Джон Пристли - The Doomsday Men

Once inside Malcolm’s room, Jimmy Edlin lit a pipe and the other two lit cigarettes, and they settled down cosily. Before he began talking, Edlin had a good look at both of them, though he had already done this once before, in the dining-room. “Don’t mind me, boys,” he said. “Yes, I’m looking you over again. You see, if I’m to talk, I’ve to trust you. I’m up against something, believe me. And there’s more to it than I thought there was, and that’s saying a lot. But I know you two are all right, and you’ve done me a good turn. Does either of you know anything about a sort of religious society called the Brotherhood of the Judgment?”

Neither Malcolm nor Hooker had ever heard of it, and said so.

“I’ll try again,” said Edlin, puffing away at his pipe. “The head of it-and I’ve not seen him so I can’t tell you what he’s like-is living somewhere up this way. They call him Father John-which doesn’t get you very far-but I happen to know his name is MacMichael-hey, steady, boys!” He added this because, to his great astonishment, both his listeners had given a shout.

Malcolm began to wonder if the whole thing was simply getting out of control. This was too fantastic. It really would not do. And he told them so. “I’ve been doing a lot of travelling,” he told them. “All very rum-to me. I’ve just had five days in Hollywood with a client of ours, who seemed to be living in a sort of film nightmare, and as I stayed with him I was in the nightmare too, with one girl coming to dinner bringing a leopard with her, and another girl who said my aura was bright blue with yellow stars in it, and a chap so tight he said he could only go round on all fours, and an awful quarrel between my host and two other fellows about whether they should use real elephants or have them made of rubber; and not much sleep lately; and then I come here, feeling a fool and not quite real, and it’s all desert and I haven’t the least idea where I’ll find this MacMichael girl I’m looking for; and then you, Mr. Hooker, begin talking to me about MacMichaels and professors with wrong names who are missing; and now you, Mr. Edlin, after coming running up with people firing at you, begin talking about clocks striking and some brotherhood or whatever it is and a Father John and he turns out to be a MacMichael too-well, what I mean is , it’s all right, isn’t it?-nobody’s simply being funny, are they?-just taking advantage of the general dither I’m in-now, tell me, honestly, you fellows.”

Jimmy Edlin, taking his pipe out of his mouth, stared in astonishment at the end of this outburst; but Hooker, after grinning sympathetically, said slowly: “I know just what you feel, Mr. Darbyshire. I feel a bit that way too. But it seems all right.”

“I thought you boys were stone-cold sober,” said Edlin reproachfully. “I know I am. If you’ve started on a blind, I’ll either retire or catch up, just as you say, but I think in that case we’d better postpone the talk.”

They assured him they were completely sober. Neither of them had had a single drink that night.

“Then let’s get this straight,” said Edlin earnestly. “Do I understand that you’re both looking for this MacMichael lot? And separately? And here we are, the three of us. Now this is what they call coincidence, isn’t it? Well, coincidence my foot! I tell you, boys-and I’m older than you and I’ve seen a lot in my time-these things don’t work by chance. We were brought together for a purpose, believe me.”

“What purpose?” asked Hooker, who was obviously sceptical.

“I don’t exactly know yet. But I’ll tell you this much. And if I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t be here-running down desert roads with fellows taking potshots at me. There’s something going on-back there-” he waved a hand, presumably to indicate the distant mountains “-that’s all wrong.”

Malcolm stared, bewildered, but Hooker merely shook his head and muttered something about a possible scientific experiment.

“No, sir,” said Jimmy Edlin emphatically. “I’m not talking about scientific experiments-in fact, I don’t see where they come in-though you may. I’m talking about something that these religious fanatics are working for-I don’t say they all know about it, but some of ’em do-and whatever it is they’re at, it’s important enough to them so that they don’t stop short at murder.” And he shot the startling ugly word at them.

There was a moment’s silence, during which Edlin looked hard from one to the other of them, while they exchanged puzzled glances. Then a queer hateful thought, the ghost of which had haunted him several times when he had been awake late thinking about Andrea, came to Malcolm, to explain the girl’s reserve and secrecy and melancholy. He dismissed it hastily, though he knew it would return, probably later that night, to haunt him more fearfully than ever.

“You see,” said Jimmy Edlin gravely, “I got into this because my brother Phil, who was a reporter in Los Angeles, was murdered.” He went on to tell the story of his evening with Rushy Drew and of what happened the following night at the meeting of the Brotherhood of the Judgment, and how he had arranged to meet one of the brethren here at the hotel at Barstow. “I was a fool, of course,” he continued, “to think I’d get away with it. I was too pleased with myself, and didn’t stop to think, that was my trouble. I hired a car and came along here-I’d only just arrived when I asked you two fellows the clock question. Then I went out and met a fellow down there in the lobby-weather-beaten ordinary sort o’ fellow in the usual Western rig-out-and he stared at me hard, so I took him on one side and we exchanged the password all right, and he said he had a car there, waiting to take me up among the hills to meet Father John. There was another of ’em in the car. No sooner had we started off than I felt it was all wrong. I could feel it in my bones. And something about the look of those two fellows too. They didn’t like me, and I knew it. When we got just beyond the bridge, I shouted to ’em I’d forgotten something and asked ’em to slow up. They slowed up all right, probably without thinking, and then I made a dash for it. You heard ’em taking a pot at me. It was only being so close to the town that saved me. Of course what had happened was that after that meeting, perhaps after Kaydick had got in touch with Father John, they’d made some enquiries-perhaps sent a cable or something-and tumbled to the fact that I was an outsider. So they sent for me all right, but only to take me into that desert and leave me there-cold.”

“But you don’t really know that,” Malcolm protested. “They may have been genuinely taking you to see Father John.”

“And then tried to kill me because I decided to refuse the invitation,” Edlin retorted grimly. “No, sir. You try riding behind two fellows who know they’re going to do you in, it’s quite a different sensation from the usual pleasure trip. Even their backs look different. And just notice this. Even if they only suspected I wasn’t a real member of the Judgment troupe, they’d only to refuse to send anybody, and I’d have been stranded here, because it’s new country to me and how the hell would I know where Father John is. That’s what ordinary people, who had somebody butting into their affairs like that, would have done. Just ignored me.”

“I don’t see why these people didn’t, if you think they really had found you out,” said Hooker.

“Because I knew too much. I didn’t know a lot, but it was too much.”

“But anybody could walk into their meetings,” Malcolm pointed out. “You said that yourself.”

“Certainly. And we could all join the Brotherhood to-morrow, I reckon, and sing hymns and listen to prayers and be told that God loves us so much he might burn us up at any moment. But there’s obviously an inner circle-Brother Kaydick and his tough boys-and to be one of them you’ve probably to take an oath and all the rest of it, swear to obey orders-and you’re given a sort of password. How my brother Phil discovered it, I don’t know, probably heard two fellows in this inner circle-they’re the Servers and they have numbers, all the old bag of tricks-doing their clock-won’t-strike act together. But he did know-that, and a few other things-and they found out he knew-and went for him. And if I hadn’t had a quick hunch to-night-and broken the two hundred yards record-that would have been the last of me. And from now on, of course, that clock question is out-they’ll have changed that now.”