Living alone has made my manners a bit rusty, but I do want you to be comfortable.”
“Thanks a lot.” Barney sipped the coffee and deduced from its flavour that it had been made from some rather inferior brand of powder, but at the same time he was intrigued by Haggle’s desire to be hospitable. It appeared that the little man, in spite of some serious character defects, had a better side to his nature. It just goes to show, Barney mused, nobody is all black.
“How is your coffee?” Haggle said, watching Barney with a look of intense solicitude.
“It’s very nice.” Barney made an appreciative slurping sound. “Delicious.”
Haggle looked pleased. “I’m glad to hear it – most poisons spoil the taste of a drink.”
“I’m an anti-caffeine man myself,” Barney riposted, ‘but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it…” He stopped speaking as a curious tingling sensation spread through his limbs, making it difficult for him to move, and causing him to fix Haggle with a look of abject pleading. “You are talking about caffeine, aren’t you?”
“Hardly.” Haggle took the mug from Barney’s numb fingers and put it aside. “Caffeine takes decades to kill a person, but the substance I put in your drink will do the trick in about fifteen minutes. You can consider yourself well and truly dead.”
Barney had read somewhere that the imminence of death was a powerful aid to concentration, but he found himself unable to string two thoughts together as Haggle caught his toppling body and dragged him to the door of the laboratory. It obviously took most of the little man’s strength to get both of them through the narrow opening during the brief period in which the door was ajar, and when it closed again Haggle leaned against a wall, panting and clutching his chest. As soon as his breathing steadied he bundled Barney into the elevator and thumbed the top button on the control panel.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” Barney said, aware that the near-final utterance sounded disappointingly like a line from an old B-movie.
Haggle appeared not to mind the lack of originality. “I’ll get away with it, all right. After all – what motive could the police establish?”
“Motive? I’ll tell you what motive.” Barney paused for a moment, his brow wrinkling. “Why did you do it?”
“Bringing you here was part of an experiment,” Haggle explained, smirking. “I did need some theoretical help, but I was also interested in finding out if Mary would be visible to other people. I guessed from the expression on your face that you had seen her when I was on the phone. That was why I went out and left you alone with her.”
“I take it that the lab is wired for sound,” Barney said, getting his first inkling of what had been going on.
Haggle nodded. “You take it correctly. I suspected Mary might try to be unfaithful to me – there’s a touch of the wanton in that girl – and when I heard you begin plotting with her so readily I realized you would have to be put out of the way.” Haggle’s brows drew together. “It’s a fine thing when you invite someone into your home and the first thing he does is try to steal your wife.”
“Mary isn’t your wife,” Barney protested.
“She soon will be.” A look of lascivious anticipation appeared on Haggle’s face. “I don’t think I’ll have long to wait until I’m free of this mortal shell.”
Barney felt a strong desire to take part in the little man’s discorporation, but as his paralysis was now almost complete he concentrated instead on assuaging his curiosity. “Do you reckon that male and female ghosts are able to… you know…?”
Before Haggle could reply, the elevator came to a halt and the door slid aside to admit strong sunlight from a conservatory which appeared to have been constructed on the roof of the castle. Haggle manhandled Barney out of the elevator and unceremoniously dropped his body on the rush matting of the floor. The rough treatment caused Barney no pain, a reminder that he was close to death. He gazed up through the glass roof, into the clear blue vault of the sky, and made the astonishing discovery that he was unafraid. Previously, death had always been equated in his mind with total extinction, but he had learned a lot in the past hour. He had met Mary, had fallen in love with her, and passing from this world into the next merely meant that…