Matlock's System

4

It was after four when Matlock returned to his flat. The door was flung open as he approached and Lizzie rushed out to him, her face pale with worry.

“Matt,” she said, “Matt. Thank heaven you’re back.”

She pressed her head against his chest and dug her hands into his back. Automatically he rested his hands on her shoulders. Over her head and through the door he could see Ernst and Colin, their faces alight with relief also, but hanging back in the face of — or rather, the rear of — Lizzie’s emotionalism. He forced a smile and they came to him.

“Are you all right, Matt? For Godsake, where have you been?”

This was Ernst. Relief, with a hard core of curiosity. The friend and the heir apparent both on show.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Colin said nothing but reacted just as typically. He prised Lizzie loose and led Matlock into the room. His eyes, Matlock knew, were unobtrusively but efficiently examining his face and head for damage.

He sat down, took the glass which Ernst offered him and sipped a little of the drink. He wrinkled his mouth in distaste at the comparison evoked with Browning’s Scotch.

“I’m sorry I’m a bit late,” he began. “But I see no reason for you all to get in a panic.”

“But Matt, we got your note about Browning and waited for ages. Then Colin made some enquiries at the House. All the reporters there had seen you go in, but no one saw you come out. We were worried sick.”

“My dear Lizzie. What did you imagine had happened to me? That Browning had whisked me off to some dungeon under the Thames where I was being put to the test on the rack?”

Lizzie flushed violently enough for something like this to have been her actual fear.

“So what did happen, Matt?” asked Colin.

“Why, Browning offered me a seat in the Cabinet and I slipped out by a back way and went for a little walk to think things over. I was rather abstracted, I’m afraid, and quite forgot to telephone you. I am very sorry.”

He sipped his drink slowly and through half closed eyes watched their reactions closely. Lizzie and Ernst looked at him in disbelief, their amazement at the news aggravated by the casual way it had been offered. Only Colin looked unperturbed and nodded slowly as though confirming something in his own mind.

“You’re joking, Matt,” said Ernst.

“No,” said Matlock. “Fill me up again will you?”

He handed over his empty glass. It made a useful stage-prop. From now on, he realized, he would be acting all the time, never knowing who was acting with him. He was faced by a bewildering complex of possibilities through which the straightest way seemed to be to assume that he could trust no one, that everything he said would be reported back to Browning.

“I am nearly seventy years old,” he had said to the Abbot. “And you are asking me to be without friends. You are telling me that in seventy years all I have collected round me are my enemy’s spies.”

“No,” the Abbot had replied, “they are your friends. But to love a man does not mean to love his beliefs. Just as to love a belief does not mean you must love those who share it. In any case I have spoken against only two people. Of the man, Peters, I know nothing damaging. Nor of the great mass of your sympathizers.”

Perhaps the straightest path, he thought now, would be to tell them everything. But Colin’s slowly spoken question made him realize he had not the right to do this.

“Why,” he asked, “should Browning think you dangerous enough to be offered such a bribe?”

Matlock imagined he sensed a tensing in the other two as they waited for his answer.

If what he said now was going to be reported back to Browning, then his answer must ring true. But the crux of the matter would be whether or not Browning knew of his contact with the Meek. Twenty-four hours earlier he would have said that he was not important enough to be shadowed everywhere. Now he was certain he was, but whether his exit from Westminster had been surreptitious enough to throw them off the scent, he did not know.

He decided to sit on the fence. To hint knowledge, but not its source. Let Browning take it as he liked.

“I’m not sure. That’s what I’ve been trying to work out in these past few hours.”

“And?” It was Ernst, his face eager. Too eager? Or was it just that his own importance must swell in direct proportion to Matlock’s?

“I’m not sure. There are too many factors.”

“But you have an idea?”

Lizzie this time. Dear God, once you started thinking of spies, how conspiratorial everyone looked!

“Yes. An idea. But nothing of that yet. I want more time to work things out.”

“This could be the beginning of a break-through,” said Ernst. “You remember what I suggested about Percy’s death, that this might be in the way of a warning? And things have been made progressively tougher for you, in the North in particular, in the past couple of years. Perhaps we’ve been making more progress than we thought.”

“With the kind of attendances we get, that hardly seems likely. Two members of the police-force for every member of the public!” said Colin.

Ernst snapped back, “Well, you explain why Matt has become important enough to warn off, to threaten, to bribe.”

“No one has threatened me, have they?” said Matlock mildly.

“Of course not,” said Colin. “Look Ernst, I can’t explain it. All I am saying is that if we’ve made progress in the North or anywhere, it’s been invisible progress, not measurable in any terms I can understand yet.”

Matlock looked at Colin and nodded his head as though in agreement. What he was thinking about was a coincidence of wording. ‘Invisible progress’ had been the very phrase the Abbot had used.

“You see,” he had explained, “it cut two ways, this pleasant scheme of Browning’s to keep you out of harm’s way. He very efficiently shut you off from public view and shut the public’s views off from you. But oddly enough, by decreasing your influence and authority on a public, political level, he increased it in another way. He cut off your power, but your charismatic value increased enormously. Charisma. Yes, that’s the word. That attracting force which bears little relationship to objective factors. Don’t feel too proud, Mr. Matlock. This cult was not altogether spontaneous, not altogether due to your own many virtues and attractions. No, like the cult of Guevara in the late sixties of the last century, it was a controlled spontaneity. It was in the interests of certain factions that there should be a leader, a focal point, beyond the reach of internal squabblings and politics. You were that man.”

“Why? Why me? After all, Abbot, I was the man who created the Unirads and the Age Law.”

“All the more reason, my dear Mr. Matlock. The convert, or the apostate, depending on how you look at it, is very frequently the most useful and respected member of his new-found faith. One does not have to look much further than the case of Saul of Tarsus. Or Lucifer.”

“That’s quite a bit further.”

“I meant nothing personal in either instance. The point is this, Mr. Matlock, that you are possibly the single most influential name in the extra-Parliamentary opposition group which is at its strongest in the Northern counties.”

Matlock had listened with growing disbelief.

“No,” he burst out now, “no. This can’t be true. I have gone up there to meeting after meeting. I would have seen some sign. Instead, the attendance has grown steadily smaller.”

“You could have had thousands there, Mr. Matlock, thousands, had you not given the word that you did not yet desire a show of strength.”

“I gave the word?”

“It was given for you, I’m afraid. Just as your followers were also informed that these pathetic meetings which always degenerated into brawls followed by your ejection back to London, were merely covers for the passing by you of information and instructions to your lieutenants. It was a plan much admired.”

Matlock had taken a few moments to sort this welter of assertion into some kind of acceptable order.

“All right,” he said finally. “Suppose I accept this. Suppose I accept that I am the revered leader of an underground movement, why at this particular time have I become so popular with Browning? I presume he knows all you tell me. Why not just have me arrested?”

“You are determined to be naive, Mr. Matlock. Browning’s intelligence service has, of course, penetrated this underground of yours. He knows much, though by no means all. He is not really certain how much you know. And he is not yet ready for a confrontation. But he knows that Budget Day will bring matters to a climax. Yet he is a man of insight and of cunning. He has seen how his own plan for your suppressal has been turned against him. To arrest you now would be to martyr you. But he hopes to be able to turn the tables once more. Your charisma has been so carefully cultivated that it is now self-propagating. It has gone far beyond the original intentions of the Underground organizers. It could not be killed with your death or disappearance. Only by your betrayal. If you join the Government before Budget Day, the effect on morale and internal discipline within the movement will be so disruptive that his new measures will pass with no more than a whimper of protest.”

“And this is what you have come to tell me. You have come to tell me that unwittingly I have been used in a battle I would willingly have joined had I known it was being fought? You have come now to invite my blind co-operation in plans I know nothing of? Why this is almost as bad as Browning’s threats.”

“Worse, Mr. Matlock. He does not want your death. We don’t mind. In fact certain elements in our midst feel that your influence should be given the permanence of heroic memory. They have been outvoted. But be sure, Mr. Matlock, that if you show any signs of capitulating to Browning’s request, you will be killed instantly. It will look like Browning’s handiwork, of course. But you will be dead. That’s the burden of my message.”

The two men had sat and stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, both mask-like in their expressions. Then the Abbot had relaxed, leaned forward, tapped him familiarly upon the knee and said in a much more ordinary everyday kind of voice, “Well, that’s the official business. Now let’s have a little unofficial chat, shall we? There’s plenty of time. After all, your job is best done from a position of invisibility, eh? You’re making invisible progress all the time!”

“Invisible progress.” Matlock realized he had spoken the words out loud. The others were looking at him. He would have to make a greater effort to control these fits of abstraction. More and more he was withdrawing in upon himself lately. It must be age. Or the awareness of age entailed in the Age Law.

“You’re right, Colin,” he said. “We must have made some kind of progress, it seems, but in what direction I’m not sure. But I apparently have some value. Great value if it is to be judged by Browning’s offer, though we must remember that what he can so easily give, he can as easily take away. In many ways, I am tempted to accept.”

He sipped at the new drink Ernst had brought him and watched their reactions once more.

He saw in Colin’s face a look of blank bewilderment, turning to indignation.

Ernst too looked puzzled, but some other emotion — certainly not anger — was there too.

Only in Lizzie’s face did he see the brightening of hope and he closed his eyes at the sight of it. He longed to ask her how much was hope for Browning and how much a woman’s hope for some years of peace with the man she loved.

Matlock was suddenly very tired of all three of them. Or rather, he was tired with the events of the day and could not face the thought that here where he should have been most at ease, he had to be most on his guard.

“Look,” he said. “Of course I’ll do nothing without discussion. But I must be my own master. I do not claim to be yours, Colin, or yours Ernst, or yours Lizzie. Now I’m rather tired. Let’s leave this till tonight, shall we?”

“Anything you say, Matt,” said Ernst with his ready smile.

“Not tonight, Matt,” said Lizzie. “You’re suddenly in demand. A late invitation to a little ‘do’ at the Scottish Embassy. With a most cordial handwritten ‘do hope you can make it’ from the Ambassador himself.”

“Oh yes. That,” said Matlock.

Lizzie looked at him quizzically.

“You knew?”

“Well, half-knew. Let me see.”

He glanced at the ornately printed card with the great red lion running along the top of it. On the back in writing just as ornate was the note. If he had not known the Ambassador’s name was Fergus McDonwald, he would never have guessed it from the signature.

“I suppose I must go,” he sighed.

“What’s he after, do you think?” asked Ernst, pausing on his way to the door.

“A chance to demonstrate his literacy, I shouldn’t wonder. Good-bye, Ernst, Colin.”

The door closed behind the two men and Matlock found himself in the situation he had hoped above all to avoid. Alone with Lizzie.

He strolled through into his bedroom and stood at the window moodily twisting the poro-control. The window changed from its normal translucency to utter blankness and the room darkened.

“Where did you go this afternoon, Matt? Something happened, didn’t it? What was it?”

He half turned. Lizzie was framed in the daylight of the living-room as she stood by the door.

“Nothing.”

She did not pursue the question but took a step into the room.

“Do you want me to stay, Matt?”

“No!”

The violence of his reply surprised him. At the same time he thought with alarm that perhaps the darkening of the room had seemed like an invitation.

“No thanks,” he said, gently trying to disown the previous negative and at the same time twisting the poro-switch to full transparency. As the light poured back into the room, he saw the effect of his denial on Lizzie’s face. It was as though he had struck her.

I will not believe she is a spy, he cried inwardly, and “Lizzie”, he began, stepping towards her.

Behind him the guaranteed shatterproof window blossomed violently into a multifaceted rose, and the wall beside Lizzie cracked crazily under the plastic paper even before the fragments of glass showered over his shoulders.

His loving move towards her turned into a terrified dive, his shoulder caught her in the stomach and they both tumbled through into the living-room as the wall trembled under another impact.

“Matt!” cried Lizzie, trying to struggle into a sitting position but unable to shift the downpressing weight of the man’s body. “Matt! Are you hurt?”

She managed to raise herself up on her elbows, but Matlock thrust her savagely back.

“Lie still,” he snapped.

He himself rose to a crouch, his right hand pressed painfully and obliviously to her breast. Then, his head held low, he scuttled around the room darkening each window in turn and pulling shut the bedroom door. His face was white as chalk, though whether for her or himself Lizzie did not know.

Finally when the room was in utter darkness he switched on a small table lamp and came across to where she lay.

“Are you hurt?” he asked abruptly.

“Well, I’ve probably got a few bruises and fingermarks. Matt, what was it?”

He helped her to her feet and for a moment she rested trembling in his arms. Then, without answering her question he went across to the ’phone and called the police on the emergency beam.

“It must have been a force-gun,” he said. “Those windows will resist up to a hundred pounds of pressure.”

Lizzie raised her hands to her face in the classic gesture of horror.

Is it just a gesture? Matlock asked himself. How can I tell?

Inside him a thousand nerve ends were jangling. Nothing that had happened so far that day had prepared him for this.

“They were trying to kill you!” gasped Lizzie.

Matlock looked at her in real surprise.

“You didn’t imagine it was merely a blown circuit, did you? A domestic accident?”

Lizzie’s head moved from side to side as though of its own volition. Her face belied the gesture.

“Who, Matt? Who?”

“I don’t know.”

He poured himself a long drink and disposed of it like a short one.

“Whoever it was seemed to have plenty of time. Time to fire another shot before packing up and going home. Where are the police?”

He strode up and down the long room. Inside he was almost back to normal, but this display of nervous anger postponed the reassertion of the old relationship.

I was going to tell her, he thought. I would have told her. But not now. Not now.

“Could it be Browning?”

That’s a good question, Lizzie my girl. It deserves a good answer.

“It might be. He’d like me dead, and it’s easier than having me in the Cabinet. More final.”

That’s an answer which would interest Browning if it ever reached him.

There was a short ring at the doorbell followed by a fusillade of knocks.

“That can only be the police,” said Matlock.

He flung open the door.

“You took your time,” he said.

An hour later they had gone. At first their attitude had been rather overbearing. They obviously had some official knowledge of Matlock and the implication of their casual approach to the case was that a trouble-maker must expect trouble. Matlock had wound himself up to give the Inspector in charge a tongue-lashing when the ’phone rang. It was for the Inspector. He did little talking, but a great deal of listening. When it was over, his whole attitude had changed to one of courteous, almost deferential efficiency. A full-scale investigation was initiated and by the time they had left, Matlock had been assured he would receive every protection the police could give.

Lizzie had noticed also.

“Who was behind that call, Matt?” she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders, as much for the benefit of the little man who was whispering caution in his head as for Lizzie.

“Browning. Who else?”

Who else indeed. She must have guessed as much herself if she did not know for certain. A report on his call must have gone straight to the Prime Minister. And Browning, if the Abbot was to be believed, had every reason to want him alive for a while.

Which meant that Browning could not have been behind the shooting.

“But why should he arrange protection if he wants you killed?”

A good question. Lizzie had a quick mind. He had lost his desire to tell her everything, but he was in no mood for further fencing.

“Look Lizzie,” he said, allowing his very real irritation to show through. “It’s nearly six. I’m going to have a long soak, a short sleep and then get myself ready for the McDonwald of McDonwald or whatever he calls himself. So let’s just add this to all the other problems we’ve got to sleep upon eh?”

She began gathering her things together with an attempt at a smile.

“All right, Matt. Don’t forget to brush up on your Bums.”

He did not feel he dared respond to her lightness, but watched her to the door in preoccupied silence.

She turned in the open doorway.

“Matt,” she said, “take care.”

Then she went leaving Matlock staring at the door wondering whether it was just concern he heard in her voice.

Or warning.