"You read them afterwards, Pamela.

"
"It didn't harm anyone at all. You said so yourself at the time. And this o
ne's no worse."
"How would you like it if someone did it to you?"
"How could I mind if I didn't know it was being done? Come on, Arthur.
Don't be so flabby."
"I'll have to think about it."
"Maybe the great radio engineer doesn't know how to connect the mike to
the speaker?"
"That's the easiest part."
"Well, go on then. Go on and do it."
"I'll think about it and let you know later."
"There's no time for that. They might arrive any moment."
"Then I won't do it. I'm not going to be caught red-handed."
"If they come before you're through. I'll simply keep them down here. N
o danger. What's the time, anyway?"
It was nearly three o'clock.
"They're driving down from London," she said, "and they certainly won't l
eave till after lunch. That gives you plenty of time."
"Which room are you putting them in?"
"The big yellow room at the end of the corridor. That's not too far away, is
it?"
"I suppose it could be done."
"And by the by," she said, "where are you going to have the speaker?"
"I haven't said I'm going to do it yet."
"My God!" she cried, "I'd like to see someone try and stop you now. You
ought to see your face. It's all pink and excited at the very prospect. Put
the speaker in our bedroom why not? But go on and hurry."
I hesitated. It was something I made a point of doing whenever she tried t
o order me about, instead of asking nicely. "I don't like it, Pamela."
She didn't say any more after that; she just sat there, absolutely still,
watching me, a resigned, waiting expression on her face, as though she were
in a long queue. This, I knew from experience, was a danger signal. She was l
ike one of those bomb things with the pin pulled out, and it was only a matte
r of time before--bang! and she would explode. In the silence that followed,
I could almost hear her ticking.
So I got up quietly and went out to the workshop and collected a mike an
d a hundred and fifty feet of wire. Now that I was away from her, I am asham
ed to admit that I began to feel a bit of excitement myself, a tiny warm pri
ckling sensation under the skin, near the tips of my fingers. It was nothing
much, mind you--really nothing at all. Good heavens, I experience the same
thing every morning of my life when I open the paper to check the closing pr
ices on two or three of my wife's larger stockholdings. So I wasn't going to
get carried away by a silly joke like this. At the same time, I couldn't he
lp being amused.
I took the stairs two at a time and entered the yellow room at the end o
f the passage. It had the clean, unlived-in appearance of all guest rooms, w
ith its twin beds, yellow satin bedspreads, pale-yellow walls, and golden-co
loured curtains. I began to look around for a good place to hide the mike. T
his was the most important part of all, for whatever happened, it must not b
e discovered. I thought first of the basket of logs by the fireplace. Put it
under the logs. No--not safe enough. Behind the radiator? On top of the war
drobe? Under the desk? None of these seemed very professional to me. All mig
ht be subject to chance inspection because of a dropped collar stud or somet
hing like that. Finally, with considerable cunning, I decided to Put it insi
de the springing of the sofa. The sofa was against the wall, near the edge o
f the carpet, and my lead wire could go straight under the carpet over to the door.
I tipped up the sofa and slit the material underneath. Then I tied the mi
crophone securely up among the springs, making sure that it faced the room. A
fter that, I led the wire under the carpet to the door. I was calm and cautio
us in everything I did. Where the wire had to emerge from under the carpet an
d pass out of the door, I made a little groove in the wood so that it was alm
ost invisible.
All this, of course, took time, and when I suddenly heard the crunch of
wheels on the gravel of the drive outside, and then the slamming of car door
s and the voices of our guests, I was still only half-way down the corridor
tacking the wire along the skirting. I stopped and straightened up, hammer i
n hand, and I must confess that I felt afraid. You have no idea how unnervin
g that noise was to me. I experienced the same sudden stomachy feeling of fr
ight as when a bomb once dropped the other side of the village during the wa
r, one afternoon, while I was working quietly in the library with my butterf
lies.
Don't worry, I told myself. Pamela will take care of these people. She wo
n't let them come up here.
Rather frantically, I set about finishing the job, and soon I had the wir
e tacked all along the corridor and through into our bedroom. Here, concealme
nt was not so important, although I still did not permit myself to get carele
ss because of the servants. So I laid the wire under the carpet and brought i
t up unobtrusively into the back of the radio. Making the final connections w
as an elementary technical matter and took me no time at all.
Well--I had done it. I stepped back and glanced at the little radio. Some
how, now, it looked different--no longer a silly box for making noises but an
evil little creature that crouched on the table top with a part of its own b
ody reaching out secretly into a forbidden place far away. I switched it on.
It hummed faintly but made no other sound. I took my bedside clock, which had
a loud tick, and carried it along to the yellow room and placed it on the fl
oor by the sofa. When I returned, sure enough the radio creature was ticking
away as loudly as if the clock were in the room--even louder.
I fetched back the clock. Then I tidied myself up in the bathroom, retur
ned my tools to the workshop, and prepared to meet the guests. But first, to
compose myself, and so that I would not have to appear in front of them wit
h the blood, as it were, still wet on my hands, I spent five minutes in the
library with my collection. I concentrated on a tray of the lovely Vanessa c
ardui--the 'painted lady'--and made a few notes for a paper I was preparing
entitled The Relation between Colour Pattern and Framework of Wings', which
I intended to read at the next meeting of our society in Canterbury. In this
way I soon regained my normal grave, attentive manner.
When I entered the living-room, our two guests, whose names I could n
ever remember, were seated on the sofa. My wife was mixing drinks.
"Oh, there you are, Arthur," she said. "Where have you been?"
I thought this was an unnecessary remark. "I'm so sorry," I said to the g
uests as we shook hands. "I was busy and forgot the time."
"We all know what you've been doing," the girl said, smiling wisely. "But
we'll forgive him, won't we, dearest?"
"I think we should," the husband answered.
I had a frightful, fantastic vision of my wife telling them, amidst roars
of laughter, precisely what I had been doing upstairs. She couldn't--she cou
ldn't have done that! I looked round at her and she too was smiling as she me
asured out the gin.
"I'm sorry we disturbed you," the girl said.
I decided that if this was going to be a joke then I'd better join in quickly
, so I forced myself to smile with her.
"You must let us see it," the girl continued.
"See what?"
"Your collection. Your wife says that they are absolutely beautiful."
I lowered myself slowly into a chair and relaxed. It was ridiculous to be
so nervous and jumpy. "Are you interested in butterflies?" I asked her.
"I'd love to see yours, Mr Beauchamp."
The Martinis were distributed and we settled down to a couple of hours
of talk and drink before dinner. It was from then on that I began to form t
he impression that our guests were a charming couple. My wife, coming from
a titled family, is apt to be conscious of her class and breeding, and is o
ften hasty in her judgement of strangers who are friendly towards her--part
icularly tall men. She is frequently right, but in this case I felt that sh
e might be making a mistake. As a rule, I myself do not like tall men eithe
r; they are apt to be supercilious and omniscient. But Henry Snape--my wife
 had whispered his name--struck me as being an amiable simple young man wit
h good manners whose main preoccupation, very properly, was Mrs Snape. He w
as handsome in a long-faced, horsy sort of way, with dark-brown eyes that s
eemed to be gentle and sympathetic. I envied him his fine mop of black hair
, and caught myself wondering what lotion he used to keep it looking so hea
lthy. He did tell us one or two jokes, but they were on a high level and no
one could have objected.
"At school," he said, "they used to call me S cervix. Do you know why?"
"I haven't the least idea," my wife answered.
"Because cervix is Latin for nape."
This was rather deep and it took me a while to work out.
"What school was that, Mr Snape?" my wife asked.
"Eton," he said, and my wife gave a quick little nod of approval. Now she
will talk to him, I thought, so I turned my attention to the other One, Sall
y Snape. She was an attractive girl with a bosom. Had I met her fifteen years
earlier I might well have got myself into some sort of trouble. As it was, I
had a pleasant enough time telling her all about my beautiful butterflies. I
was observing her closely as I talked, and after a while I began to get the
impression that she was not, in fact, quite so merry and smiling a girl as I
had been led to believe at first. She seemed to be coiled in herself, as thou
gh with a secret she was jealously guarding. The deep-blue eyes moved too qui
ckly about the room, never settling or resting on one thing for more than a m
oment; and over all her face, though so faint that they might not even have b
een there, those small downward lines of sorrow.
"I'm so looking forward to our game of bridge," I said, finally changing th
e subject.
"Us too," she answered. "You know we play almost every night, we love i
t so."
"You are extremely expert, both of you How did you get to be so good?"
"It's practice," she said. "That's all. Practice, practice, practice."
"Have you played in any championships?"
"Not yet, but Henry wants very much for us to do that. It's hard work, yo
u know, to reach that standard. Terribly hard work." Was there not here, I wo
ndered, a hint of resignation in her voice? Yes, that was probably it; he was
pushing her too hard, making her take it too seriously, and the poor girl wa
s tired of it all.
At eight o'clock, without changing, we moved in to dinner. The meal wen
t well, with Henry Snape telling us some very droll stories. He also praise
d my Richebourg '34 in a most knowledgeable fashion, which pleased me great
ly. By the time coffee came, I realized that I had grown to like these two
youngsters immensely, and as a result I began to feel uncomfortable about t
his microphone business. It would have been all right if they had been horr
id people, but to play this trick on two such charming young persons as the
se filled me with a strong sense of guilt. Don't misunderstand me. I was no
t getting cold feet. It didn't seem necessary to stop the operation. But I
refused to relish the prospect openly as my wife seemed now to be doing, wi
th covert smiles and winks and secret little noddings of the head.
Around nine-thirty, feeling comfortable and well fed, we returned to the
large living-room to start our bridge. We were playing for a fair stake--te
n shillings a hundred--so we decided not to split families, and I partnered
my wife the whole time. We all four of us took the game seriously, which is
the only way to take it, and we played silently, intently, hardly speaking a
t all except to bid. It was not the money we played for. Heaven knows, my wi
fe had enough of that, and so apparently did the Snapes. But among experts i
t is almost traditional that they play for a reasonable stake.
That night the cards were evenly divided, but for once my wife played ba
dly, so we got the worst of it. I could see that she wasn't concentrating fu
lly, and as we came along towards midnight she began not even to care. She k
ept glancing up at me with those large grey eyes of hers, the eyebrows raise
d, the nostrils curiously open, a little gloating smile around the corner of
her mouth.
Our opponents played a fine game. Their bidding was masterly, and all t
hrough the evening they made only one mistake. That was when the girl badly
overestimated her partner's hand and bid six spades. I doubled and they we
nt three down, vulnerable, which cost them eight hundred points. It was jus
t a momentary lapse, but I remember that Sally Snape was very put out by it
, even though her husband forgave her at once, kissing her hand across the
table and telling her not to worry.
Around twelve-thirty my wife announced that she wanted to go to bed.
"Just one more rubber?" Henry Snape said.
"No, Mr Snape. I'm tired tonight. Arthur's tired, too. I can see it. Let's all
go to bed."
She herded us out of the room and we went upstairs, the four of us toget
her. On the way up, there was the usual talk about breakfast and what they w
anted and how they were to call the maid. "I think you'll like your room," m
y wife said. "It has a view right across the valley, and the sun comes to yo
u in the morning around ten o'clock."
We were in the passage now, standing outside our own bedroom door, and
I could see the wire I had put down that afternoon and how it ran along the
top of the skirting down to their room. Although it was nearly the same co
lour as the paint, it looked very conspicuous to me. "Sleep well," my wife
said. "Sleep well, Mrs Snape. Good night, Mr Snape." I followed her into ou
r room and shut the door.
"Quick!" she cried. "Turn it on!" My wife was always like that, frighten
ed that she was going to miss something. She had a reputation, when she went
hunting--I never go myself--of always being right up with the hounds whatev
er the cost to herself or her horse for fear that she might miss a kill. I c
ould see she had no intention of missing this one.
The little radio warmed up just in time to catch the noise of their door op
ening and closing again.
"There!" my wife said. "They've gone in." She was standing in the centre
of the room in her blue dress, her hands clasped before her, her head crane
d forward, intently listening, and the whole of the big white face seemed so
mehow to have gathered itself together, tight like a wine-skin.
Almost at once the voice of Henry Snape came out of the radio, strong a
nd clear. "You're just a goddam little fool," he was saying, and this voice
was so different from the one I remembered, so harsh and unpleasant, it ma
de me jump. "The whole bloody evening wasted! Eight hundred points--that's
eight pounds between us!"
"I got mixed up," the girl answered. "I won't do it again, I promise."
"What's this?" my wife said. "What's going on?" Her mouth was wide open
now, the eyebrows stretched up high, and she came quickly over to the radio
and leaned forward, ear to the speaker. I must say I felt rather excited ITl
yself. "I promise, I promise I won't do it again," the girl was saying.
"We're not taking any chances," the man answered grimly. "We're going t
o have another practice right now."
"Oh no, please! I couldn't stand it!"
"Look," the man said, "all the way out here to take money off this rich b
itch and you have to go and mess it up."
My wife's turn to jump.
"The second time this week," he went on.
"I promise I won't do it again."
"Sit down. I'll sing them out and you answer."
"No, Henry, please! Not all five hundred of them. It'll take three hours."
"All right, then. We'll leave out the finger positions. I think you're sure
of those. We'll just do the basic bids showing honour tricks."
"Oh, Henry, must we? I'm so tired."
"It's absolutely essential that you get them perfect," he said. "We have
a game every day next week, you know that. And we've got to eat."
"What is this?" my wife whispered. "What on earth is it?"
"Shhh!" I said. "Listen!"
"All right," the man's voice was saying. "Now we'll start from the begin
ning. Ready?"
"Oh Henry, please!" She sounded very near to tears.
"Come on, Sally. Pull yourself together."
Then, in a quite different voice, the one we had been used to hearing in
the living-room, Henry Snape said, "One club." I noticed that there was a cur
ious lilting emphasis on the word 'one', the first part of the word drawn out
long.
"Ace queen of clubs," the girl replied wearily. "King jack of spades. No
hearts, and ace jack of diamonds."
"And how many cards to each suit? Watch my finger positions carefully."

"You said we could miss those."

"Well--if you're quite sure you know them?"
"Yes, I know them."
A pause, then "A club."
"King jack of clubs," the girl recited. "Ace of spades. Queen jack of hea
rts, and ace queen of diamonds."
Another pause, then "I'll say one club."
"Ace king of clubs..
"My heavens alive!" I cried. "It's a bidding code! They show every card i
n the hand!"
"Arthur, it couldn't be!"
"It's like those men who go into the audience and borrow something from y
ou and there's a girl blindfold on the stage, and from the way he phrases the
question she can tell him exactly what it is--even a railway ticket, and wha
t station it's from."
"It's impossible!"
"Not at all. But it's tremendous hard work to learn. Listen to them."
"I'll go one heart," the man's voice was saying.
"King queen ten of hearts. Ace jack of spades. No diamonds. Queen jack o
f clubsÉÓ "And you see," I said, "he tells her the number of cards he has in
each suit by the position of his fingers."
"How?"
"I don't know. You heard him saying about it.,, "My God, Arthur! Are you
sure that's what they're doing?"
"I'm afraid so." I watched her as she walked quickly over to the side of
the bed to fetch a cigarette. She lit it with her back to me and then swung
round, blowing the smoke up at the ceiling in a thin stream. I knew we were
going to have to do something about this, but I wasn't quite sure what beca
use we couldn't possibly accuse them without revealing the source of our inf
ormation. I waited for my wife's decision.
"Why, Arthur," she said slowly, blowing out clouds of smoke. "Why, this
is a marvellous idea. D'you think we could learn to do it?"
"What!"
"Of course. Why not?"
"Here! No! Wait a minute, Pamela... " but she came swiftly across the ro
om, right up close to me where I was standing, and she dropped her head and
looked down at me--the old look of a smile that wasn't a smile, at the corne
rs of the mouth, and the curl of the nose, and the big full grey eyes starin
g at me with their bright black centres, and then they were grey, and all th
e rest was white flecked with hundreds of tiny red veins--and when she looke
d at me like this, hard and close, I swear to you it made me feel as though
I were drowning. "Yes," she said. "Why not?"
"But Pamela... Good heavens... No... After all...
"Arthur, I do wish you wouldn't argue with me all the time. That's exactly
what we'll do. Now, go fetch a deck of cards; we'll start right away."

Dip in the Pool

ON the morning of the third day, the sea calmed. Even the most delicate pas
sengers--those who had not been seen around the ship since sailing time--em
erged from their cabins and crept on to the sun deck where the deck steward
gave them chairs and tucked rugs around their legs and left them lying in
rows, their faces upturned to the pale, almost heatless January sun.
It had been moderately rough the first two days, and this sudden calm a
nd the sense of comfort that it brought created a more genial atmosphere ov
er the whole ship. By the time evening came, the passengers, with twelve ho
urs of good weather behind them, were beginning to feel confident, and at e
ight o'clock that night the main dining-room was filled with people eating
and drinking with the assured, complacent air of seasoned sailors.
The meal was not half over when the passengers became aware, by the slig
ht friction between their bodies and the seats of their chairs, that the big
ship had actually started rolling again. It was very gentle at first, just
a slow, lazy leaning to one side, then to the other, but it was enough to ca
use a subtle, immediate change of mood over the whole room. A few of the pas
sengers glanced up from their food, hesitating, waiting, almost listening fo
r the next roll, smiling nerviously, little secret glimmers of apprehension
in their eyes. Some were completely unrufled, somewre openly smug, a number
of the smug ones making jokes about food and weather in order to torture the
few who were beginning to suffer. The movement of the ship then became rapi
dly more and more violent, and only five or six minutes after the first roll
had been noticed, she was swinging heavily from side to side, the passenger
s bracing themselves in their chairs, leaning against the pull as in a car c
ornering.
At last the really bad roll came, and Mr William Botibol, sitting at the
purserÕs table, saw his plate of poached turbot with hollandaise sauce slid
ing suddenly away from under his fork. There was a flutter of excitement, ev
erybody reaching for plates and wineglasses. Mrs Renshaw, seated at the purs
erÕs right, gave a little scream and clutched that gentlemanÕs arm.
ÒGoing to be a dirty night,Ó the purser said, looking at Mrs Renshaw. ÒI
think itÕs blowing up for a very dirty night.Ó There was just the faintest su
ggestion of relish in the way the purser said this.
A steward came hurrying up and sprinkled water on the table cloth betw
een the plates. The excitement subsided. Most of the passengers continued
with their meal. A small number, incluing Mrs Renshaw, got carefully to th
eir fee and threaded their ways with a kind of concealed haste between the
tables and through the doorway.
"Well," the purser said, "there she goes." He glanced around with approva
l at the remainder of his flock who were sitting quiet, looking complacent, t
heir faces reflecting openly that extraordinary pride that travellers seem to
take in being recognized as 'good sailors'.
When the eating was finished and the coffee had been served, Mr Botibol
, who had been unusually grave and thoughtful since the rolling started, su
ddenly stood up and carried his cup of coffee around to Mrs Renshaw's vacan
t place, next to the purser. He seated himself in the chair, then immediate
ly leaned over and began to whisper urgently in the purser's ear. "Excuse m
e," he said, "but could you tell me something, please?"
The purser, small and fat and red, bent forward to listen. "What's the tro
uble, Mr Botibol?"
"What I want to know is this." The man's face was anxious and the purser
was watching it. "What I want to know is will the captain already have made
his estimate on the day's run--you know, for the auction pool? I mean befor
e it began to get rough like this?"
The purser, who had prepared himself to receive a personal confidence, s
miled and leaned back in his seat to relax his full belly. "I should say so-
-yes," he answered. He didn't bother to whisper his reply, although automati
cally he lowered his voice, as one does when answering a whisperer.
"About how long ago do you think he did it?"
"Some time this afternoon. He usually does it in the afternoon."
"About what time?"
"Oh, I don't know. Around four o'clock I should guess."
"Now tell me another thing. How does the captain decide which number it
shall be? Does he take a lot of trouble over that?"
The purser looked at the anxious frowning face of Mr Botibol and he smil
ed, knowing quite well what the man was driving at. "Well, you see, the capt
ain has a little conference with the navigating officer, and they study the
weather and a lot of other things, and then they make their estimate."
Mr Botibol nodded, pondering this answer for a moment. Then he said,
"Do you think the captain knew there was bad weather coming today?"
"I couldn't tell you," the purser replied. He was looking into the small b
lack eyes of the other man, seeing the two single little specks of excitement
dancing in their centres. "I really couldn't tell you, Mr Botibol. I wouldn't
know."
"If this gets any worse it might be worth buying some of the low numb
ers. What do you think?" The whispering was more urgent, more anxious now
.
"Perhaps it will," the purser said. "I doubt whether the old man allowed
for a really rough night. It was pretty calm this afternoon when he made his
estimate."
The others at the table had become silent and were trying to hear, watchi
ng the purser with that intent, half-cocked, listening look that you can see
also at the race track when they are trying to overhear a trainer talking abo
ut his chance: the slightly open lips, the upstretched eyebrows, the head for
ward and cocked a little to one side--that desperately straining, halfhypnoti
zed, listening look that comes to all of them when they are hearing something
straight from the horse's mouth.
"Now suppose you were allowed to buy a number, which one would you
choose today?" Mr Botibol whispered.
"I don't know what the range is yet," the purser patiently answered. "The
y don't announce the range till the auction starts after dinner. And I'm real
ly not very good at it anyway. I'm only the purser, you know."
At that point Mr Botibol stood up. "Excuse me, all," he said, and he walk
ed carefully away over the swaying floor between the other tables, and twice
he had to catch hold of the back of a chair to steady himself against the shi
p's roll.
"The sun deck, please," he said to the elevator man.
The wind caught him full in the face as he stepped out on to the open d
eck. He staggered and grabbed hold of the rail and held on tight with both
hands, and he stood there looking out over the darkening sea where the grea
t waves were welling up high and white horses were riding against the wind
with plumes of spray behind them as they went.
"Pretty bad out there, wasn't it, sir?" the elevator man said on the way do
wn.
Mr Botibol was combing his hair back into place with a small red comb.
"Do you think we've slackened speed at all on account of the weather?" he a
sked.
"Oh, my word yes, sir. We slackened off considerable since this started. Y
ou got to slacken off speed in weather like this or you'll be throwing the pas
sengers all over the ship."
Down in the smoking-room people were already gathering for the auction.