“You mean an aphrodisiac?”

Wither sighed gently and said nothing.

“That is nonsense,” said Frost. “It isn’t to his wife that a man turns under the influence of aphrodisiacs. But as I was saying, I think it is a mistake to rely wholly on fear. I have observed, over a number of years, that its results are incalculable: especially when the fear is complicated. The patient may get too frightened to move, even in the desired direction. If we have to despair of getting the woman here with her husband’s goodwill, we must use torture and take the consequences. But there are other alternatives. There is desire.”

“I am not sure that I am following you. You have rejected the idea of any medical or chemical approach.”

“I was thinking of stronger desires.”

Neither at this stage of the conversation nor at any other did the Deputy Director look much at the face of Frost; his eyes, as usual, wandered over the whole room or fixed themselves on distant objects. Sometimes they were shut. But either Frost or Wither-it was difficult to say which-had been gradually moving his chair, so that by this time the two men sat with their knees almost touching.

“I had my conversation with Filostrato,” said Frost in his low, clear voice. “I used expressions which must have made my meaning clear if he had any notion of the truth. His senior assistant, Wilkins, was present too. The truth is that neither is really interested. What interests them is the fact that they have succeeded-as they think-in keeping the Head alive and getting it to talk. What it says does not really interest them. As to any question about what is really speaking, they have no curiosity. I went very far. I raised questions about its mode of consciousness-its sources of information. There was no response.”

“You are suggesting, if I understand you,” said Wither, “a movement towards this Mr. Studdock along those lines. If I remember rightly, you rejected fear on the ground that its effects could not really be predicted with the accuracy one might wish. But-ah-would the method now envisaged be any more reliable? I need hardly say that I fully realise a certain disappointment which seriousminded people must feel with such colleagues as Filostrato and his subordinate, Mr. Wilkins.”

“That is the point,” said Frost. “One must guard against the error of supposing that the political and economic dominance of England by the N.I.C.E. is more than a subordinate object: it is individuals that we are really concerned with. A hard unchangeable core of individuals really devoted to the same cause as ourselves-that is what we need and what, indeed, we are under orders to supply. We have not succeeded so far in bringing many people in-really in.”

“There is still no news from Bragdon Wood?”

“No.”

“And you believe that Studdock might really be a suitable person?”

“You must not forget,” said Frost, “that his value does not rest solely on his wife’s clairvoyance. The couple are eugenically interesting. And secondly, I think he can offer no resistance. The hours of fear in the cell, and then an appeal to desires that undercut the fear, will have an almost certain effect on a character of that sort.”

“Of course,” said Wither, “nothing is so much to be desired as the greatest possible unity. You will not suspect me of underrating that aspect of our orders. Any fresh individual brought into that unity would be a source of the most intense satisfaction-to-ah-all concerned. I desire the closest possible bond. I would welcome an interpenetration of personalities so close, so irrevocable, that it almost transcends individuality. You need not doubt that I would open my arms to receive-to absorb-to assimilate this young man.”

They were now sitting so close together that their faces almost touched, as if they had been lovers about to kiss. Frost’s pince-nez caught the light so that they made his eyes invisible: only his mouth, smiling but not relaxed in the smile, revealed his expression. Wither’s mouth was open, the lower lip hanging down, his eyes wet, his whole body hunched and collapsed in his chair as if the strength had gone out of it. A stranger would have thought he had been drinking. Then his shoulders twitched and gradually he began to laugh. And Frost did not laugh, but his smile grew moment by moment brighter and also colder, and he stretched out his hand and patted his colleague on the shoulder. Suddenly in that silent room there was a crash. Who’s Who had fallen off the table, swept onto the floor as, with sudden, swift convulsive movement, the two old men lurched forward towards each other and sat swaying to and fro, locked in an embrace from which each seemed to be struggling to escape. And as they swayed and scrabbled with hand and nail, there arose, shrill and faint at first, but then louder and louder, a cackling noise that seemed in the end rather an animal than a senile parody of laughter.

III

When Mark was bundled out of the police waggon into the dark and rain and hurried indoors between two constables and left at length alone in a little lighted room, he had no idea that he was at Belbury. Nor would he have cared greatly if he had known, for the moment he was arrested he had despaired of his life. He was going to be hanged.

He had never till now been at close quarters with death. Now, glancing down at his hand (because his hands were cold and he had been automatically rubbing them) it came to him as a totally new idea that this very hand, with its five nails and the yellow tobacco-stain on the inside of the second finger, would soon be the hand of a corpse, and later the hand of a skeleton. He did not exactly feel horror, though on the physical level he was aware of a choking sensation; what made his brain reel was the preposterousness of the idea. This was something incredible, yet at the same time quite certain.

There came a sudden uprush of grisly details about execution, supplied long since by Miss Hardcastle. But that was a dose too strong for the consciousness to accept. It hovered before his imagination for a fraction of a second, agonising him to a kind of mental scream, and then sank away in a blur. Mere death returned as the object of attention. The question of immortality came before him. He was not in the least interested. What had an after-life to do with it? Happiness in some other and disembodied world (he never thought of unhappiness) was totally irrelevant to a man who was going to be killed. The killing was the important thing. On any view, this body-this limp, shaking, desperately vivid thing, so intimately his own-was going to be turned into a dead body. If there were such things as souls, this cared nothing about them. The choking, smothering sensation gave the body’s view of the matter with an intensity which excluded all else.

Because he felt that he was choking, he looked round the cell for any sign of ventilation. There was, in fact, some sort of grating above the door. That ventilator and the door itself were the only objects to detain the eye. All else was white floor, white ceiling, white wall, without a chair or table or book or peg, and with one hard white light in the centre of the ceiling.

Something in the look of the place now suggested to him for the first time the idea that he might be at Belbury and not in an ordinary police station. But the flash of hope aroused by this idea was so brief as to be instantaneous. What difference did it make whether Wither and Miss Hardcastle and the rest had decided to get rid of him by handing him over to the ordinary police or by making away with him in private-as they had doubtless done with Hingest? The meaning of all the ups and downs he had experienced at Belbury now appeared to him perfectly plain. They were all his enemies, playing upon his hopes and fears to reduce him to complete servility, certain to kill him if he broke away, and certain to kill him in the long run when he had served the purpose for which they wanted him. It appeared to him astonishing that he could ever have thought otherwise. How could he have supposed that any real conciliation of these people could be achieved by anything he did?