A boy took us into the physics classroom, where Howard was sitting on the lecture table. As we went in, he muttered some sort of greeting, but, if he looked at us, it was only out of the corner of his eye. To make conversation I said, glancing round the room, that it was an improvement on those I had been taught in as a boy.
“If they had some apparatus,” said Howard, “you might begin to talk.”
“Still, it’s better than nothing—”
“Not much,” he said.
That seemed the end of that. It was, in fact — I was gazing round for want of anything to say — a model of a room, new, bright, shining, with seats at a good rake and windows taking up the two side walls. On the blackboard behind the table Howard had been writing: the smell of chalk hung in the air. His writing was high, stiff, broken-backed. There were calculations I couldn’t follow: this must have been a sixth-form lesson. One word stuck out — “inductence”. Could that be right? It didn’t seem possible, even in scientific English. Was he one of those people, without visual memory, who just couldn’t spell?
“Can we talk here?” said Martin.
“I don’t see why not.”
Martin settled himself against one of the desks in the front row.
“I don’t think I’ve got any news for you yet awhile—” he began.
“Why did you want to see me, then?”
“There are one or two things we’d like to ask—”
“I’m sick and tired of going over stuff you know as well as I do,” said Howard, not meeting Martin’s eye, staring unfocused beyond the darkening windows.
“It’s mainly for my benefit,” I said.
“I’m not clear where you come in.”
“Perhaps Lewis had better tell you,” said Martin, glancing at me.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s very simple. I should like to say that I believe you are in the right in this business. I’m sorry that I doubted you before. If I can be of any use at this stage, I should like to do what I can.”
For an instant, Howard’s eye flickered in my direction and then away again. He said: “You don’t expect me to be exactly overcome with gratitude, do you?”
As a rule I was not touchy, but Howard had a knack of getting under my skin. Martin intervened.
“Come off it, Donald.” His tone was hard but comradely. “We’ve got enough to cope with, without you.”
Howard, whose head had been turned away, brought it round to face us: but it sank down on to his chest and he was gazing, not at the window, but at his feet.
“Anyway,” he said, without a mollifying word, “I don’t see what you can do.”
He was speaking to me, and I replied: “I’ve known some of these people a long time. I’ve arranged to see Francis Getliffe tomorrow morning, I thought it might be worthwhile.”
“A fat lot of good that will do.”
“I’m glad you’re doing that—” Martin was saying, but Howard interrupted: “I don’t believe in seeing these people. The facts are on paper. They can read, can’t they? Well, let them get on with it.”
The curious thing was that, though he spoke with such surliness, he was full of hope. It wasn’t simply one of those flashes of random hope that come to anyone in trouble. This was a steady hope that he had kept from the beginning. At the same time he managed to be both suspicious and childishly hopeful.
Martin started to question him about the missing photograph. It seemed to be old ground for both of them, but new to me. Had Howard still no idea when old Palairet could have taken such a photograph? Had he never seen one which fitted the caption at the bottom? Couldn’t he make his memory work and find anything that would help?
“I’m not a lawyer,” he said, gibing at me, “it’s no use asking me to cook up a nicer story.”
“That isn’t specially valuable, even in the law,” I replied. Martin, who knew him better, was rougher with him.
“We’re not asking you that. We’re asking you to use what you’re pleased to call your mind.”
For the first time that evening Howard grinned.
I went on to say that anything he could tell us about Palairet might be a point in argument. Even people whose minds were not closed couldn’t be swung over until they had some idea what had happened. None of us seemed to have a completely clear idea: I certainly hadn’t myself.
“Why should you think I have?” asked Howard. “I didn’t have anything to do with him apart from the work. He was always decent to me. I don’t pay any attention to what other people say about a man. I take him as I find him, and by how he is to me.”
“And you’re satisfied with the result?” I could not resist saying, but he did not see the point. He described how Palairet had given him the photograph which he had used in his thesis — the photograph with the dilated pin-marks. According to Howard, Palairet had said that it would “help out” the experimental evidence. Howard had not wondered for an instant whether it was genuine or not. He had just taken it with gratitude. Even now, he could not imagine when Palairet had faked the photograph. He said, with a curiously flat obstinacy, that he was not certain it was a conscious fake at all.
“What else could it be?” said Martin sharply.
“Oh, just an old man being silly.”
“No,” said Martin.
I was thinking that Howard was one of the two or three worst witnesses I had listened to. So bad that it seemed he could not be so bad. Once or twice I found myself doubting my own judgment.
Howard said that he had seen another photograph of the same kind: he had repeated that often enough. But this photograph could not have been the one missing from the notebook. Whatever the photograph in the notebook had been, he had never seen it.
“You’re positive about that?” I said.
“Of course I am.”
“It’s a pity,” said Martin.
“Then it’s got to be a pity,” said Howard.
Martin said, “If that photograph was still in the notebook, there might have been a bit of resistance but there’s no doubt we should have got you home in the end.”
As Martin spoke, not with any special edge, saying something which we all knew, Howard’s expression had undergone a change. His eyes had widened so that one could see rims of white round the pupils; the sullen, dead-pan, sniping obstinacy had all gone; instead his face seemed stretched open, tightly strained, so exposed that he had lost control over his eyes and voice. In a high, grating tone he said: “Perhaps that’s why it isn’t there.”
“What do you mean?” Martin asked him.
“Perhaps the people who wanted to get at me found it convenient to get rid of that photograph. Perhaps it isn’t an accident that it isn’t there.”
I had heard someone, in. a state of delusion, speak just like that. Martin and I glanced at each other. Martin nodded. We both knew what had to be said, and Martin began: “You must never say anything like that again. That is, if you want to have a fighting chance. We can’t do anything for you, we couldn’t even take the responsibility of going on, if there’s the slightest risk of your saying that again.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“It’s time you did,” said Martin. I broke in: “Don’t you see that it’s a very serious accusation? Don’t you see that, if it once got round the college, you’d have to answer for it—”
“So would the people who were standing up for you,” said Martin. “Either you cut it out, or we should have to wash our hands of the whole business.”
Without speaking, without any sign of acquiescence, Howard had lost the wild open look. He had slumped back again, his eyes looking at his feet, his head on his chest.