AS we sat in the sunny room after Irene had cried, “I knew you would,” Martin got down to tactics. He reiterated what he had already told Skeffington, that getting a majority to re-open the case was only the start. This wasn’t the sort of argument that would be settled by “counting heads”. The essential thing was to bring in men who would “carry weight”. Could Skeffington, or Martin himself, persuade Nightingale to stay neutral? Even after the night before, Martin thought it worth trying. Above all, Francis Getliffe was a key man. Get him active, and all the scientists, the Master included, would have to listen.
Within half an hour, Martin had telephoned the Cavendish, and he and Skeffington and I were on our way there. At first I was surprised that Martin had not only asked if I would care to come with them, but pressed me to. Then I realised that he had a reason. He wanted Francis at his easiest. He knew that with me Francis still sometimes talked like a young man, like the young man I still – with the illusion that invests a friend one has known since twenty – half-thought him to be. But his juniors in the college, even Martin, did not think of him in the least like that. To them – it struck me with one of the shocks of middle-age – he had become stiff and inaccessible.
Yet, when we had climbed up the steps of the old Cavendish, and walked down the dingy corridors to his room, we found him lit up with happiness. The room, which was not his laboratory but his office, was dark and shabby, a room that minor Civil Servants would have refused to live in. On the walls were graphs, scientific photographs, pictures of scientists, one of Rutherford. At one side stood two packing-cases covered with dust. On the desk, under two anglepoise lamps, were pinned down what looked like long stretches of photographic print, with up and down curves in white clear upon them.
“Have a look at this,” called Francis. No man could have been less stiff. “Isn’t this lovely?”
He explained to them, he explained to me as though I knew as much as they did, what he had found out. “It’s a new kind of source,” he was saying. “I’ve been keeping my fingers crossed, but this is it.”
They were all three talking quickly, Martin and Skeffington asking questions which were incomprehensible to me. Out of it all I gathered that he was “on to something”, not as big as his major work, but scientifically both unexpected and sharp-edged. He had made his name by research into the ionosphere, but since the war he had moved into radio astronomy; he was over fifty, he was keeping on at creative work when most of his contemporaries had stopped. As I watched him, his long face warm with delight, I thought this discovery was giving him as much joy as those of twenty years before – perhaps a purer joy, because then he had not satisfied his ambitions. Now he was free to be enraptured with the thing itself.
“Really it is beautiful,” he said. He smiled at us all, shamefaced because he was so happy.
Then reluctantly, in a sharp brisk tone, he broke off: “But I mustn’t go on talking all morning. I think you had something to see me about, Martin?”
“I’d rather go on with this,” said Martin.
“Oh, this can wait – that is, if your job is important. Is it?”
“In a way, it might be. But we want your advice on that.”
“You’d better go ahead.”
With dexterous care, Francis was fitting a plastic cover over the print; he was still studying the trace, and his eyes did not leave it as Martin spoke.
“As a matter of fact, it’s Julian’s show more than mine.”
“Well then?”
Skeffington began to explain, much as he had done on the night of Christmas Day. The story was better organised than it had been then; he had had time to get it into proportion. The instant he said that they had been blaming the wrong man, Francis looked up from the print. He gazed at Skeffington without any interruption or gesture, except to draw at his pipe. As he gazed, his expression, which had been happy, receptive and welcoming when we first saw him, changed so much that one did not know what to expect.
When Skeffington paused, Francis said in a harsh voice: “That all?”
“Yes, I think it puts you in the picture,” Skeffington replied. “Is that what you call it?” Francis broke out. “It’s just about the most incredible picture I’ve ever heard of.” He was flushed with resentment. His courtesy, which was usually just a shade more formal than most of ours, had quite left him, and he was speaking to Skeffington with the special hostility kept for those who bring bad news. In fact, he spoke to Skeffington as though he, and only he, were the culprit and that it was his duty to obliterate the bad news and restore the peace of the morning.
“What do you mean, incredible?” said Martin, in a conversational tone. “Do you mean it’s incredible that we’ve all been such fools?”
“I should like to be told when we stop being fools,” Francis snapped. Then he tried to collect himself. In a level, reasonable voice, but his face still stern, he said to Skeffington: “Don’t you see that your explanation is very hard to credit?”
Skeffington had become angry too. He answered back: “Then are you prepared to make a better one?”
“From what you’ve told me, I shouldn’t have thought it was beyond the wit of man.”
“If we’d believed that,” said Skeffington, “we shouldn’t have come to waste your time.”
I said something, and Francis was sharp with me: “Lewis, you’re not a scientist, after all.”
“If you studied the evidence, what else do you think you could make of it?” said Skeffington. He had begun his exposition with much deference towards Francis, and now, though he looked angry and baited, the deference had not all gone.
Francis ignored the question and spoke coldly and sensibly: “Don’t you want to realise how this is bound to strike anyone who isn’t committed one way or the other?”
“We not only want to realise that, we’ve got to,” said Martin.
Was he as puzzled as I was by Francis’ response? He did not know him so well: perhaps that made it less mystifying to Martin than to me. But he was certainly at a loss to know how to get on terms with Francis, and was feeling his way.
“Remind me,” Francis said to Skeffington, “who acted as referees on Howard’s work when we elected him?”
“There was one external – old Palairet, naturally. One internal – Nightingale. I was asked to write a note along with Nightingale’s. Of course, I was still a new boy myself.”
“And you and Nightingale reported on his work when we dismissed him. That’s fair enough. But you admit that it isn’t precisely convincing when you suddenly tell us that you and Nightingale have ceased to agree?”
“He’s not got a leg to stand on–”
“That won’t do,” said Francis. “He knew as much as you did about the whole background, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And you showed him the new data and told him your explanation, and he didn’t think there was much in it?”
“He didn’t think there was anything in it,” said Skeffington.
“Well, there it is,” said Francis. “If you’re going to attack the memory of a distinguished old man, you’ll want something firmer than that.”
“The facts are firm,” Skeffington broke out.
Martin spoke quietly and fairly, still trying to persuade Francis to match his tone: “At any rate, they’re as firm as one could expect. If only that photograph weren’t missing.”
“Presuming that there was ever a faked photograph there,” said Francis.
“Presuming that. Given that photograph, I should have thought there was enough evidence to satisfy a court of law. What do you think, Lewis?”
I also set out to be fair.
“It would be a terribly difficult case for an ordinary court, of course. Too much would depend on the technical witnesses. But I think I agree with Martin. I believe that if that photograph weren’t missing, a court would probably see that Howard was cleared. Without it – without it he wouldn’t stand more than an even chance.”
Francis looked from Martin to me, but without any sign that he was willing to talk our language. He said to Skeffington: “I take it Nightingale knows all the facts you know, by now?”
“He’s seen everything.”
“And he still doesn’t admit the facts are firm?”
“I told you right at the beginning. I didn’t want to give you any false impression. Nightingale wouldn’t admit to me – and I hear he said the same a good deal more strongly when these two were at the Lodge – he wouldn’t admit that the facts add up to anything.”
For some instants Francis sat silent. Somewhere in the room a clock gave a lurching, clonking tick: I thought I had noticed it as we came in, tapping out the half-minutes, but I did not look round. I was watching Francis’ expression. Despite his strong will, he hadn’t any of the opacity that I was used to in men of affairs. By their side his nerves were too near the surface. When in the war he was successful among men of affairs, it had been through will and spirit, not through the weight of nature most of them had. As he sat at his desk, faced with a situation that colleagues of mine like Hector Rose would have taken in their stride without a blink, the shadows of his thoughts chased themselves over his face as theirs never would. His expression was upset and strained, out of proportion, much more than Skeffington’s or Martin’s had been at any time in the last few days. As he sat there, his eyes clouded, his lips pulled themselves in as though he had had a new thought more vexing than the rest.
At last he said, putting his hands on the table, making his voice hearty and valedictory: “Well, that seems as far as we can go just now.” He continued, in the same dismissive tone, but deliberately, as though he had been working out the words: “My advice to you” – he was speaking to Skeffington – “is to keep on at Nightingale and see if you can’t convince each other of the points that are still left in the air. By far the best thing would be for the two of you to produce a combined report. The essential thing is that the two of you ought to agree. Then I’m sure nearly all the rest of us would accept your recommendation, whether you wanted us to stay put or take some action. In fact, I’m sure that’s the only satisfactory way out, either for you or the rest of us.”
“Do you think it’s likely?” Martin asked sharply, pressing him for the first time.
“That I don’t know.”
Francis’ thoughts had turned into themselves again. Martin rose to go. He knew they were getting nowhere: it would be a mistake to test Francis any more that day. But Skeffington, although he got up too, was not acquiescing. In an impatient, aggrieved tone, he said to Francis: “When you mentioned me changing my mind about the explanation, you don’t seriously think that’s on the cards, do you? You don’t seriously think that now I’ve had this evidence through my hands, I could possibly change my mind, do you? If you still think I could, why don’t you have a look at the evidence for yourself?”
“No,” said Francis. “I’ve got enough to do without that.”
He had replied bleakly. When he was opening the door for us he said to Skeffington, as though intending to take the edge off the refusal: “You see, these new results of mine are taking up all my time. But if you and Nightingale do a report, either alone or together, then I’ll be glad to have a look at that.”