Butty said, gently, “The einflubgeist?” making it up because he couldn’t remember exactly.
Dickie said, “The ein— Oh, you mean that fellow.” He shot a grateful glance at Butty. This was an encouragement for him to go on with his story.
Dickie said, “I’d forgotten what he was called—”
“Einflubgeist.” Fortunately Butty was able to remember his invented title. And wickedly. “It means, freely translated, ‘influencing ghost or spirit’.” Though to himself he was amused, realizing it meant nothing of the sort, but Dickie wouldn’t know.
The publisher had to come in then. “What’s this ein thing?”
“You’ve heard of a poltergeist? Malignant spirit? Well, something like that.” Dickie, imprecise but near enough to satisfy a publisher.
“German,” added Butty, delicately holding on to his humor because he was beginning to see the truth. “They go in a lot for those sort of wicked spirits, those Teutons. Thick with them in Bavaria.”
“What about this ghost thing?” The publisher frowned and looked at his watch.
“That was the only explanation that was ever given for the two events,” said Dickie. “Something triggered off their imaginations all at once. Something projected the same pictures into all their minds, and they believed, just as we believed yesterday, that they saw what they didn’t see.”
“But what?” An impatient publisher now.
“This einflubergeist. In Germany they believe that influences move around the world in the guise of men but not real men. They are emotions, not substantial. They merely have physical form—”
“Why?” Butty. “Why do they need to have physical form at all?” Butty amused. Dickie ignored him.
“When they appear there is always tragedy — or the appearance of tragedy. In that Rhine village and in Switzerland people spoke of a stranger — and strangers weren’t common in small places in those days.” Dickie looked at Butty. Deliberately— “In both cases they painted the same picture. A man, difficult to describe because he seemed of no age, no features to remember him by — just a vague creature, poorly dressed, shabby.”
“In fact,” helped Butty, “just like the fellow who upset the table outside Dalrymple’s yesterday.” He turned to the publisher. “You know, the weirdie you sent packing because he looked a bum.”
The publisher was a little proud of the memory and nodded.
Young Dickie took the plunge. “Just like him. Mr. Butteridge, something happened yesterday that was above natural laws of explanation. You tell me, how can the same identical story leap into a hundred people’s minds when it didn’t happen? Something happened to plant those pictures in those minds. I still think I saw them. They’re vivid to me. Yet I am prepared to accept that I didn’t see them. Even so, I want to know — what put the pictures into our minds, the same pictures at the same moments?”
The Swiss and the Germans blamed it on the passing stranger.” Butty was on sure ground. “Passing strangers have been lynched for unaccountable happenings to communities right through the ages. You should read The Witches of Salem. Not quite the same, but it does demonstrate the power of hysteria.”
Dickie said levelly, not liking to be laughed at, “Both the Swiss and the Germans put down the hallucination to the presence and influence of the einflubgeist. For them there was no other explanation. In some mysterious way that stranger in their midst was able to influence their minds. They saw — or thought they saw — tragedy. And in both cases, next day the stranger had gone and was never seen again.” His young voice ended on triumph.
Butty squashed him easily. He felt rather a cad for doing so, for Dickie was a nice lad, just quaint because he liked bug-eyed monsters.
“Now, Dickie, are you saying that yesterday’s hallucination was caused by that weirdie who showed up here only a minute or so before the event?”
Put like that, Dickie wasn’t on such firm ground. He wavered. “Well, not exactly.” He pondered and saw for the first time where a vivid imagination could take one — into quicksand that could bring shame and retraction. Defiantly, “All right, but what’s your explanation? What caused it all?”
Butty looked out on to the High Street, seeing Dunn’s the gents’ hatters opposite. His eyes lifted to the tall chimneys on the industrial estate behind. No smoke today. Good. Smokeless zones are to be observed.
Butty said, “I approve of your explanation. It was the work of an einflubgeist.”
The publisher said, “Oh, come off it, Butteridge. Even I can’t swallow that. And let’s stop talking. God knows, we’re so far behind we’ll have nothing to publish next month.”
Neither took any notice of him. Dickie said, “But I thought you were deriding my theory?”
“I am. So far as the weirdie is concerned. He wasn’t the einflubgeist,” He looked at Dickie, smiled slightly, and said, “You were it.”
Dickie just sat there with his mouth open. Butty said, “Let us accept that something put people into a mental condition where they could be receptive to thought suggestions. I have a theory about that.” His eyes looked through the doorway again. “At that very moment — and it must have been exactly at that moment — something happened to cause a stir, a bit of a panic, a commotion.”
That car that ended up in Jolly’s window, thought Butty. Yes, that would be the thing that triggered things off, first aroused emotions. The driver — a heart attack — a swerve. Into the window and everybody shouting and running like mad. Young Dickie drawn out by the noise, and then the publisher. And then — But first something had tampered with all those minds down the High Street.
Butty looked at Dickie. “You did it. You have a wonderfully fertile imagination. You handle imaginative writing, science fiction, good, bad and plain lousy. Your job is to deal with ideas, wild ideas at times, richly imaginative ideas occasionally. So your mind is a stockpot of many men’s inventiveness, so that when the time came you were able to draw upon your imagination.”
Dickie was incredulous. He just stared at Butty, then said, “Are you telling me I went into that crowd and made up the whole story about the conductress and the bus and those people being run down?”
Butty was laughing. “Well, someone did, didn’t they?”
Dickie snapped, “You must think I’m mad.”
Butty shook his head, “Oh, you didn’t do it consciously. Perhaps someone else even started it off. An odd phrase— ‘These damn’ buses. Shouldn’t be on the High Street. That caused the accident.’ I don’t know, I’m only ad libbing. But you have an inventive mind and you probably started off the crowd and they responded and you accepted their statements and built upon them and between you in no time you had worked out a story which in their condition they saw as pictures in their minds.”
“I saw them.” The publisher was looking hard at Butty. He was entertaining some theory of his own now, and by the look of things it would not be in Butty’s favor.
Butty said, “That was it. All in seconds a story built up, and those who had been influenced accepted it and believed they saw the events invented.”
Dickie was a little dazed. “I can’t really accept that.” He began to protest, as anyone would in his situation. “I mean, being responsible for all that hysteria.” He was shuddering, Sick inside, thinking, “Great God, if it’s true and it comes out in the papers.” Then he said, suspicious, “But people aren’t normally responsive to suggestions like that. If I went into the street right now and shouted to people that a bus was mowing down pedestrians on the zebra crossing, they’d take one look then—”