There was the merest suggestion of a smile on the Headmaster’s face. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You certainly have your uncle very well trained. Well, I can find out from him where he got it. But how much did you eat and how much did he send?’
‘Well, sir, he was rather generous. He sent me half a dozen bars like this.’
‘Of which you have eaten?’
The boy looked glum. ‘This is the last.’
‘Were they all the same make?’ asked the Headmaster, without revealing his feelings.
‘Yes, all the same, sir.’
‘Did you give any away?’
‘A few pieces off each bar, sir.’
‘All to the same person?’
‘No, different people, sir.’
‘So you’re the only person who has eaten a considerable amount of the stuff?’
‘That’s right, sir. Sir?’
‘Yes, Riddle?’
‘Why did you let me off a punishment?’
The Head didn’t know what to say. He would rather have thrashed the boy twenty times over than guess what could happen to him now. At last he said: ‘Perhaps it’s because I rather like chocolate myself. Would you like to give me a piece, as a token of mutual understanding?’
Solemnly the boy broke a piece from the bar, and the Headmaster ate it appreciatively. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘You have a singularly co-operative uncle. I think I’d better confiscate the rest though, don’t you?’
Riddle handed it to him, and the Headmaster made as if to leave. Then, apparently as an afterthought, he added: ‘Riddle, I want you to report to Matron.’
‘Now, sir?’
‘Yes. You’d better go now.’
Morningways escorted his senior to the door, and the Head spoke quietly to him. ‘I am eternally in your debt,’ he said. ‘I only hope you didn’t find out too late.’ With that he left.
And Morningways was sufficiently humanitarian to be more concerned for the boy than for the fact that the job he had been on the brink of losing was now secure.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hargreaves said: ‘I don’t have to tell you that the eyes of the world are now upon us. Things were bad enough before, but at least we thought the hazard was restricted to one product. Then this new, incredible, horrifying thing happens. We are now no longer faced with a serious accident endangering the lives of a known section of the community, but with an apparently limitless chain of danger of which we do not yet know the cause. The Atomic Energy Authority have so far kept off our territory — they felt that since no proof existed that this was our affair they had no more right or reason to investigate us than we had to investigate them. Now, of course, all that has gone by the board. The date of Gould’s ventilation fault is far too close to that of the Project 3 accident, and the two are only six miles apart. It is inconceivable that the two could be unconnected. Yet so far no one has managed to link them — that is the truly astonishing thing. The Atomic Energy Authority have asked permission (purely a courtesy, of course — they are in a position to do anything they think necessary) to inspect all chimneys and ducts at Marsdowne, and all disposal sites where fission products have been dumped. A team of their people have gone up by plane tonight. They do not, they have assured me, suggest that we have not done our damnedest to get at the facts, but they are frankly amazed that we have discovered so little, and I don’t blame them. I find it hard to understand myself. Therefore I am repeating, for the last time, my original urge that if anyone knows anything, however insignificant it may seem, that will throw any light on this, they must say so now. Because from now on every minute wasted may mean a life lost some time in the future, long after the Marsdowne incident is forgotten. Even at this moment, while we sit talking, thousands of people may be poisoning themselves without knowing it. Because the stark reality is that we no longer know where the deadly poison may be lying in wait.’ He picked up his glass of water and held it up. ‘A tumbler of water — this cigarette — Gatt’s stomach pills… all or any of these things could be lethal. All because of something we did… or didn’t do.’ He replaced the glass with such force that the water spilled over. ‘For God’s sake, gentlemen, let’s not leave this table today until we know the answer! Until Chiesman came through we thought the contamination was restricted to the sugar; now we know that it is not. What was it that conveyed the poison to the coffee? How can we find out just how the two radioactive substances became mixed in uneven proportions; did they, in fact, originate from the same source at all? We jumped to one abortive conclusion at the beginning of this investigation… are we justified in leaping to another one?’
‘Leaping!’ echoed Seff, in such an excited voice that they all looked at him as if he’d suddenly gone mad. ‘Don’t you see?’ he exclaimed. ‘Tiddlywinks!’
Major Pentecue opened up the throttle of the leading helicopter, and Dick watched the ground dropping away underneath them.
‘Your first time up?’ shouted Pentecue, above the noise of the motor.
‘In one of these, yes.’
Pentecue was a solidly built looking man — a lot more solid, thought Dick, than the egg-box of an aircraft he was piloting. It rattled and vibrated in its hideous, beetle-like simulation of flight. The major patted the inside of the fuselage affectionately. ‘She’s noisy, all right,’ he observed, reading his thoughts, ‘but she’s a nice old lady when you get to know her.’
‘Is it easy to fly?’
‘What?’ He was busying himself with a parcel of sandwiches. ‘Have one? My wife made them fresh this morning. Chicken. Very good.’ He remembered the question. ‘Easy to fly? Well, she’s like any other old lady — you have to treat her with respect, you see. She doesn’t like to be pushed around. Do you like the chicken? Our own, you know. Got a small farm in the Cotswolds.’
Dick hastily said he thought it was excellent. Actually he was convinced it was more than slightly high; but he didn’t want to say anything that might upset diplomatic relations at this early stage; and in particular he didn’t want to upset the old lady. So he ate the questionable chicken, and leaned over to check the geiger equipment that had been installed in such a hurry. The ‘head’ of the machine was attached, sensitive side downwards, to the undercart. He noted the slight background count and set the needle of the dial at zero, then switched off again.
Behind them the other two helicopters had taken off, and were flying in line astern, spaced about half a mile apart. Pentecue called up the pilots casually on the VHF, and Simmel asked him to get the technicians in each to set-zero on background count and to report that the sets were working properly. By the time this had been done Simmel had grown accustomed to the awkward gait of the old lady, and was able to relax and enjoy the splendour of the green hills below them.
And as he watched, he wondered. He wondered whether two and two made four, and whether if he had not been aroused in one way by a chance meeting with a slender girl he would have been awakened in another by the restlessness of an unanswered question — the question which led him to the small laboratory at dead of night. Whether he would not, in fact, have just gone on being a P.A. who fetched and carried and answered the telephone and annoyed Manson for fun. He wondered whether the chemical formula called love made a difference to the way you thought and reacted to things quite unconnected with it. And then he ended up realising that if he himself hadn’t stumbled on the truth about the tins someone else would have, so it didn’t make any difference in the end. So, because he wasn’t particularly self-analytical, he abandoned the main train of thought, and amused himself by comparing the landscape with the map and calculating their groundspeed.