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The man stopped his obsessive twitching of his fingers. He cocked his head slightly on one side and then seemed to need to go on a long journey inside himself to find a voice, which when found turned out to be a thin and soft little one.
He said, "That is the first thing anybody has said to me for seventeen years, three months and two days, five hours, nineteen minutes and twenty seconds. I've been counting."
He closed the door softly again.
Richard virtually ran through Second Court.
When he reached First Court he steadied himself and slowed down to a walking pace.
The chill night air was rasping in his lungs and there was no point in running. He hadn't managed to talk to Susan because Reg's phone wasn't working, and this was another thing that he had been mysteriously coy about. That at least was susceptible of a rational explanation. He probably hadn't paid his phone bill.
Richard was about to emerge out on to the street when instead he decided to pay a quick visit to the porter's lodge, which was tucked away inside the great archway entrance into the college. It was a small hutchlike place filled with keys, messages and a single electric bar heater. A radio nattered to itself in the background.
"Excuse me," he said to the large black-suited man standing behind the counter with his arms folded. "I..."
"Yes, Mr MacDuff, what can I do for you?"
In his present state of mind Richard would have been hard-pressed himself to remember his own name and was startled for a moment. However, college porters are legendary for their ability to perform such feats of memory, and for their tendency to show them off at the slightest provocation.
"Is there," said Richard, "a horse anywhere in the college--that you know of? I mean, you would know if there was a horse in the college, wouldn't you?"
The porter didn't blink.
"No, sir, and yes, sir. Anything else I can help you with, Mr MacDuff, sir?"
"Er, no," said Richard and tapped his fingers a couple of times on the counter. "No. Thank you. Thank you very much for your help. Nice to see you again, er... Bob," he hazarded. "Good-night, then."
He left.
The porter remained perfectly still with his arms folded, but shaking his head a very, very little bit.
"Here's some coffee for you, Bill," said another porter, a short wiry one, emerging from an inner sanctum with a steaming cup. "Getting a bit colder tonight?"
"I think it is, Fred, thanks," said Bill, taking the cup.
He took a sip. "You can say what you like about people, they don't get any less peculiar. Fellow in here just now asking if there was a horse in the college."
"Oh yes?" Fred sipped at his own coffee, and let the steam smart his eyes. "I had a chap in here earlier. Sort of strange foreign priest. Couldn't understand a word he said at first. But he seemed happy just to stand by the fire and listen to the news on the radio."
"Foreigners, eh."
"In the end I told him to shoot off. Standing in front of my fire like that. Suddenly he says is that really what he must do? Shoot off? I said, in my best Bogart voice, 'You better believe it, buddy.'"
"Really? Sounded more like Jimmy Cagney to me."
"No, that's my Bogart voice. This is my Jimmy Cagney voice--'You better believe it, buddy.'"
Bill frowned at him. "Is that your Jimmy Cagney voice? I always thought that was your Kenneth McKellar voice."
"You don't listen properly, Bill, you haven't got the ear. This is Kenneth McKellar. 'Oh, you take the high road and I'll take the low road...'"
"Oh, I see. I was thinking of the Scottish Kenneth McKellar. So what did this priest fellow say then, Fred?"
"Oh, he just looked me straight in the eyes, Bill, and said in this strange sort of..."
"Skip the accent, Fred, just tell me what he said, if it's worth hearing."
"He just said he did believe me."
"So. Not a very interesting story then, Fred."
"Well, maybe not. I only mention it because he also said that he'd left his horse in a washroom and would I see that it was all right."
CHAPTER
11
Gordon Way drifted miserably along the dark road, or rather, tried to drift.
He felt that as a ghost--which is what he had to admit to himself he had become--he should be able to drift. He knew little enough about ghosts, but he felt that if you were going to be one then there ought to be certain compensations for not having a physical body to lug around, and that among them ought to be the ability simply to drift. But no, it seemed he was going to have to walk every step of the way.
His aim was to try and make it to his house. He didn't know what he would do when he got there, but even ghosts have to spend the night somewhere, and he felt that being in familiar surroundings might help. Help what, he didn't know. At least the journey gave him an objective, and he would just have to think of another one when he arrived.
He trudged despondently from lamppost to lamppost, stopping at each one to look at bits of himself.
He was definitely getting a bit wraithlike.
At times he would fade almost to nothing, and would seem to be little more than a shadow playing in the mist, a dream of himself that could just evaporate and be gone. At other times he seemed to be almost solid and real again. Once or twice he would try leaning against a lamppost, and would fall straight through it if he wasn't careful.
At last, and with great reluctance, he actually began to turn his mind to what it was that had happened. Odd, that reluctance. He really didn't want to think about it. Psychologists say that the mind will often try to suppress the memory of traumatic events, and this, he thought, was probably the answer. After all, if having a strange figure jump out of the boot of your own car and shoot you dead didn't count as a traumatic experience, he'd like to know what did.
He trudged on wearily.
He tried to recall the figure to his mind's eye, but it was like probing a hurting tooth, and he thought of other things.
Like, was his will up-to-date? He couldn't remember, and made a mental note to call his lawyer tomorrow, and then made another mental note that he would have to stop making mental notes like that.
How would his company survive without him? He didn't like either of the possible answers to that very much.
What about his obituary? There was a thought that chilled him to his bones, wherever they'd got to. Would he be able to get hold of a copy? What would it say? They'd better give him a good write-up, the bastards. Look at what he'd done. Single-handedly saved the British software industry: huge exports, charitable contributions, research scholarships, crossing the Atlantic in a solar-powered submarine (failed, but a good try)--all sorts of things. They'd better not go digging up that Pentagon stuff again or he'd get his lawyer on to them. He made a mental note to call him in the mor...
No.
Anyway, can a dead person sue for libel? Only his lawyer would know, and he was not going to be able to call him in the morning. He knew with a sense of creeping dread that of all the things he had left behind in the land of the living it was the telephone that he was going to miss the most, and then he turned his mind determinedly back to where it didn't want to go.
The figure.
It seemed to him that the figure had been almost like a figure of Death itself; or was that his imagination playing tricks with him? Was he dreaming that it was a cowled figure? What would any figure, whether cowled or just casually dressed, be doing in the boot of his car?
At that moment a car zipped past him on the road and disappeared off into the night, taking its oasis of light with it. He thought with longing of the warm, leather-upholstered, climate-controlled comfort of his own car abandoned on the road behind him, and then a sudden extraordinary thought struck him.
Was there any way he could hitch a lift? Could anyone actually see him? How would anyone react if they could? Well, there was only one way to find out.
He heard another car coming up in the distance behind him and
turned to face it. The twin pools of hazy lights approached through the mist and Gordon gritted his phantom teeth and stuck his thumb out at them.
The car swept by regardless.
Nothing.
Angrily he made an indistinct V sign at the receding red rear lights, and realised, looking straight through his own upraised arm, that he wasn't at his most visible at the moment. Was there perhaps some effort of will he could make to render himself more visible when he wanted to? He screwed up his eyes in concentration, then realised that he would need to have his eyes open in order to judge the results. He tried again, forcing his mind as hard as he could, but the results were unsatisfactory.
Though it did seem to make some kind of rudimentary, glowing difference, he couldn't sustain it, and it faded almost immediately, however much he piled on the mental pressure. He would have to judge the timing very carefully if he was going to make his presence felt, or at least seen.
Another car approached from behind, travelling fast. He turned again, stuck his thumb out, waited till the moment was right and willed himself visible.
The car swerved slightly, and then carried on its way, only a little more slowly. Well, that was something. What else could he do? He would go and stand under a lamppost for a start, and he would practise. The next car he would get for sure.
CHAPTER
