Brangwyn had great belief in hygienic living as the only basis of efficiency, and insisted that Murchison should take a brisk constitutional after his breakfast as the best start for the day's work. Murchison, who was taking his role as laboratory animal literally, took his hat, nothing loath, and set off for Regent's Park as instructed, truly thankful that this should be his task rather than the hated quill-driving.
As he let himself out of the front door he collided with a large wooden shutter that was in process of detaching itself from the facade of the second-hand book-shop. Out from under the shutter, like a woodlouse from under a brick, came a smallish, ferrety-faced son of the people, an obvious Cockney, who stared at him sharply.
‘Sorry,’ said Murchison, though it was no fault of his that the collision had taken place.
‘Didn't know you was there. No damage done, I ‘ope?’ said the small man, continuing to eye him sharply.
‘None at all, thanks,’ said Murchison, rubbing the dirt off his slouch hat, to which it had not made much difference.
As he went down the street he had the feeling that the sharp, beady eyes of the small man were observing every step he took, and, taking the opportunity to glance over his shoulder as he rounded the corner, he found that he had not been mistaken. The man stood with the shutter still in his arms, gazing after him fixedly.
Instead of bearing north for Regent's Park as instructed, Murchison turned left at the end of the block, and then left again, thus bringing himself back into the far end of the road from which he had started. No one was outside the second-hand book-shop now, and Murchison passed silent-footed in front of it and turned in at the door. A large cat sat washing itself on the mat; he took a long stride over it and found himself alone among the musty piles of dog-eared literature.
He looked round for the ferrety man, but there was no sign of him. Then, in the silence, there came a sound that explained his absence, the faint creaking of a telephone being dialled. Then came a Cockney voice.
‘That Mr. Astley? Monks speaking sir. E's just gorn out. Yes, sir, thank you, sir, I will,’ followed by the sound of the receiver being hung up.
Murchison took one stride over the abluting cat and was gone. It would not do for Monks, if that was the name of Brangwyn's manager, to know that he had been overheard. Moreover, he had learnt all that he needed to know.
He opened and shut the door of Brangwyn's maisonette as quietly as he could, and prayed that the creaking of the stairs under his bulk would not convey any intelligence to the prick-ears next door.
As he opened the door into the lounge, Brangwyn, who was sitting over the fire with a cigarette, glanced up in surprise from his paper.
‘Hullo, Murchison!’ he said, ‘don't tell me you've been round Regent's Park in this time!’
‘No,’ said Murchison, ‘I've not been in Regent's Park, but I've been somewhere a dashed sight more useful. I say, sir, you know that corkscrew staircase of yours, leading down to the nether regions where you have your performances, does it lead down through the book-shop or the restaurant?’
‘It leads down through the book-shop, hidden behind the shelves. But why do you ask?’
‘I think I've solved the problem as to how information leaks out of the dining-room.’
‘How?’
‘The fellow in the book-shop is a wrong'un.’
‘What makes you think that, Murchison?’
‘Well, sir, I collided with him and his shutter as I came out of your front door, and I didn't like the way he looked at me. I thought he was a dashed sight more interested in me and my doings than he had any need to be. So, instead of going straight ahead at the corner, I swung round the block and took him in the rear. And he was busy telephoning our pal Astley to tell him I'd just gone out.’
‘But, good Lord, Murchison, are you sure? There isn't a telephone in the shop. I never saw any occasion to put one in.’
‘Well, he has, if you haven't. There's one there now.’
‘That explains a good many things that have puzzled me,’ said Brangwyn thoughtfully. ‘But I should have thought that Monks, of all men, had reason to be loyal to me.’
‘Is he under an obligation to you?’
‘Yes, Murchison, a very great obligation.’
‘Then that's probably the cause of the trouble. Gratitude disagrees very actively with some people, sir, and that little cock-sparrow, as sharp as a needle and as common as mud, is sure to have an inferiority complex. I'd as soon have a warmed-up serpent in my bosom as a fellow with an inferiority complex who's under an obligation to me.’
‘And Astley, who is a very great deal shrewder than I am, has worked on that inferiority complex. I'm not shrewd, Murchison, and no one knows it better than I do. If I had been shrewder, Ursula would never have got into her trouble.’
‘No, sir, you aren't a bit shrewd. It's amazed me, sometimes, how a fellow who knows as much as you do should see so little. You need a secretary, sir, and I'm glad you do, for I shan't feel so much as if I were taking your money under false pretences.’
‘I suppose we all tend to judge others by ourselves, Murchison, and it never occurs to me that people will act the way they do.’
That's right, sir, that's your trouble. But you let me judge ‘em for you, and I'll tell you how they'll act all right, because but for the grace of God, that's how I'd act.’
Brangwyn looked curiously at the man standing over him in his filthy trench coat, cheerfully accepting all the sins in the decalogue as his natural heritage, and compared him with the idealistic Fouldes, who would not eat meat for humanitarian reasons.
‘What shall we do with Monks, Murchison? My instinct is to chuck him out and sow the place with salt.’
‘Don't you do that, sir. You let him bide. He may come in very handy.’
‘But I don't like the feeling that I'm being spied on. How can we talk in comfort if we never know when he's listening in? And, good God, how much does he know already?’
‘That's what I'm wondering, sir. Do you think he's got a private entrance on to your corkscrew stair?’
‘Might have. It's only matchboarding. Good God, what a fool I've been!’
‘Are those special papers you told me of all right. The ones you said Fouldes wanted to get hold of so badly?’
‘Yes, they're all right. They're in a safe. I'm not worried about them. The thing that's worrying me is the amount of information they've got hold of about our doings with Ursula. If they know about last night, the fat's in the fire properly.’
‘Well, if the fat's in the fire, you'll soon hear it sputtering. Personally, I don't think Astley would be interested in my comings and goings if bigger game were up.’
‘Let's hope you're right. I'm not ready to come to grips yet.’
‘I suppose you mean that I haven't come into line yet?’
‘Well, yes, frankly, Murchison, that is about it.’
‘You needn't worry about that, sir. I mayn't know much, but my intentions are all right. I may back and sidle a bit, and be a bit coy, as you might say, but I won't let you down. There's nothing I'd like so much as to wipe that brute Astley in the eye. I've never seen anybody I've disliked so much.’
‘Well, my dear lad, I'll have to take you at your word, for we shall be in the dickens of a hole if this thing blows up prematurely.’
‘I suppose your sister is well looked after? She's in safe hands, is she?’
‘She's right up on the flank of Snowdon, in a shepherd's cottage. No one knows she's there.’
‘By herself’
‘By herself in the cottage, but only a few hundred yards from the farm, and the only way to the cottage is through the farmyard, unless you're a first-class rock climber.’
‘And the farm people?’
‘Good old God-fearing Welsh. Do anything for you if they like you, and anything to you if they don't. Yes, I'd trust them, and I think you would, too.’
‘Well, I suppose you know your business best, but I shouldn't have left her alone.’
‘She won't have anyone with her.’
‘She can't have everything she wants in this wicked world.’
Brangwyn smiled inwardly.
‘Do you know what I think, sir?’ said Murchison. ‘I think that they're planning to do something while I'm out. Planning to raid you, or something. Else why does Astley want to be told when I go out?’
‘But they can't raid me in broad daylight, my dear fellow. Luigi's got about fifteen nephews in the room underneath, and they've all got knives. They'd make mincemeat of anybody who raided me. Fouldes knows the ways of the house, and he'd never risk it.’
‘Well, sir, when I go out for my constitutional tomorrow, you have all the fifteen up to keep you company. And another thing I should do, if I were you. I should put the heater out of action in the dining-room, and then Luigi will shift the dinner-table in here of his own accord, and no suspicions will be raised if we change our feeding-place. It will be an awful bore to have to make push-conversation all through meals for Monks's benefit.’
Murchison removed his trench-coat and hung it over the banister at the stair-foot, and perched his hat on the newel-post. Then he came and sat himself down in his usual chair, fished a packet of gaspers out of his pocket and lit up. Brangwyn watched him closely. Hitherto his attitude had been that of a rather grudging deference, variegated by sudden flashes of alternating resentment and loyalty. To anyone who could not look beneath the surface Murchison was an unprepossessing specimen; difficult to work with, owing to his uncertain temper, and not promising overmuch efficiency owing to lack of natural aptitude and indifferent training. But a curious change had taken place since the previous evening. He was like a man who has changed from tight boots into easy shoes. There was still the deference of the younger man to the older man; but the leadership of the expedition had passed unobserved into Murchison's hands. The practical man had taken the philosopher under his wing, and the philosopher was truly thankful to have it so.
There was no Ursula to brew coffee, so Brangwyn pulled up a tea trolley and made tea with the ubiquitous electric kettle. It was no use putting his secretary on to such a job as that. The enormous red hands were only fit to handle weapons and tools. Murchison, who would drink whatever was given him at any hour of the twenty-four, poured three large cups down his throat one after the other with great satisfaction, just as he had tossed off the rare sherry. Brangwyn realized a little dubiously that this hearty Philistine would take a good deal of fitting into Ursula's elegant sophistications, and was struck by a sudden qualm as to the wisdom of his choice. He wished it were possible to avail himself of his secretary's shrewdness of judgment upon this point, but realized that circumstances forbade it. As a matter of fact, Murchison had already expressed his opinion pretty uncompromisingly.
So Brangwyn put the matter aside, and got to business. ‘Now, Murchison,’ he said, ‘I am going to tell you what I want you to do as your part of the work. I want you to go into training as sedulously as if I were putting up a purse for you at a prize-fight.’
‘Right you are, sir. Nothing I'd like better. What I hate is hanging about and feeling I'm not earning my keep.’
‘You've got a working knowledge of psychology, haven't you?’
‘I shouldn't care to call it that. It has always interested me. My brother had got various books on the subject, which he understood about as much as the cat, and I used to read ‘em.’
‘Very good, then, we'll take that for granted. Now the thing I really want you to get up is mythology. You'll see why later. You will find a pretty representative selection of books in your quarters. Browse among them, and tell me which appeals to you most.’
‘I can tell you that right away. Thor and Odin, and all that crowd, and, after them, the Egyptians.’
‘Do you care for the Greek?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Or the Keltic fairy lore?’
‘Don't know anything about it. Shouldn't imagine I would. I could never stick stories when I was a kid. I like something with a kick to it.’
‘Well, sample it, anyway, and see what you make of it. Or, to be more accurate, what it makes of you. Then the next thing I want you to do is to practise meditation. Can you visualize clearly?’
‘Yes, awfully clearly. Always could. When I was a kid I hardly knew fact from fancy.’
‘Thank goodness. That will cut out a lot of time in your training. You can go straight ahead with the composition of place.’
‘What's that?’
‘It is the way Ignatius Loyola trained his Jesuits. Only we apply it to other ends. The Jesuits visualize New Testament scenes, and work up an extraordinary religious pressure. We visualize the old myths, and work up pressures of quite a different kind.’
‘What kind?’
‘It depends on the myth visualized.’
‘Supposing I meditate on Aphrodite rising from the foam, what happens then?’
‘You wait till you're legally married for that, my lad. I don't want a scandal. I'll tell you what to meditate on.’
‘If I meditated on Bacchus and his crew, would I get drunk free of charge?’
‘If you were sufficiently highly trained you could produce a very curious kind of inebriation. If you were not so highly trained, you would probably find you were getting in with a drinking set and taking more than was good for you.’
‘The feller I keep on meditating on without meaning to is my old bull.’
‘What in the world's that?’
‘Didn't I tell you? Oh, no. It was Miss Brangwyn I told. When I was in the British Museum the day you found me, I had a most extraordinary experience with one of those winged bulls of Babylon near the entrance. It was very foggy, and the light was funny, and I thought the brute was alive. In fact, we kind of palled on. I saw his old face in the dusk, and thought he was human, and was just going to speak to him when I saw he was an exhibit, and that I'd been had. And yet I hadn't been had. There was something there, and I can't tell you what it was. But it was real, and I touched it. And it was from that that all the fun began.’
‘So that explains it. Good God! What an extraordinary story.’
‘Explains what, sir?’
‘I've been working on the winged bull formula with Ursula all the time.’
‘I'm afraid I'm none the wiser.’
‘No, my dear boy, you can't be expected to be. But let me put it as clearly as I can. All these animal gods are psychological formulae just as H2O is a chemical formula. In the old myths the bull is always a phallic symbol, meaning crude sexual force. The eagle's wings are spiritual aspiration - the flight to the sun. The human head is human intelligence. Put the three together, and how does the formula read? The powerful bull form of the natural instincts soaring on eagle's wings of spiritual aspirations, with consciousness poised between them.’
‘What the psychologists call sublimation?’
‘No, my dear boy, that is just exactly what it isn't. The symbol of sublimation is the white-winged angel of no particular sex, so dear to the Sunday-school illustrators.’
‘Then what is the symbol of repression?’
‘The dear little cherub who ends at the neck, whom you have already quoted to me.’
‘Oh, that constipated little beast? He's no use to anybody. But tell me, what does my bull stand for?’
‘For full function on all levels of consciousness.’
‘In other words, for holy matrimony?’
‘Yes, Murchison, that is exactly what it does stand for, absolutely literally. Only not, perhaps, as understood by the prayer-book, which plainly indicates that it regards matrimony as faute de mieux.’
‘The less there is of matrimony in it, the more there is of holy, or so I've always understood.’
‘And the more there is of holy, the less there is of wholesomeness, as you may have observed. No, Murchison, we keep our elemental bull, and we don't let the wings and the head go soaring off as a cherub, who is bound, as you say, to be constipated, having an intake, but no output.’
‘Yes, I think we'll stick to my bull. He's a decent old beast, though a trifle broad in the beam. Funny, isn't it, that ever since I made his acquaintance he keeps on bobbing up?’
‘How so?’
‘Well, as soon as ever I start to take a look around my quarters, I open a book, and there he is, as affable as you please. And as soon as I sit down to a meal with your sister, he pops out of her frock. But he goes back a jolly sight quicker than he came out, I'll admit that.’
‘What's all this? Ursula has never told me a word about it.’
‘There was nothing much to tell. She has him for a book-plate, too, hasn't she, now I come to think of it? By Jove, the place is stiff with bulls. What does it all mean?’
‘What did you say when you saw Ursula's Gnostic gem?’
‘I didn't say anything. I've got that much manners. But I'm afraid I stared at it rather hard, and she asked me what about it, so I told her what I've just told you, and she seemed rather interested, but I couldn't get much out of her, and I didn't like to pump her.’
‘Yes, I dare say she was interested! But the little puss never told me a word.’
‘I say, sir, what does the cow symbolism mean?’
‘The cow-goddess is Hathor, the lower form of Isis, the moon goddess. She is the Mighty Mother, the all-fertile.’
‘In other words, the earth in spring?’
‘Yes, Murchison, the earth in spring.’
‘And you want my bull for your cow?’
‘No, Murchison, I do not want the bull god Apis for the cow Hathor. I want the winged bull of the sun for the moon-goddess Isis, in whom the cow-horns have become the lunar crescent on her brow. Do you understand the symbolism?’
‘Not altogether.’
‘You will if you don't let me down.’