philosophy,’ said Bronwen lightly.
Mr. Hinde said: ‘A satisfactory sitting, Mrs. Caspian?’ His gaze ranged about the walls, and alighted on one of her father’s studies of Beaumaris. ‘If you should ever want to take pictures of my own establishment for your collection, please do let me know. I think it merits pictorial preservation.’
When father and daughter left, Laura’s head was bowed. Bronwen stood in the outer doorway watching. As they reached the carriage she saw Laura glance at Mr. Hinde, apprehensive yet wistful. But when he turned to speak to her, she was quite remote and withdrawn again.
* * * *
In the house Caspian had bought on Cheyne Walk immediately after their marriage, Bronwen sat facing him and said:
‘The type and setting of that advertisement belong to The Times.’
‘You plucked that from my mind.’’
‘Or you from mine.’
‘Oh, I think not.’
‘Really? You think not?’
‘I’ve just identified it, and you caught the gist of what I was thinking. Perfectly normal—for us, that is.’
‘And wouldn’t it be just as normal for me to think of a thing first, and you to register it?’
He laughed affectionately; and infuriatingly.
She said: ‘You’re so arrogant.’
But their minds drifted briefly together, and now they were both laughing.
Since the conventional wedding ceremony that followed their mystical union two and a half years ago, when they had pitted their interwoven minds against an engulfing force of evil, they had used their mental powers sparingly. At first the resources of telepathy, which they had so startlingly discovered within themselves, were a constant challenge, and a constant shared delight. But the strain began to tell. Too much energy, both psychic and physical, was drained away by too lavish a use of the faculty. It was too precious to be squandered on the conversational exchanges of everyday existence. And what need was there for it, when they could talk and take pleasure in the sound of each other’s voice? Bronwen loved her husband’s deep, musical, often mocking tone; and loved the movement of his lips when he spoke.
And then, complete surrender of the mind and its deepest secrets to another, no matter how passionately loved that other might be, was too destructive of privacy. Over the years it might even be destructive of the mystery and, paradoxically, the very intimacy of marriage. There were slow, sensual, mutual appreciations more rewarding than too direct an interchange of words or thoughts. And since what they shared was pleasurable and loving, there was no urgency. Thought transference was for times of stress: a telepathic message was an alarm signal rather than a leisurely comment.
London had added to the stress of using their gift too frequently. First learning its power and their own powers in a secluded Fenland village, they had communicated across the slow-thinking blur of country minds, hearing in the background what amounted only to a passing mumble, a half-formulated notion, with only the occasional harsh spurt of directness—until all those slow minds combined and unleashed a shared terror. The turmoil of the city was different, and dangerous in a different way. Prolonged mental exposure to its millions of unspoken desires and hatreds and confusions brought fierce headaches and a numbness of the mind: a cacophony of voices dinned unrelentingly in, clashing, some fast and some slow, too many shrill and disturbed and savage. Attempting to transmit a clear personal message through such discord was like trying to share confidences with a loved one and then having a window thrown wide open, to admit the full clamour of a screaming mob and the crash and screech and jangle of traffic.
Today they had exercised their powers briefly, but still found no neat answer to the question posed by Joseph Hinde.
Caspian settled deeper into his armchair. On the wall behind was Bronwen’s favourite picture of him: a portrait photograph which she had superimposed on a painting of a cloaked Mephistophelian figure rising above the Cavern of Mystery in Leicester Square. He had virtually retired from the theatre save for an occasional guest performance, preferring to devote himself to the exposure of fraudulent mediums and magicians rather than the display of his own avowedly, professionally fraudulent magic. Still she cherished the memory of him in his role of Count Caspar, in exuberant command of his skills and his audience.
Even in this room, at ease in his chair, he exuded the same power. He closed his eyes, but thereby became more widely awake. From memory and intuition he sought to call up whatever was relevant to that flash of insight they had experienced.
At last he said: ‘No, it’s an advertisement we’ve neither of us seen before. But we recognize certain aspects of it. So I feel it must be in a column adjacent to one of our theatre announcements. Logan will be able to trace it. I’ll go round and set him to work first thing in the morning.’
‘You can’t visualize the exact wording?’
Together they tried to bring the snippet of newspaper into focus from the remembered imprint of Laura Hinde’s consciousness. But only a few scattered words survived:
...TRUTH...death and its banishment... Scientific truth open to all who qualify as mature students... Thursday 12th January.
‘At least that date should simplify our quest. We’ll most likely find the item during the fortnight or so before the 12th of January.’
* * * *
The full version, when the Cavern of Mystery’s advertising manager had tracked it down, sat amid a whole batch of invitations to lectures and meetings: on two successive evenings the enquiring mind in search of self-improvement had a choice between the activities of the Empirical Society, the Paternoster Botanic Club, the Western Hermetic Society, and the Malthusian League, or a free discourse by Madame Helena Blavatsky on The Secret Doctrine. The one that Caspian had been seeking read, in full:
A DISCUSSION GROUP on
OUR INDESTRUCTIBLE LIFE
for discriminating seekers after TRUTH.— Lecture for serious Ladies and Gentlemen worthy of advanced tuition. The illusion of death and its banishment. ETERNITY IN THIS WORLD. Scientific truth open to all who qualify as mature students. Selection meeting Thursday 12th January at The Camden Lecture Rooms N.W.
Bronwen could see and hear it so clearly and depressingly: an hour or more of earnest disquisition in a dank and ill-lit hall, followed by equally earnest argument about Life and Death and the Hereafter and Scientific Proofs of something or other. Every night of the week there were such meetings and such jumbling together of hopes and frustrations all over London. ‘But why,’ she wondered aloud, ‘should Miss Hinde be so disturbed by her memories of that meeting—if in fact she did attend it?’
‘I fancy she attended it,’ said Caspian, ‘but yes, that’s our question: what did they teach her that proved so frightening...yet so irresistible?’
‘She won’t have been the only one to answer that announcement. There must have been others like her, hoping to get something from it.’
‘And perhaps, like her, now fearing what they’ve got.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘Death for you,’ said the woman
