Tales of the Unexpected(18)

‘It’s not right, Pamela.’

‘It’s just as right’ – up came the finger again – ‘just as right as when you found those letters of Mary Probert’s in her purse and you read them through from beginning to end.’

‘We should never have done that.’

‘We!’

‘You read them afterwards, Pamela.’

‘It didn’t harm anyone at all. You said so yourself at the time. And this one’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. No 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 leave 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 to 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 like one of those bomb things with the pin pulled out, and it was only a matter 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 and a hundred and fifty feet of wire. Now that I was away from her, I am ashamed to admit that I began to feel a bit of excitement myself, a tiny warm prickling 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 prices 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 help being amused.

I took the stairs two at a time and entered the yellow room at the end of the passage. It had the clean, unlived-in appearance of all guest rooms, with its twin beds, yellow satin bedspreads, pale-yellow walls, and golden-coloured curtains. I began to look around for a good place to hide the mike. This was the most important part of all, for whatever happened, it must not be discovered. I thought first of the basket of logs by the fireplace. Put it under the logs. No – not safe enough. Behind the radiator? Or on top of the wardrobe? Under the desk? None of these seemed very professional to me. All might be subject to chance inspection because of a dropped collar stud or something like that. Finally, with considerable cunning, I decided to put it inside the springing of the sofa. The sofa was against the wall, near the edge of 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 microphone securely up among the springs, making sure that it faced the room. After that, I led the wire under the carpet to the door. I was calm and cautious in everything I did. Where the wire had to emerge from under the carpet and pass out of the door, I made a little groove in the wood so that it was almost 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 doors 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 in hand, and I must confess that I felt afraid. You have no idea how unnerving that noise was to me. I experienced the same sudden stomachy feeling of fright as when a bomb once dropped the other side of the village during the war, one afternoon, while I was working quietly in the library with my butterflies.