On his entering the room the Colonel waved him to a chair, and said: 'This is a perfectly damnable business, and there's nothing we can do about it. Thompson got the truth out of Tom Ruddy last night, but he flatly refuses to prosecute.'
'Tom Ruddy?' Barney echoed, momentarily taken aback. 'No, Father Christmas!' retorted C.B., with an irritable impatience quite unusual in him. 'Or am I wrong in supposing that you came here this morning to report to me that he has withdrawn his name as a candidate for Secretary-General of the C.G.T. ?' 'Yes; no, I mean,' faltered Barney, suddenly recalled to the duty entailed by his major mission. 'I picked up a pretty definite rumour to that effect in Hammersmith last night, and of course intended to report it.'
'Very well then. This ties up with your second string; so sit down and I'll tell you about it. I heard that Ruddy had thrown his hand in yesterday afternoon, so I asked Inspector Thompson to go to see him and try to find out why. Of course, it's none of our business officially, but I felt certain there must be something fishy about it, and that if Ruddy could be persuaded to accept police help we might be able to restore the situation. At first he was very reluctant to talk but, after Thompson had given him his word that no action of any kind which might involve him should be taken, he got the story.'
C.B. stuffed some tobacco down into his pipe, and went on. 'One wouldn't have thought that a man like Ruddy would be a superstitious fool; but he is. Apparently his old mum used to tell fortunes pretty accurately, so he has been a believer in that sort of thing all his life. About a year ago someone introduced him to a crystal-gazer named Emily Purbess, a middle-aged and apparently respectable body. He has consulted Mrs. P. several times in the past six months and she's given him guidance that he says has paid off well on various problems connected with his election campaign. About ten days ago she warned him that there was trouble ahead; someone he relied on was going to double-cross him, and if he didn't watch out that would wreck his chances. But she couldn't tell him who or what to watch out for.
'Naturally that got him worried, so she suggested that he should consult someone who had greater occult powers than herself and gave him the address of a man named Biernbaum, who is in practice in the West End as a psycho-analyst. Biernbaum gave Ruddy a lot of gupp about seeing into the future really being a science which was understood by the ancients and is only now being rediscovered, and how it had recently been proved that they were right to use pure young girls as priestesses in the temples because nubile virgins were the best vehicles for conveying the voices of unseen powers; then he said that, for a fee, he could take Ruddy to a house in which a young woman who had been trained to prophesy invariably produced the goods. Ruddy agreed to cough up five pounds and was told to report at Biernbaum's consulting room again on Saturday evening.'
'Saturday evening,' Barney repeated. 'That's the night the Satanists meet. Did this chap Biernbaum take him along to the house in Cremorne?�
C.B. nodded. 'You've hit it, partner. At least I'm pretty certain that is where they went. Biernbaum must have put Ruddy under a light hypnosis because after they got into a taxi he doesn't remember the streets through which they passed, or those by which they returned about an hour later; but his description of the approach to the place, and of its outside, tallies. He says the inside was like that of a nobleman'3 mansion, as seen on the films, but he was received by an elderly bald-headed doctor, who runs the place, and a fine looking woman who was dressed as a nurse. They told him that their most gifted girl had been taken ill but, as the appointment had been made, she had agreed all the same to prophesy for him. Then they took him up to a luxurious bedroom where a lovely girl was lying in bed with her eyes shut and the sheets up to her chin.'
Barney grinned suddenly. 'This sounds more fun than getting a blowsy old woman to peer into a crystal. Did the lovely prove a good oracle?'
'Yes, she prophesied all right. In fact, so plausibly that she shook poor Ruddy to his buttoned boots. She described the chap who was supposed to be going to do him dirt, and unmistakably she was seeing young Sir Hamish McFadden.'
�The chap whose father left him about ten million pounds worth of shipping, and is now regarded as quite a big shot among the Socialist intelligentsia?'
"That's right. But even if he is ass enough to believe in their old fashioned theories, he at least has the sense to realize the Communist danger, and he has been spending quite a lot of money lately to finance the campaigns of honest Trade Unionists like Ruddy, who want to oust the Reds. Ruddy was going down to lunch with him at his place in Kent last Sunday, to fix the final details about I.T.V. appearances, leaflets, and other anti-Communist propaganda for which Sir Hamish is footing the bill. But the prophecy decided Ruddy to call his visit off.'
'So that's how they worked it.' Barney made a grimace. 'I suppose by Monday Ruddy and Sir Hamish had quarrelled violently and, after the break, Ruddy felt that, without the financial support he had been promised, he no longer stood a chance?'
'Good Lord, no! With, or without Sir Hamish, Ruddy could still romp home. He has thrown his hand in on personal grounds: on account of his family. The lovely oracle predicted for him, despite everything, a smashing victory. She even got so enthusiastic about it that, although she was as naked as when her mother bore her, she suddenly sat up in bed and threw an arm round his neck. It was at that moment that from some camouflaged point of vantage someone took a photograph of them.' 'Blackmail!' exclaimed Barney.
'That's it. On Monday a man who was a complete stranger to Ruddy brought him a copy, gave it to him and said: 'We thought you might like to have this as a souvenir. We have plenty more and either you lay off standing for Secretary-General, or your wife gets one tomorrow.' 'What swine these people are!'
'Of course. Communists are of two kinds only. Gadarene Swine whose wits have been taken from them so that they rush headlong down the slope to their own destruction, and ordinary voracious swine who, if you were standing in their sty, had a heart-attack and fell among them, would instantly set upon and devour you - just as did the pigs in T. F. Powys' novel, "Mr. Tasker's Gods".'
'I know, Sir. But this sort of thing really is frightful. Did poor old Ruddy cave in right away?'
'I gather so. He told Thompson that he had been happily married for twenty-four years and counted his wife his greatest blessing; but she was not the sort of woman who would even tolerate his dancing twice in an evening with the good-looking wife of another chap at a Trade Union social and that once she had made his life a misery for a couple of months because she had found out that, while she was on holiday at the seaside with the children, he had taken a pretty typist to a movie. He said that the sight of the photograph would be a terrible shock to her. He felt sure that her principles would prove stronger than her affections: that, filled with righteous indignation, she would leave him, taking their two unmarried daughters with her, and that no political success he might achieve could compensate a man of his age for the loss of his family.'
'Couldn't he explain?' Barney asked. 'Surely if his wife loves him, and he told the truth, she would believe him?�
'Put yourself in his shoes, or hers.' C.B. gave a short hard laugh and tossed across the desk a photograph. 'Take a look at that. Thompson asked Ruddy to let him have the loan of it so that Scotland Yard could try to identify the woman, and Ruddy said he was glad to get it out of the house, provided it was destroyed afterwards. Can you see yourself endeavouring to persuade a middle-aged, narrow-minded and distrustful wife that you had gone to the bedroom of this naked lady for no other reason than the hope that she would predict for you the winner of the Derby?'