Many Dimensions, Charles Williams [black authors fiction TXT] 📗

knew he would have been the first to mock at the

ascription. But there was certainly something in them that referred if

not to him, then to something connected with him. He was walking on

some firm pavement, where she wanted to be walking too.

 

She came back to hear Mrs. Sheldrake end a sentence—“opinion on it.”

 

“Madam,” Lord Arglay said, “it must be clear to you that I can give no

opinion until a case is before the Court. I am not a solicitor or a

barrister. I am the Chief Justice.”

 

“But we must know what to do,” Mrs. Sheldrake said. “Don’t you even

know where the original, whatever it is, came from?”

 

Lord Arglay suppressed a desire to offer her a pr�cis of the Hajji’s

history of the Stone of Suleiman, and leaned forward. “Mrs. Sheldrake,”

he said, “by the folly of my nephew you

have come into actual—if not legal—possession of a Type of Stone which

is said to be regarded by millions as a very holy relic, and the

ownership of which may have the most important repercussions. I beg you

to act with great care. I venture to suggest that you should at least

consider the propriety of giving it into my care until more is known

and decided. It is, I know, an audacious proposal, but the seeming

audacity is due to the anxiety with which I regard the situation. I am

not speaking casually. I do not think it likely, but in certain remote

yet not impossible circumstances I can believe that even your life and

your husband’s might be in danger. Consult with him and believe me that

this warning is meant very, very seriously.”

 

“That,” he thought, “ought to worry her.” She was staring at the ground

now, and he threw a side glance at Chloe, whose face reinforced his

words.

 

Cecilia felt baffled. She saw nothing to do at the moment but to talk

to Angus and take other ways of finding out the mystery. As she began

to shape a phrase of dubious farewell the door was thrown open and Sir

Giles Tumulty came in. He nodded to Arglay and stared at the visitors.

 

“Busy, Arglay?” he asked. “I want to talk to you.”

 

“I want to talk to you,” the Chief Justice said, with something

in his voice that made Chloe look up suddenly and even distracted

Cecilia, to whom he turned. “I can do no more for you now, Mrs.

Sheldrake,” he ended.

 

“It’s very unsatisfactory,” she complained. “I almost think I had

better go to the Ambassador. You see, we don’t come under your

jurisdiction, if that’s what you call it. We belong to the States.”

 

“Quite,” Lord Arglay said, waiting for her to go.

 

“After all, someone must know to whom the Stone belongs, and who can or

can’t sell it,” Cecilia went on.

 

“Hallo,” Sir Giles said, “have you got one too? Is this yours, Arglay,

or is it Reginald’s? I hope you didn’t overcharge for it. “

 

Cecilia almost leaped at him. “O,” she said, “I’m afraid I don’t know

your name but can you tell me anything about this Stone? It’s all so

very mysterious. We—my husband and I-bought it from a Mr. Montague, and

now we are told it’s very doubtful whether he had the right to sell

it.”

 

“Of course he had the right,” Sir Giles said. “I gave him one yesterday

morning.”

 

“Was it yours then to begin with?” Cecilia asked.

 

“Certainly,” Sir Giles said.

 

“Does anyone deny it?”

 

“Yes,” Lord Arglay said, “and you know they do.”

 

“O a set of religious maniacs,” Sir Giles tossed them aside. “Do you,

Arglay?”

 

The Chief Justice paused for a half second, then his training won.

 

“No,” he said, “I don’t deny it for I don’t know. But I want to talk to

you about it, Tumulty, after this lady has gone.” He felt it was rude

but he couldn’t help it. A more urgent matter than Mrs. Sheldrake’s

trouble was obsessing him. That she had actually lost the Stone he had

not understood; her references to that part of the adventure had been

so general as to leave the impression that her husband was finding it

just as she set off with Chloe.

 

Now she retaliated by turning her back full on him and saying to

Tumulty: “I should like to talk with you, Sir Giles. Could you spare me

half an hour at Grosvenor Square?”

 

Sir Giles’s first impulse was to tell her to go to hell. But he felt

that Lord Arglay had changed in something; his previous good temper had

gone. Tumulty had been through too many dangerous experiences in remote

parts of the world not to recognize hostility when he met it, and he

knew that Arglay was hostile now. Why he couldn’t imagine but that was

the fact. If Arglay was going to turn nasty it might be as well to be

in with this woman, whoever she was. If she had bought the Stone there

must be money and therefore power and probably position, and perhaps a

counterweight to the Chief Justice’s enmity. Not that it mattered very

much; he wasn’t going to spend any time shooting at Arglay with any

possible kind of inconvenient elephant rifle. But obviously these two

weren’t on the best of terms, and Sir Giles’s generally diffused

contempt suddenly crystallized in a definite hatred of this large man

looming in front of him. He accepted a card, refused to make a definite

promise; he wasn’t going to be rung up as if he were her chauffeur—but

said something about ringing up, and with a malicious benevolence got

rid of her. She departed, her mind stabilized by his brusque assurance

that she had an entire right to her Stone. Chloe half rose; Lord Arglay

waved her back. Sir Giles flung himself into a chair.

 

“Now,” he said, “what’s.your trouble, Arglay—that is, if it’s fit for

your… secretary… to hear.” It was the minutest pause before

“secretary”; both his hearers remarked it, and neither of them took any

notice of it.

 

“I want to know,” Arglay said, “what you’ve been doing at Birmingham.”

 

Genuinely surprised, Sir Giles stared at him. “But that’s exactly what

I want to tell you,” he said. “I want you to find out, one way or

another, what has happened.”

 

“I promise you I will do that,” Arglay answered. “But you shall tell me

first what you have done.”

 

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Sir Giles snapped back. “You’re not in

your bestial Law Courts now. Palliser and I made an experiment this

morning, and I’m not at all clear-”

 

“I want to know” Arglay interrupted “about your experiment last night.”

 

More and more astonished, Sir Giles sat up. “Last night?” he said,

“what do you know about last night? Not that there’s anything

particular to know. You’re not interested in Palliser’s kindergarten

school, are you?”

 

“Who was the man you gave the Stone to?” the Chief justice insisted,

“and what happened to him?”

 

“Now how do you know all that?” Sir Giles said meditatively. “God

strike you dead, Arglay, have you been spying on me with that blasted

bit of dried dung? You have, have you? So it does do something with

knowledge. Good, that’s what I wanted to know. Now listen. This morning

Palliser and I-”

 

“What happened to the man last night?” Lord Arglay said again.

 

“O how the hell do I know?” Sir Giles said fretfully. “That’s part of

the whole thing. You can have him—I don’t want him. He’s probably

messing round last week—no, we said twelve hours so he won’t be. As a

matter of fact I thought he might come back in another twelve but we

were there—at least, Palliser was—by nine this morning and he hadn’t.

But you can go and look for him. Only I want you to tell me first

whether I’m here or not.” He succeeded in outlinino, his problem.

 

In spite of himself Lord Arglay was held by it.

 

“But so far as I’m concerned, it’s certainly you—the normal corporeal

sequential you I’m talking to,” he said. “I’ve not missed half an

hour.”

 

“I know that,” Sir Giles moaned. “I know that what’s happening now is

happening to you. But I don’t know whether

I’m knowing it all first of all. It’s this damned silly business of

only actually experiencing the smallest minimum of time and all the

rest being memory that does me in. I know it was memory at twelve

o’clock but if I’d lived through it all it would still be memory. O for

God’s sake, Arglay, don’t be as big a fool as Palliser. I suppose

you’ve got some brains; after all they made you Chief Justice. And if

you can see what happened in Birmingham last night you can see what

happened there this morning. You needn’t be afraid; we can define the

whole thing first of all, so you’re bound to come back all right.”

 

“I will do nothing at all,” Lord Arglay said, “until I have done what I

can for your-” he paused on the word ” victim ” which sounded

theatrical. “And even then,” he said, slurring it, “I do not know what

I can do, for I do not think this Stone was meant to be used to save

such men as you from the consequences of their actions.”

 

“What do you think it was meant for?” Sir Giles said. “And not so much

of this infant school Scripture lesson. I’d see your inside torn out,

Arglay, before I asked you to save me. I want to know what does happen

and if you won’t tell me the nearest warder in the Zoological Gardens

will do as well.”

 

“Then you can go and ask him,” Lord Arglay said, recovering something

of his good temper, partly because he began to discern that, somehow or

other, the tinfortunate assistant might be given a chance of return,

and partly because he did not dislike seeing Sir Giles really thwarted.

“I’m not going to do a thing without very great care. And you’d better

take care what you do because, if you’re right, you’ll have to do it

all again.”

 

“O my lord God Almighty,” Sir Giles said, “can’t you see that, if I’m

right, I can’t choose till next time? You are a louse-brained catalept,

Arglay.” His interest in pure thought vanished and his personal concern

returned. “So you’re not going to do anything, aren’t you?” he said.

 

“Not for a day or two,” Lord Arglay said. “It’ll do you all

the good in the world, Giles, to be a little uncertain of yourself.

Well, you can’t object to that way of putting it, surely; you are

exactly a little uncertain of yourself, aren’t you?”

 

Sir Giles said nothing. He sat for a minute or two gazing at the Chief

Justice, then he got up, and with a conversational, “Well, well, well,”

walked straight out of the room. Lord Arglay looked at Chloe.

 

“I refrain from saying ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ ” he said, “but I

can’t think of anything else to say. The efficient Giles has been

caught. How just a compensation! The Stone is a very marvellous thing.”

His voice, even on the words, changed into gravity. “And now,” he went

on, “suppose you tell me what did happen this afternoon.”

 

When she had done so-“Then for all we know one of them is lying about

the English countryside?” the ChiefJustice said. “Pleasant hearing for

our friend the Hajji. And now for my experiments.” He went over his

experiences of the previous evening.

 

“So,” he ended, “we know it