Standing by the worn crease, with the ferrule of his incongruously urban umbrella thrusting inquisitively at the cavity left by a leg stump, Appleby continued to eye his host with a steady glance. Would this Juniper, he was wondering, have what it would take? The question was decidedly that.
‘Appleby? Sir John Appleby?’ the pitch of Juniper’s voice had shot up queerly. He was plainly startled.
‘Yes. It’s odd that you should have heard of me.’
‘Surely no odder than this pantomime, as you call it. May I ask why you have presented yourself in this fashion at Splaine Croft?’
So far, so good, Appleby thought. He’s a strung-up type, and already he has something on his mind. But he doesn’t take things lying down. If he thought me a little younger than I am, he’d be quite ready to turn me out. Except that he guesses something, really. I think he guesses.
Aloud, he said: ‘In this fashion? It’s a fair question, certainly. The answer, Mr Juniper, is that it absolutely mustn’t be suspected that either Scotland Yard or any of the security services has contacted you. As for why I’m here at all – well, I’m afraid that involves rather bad news. Or worrying news, anyway.’
‘Is it about my–?’ Juniper checked himself, and appeared to articulate with difficulty. ‘Is it about my brother?’
‘I am sorry to say it is. Your brother has vanished.’
For a moment it seemed to Appleby that Juniper was completely at sea – as if he had suddenly been addressed in a language unknown to him. ‘Disappeared?’ When at length he spoke his voice was oddly mechanical. ‘Howard disappeared? It’s not possible.’
‘It is possible, and it has happened.’ Appleby was now uncompromisingly brisk. ‘No doubt the news is a shock, but you have to face it. Professor Juniper walked out of his laboratory at noon on Wednesday. That’s three days ago. And he hasn’t been seen since.’
‘But surely it’s not – not necessarily sinister? Mayn’t there be some mistake? Howard’s gone to a conference, and failed to leave word. Something like that. There are a hundred possible explanations.’
‘Mr Juniper, why has this news been such a shock to you?’
Juniper had started unconsciously to walk down the length of the cricket pitch, and Appleby was keeping up with him. But now he halted, and the two men faced each other.
‘A shock to me? Well, of course – if it’s true.’
‘Isn’t there something more to it than that? Doesn’t this come, Mr Juniper, as – well, something you’ve feared for a long time?’
‘That Howard might’ – Juniper hesitated – ‘might cut and run? And in a way that sets the head of Scotland Yard on his heels? For that’s what you are, aren’t you?’
‘Something of the sort, Mr Juniper. And, if you want to know the size of the thing, I may say that I am dealing with the matter on the direct instructions of the Prime Minister. Your brother is decidedly among the people who mustn’t disappear – not for twelve hours, let alone seventy-two. To put it quite simply, there’s a headline we just can’t afford to see in the newspapers.’
‘A headline?’ Juniper seemed merely bewildered again.
‘Top Secret Scientist Missing. Something like that.’
‘Of course, I know that Howard’s at the top. And I know what his work is. It was all – it was all in my head this afternoon.’
‘This afternoon?’ Appleby spoke sharply.
‘No, no – it’s nothing relevant. Just because of what some young people were discussing.’ With a great effort, Juniper seemed to pull himself together. ‘Why do you think I have been anxious about Howard? Am I supposed to have been suspecting that he might bolt to Russia? Or merely that he might go mad?’
‘Merely that he might go mad.’
Juniper took a deep breath. ‘You’re frank,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to be too.’
‘Thank you. And madness – real madness – need have nothing to do with it. Indeed, it’s rather unlikely. But serious nervous breakdown is another matter. Professor Juniper probably works under considerable pressure–’
‘Considerable pressure be damned!’ Juniper’s promise of frankness realized itself abruptly in sudden and surprising passion. ‘You know what Howard has been drawn into, as well as I do. If he has gone mad, I don’t blame him. Perhaps it’s the best thing he can do. And I say be damned to you all. Be damned to your Prime Minister and his Cabinet, and be damned to their opposite numbers in every corner of the globe. And be damned to you and me for suffering them. The guilt’s immeasurable. My guilt’s immeasurable.’
‘You’re not your brother’s keeper.’
But Juniper took a deep breath. It was, Appleby thought, as if something that had been bottled up in this quiet schoolmaster was bursting out in sustained vehemence. ‘Yes, I am. At that level we’re all each other’s keeper. And we’re all what the journalists call guilty men. Howard is an honest scientist. He has the misfortune to be also a very good one – in his own line, the best of his age. And devoted, dedicated. Perhaps only I know the sheer toil that has gone to his achievement. And what happens? He is persuaded, on his conscience, to apply himself to devising defence against bacteriological warfare. What does that mean? It means – it means what I was telling some young people only this morning. It means straight out thinking on the means of waging that warfare. Isn’t that so?’
‘It is undoubtedly so – God help us all.’ Appleby gave his answer soberly. ‘Perhaps those aren’t the official terms. But the fact is just that. Preparation for defence, and preparation for attack: one can’t pass the finest blade between them. And if the thing has driven your brother mad, I’m with you in every damn. The question is, though, just what, as practical men, can we do about the existing situation? May we go on to consider that?’
There was a pause. Appleby had been studying his man as he spoke. And his conclusions encouraged him. This Juniper, too, looked as if he had devotion and dedication in him. He wasn’t, perhaps, a strong man. But he would put up a stiff fight against his own weakness. And that, it seemed to Appleby, was pretty well the definition of courage. He decided to plunge with Miles Juniper.
‘But what is the existing situation?’ Juniper was entirely controlled again. ‘You say that Howard has vanished, and you suggest it may be a matter of a serious nervous breakdown. I’ve heard of that sort of thing happening – with or without complete loss of memory going along with it. There’s some technical term for it.’
‘Fugue, I think. It may be simply hysterical. In that case it usually doesn’t last long; the chap may get back on an even keel without treatment, and it may never happen again. On the other hand, it may be a symptom of something more serious blowing up. It’s clear that previous history is important. So, if your brother doesn’t turn up at once, we shall want you to tell all you know about him – about his health and personality and so on – to the experts.’
Juniper nodded. ‘I can see that – of course. And I’ll do all I can. I only wish you’d brought those experts along.’
‘I rather have it in mind to get you to them.’
‘Good. I’m ready. There’s not much doing here at the moment. And of course I’d come at once even if there was.’ Juniper paused. ‘But it’s still only one hypothesis, isn’t it?’
‘This of sudden nervous illness? Certainly it is.’ Appleby was now striding across the cricket field, with Juniper keeping pace with him. ‘There are other possibilities we have to think of. Serious accident, for instance, in some exceptional circumstances that delay identification. And it’s true that, with a man like your brother, my people in London think in terms of the ports and airfields at once. You won’t judge me offensive if I say that we have already been hard at work on any background that might suggest that sort of cut and run. And I see no evidence whatever that–’
‘That Howard has nipped off with his bugs to Moscow?’ Juniper spoke without resentment; it was clear that he was merely amused. ‘Or, better perhaps, to some nasty small country that can’t afford anything more spectacular? No, Sir John’ – Juniper was serious again – ‘there’s nothing in that particular nightmare, as far as Howard’s concerned. We can cut it out. So would you mind telling me more of the facts – and what you propose?’
Appleby raised his umbrella and pointed. ‘May I propose that we walk over and have a look at that swimming pool? I take no chances in an affair like this. Even to your secretary, please, I remain just another inquiring parent.’
They walked across the August grass, faintly brown. From the edge of the field a breeze, still warm, brought the scent of grass-mowings now rotting. It was familiar and precious, and for a moment Appleby had an odd sense that he was really doing what he was pretending to do: looking over a school to which he was thinking of sending a son. He had indeed done it often enough – but his own children were beyond private school age now. ‘I like everything here,’ he said suddenly. ‘And I wish I wasn’t bringing you this bad news – that I wasn’t merely pretending to be a parent.’
Juniper looked at him rather oddly. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘My secretary took you for a grandparent, actually. But’ – he spoke with a touch of mockery – ‘no doubt that’s the beard.’
Appleby smiled. ‘I do apologize for it again. And I’d repeat that it’s a fantastic degree of caution. There are people – as I’ll explain to you – who would be very interested indeed in the notion of a Professor Howard Juniper vanished into the blue, and of Scotland Yard hurrying down to see his brother. But, to the best of my knowledge, the disappearance is a secret still. I’ll explain that too. It will bring me to my real proposal.’
‘I’m waiting for that,’ Juniper said.
The pool was drained and empty. But the garden boy who was cleaning out the mud and leaves had gone away, and they were again quite alone. Only from the school there came a sudden faint confusion of voices. The holiday crowd had emerged from tea. Perhaps they had discovered the prosperous Mr Clwyd’s Rolls Royce.
Appleby paced out the length of the pool. He might have been a veritable Mr Clwyd, checking up with mercantile caution upon the dimensions as declared in the school prospectus. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘how your brother lives: an unmarried man like yourself – and like yourself, right on the job. But – I gather – as something of a recluse. Certainly rather an aloof figure, as far as the staff at the research station goes.’
Juniper nodded. ‘Quite so. And I understand it very well. Howard and I are worlds apart in intellectual endowment. That hardly needs saying. But in temperament I imagine that we are notably akin. And that sort of shyness, or whatever it is, grows on both of us with age.’
Again Appleby smiled. ‘I think I’d have guessed as much. And, at the moment, there’s one important consequence. With the exception of Dr Clandon, his principal assistant, there’s as yet nobody to know that the professor’s absence isn’t perfectly regular. Clandon covered up at once with the small domestic staff; and the scientific people have precisely the notion you had: that your brother’s at a conference, or something of the sort. So there we are. At the moment, no sensation. And no alerting of the relevant espionage people.’
Juniper drew a long breath, ‘Surely not that? It sounds like a shocker. There can’t really be – foreign agents who would be interested in the idea of my brother wandering about ill?’
Appleby shook his head rather grimly. ‘Shocker or not, there certainly are. And I’m taking no risks. I’m going to find your brother before they do. With luck, I’m going to find him before anybody knows he has to be found. If you will help, that is to say.’
‘I’ve already said I’ll help in any way I can.’ Juniper was suddenly impatient. ‘Good God, man – does it need saying? Howard and I have gone our different ways, and no longer see a great deal of each other. But we’re closer to one another than perhaps most brothers are.’
‘So far, so good. You see, although Clandon is doing his best, we can’t cover up for much longer.’
‘But is that really the right thing, Sir John – really necessary? Surely if Howard is missing – and perhaps, as you suggest, a very sick man – it’s in his interest and that of everybody else that there should be an alarm and an extensive search?’ Juniper seemed now perplexed, anxious, and on the verge of renewed anger.
‘There’s an extensive search, all right.’ Appleby strolled across the grass verge of the swimming pool and glanced into the gloomy changing shed, so that it was almost as if he suspected Professor Howard Juniper of being in hiding there. ‘But – I can’t too emphatically repeat – I’d rather know where he is before it becomes known that he isn’t where he ought to be.’
‘Very well. You are the judge. But I record that I consider it thoroughly dangerous.’
‘You protest?’
‘I don’t protest. I simply put that on the record.’ For a moment Juniper seemed entirely the rather pedantic schoolmaster. ‘Now, go ahead.’
But Appleby, for some reason, paused to take a wider view of the scene. He raised his umbrella and pointed at a beech wood beyond the little river from which Splaine Croft took its name. He might have been talking timber. Then he turned and looked at the school. ‘I think I heard some boys?’ he asked. ‘You have holiday boarders?’
‘Only a handful.’ Juniper was impatient.
‘So the school is fairly empty?’
‘There’s certainly oceans of room.’ Juniper glanced at Appleby and gave a sudden exclamation. ‘Great heavens! You don’t imagine that – that I’m hiding my brother – sheltering him?’
Appleby smiled faintly. ‘You are, if I may say so, Mr Juniper, most promisingly acute. And I try to imagine everything under the sun. It’s my job.’
‘Very well. You can bring down the whole flying squad – if that’s what it’s called – and search the place. But, meanwhile, and while you’re pursuing some damned fantasy, Howard may be in real and sober danger.’
‘It’s not a point I’m likely to overlook. And we’re not, I hope, going to quarrel. Let me come at once to what I want you to do. I want you – just for a vital few days – to take your brother’s place.’
Juniper stared at his visitor, thunderstruck. ‘Take Howard’s place! I’m to be involved in pantomime too! It’s impossible. And there’s no sense in it. You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m perfectly serious, and you know it. And it can’t be impossible, since you’ve done it before.’
‘Done it before?’ Juniper now looked bewildered. ‘Just how much have you ferreted out about Howard and me?’
‘I know that you are identical twins, and amazingly like each other. I know that when you were both up at Cambridge you played some famous tricks on the strength of it. And I know that it went along with a certain amount of regular theatrical activity – the Footlights, and so forth. Do you happen to have kept up your amateur acting?’
‘No, I haven’t – although Howard has, to a certain extent. He is altogether more versatile than I am.’
Appleby was carefully testing the flexibility of the diving board. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘whether that tells us anything about the probabilities or possibilities of your brother’s situation now?’
‘Yet more false beards, and so forth, Sir John?’ Juniper seemed to intend to speak ironically, but to be veering towards anger again instead. ‘It’s certainly conceivable that Howard is play-acting. He may have disguised himself as a commercial traveller in order to seduce the wife of a greengrocer. Or a dozen other things – provided you’re willing to ignore plain common sense. If Howard is himself, he may be doing something slightly freakish, but not anything downright irresponsible. I’m certain of that. If he’s had this nervous breakdown, it’s at least my guess that any sort of deliberate disguising of himself is most unlikely. I mean, simply in the light of what sick men do and don’t do. But I’m not an expert. I may be wrong there.’
Appleby nodded thoughtfully. ‘I imagine you have clinical experience on your side. But there’s an exception to every rule. And Professor Juniper, of course, must be an exceptional man to start with. Are you often anxious about him?’
The sudden question took Juniper by surprise, as it was meant to do. But his answer seemed to come frankly enough. ‘Well, yes – I am. Ever since he has been on this secret work. We’ve already touched on that, haven’t we? The moral burden must be almost unbearably onerous. If I had to carry it, I think it would make me completely unscrupulous.’
‘Unscrupulous?’ Appleby took up the word curiously. ‘A strong sense of moral responsibility would make you unscrupulous?’
Juniper was frowning, rather as if his perception was still obscure to him. ‘Yes – in a sense. I’d feel that I lived in a world of moral imbeciles, against whom I must defend myself by any means in my power – including, perhaps, just clearing out. Something like that.’
‘You have a strong sense of sympathy with your brother?’
‘Haven’t I made that clear?’ Juniper turned away impatiently.
‘Then you will come to the rescue in the way I’ve suggested?’
‘Yes, I will. If you can show me it isn’t nonsense, that is to say.’
‘Very well.’ Appleby turned away from the swimming pool and began to walk in the direction of the school. He seemed to be confident that the interview would now soon be over. ‘What I have to show you is that, if he is known to be wandering round in some more or less helpless state, your brother’s danger is acute. I can do that – although you may feel that what I have to tell you about foreign agents, and so forth, is like stuff out of a book. But there’s more of – well, more of the same order. Professor Juniper has vanished. That’s strange enough. But there’s something that takes a good deal more swallowing – and that makes the dangerousness of the situation extend far beyond your brother himself.’
Juniper stopped in his tracks, and Appleby saw that he had quite suddenly gone deadly pale. ‘You can’t mean–’
‘Yes. You yourself came quite near to mentioning it, if only as a sort of joke. Your brother may have taken something with him. Something that ought never to have left a locked refrigerator in his laboratory.’
‘It can’t be true!’ Juniper’s voice had risen in pitch again. ‘Howard would never – Why, it’s madness!’
Appleby turned and looked at him steadily. ‘Isn’t madness,’ he asked, ‘one of the possibilities we’ve been talking about?’
The summer sun, low in a clear sky, was at play on the rambling red-tiled roof of Splaine Croft. It made the place blaze like fire. From the paddock on the other side of the house came the shouts of boys playing tip and run. Appleby, his bowler hat on his head, walked towards the building as if his next task was to check up on its sanitation.
For some moments Juniper walked silently beside him. When he spoke, it was still incoherently. The man – Appleby saw – was really shaken.
‘I won’t believe it! You said something out of a book. It’s that – but absurd, banal. The demented scientist with the vital secret in his pocket? I just won’t take it. I doubt the whole thing…your whole visit…who are you… It’s a hoax – a hoax in filthy taste.’
Appleby allowed a minute for this disturbance to subside. ‘No,’ he said presently. ‘This is quite literally no joke, Mr Juniper. You know that, really. But I admit that it is all close neighbour to absurdity. The atom bomb in the attaché case. They made rather a good film out of that, although not perhaps a very plausible one. The bomb was certainly a bit much. And of course – inside the story, I mean – it could have been checked up on at once. One can go in and count such things, I suppose, on their racks. Bombs don’t obligingly breed for you.’
There was a silence during which Juniper was clearly striving for self-control. ‘That assistant,’ he brought out presently. ‘Clandon, did you call him? Is he certain?’
‘No. He can’t be certain. The whole technical set-up, it seems, is such that he can’t be certain. Your brother is the only person who can be certain.’
‘I accept it. I accept your story…the situation.’ Juniper, although he spoke firmly, was like a man slightly dazed. ‘And I’ll go – I’ll go at once, and hold the fort as best I can. Although I never expected to be the cuckoo, so to speak, in my brother’s scientific nest.’
Appleby smiled grimly. ‘It’s not a very exact image. But I’m glad you’re game. Thank you.’
‘I’ll need a lot of briefing. But I suppose I can get it from this fellow Clandon. He’s to be in the secret, I suppose?’
‘He must be. But he’s entirely reliable. I know him quite well. A man of some imagination, as well as a competent scientist. He’s absolutely willing to see you through as Professor Howard Juniper for a few days.’
‘You know…it’s funny.’ Juniper had come to a halt and was gazing with unseeing eyes at Splaine Croft. ‘Did I tell you how I travelled from Oxford today with a lot of young people? I was led into talking to them about all this sort of thing. The whole nightmare, I mean, of these new ways of making war – if war is not far too clean a name for the horror. I think I even mentioned having a brother who was a little concerned in it. The thing slipped out – although not, I hope, indiscreetly. It shows that my anxieties about Howard have been very near the surface of my mind. But I never dreamed of this – that my brother may be carrying round death and destruction with him.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t.’ Appleby, who appeared to be a born actor, meditatively stroked his false beard. ‘It would be a distinctly morbid mind that would think up anything of the sort clean out of the blue.’
‘But it’s true?’ Juniper appealed oddly for confirmation, as if he had a lingering hope that he had got the whole thing wrong. ‘Howard may actually have taken – have taken something almost as destructive as an atom bomb?’
‘Almost as destructive!’ Appleby paused, apparently thinking better of going on. ‘Clandon will be the man to tell you about that.’
Juniper was very pale again. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I think my own imagination can cope with the possible dimensions of the thing. Now, how had I better get away? I’m ready this instant.’
Appleby nodded approvingly. ‘Mr Clwyd,’ he said, ‘will take a quick look at a form room and a dormitory, and drive off. You’ll get a telegram within half an hour. It will be a genuine telegram from – shall we say Dorchester? But it will have begun its life on the short-wave transmitter in my car. Would the sudden death of an old friend serve?’
‘Quite adequately, I suppose. And he can be given any name under the sun. Even Miss Grimstone – that’s my secretary – hasn’t a line on my whole former acquaintance.’
‘Very good. You will pack your bag, and mention to the relevant people that you are an executor of your late friend’s estate, and that after the funeral you may be detained by business for some days.’
Juniper frowned. ‘I suppose,’ he asked, ‘there must be a funeral?’
And Appleby caught his meaning. ‘Absit omen,’ he said.