The Tightrope Men

Twenty-Nine

They were grouped around Denison who lay prone on the ground. ‘Don’t move him,’ warned Harding. ‘I don’t know what he’ll have apart from concussion.’ Very carefully he explored Denison’s skull. ‘He’s certainly been hit hard.’

Diana looked at McCready. ‘Who by?’ McCready merely shrugged.

Harding’s long fingers were going over Denison’s torso. ‘Let’s turn him over — very gently.’ They turned Denison over on to his back and Harding lifted one eyelid. The eye was rolled right back in the head, and Lyn gave an involuntary cry.

‘Excuse me, Doctor,’ said Diana, and her hand went to Denison’s shirt pocket. She got up off her knees and jerked her head at McCready. They walked back to the middle of the camp. ‘The plan and the notebook are gone,’ she said. ‘He carried them in the button-down pocket of his shirt. The button has been torn off and the pocket ripped. The question is by whom?’

‘It wasn’t the Yanks,’ said McCready. ‘I saw them well off down-river. And it wasn’t the other mob, either; I’ll stake everything on that.’

‘Then who?’

McCready shook his head irritably. ‘By God!’ he said. ‘There’s someone around here cleverer than I am.’

‘I’d better not comment on that,’ said Diana tartly, ‘You might get annoyed.’

‘It doesn’t really matter, of course,’ said McCready. ‘We were expecting it, anyway.’

‘But we were expecting to use it to find out who the opposition is.’ She tapped him on the chest. ‘You know what this means. There are three separate groups after us.’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘The Americans; another crowd who is vaguely Slav — Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Yugoslavs, take your pick — and now someone mysterious whom we haven’t even seen.’

‘It’s what Carey was expecting, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it’s worrying all the same. Let’s see how Denison is.’

They went back to the rock where Lyn was saying worriedly, ‘It is just concussion, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not too sure,’ said Harding. ‘Lyn, you’ll find a black box in my pack about half-way down. Bring it, will you?’

Lyn ran off and McCready went down on his knees by Denison. ‘What’s wrong with him apart from a crack on the head?’

‘His pulse is way down, and I’d like to take his blood pressure,’ said Harding. ‘But there’s something else. Look at this.’ He took Denison’s arm by the wrist and lifted it up. When he let go the arm stayed there. He took the arm and bent it at the elbow, and again it stayed in the position into which he had put it.

McCready drew in his breath sharply. ‘You can mould the man like modelling clay,’ he said in wonder. ‘What is it?’

‘A form of catalepsy,’ said Harding.

That did not mean much to McCready. ‘Does it usually accompany concussion?’

‘Not at all. It’s the first time I’ve seen it induced by a knock on the head. This is most unusual.’

Lyn came back and held out the box to Harding. ‘Is this what you wanted?’

He nodded briefly, took out an elastic bandage of a sphygmometer and bound it around Denison’s arm. He pumped the rubber bulb, and said, ‘His blood pressure is down, too.’ He unwrapped the bandage. ‘We’ll carry him back and put him into a sleeping bag to keep him warm.’

‘That means we don’t move from here,’ said McCready.

‘We can’t move him,’ said Harding. ‘Not until I can find out what’s wrong with him, and that, I’m afraid, is mixed up with what’s been done to him.’

A bleak expression came over McCready’s face. If they stayed at the camp they’d be sitting ducks for the next crowd of international yobbos.

Lyn said, ‘Is he conscious or unconscious, Doctor?’

‘Oh, he’s unconscious,’ said Harding. ‘Blanked out completely.

Harding was wrong.

Denison could hear every word but could not do a thing about it. When he tried to move he found that nothing happened, that he could not move a muscle. It was as though something had chopped all control from the brain. He had felt Harding moving his limbs and had tried to do something about it but he had no control whatever.

What he did have was a splitting headache.

He felt himself being lifted and carried and then put into a sleeping bag. After a few minutes he was lapped around in warmth. Someone had tucked the hood of the bag around his head so that sounds were muffled and he could not hear what was said very clearly. He wished they had not done that. He tried to speak, willing his tongue to move, but it lay flaccid in his mouth. He could not even move his vocal cords to make the slightest sound.

He heard a smatter of conversation... ‘still breathing... automatic functions unimpaired... side... tongue out... choking...’ That would be Harding.

Someone rolled him on to his side and he felt fingers inserted into his mouth and his tongue pulled forward.

After a little while he slept.

And dreamed.

In his dream he was standing on a hillside peering through the eyepiece of a theodolite. Gradually he became aware that the instrument was not a theodolite at all — it was a cine camera. He even knew the name of it — it was an Arriflex. And the small speck of blue lake in the distance became one of the blue eyes of a pretty girl.

He pulled back from the view finder of the camera and turned to Joe Staunton, the cameraman. ‘Nice composition,’ he said. ‘We can shoot on that one.’

Great slabs of memory came slamming back into place with the clangour of iron doors.

‘It’s no good, Giles,’ said Fortescue. ‘It’s becoming just that bit too much. You’re costing us too much money. How the hell can you keep control when you’re pissed half the time?’ His contempt came over like a physical blow. ‘Even when you’re not drunk you’re hung over.’ Fortescue’s voice boomed hollowly as though he was speaking in a cavern. ‘You can’t rely on the Old Pals Act any more. This is the end. You’re out.’

Even in his dream Denison was aware of the wetness of tears on his cheeks.

He was driving a car, the familiar, long-since-smashed Lotus. Beth was beside him, her hair streaming in the wind.

‘Faster!’ she said. ‘Faster!’ His hand fell on the gear lever and he changed down to overtake a lorry, his foot going down on the accelerator.

The scooter shot, insect-like, from the side road right across his path. He swerved, and so did the lorry he was overtaking. Beth screamed and there was a rending, jangle of tearing metal and breaking glass and then nothing.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Staunton. ‘This would have been a good one, but Fortescue won’t have it. What will you do now?’

‘Go home to Hampstead and get drunk,’ said Denison.

Hampstead! An empty flat with no personality. Bare walls with little furniture and many empty whisky bottles.

And then...!

In his dream Denison screamed.

He stirred when he woke up and opened his eyes to find Lyn looking at him. He moistured his lips, and said ‘Beth?’

Her eyes widened and she turned her head. ‘Dr Harding! Dr Harding — he’s... he’s awake.’ There was a break in her voice. When she turned back to him he was trying to get up. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Lie quietly.’ She pushed him back.

‘I’m all right,’ he said weakly.

Harding appeared. ‘All right, Lyn; let me see him.’ He bent over Denison. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Not too bad,’ said Denison. ‘Hell of a headache, though.’ He put up his hand and tenderly felt the back of his head. ‘What happened?’

‘Somebody hit you.’

Denison fumbled with his other hand inside the sleeping bag, groping for his shirt pocket. ‘They got the plan.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Lyn. ‘Giles, it doesn’t matter.’

‘I know.’ He levered himself up on one elbow and accepted the pills Harding gave him and washed them down with water. ‘I think I gave you a shock, Doctor.’

‘You were aware?’ asked Harding in surprise.

‘Yes. Another thing — I’ve got my memory back.’

‘All of it?’

Denison frowned. ‘How would I know? I’m not sure.’

‘We won’t go into that now,’ said Harding quickly. ‘How do you feel physically?’

‘If you let me stand up I’ll tell you.’ He got out of the sleeping bag and stood up, supported on Harding’s arm. He swayed for a moment and then shook himself free and took three steps. ‘I seem all right,’ he said. ‘Except for the headache.’

‘The pills ought to clear that up,’ said Harding. ‘But if I were you I wouldn’t be too energetic.’

‘You’re not me,’ said Denison flatly. ‘What time is it? And where are the others?’

‘It’s just after midday,’ said Lyn. ‘And they’re scouting to see if anyone else is around. I think the doctor is right; you ought to take it easy.’

Denison walked to the edge of the bluff, thinking of the perturbation in McCready’s voice when he discovered that, because of the attack on himself, the party was pinned down. ‘I ought to be able to cross the river,’ he said. ‘That might be enough.’