Matlock's System

5

The Scottish Embassy was aggressively Scottish in everything from the décor up. Or down. Matlock saw the profusion of tartan hangings, stags’ heads, claymores and thistles for what it was — a very basic gesture at English ‘refinement’ and ‘taste’. He enjoyed the joke, especially as it was being washed down with such excellent whisky served in heavy hand-chiselled crystal glasses. But others didn’t.

He was surprised, in fact, to realize how much he was enjoying the evening. His long soak and short sleep had done the trick marvellously well. And the drink helped.

He was standing two thirds of the way down a long reception room brightly lit by three scintillating crystal chandeliers. Young girls in national costume were walking round with trays of drinks. Three of scotch for every one of anything else. A long table at the far end of the room was covered with a profusion of Scottish confections and produce, from smoked salmon to black bun.

In the centre of the room as of right, and in the centre of the largest and liveliest group, was his host, Fergus McDonwald, His Excellency the Scottish Ambassador to England. Matlock could dimly remember his first appearance in London. “My dear,” a Foreign Office acquaintance had said to him, “there’s no such man. It’s a character actor they’ve hired for the part. It must be. And such a ham! That voice and that beard!”

That voice, roughly burred, with a guttural lilt to it, was booming out from above that beard, rich red just lightly flecked with the silver which told the man’s age. He was an imposing figure, nearly six and a half feet tall with breadth of shoulder to match. He wore the dress kilt of his clan and looked in no way ridiculous despite the malice of many of his guests. A good story about him (there were many) related that a particularly strident lady columnist had asked him what he wore under his skirt. He had instantly raised his kilt and shown her. Then advancing on her he cried, “And what d’ye have hidden under yer ain, my dear?”

She fled.

Those who met the man realized that if the story were not true, it was still necessary to invent it.

McDonwald’s pale blue eyes caught Matlock’s gaze upon him and he paused in his conversation, or rather his monologue, to wave genially across the room, the delicate white lace at his wrist falling back from the huge deep-lined hand.

Matlock waggled the heavy glass back and some of the contents slopped over his hand. He transferred the glass to the other and shook the drops off energetically.

“I say, steady on,” said a tall young man turning to see what had dampened the back of his neck. Matlock recognized Browning’s aide who had called for him that morning.

“Hello there! Clive, isn’t it? How are you, Clive? And the master, Clive? How’s the master?”

Others of the group turned and looked at Matlock. I must be a bit drunk, he thought. Clive stared at him coldly for a moment, opened his mouth as if to speak, then turned away without saying a word.

He was going to put me down with a sharp quip, thought Matlock gleefully, but he changed his mind. They must still be hoping I’ll play.

“Ladies and gentlemen!”

An unmistakable voice was bellowing from the centre of the room. Fergus McDonwald used no M.C. He did his own shouting.

“I just want to say how glad I have been to have you all under my roof tonight. You know I’m not much of a hand at standing in a draught, shaking hands and saying good-night, and anyway I hate to stop people enjoying themselves. But I must be off to my dinner just now. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you to it. Stay as long as you want. The scotch will last longer than you lot, eh?”

He gave a laugh then ploughed his way through the guests towards Matlock who watched his approach with a fixed smile on his face.

“Matt Matlock!” cried McDonwald in a voice which was audible in every comer. “You’ll be stopping for a wee bite with us? Come along, eh?”

His great arm rested like a yoke round Matlock’s shoulders and he was steered unresisting towards the door. Before they left the room Matlock caught a glimpse in a mirror of the crowd of wildly surmizing faces they left behind. In their centre was Browning’s man, his face impassive.

“The world will know,” he said as the door closed behind them.

“Know what, eh?”

“That we’re just good friends.”

The red-haired man laughed immoderately but did not pause in his progress down the long corridor which lay before them. Matlock was almost trotting to keep up with the man’s powerful strides.

“What’re we doing? Working up an appetite?”

“Oh, how I love your English wit.”

They reached the end of the passage and as they did so the door facing them opened. McDonwald swept him in without pause.

“Sit,” he said, pointing to one of two uncomfortable looking chairs which were the room’s only furnishings. The total effect, despite the better state of the walls and ceiling, was much the same as that of the room where he had talked with the Abbot.

“No thanks,” he said.

“The Laird said ‘sit’,” said a voice so deep and accented it made McDonwald’s sound like a middle-class drone. From behind the door, shutting it with his shoulder as he stepped forward, came a figure not much more than five feet high and just as broad. His head was shaped like a cottage loaf, wide-jawed rising to a low peak at the black-thatched crown. His nose looked as if it had been added as an afterthought in plasticine and his eyes were tiny and blankly evil. Brother Francis seemed a happy memory.

“Sit,” he repeated jabbing Matlock in the chest with a finger like an iron rod.

Matlock staggered back, the creature advanced. McDonwald said in a mildly admonitory tone, “Now Ossian,” and Matlock brought his right hand round, fully expecting to break his wrist.

He was still holding the whisky glass.

It shattered with a mild explosive noise as it crashed into Ossian’s head just above the left ear. His face registered little change except for the superficial embellishment of a great ribbon of blood which flowed swiftly from his temple to his nose, and he sank to the floor without a murmur.

Matlock looked at his hand which still clutched the solid base of the glass. The broad silver ring he wore on his middle finger had a drop of blood like a ruby perched upon it. He dropped the base and looked intently at his open palm. It was unmarked. He bent down and wiped the ring carefully on the unconscious man’s jacket.

“Now,” he said, “What about dinner?”

“What do you think this is?” asked McDonwald. “A bloody fight behind the fives court? Just because you’re drunk enough to knock this bungler out doesn’t mean you impress me, Matlock. You’ll sit for me now.”

Matlock sat, wearily.

“What about him?”

“Succour for the fallen foe, eh? He’ll be all right just now. I wouldn’t be around if I were you.”

“I’d like that.”

“In that case, just tell me quickly what I want to know. What was Browning’s offer?”

“A seat in the Cabinet.”

“You accept?”

“Not yet.”

“And that bloody rambling priest?”

“He wasn’t as generous. He merely threatened to kill me if I came to terms with Browning.”

“That all, eh?”

“Oh yes.”

“Nothing about me.”

“Oh no.”

Oh yes — a great deal about you, my kilted Celt. Enough to have made me more careful.

“Now listen to me, Matlock. We don’t like you much in Scotland. We have long memories there.”

“Then you’ll remember that it was me who made you independent.”

“Aye. And we remember what you said.”

The Scots had been agitating for decades for some form of independent government. The Age Law proposals were used as the basis of yet another great wave of patriotic protest. People were taking to the hills in droves. Matlock was badgered day and night in and out of Parliament. A militant group in Edinburgh occupied St Andrew’s House and proclaimed secession. Their broadcast statements were so anti-English in tone that Matlock was urged from all quarters to send the troops in. He didn’t. He accepted the secession, gave two days grace for transference across the border either way, required all Scots domiciled or wishing to remain in England to register as aliens, deported those who wouldn’t, including the entire Scottish Nationalist Party in Parliament, and threw a line of barbed wire across the border which was later replaced by what the papers called a prefabricated version of Hadrian’s wall.

“You said that it was like cutting off a dead branch, noisome with fungus and riddled with worms. You said that the decline of England began with the Act of Union.”

“Did I say all that?” asked Matlock as if surprised. “Perhaps I was a bit extreme. I do recall, however, saying that if we looked at the European boundaries of the Roman Empire, we would see to this very day the boundaries of civilization. The barbarians are beyond. I see no reason here to change my opinions.”

McDonwald’s large fist crashed into his rib-cage just below his heart. The red beard thrust close to Matlock’s face as he leaned forward in pain, and the harsh voice hissed fiercely, “Don’t try to be bloody English with me, Matlock. I’ll have a drop of your blood with every drop of your bloody false condescension.”

“What makes you call it false?” gasped Matlock.

“That,” said McDonwald, repeating the blow.

It took Matlock longer to recover this time. Even now he felt the same stupid urge to counter with some ironical comment but held his tongue. Two punches from this man were enough. And in addition Ossian was beginning to stir.

“What else do you want?” he croaked.

“That’s better. Much more sensible,” said the Scot. “Matlock, I’m not sure how much you know, how much you’re just a pawn. I could find out or Ossian here could find out for me. But this much is certain, you’re very important to a lot of people. And if you’re important to them, you’re important to me. So listen Matlock. It doesn’t matter much whether you have power, or are having power thrust upon you, or even if you’re just the bloody messenger boy. No insurrection in the North can succeed without us. That much is certain. You’ve come to us for aid enough already. Now, if you want our help, you’ll do things our way. Understand? I said I don’t like yoù, Matlock, but I think you’re a man I can deal with. I want to see that Bible-weevil cracked open before we move another step. Then we can get down to some serious talking.”

Matlock shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice he tried to keep quietly sincere, “I just don’t understand.”

“Don’t play with me, Matlock. I’m offering you the Governorship of the Northern Counties when this thing comes off. You’ve got a big organization there, but there are too many groups; it’s too bitty. They’ll be at each other’s throats sooner or later unless there’s a top man. That’s you. You’ve got the name, got the reputation. You just need the organization. That’s me.”

Matlock rose to his feet and took a couple of steps towards the grotesque figure of Ossian who had now raised himself up on his elbow and glared balefully up at his attacker. The blood on his neck was beginning to congeal, so obviously (more’s the pity, thought Matlock) no major vein had been severed. As the man moved his head, the light struck off several minute fragments of crystal still set in the brown band which wound over his face. The effect was rather pretty in a way. But not in any way that brought present comfort to Matlock.

“Listen McDonwald,” he said. “I’m not being funny, nor even particularly evasive. I’ve had a long, hard trying day. I need time to digest both your drink and your offer. I must have more details, more information. And I would prefer to continue our talks out of the company of this creature.”

The Scot came towards him and he stepped back instinctively expecting another blow on the chest. It was not offered, but Ossian suddenly grappled with his left leg. Fortunately he had made his effort before he had fully recovered his strength and Matlock had no difficulty in keeping his balance and bringing his right leg round with a vicious kick to the stomach. The servant groaned bubblingly and subsided again.

“You’re not storing up riches in heaven, Matlock,” said McDonwald. “None the less, you may be right. Let it not be said that a McDonwald did not know how to treat a guest. You mentioned dinner before. Come away then and we’ll try to restore your precious equilibrium.”

“Lay on Macduff,” said Matlock with relief. “And damned be he that first cries, Hold! Enough!”

The Ambassador squinted at him suspiciously, then decided to accept the remark as a compliment and bellowing with laughter he led the way back along the corridor, turning into a more noble and dignified door which proved to open into the dining-room.

Matlock never forgot that dinner, though everything about it, from Freud’s theory of the selectiveness of memory to the alcoholic base of apparently every dish, seemed to consign it to oblivion.

There were two other guests — an Oriental from some anonymous Embassy who sat all night as inscrutably as folklore demanded, and another Scot whose status was not revealed. He was a small wiry man who looked as if he was used to the outdoor life. His face was brown with the blowing of winds, not the bombardment of infra-red from artificial suns which Matlock had seen on Browning. Only a curious hollow on his right temple, as if the bone had been crushed in, had proved impervious to the blast of weather, and the skin in the nadir of this cavity gleamed palely.

No introductions were made, not even to the small impressively still woman who sat at the foot of the long polished table and whom he assumed to be McDonwald’s wife. She it was who by small gestures of the fingers of her left hand controlled the entrance and exit of the courses. McDonwald’s part seemed to be to produce drink which he did in profusion, not letting himself be confined by any jingoistic considerations. Matlock at one stage found his plate surrounded by half a dozen glasses including one of Tokay and one of Danish Lager, almost as rare in these insular days. He could not have survived the meal had not McDonwald followed his frequent toasts by hurling his glass into the fireplace. Matlock followed suit with enthusiasm. He was sitting at the west side of the table (he gauged north by the direction in which his host normally turned when toasting Scotland) and the fireplace was on the east side of the room. His glasses had to be hurled across the table between the Oriental and the other Scot and Matlock’s half-full glasses spattered them as they passed. Neither moved.

Somewhere along the trail of courses a piper had appeared and was walking majestically round the room playing a music whose few tonal variations did not seem to correspond with any known melodic system.

“Is he miming to a record?” Matlock asked very clearly but no one seemed to understand him. McDonwald probably did not even hear him as he was on his feet again proposing another toast to the Immortal Memory. Matlock joined in. His glass took a small nick out of the Oriental’s left ear as it whistled towards the fireplace. Smiling, the man rose, bowed politely to each member of the company and left. As he did so the panelled wall at the north end of the room folded smoothly back, the piper stopped playing, a trio of two violins and an accordian struck up in his place and the long polished floor revealed by the removal of the wall was invaded by eight kilted men.

They began to dance. They danced lightly, athletically, with muscular grace. Matlock was enchanted. The Scot with the hole in his head disturbed his concentration by thrusting another drink into his hand. He tried to put it away from him, but the man insisted. Finally he tossed it down for the sake of peace.

It bubbled down his throat and into his stomach. For a second he felt very sick, then it passed and he was cold sober.

“Now,” said McDonwald who did not seem to need any artificial restoratives, “perhaps we can talk.”

In fact it was McDonwald who talked, for which Matlock was very grateful. His sobriety was confined to his immediate neighbourhood. Outside a circle of about six feet in radius from his mind, everything was still gloriously, drunkenly hazy. He watched this boundary with suspicion while McDonwald rambled on, with what sounded like an official lecture on Scottish History since Secession.

“You did us a favour, Matlock,” he said at one point. “By making us an agricultural economy again, you gave us back our greatness. We’ve got space and to spare up there. There’s fish in the rivers and lochs again, grouse on the moors, and the red deer on the mountain slopes. We’re a nation of farmers and fishers again, of herdsmen and hunters.”

Matlock took time off from his watch on the hazy middle distance to laugh and say, “I think one of the funniest things I ever heard was when you accused the English of coming across the Border to steal your sheep. One of History’s little ironies.”

McDonwald’s eyes smouldered redly.

“Ironical perhaps. But more than irony for those we caught. There was another raid last night. Fifty of your thieving countrymen died.”

“It cuts both ways, McDonwald. The Border’s no barrier to your own men.”

“Do you blame them?” said McDonwald with a smile. “Provoked, that’s what they are. And admittedly we may be a wee bit short of manufactured goods. Not that we need them, you understand.”

“They bring enough on the black market, I hear.”

“Now where would you hear a thing like that? It sounds like Browning’s propaganda. I’m surprised at you, Matlock.”

The circle of clarity, unsupported by his watchfulness, was beginning to contract rapidly.

“Let’s stop fencing,” he said wearily. “What do you want of me?”

“Nothing. We want to give you our help. You need it. Listen, man. The North of England, geographically, economically and, I believe, culturally forms a unit with the Scottish Lowlands. The boundary has been an artificial division since Hadrian built his bloody wall. Now there’s a chance to right a great historical wrong at the same time as you right a great social wrong. Once we link the manufacturing power of your Northern Counties to the natural and agricultural wealth of Scotland and we’re embarking on a new era of greatness for this island. Man, you’re a Northerner yourself. This is where your destiny lies.”

“Again I ask, what do you want of me?”

“I’ll put it simply if you want it simply, Matlock. We’re willing to help. But if we commit ourselves to an Act of War, we want certain guarantees. To date, we haven’t found a man able to give us those guarantees, or at least one we would be willing to accept them from. Now once this thing gets going, you’ll have it in your power to come, like Lenin, from a great distance if necessary and take over all control. We provide the machinery to get you there, to get you heard. But there are others who won’t want you to take charge, at least not in any capacity other than that of a figurehead. The Abbot of Fountains is one of these, perhaps the most important. This is the first agreement we must make with you. He’s a key figure, so we can’t take care of him too early. He’s well protected in his own den, so we can’t get too close to him. But he has to go, the minute he has served his purpose which will be the minute you arrive on the scene. As I say, there are others. But the Abbot is the first.”

The circle of clarity barely included McDonwald now. Matlock stood up and by a great effort of will pressed it a little further back.

“What you are saying then is that you know you are not strong enough to take on England alone. Equally you realize that if you make a move to take over control of an internal revolt without co-operation from its leaders, you will fail and probably the revolt with you, and Browning will have a perfect excuse to invade you.”

The Scot with the hole in his head spoke for the first time.

“That’s about it,” he said.

“So you want me.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll think it over. It’s been a great day for offers.”

“You can have till tomorrow. Think wisely, Matlock.”

“Not more threats!”

The circle rushed in on him with frightening rapidity.

“You didn’t try to kill me today, did you?”

“No. Why should we?”

“Why not. Why why why not?”

The circle no longer existed. The euphoria of the alcoholic haze was back. The two fiddles and accordian were still rattling away and the kilted men sped unerringly along the maze of their dance, hands raised high, mouths set in formal smiles or opened to emit nape-bristling shrieks.

“Eech — ha!”

The sound was so near it was almost deafening. Suddenly Matlock realized it had come from him. He smiled slackly.

“I’m sorry. Perhaps I had better go home.”

“Perhaps you’d better. Matlock, were you serious? Did someone try to kill you?”

“Oh yes yes yes. Ver very much.”

Deep inside him he felt stirrings of the giggling shame of the drunken man in sober company. The weatherbeaten Scot said distantly to McDonwald, “Put a guard on him. We must give him protection.” A small area of his mind noted with interest that the slight man was giving orders to the great McDonwald. Suddenly he sat up and looked gravely down the table to where Mrs. McDonwald might or might not have still been sitting.

“Thank you very much for a splendid evening.”

Out of the mists a figure moved. But no female this. It was a troll, a mountain- troll with his face patched leprous white.

Ossian. Bandaged but not soothed.

I hope he’s not my protection, thought Matlock sleepily. Protection.

He began to laugh.

All those who are not protecting me are trying to kill me. And all those who are not trying to kill me are protecting me.

Laughing still, he fell asleep as the fiddles struck up a slow, lilting melancholy waltz and the kilted men moved silently off the polished wooden floor.

He awoke in his own bed feeling remarkably fresh. Someone had obviously been kind enough to pop a Cleerhed capsule into his mouth last night before bedding him down. He had no recollection of his return.

He stretched luxuriously and his right hand came in contact with something soft and warm. For a moment puzzled, he let his hand stray this way and that. Then he turned round.

“Lizzie,” he said.

She was leaning on her elbow looking down at him. She smiled and made a slight movement forward so that her right breast brushed his shoulder.

“Good morning,” she said. “I came at my usual time and when I found you here I thought that what’s good enough for the boss is good enough for the secretary.”

He sat up and looked round the room. The window had been repaired he noticed. Quick work by someone. Though the blast marks still remained in the wall.

His clothes he noticed were neatly arranged on a hanger in the open wardrobe. Lizzie’s on the other hand were strewn over the floor in uncharacteristic disarray. She followed his glance and said, “I was in a hurry. In case you woke up and stopped me. It seemed the best opportunity I’d had in ages. Matt, what’s the matter? Why have you been putting me off?”

“Lizzie,” he began despairingly, but she did not let him continue.

“No; wait, Matt. Explanations after. Let’s remind ourselves what we’ve been missing.”

She put her arms round his neck and drew him back down beside her. He tried to speak once more, but her mouth pressed hard against his. After that he didn’t try again.

Later she lay on top of him like a wrestler who has just made a pin-fall.

“Now,” she said, “talk.”

He could find nothing to say. Lizzie, Lizzie, he thought in anguish, I cannot believe you false. Or at least I cannot bear to find you false.

He crushed her to him with unconscious violence so that she gasped and struggled free.

“Who’d have thought the old man had so much blood in him?” she asked, twisting round to massage her back.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said and ran her finger gently down the scar on his chest. “Is it this, Matt? Is it wondering what to do? Wondering when a man can say ‘to hell with it’ and start living for himself instead of others?”

She paused a second, but when he still didn’t speak, she went on.

“Listen, Matt, I don’t care what you do. Take Browning’s offer. Go for Op. Or just sit it out. But whether you live one year or forty, make a place in it for me, Matt. I’m not saying you owe me it. I’m not an old woman debt-collecting. I don’t need to, Matt, do I?”

She flung the sheet back and knelt upright so he could see her mature but beautifully firm nakedness.

“But I believe that there’s a place for me with you, Matt. I won’t try to persuade you what to do, but don’t shut me out. I’m in. I’ve been in for twenty years. I won’t go now.”

“I don’t ask you to, Lizzie.”

Matlock felt a happy calm spread through his being. He had made up his mind. He got out of bed, caressing her long flank as he did so. Then he moved purposefully and unselfconsciously across the room and opened a panel on the wall. Reaching in he pressed a button and looked closely at a couple of dials. This little toy was known as his bugswatter. Any electronic eavesdropping device within a range of fifteen yards was now jammed. He knew his flat was well bugged. Indeed he knew the location of several of the mini-mikes. But how many more there were he could never be sure, so it was pointless digging them out. Instead he jammed them.

He paused in front of the long mirror on his way back to the bed, drew his stomach in and puffed his chest out.

“I’m really not so very old, you know,” he said.

Lizzie watched him with delight and was obviously eager to start all over again when he got back to bed, but he held her at arm’s length.

“Later,” he said. “Listen to what I want to tell you.”

Then coolly, dispassionately, he proceeded to recount the events of the previous thirty-six hours.

She listened as a good secretary should, attentively, without interruption. Her silence stretched into his own when he was finished.

Finally she asked, “What made you make up your mind about me, Matt?”

He grinned widely and made a gesture which encompassed her breasts and belly.

“This, of course.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously I never doubted you for a moment. Oh, I know I didn’t fall over you when I got back yesterday, but do you blame me?”

“Yes.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her face.

“Lizzie, what I believe in is based on individual faith and trust and hope. If I lost that in you, then I lose my worth, my purpose. I’d have taken Browning’s offer if I had believed the Abbot.”

“I still don’t understand why he told you those lies.”

“Simple. According to his logic, it negated the power of Browning’s threat against you and Ernst through the forged documents. He didn’t realize what dangerous ground he was treading on.”

“What happens next, Matt?”

In Matlock’s mind things were beginning to sort themselves out with crystal clarity. He recognized that the doubts and selfsearching of the past day had been much graver than he had told Lizzie. He knew that deep down inside him, in the caverns of his mind, was an area where his surface certainties were shifting, shadowy. But he knew himself well enough to recognize how unfitted he was to deal with any change of personal loyalties. He had done it once. Old friends had felt themselves betrayed and turned from him with disgust which he himself had felt like treachery. His wife had moved out of their bedroom, then out of their house. A few months later a burst spleen had moved her out of his life. (It had been an irony of fate that an anti-Matlock protest strike by one of the big Unirad-controlled Unions had cut off the power supply to her flat and prevented her from summoning help.) Her father who outlived her by five years, when he was replaced by Browning, always said she died of a broken heart. Adding, “As I shall too.”

Matlock knew he could not take this again. Even if my beliefs change, I cannot change my friends, those I love.

“First,” he said, “call Ernst and Colin.”

Lizzie looked surprised.

“Matt, are you sure?”

He raised her gently from the bed and pushed her towards the door.

“As sure as I am of you, Lizzie. They do not give me the same pleasure, but I love them too.”

He dressed swiftly while Lizzie was on the ’phone and joined her in the living-room as she hung up.

“My, are we finished then?” she said. He smacked her behind vigorously.

“Get dressed. There’s work to do. First, breakfast.”

Thirty minutes later as he sipped a mugful of black coffee, Ernst arrived. Matlock waved aside his questions till Colin had appeared also. Then as swiftly and accurately as he had talked to Lizzie, he revealed the course of recent events to them. When he had finished he looked from one to the other.

“How surprised are you? Did either of you have any knowledge, suspicion even of the situation? I have to ask. There’ve been too many false assumptions, concealments, deceptions already.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ernst.

“Not a whisper of my own plots and schemes in the North has reached me in any of our lecture trips. But our contacts must have known. They must have been supremely well drilled not to show any awareness of what was going on.”

Colin shook his head. “Surely, the thing is, Matt, that even if they had done, you wouldn’t have recognized it as such.”

“My God!” Ernst again. “Matt, Percy. Percy said something when he was dying, something like ‘till the Day’. Then he smiled. It seemed a happy thought somehow.”

Matlock remembered his friend’s peaceful face on that dingy stage. The Day. Budget Day.

“But Percy would have spoken. Must have spoken to me about something like this. He was the closest of all our Northern Contacts.”

“And therefore likeliest to obey absolutely any injunction to silence he thought came from you,” said Ernst.

“Anyway, that’s immaterial now,” replied Lizzie. “The thing is, where do we go from here?”

“Look,” broke in Ernst, “what I don’t understand is the Scottish situation. I don’t see why they should need you, Matt, if they’re in as close contact with the Organization as McDonwald claims.”

“They are in contact, Ernst. Get that straight. The Abbot told me. He also told me a little more in what he termed our private chat. I haven’t mentioned this before because it was immaterial to the main drift of events, but central perhaps to our choice of action. With Browning controlling the papers, it’s as difficult to get a true picture of the state of affairs in Scotland as it is anywhere else. McDonwald tries to give the impression of a happy, stable, democratic, agricultural community. Arcadia, so to speak.”

“Couldn’t you have got more out of him?” asked Ernst.

Matlock grimly rubbed his ribs and winced. He hadn’t noticed the pain when with Lizzie but now it came back.

“No. He had a rather touching sensitivity about his country. The other side of the coin was shown me by the Abbot and it’s rather more in line with the kind of anti-Scottish propaganda Browning’s been pumping at us for years. Though it has slackened off, of late.”

“A deal?” asked Lizzie thoughtfully.

“Who knows? Anyway, Scotland according to the Revised Version is indeed almost a self-supporting agricultural economy. But it’s full of cracks. On a local level, the people have reverted to the old clan system with its tight-knit code of loyalties. On a national level, the old urban rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh has become a desperate political struggle between opposing clan-based factions for national domination, with a third smaller but very militant group up in Inverness waiting for its chance.”

“Yes, but how is it that they’ve managed to get by without Age Laws for nearly thirty years? Their problems must have been as grave as ours when all this started.”

“Not quite. There was more room for one thing. But yes, of course they had basically the same population problem as us. Worse perhaps. But the Abbot assured me yesterday, that the population of Scotland is smaller today than it was thirty years ago.”

Ernst whistled.

“But how?”

“Two things. They had no Age Law. But in those early days there were many things they didn’t have. Among them was an efficient Health Service. We’d cut off its head. It’s so hard to die in England that we had to invent a new way to do it. But Nature provided ways in plenty for the Scots. There were no outbreaks of plague or anything like that, you understand. It was just that people began dying from things no one here has died of in years. Infant mortality rate shot up, expectation of life dropped down.”

“But that alone can’t have accounted for a total drop after thirty years!”

“No. I said there were two things. The second was the struggle for survival before central, or bi-central government was effectively established. The new clan wars.”

“You mean, they fought?” asked Ernst incredulously.

“Oh yes, they fought. And died. Many thousands. There are still outbreaks. The Central government which is Glasgow-based at this moment doesn’t discourage it. It keeps the population down. Keeps the people on the alert. The Border Scots in particular have reverted to type and foraging raids into Cumberland and Northumberland are fairly common. They act as a cover for the full-scale smuggling organization which is almost certainly run by McDonwald’s mates, if the Abbot is to be believed. There are crippling tariffs on all imports from England. But a constant stream of stuff is crossing illegally by helicopter and boat.”

“But why doesn’t Browning just move in? Why play at shots across the Border when you could wipe the Lowlands half off the earth in a couple of rocket attacks?”

“The Scots have got sentimental friends all over the world. America in particular. There are lots of other countries from France up who would welcome the chance to walk into England. We must not appear the aggressor. In any case, you can’t raze a mountainous country with ordinary missiles. And that’s where they’d be, up in the mountains. And you don’t drop nuclear bombs on your own doorstep.”

“Anyway,” said Lizzie impatiently, “we’re wasting time talking about what Browning can or cannot do. The point is, what are we going to do? What are you going to do, Matt. You’re the man in demand.”

Matlock looked round the tiny circle. Lizzie, her eyes fixed on him, her face full of life and hope. Ernst, relaxed in his chair, regarding him rather quizzically. Colin, seated a little further back than the others, his thin face shadowed and brooding.

“This is what I’ve called you here to decide. I’m faced with a set of rather curious alternatives.”

“There’s only one choice, Matt,” interjected Ernst leaning forward in his eagerness to talk. But Matlock held his hand up, a strangely rhetorical gesture for him.

“Wait a moment, Ernst. Colin, you haven’t said a word since we started. What’s on your mind?”

Colin slowly shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m wondering if any of us have really faced what we’re talking about,” he said. “I mean, really faced it?”

He was very agitated and stood up now as if to brace himself more firmly to hurl out his words.

“Matt, listen to me. This country of ours is in a mess, we all know that. There’s something rotten in the way it’s governed, in some of those who govern it. And we’ve opposed them together for a score of years. We’ve worked hard, all of us, in that time. We’ve used every means possible. But we’ve always worked within the law. But this thing you’re talking about now, Matt, talking about as if you accept it without qualm, this situation which has suddenly sprung up overnight, this has nothing to do with persuasion, and education, nothing to do even with political scheming and chicanery. This is open revolution you’re talking about, Matt. This is civil war.”

There followed a long silence. Colin, as though his words had been the strings which pulled him upright, slumped back into his chair and looked stonily at the carpet. Ernst turned away in mock exasperation and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. Lizzie half leaned over to Colin, then turned back to Matt, then leaned back over to Colin and placed her hand on his forearm.

“Thank you, Colin,” said Matlock. “Now, Ernst.”

The words came tumbling out, bumping together in their eagerness to take to the air.

“There’s no question what we must do, Matt. For Godsake what’s the matter with you, Colin? This is an opportunity to do something meaningful. This is heaven-sent. Here on a plate is being handed to us the power and authority we’ve been striving for for years. We’ve got to take it.”

In his turn he subsided, slight beads of sweat along the one deep furrow in his forehead. Looking at it, Matlock was reminded of the quiet Scot with the pale hollow in his temple.

“Lizzie,” he said.

“I could argue and debate,” she said quietly. “I could throw accusations of disloyalty at Colin. I could ask Ernst if power and authority are really what we’ve been striving for. But what’s the point? I cannot help you make up your mind, Matt. In fact I don’t think any of us have ever really been able to do that despite what you might have let us think. All I will say is that when you’ve made up your mind what to do and start counting the heads of your followers, you should always start at two. I’ll be there.”

“Thank you, Lizzie,” said Matlock without any reciprocal show of emotion. “You’re quite right, of course. I have made up my mind. Colin, I respect you for what you say. I could reply that this civil war is going to take place anyway and that I must do what I can to make gentle its course. But that would be Jesuitical. No, I embrace this chance without reservation. We have moved beyond the realm of political action. We moved beyond it when I resigned all those years ago though I never realized it till yesterday. And once we move out of the area of political possibilities, we have moved out of the realm of democratic government. As for you Ernst, I wish to give you no offence but this I must say. You are very dear to me and you are my legally appointed successor. But the laws under which you are so appointed are the laws we will fight to overthrow. What I may become and what you may inherit will then be in no way connected other than by my own feeling for you, which not all may share.”

Ernst rose angrily.

“Is this what you think of me?”

“No, it is not. But I am speaking publicly now. I have not been a public man for many years despite my campaigns. You may not find me always to your taste.”

“Can you speak publicly to me, Matt?” asked Lizzie challengingly.

“Yes, I can. I will make you in public what you have long been in private. My wife. We will make at least one of Browning’s forgeries true.”

“Matt!” cried Lizzie, her face a-gleam.

He took her in his arms.

“Perhaps we can adopt Ernst and make the other true also.”

Ernst looked as though he were going to resent this for a moment, then his face reluctantly unfolded into smiles and eventually laughter.

“You do that,” he said, “that way at least I’ll get your money.”

The three of them now all looked at Colin who got to his feet and moved away. For a heart-jolting moment, Matlock thought he was going to leave. But he only went as far as the drink cupboard and started to fill four glasses.

“What the hell,” he said bringing them over to the others, “if there’s going to be a civil war, I might as well be on the same side as the people I like.”

Matlock gave him a narrow glance as he made this oblique pledge of loyalty, but Lizzie flung her arms round his neck and nearly sent the drinks flying.

“Oh, Colin. That’s marvellous. That’s lovely. It wouldn’t be the same without you. Now it’s the four of us. The same as before. As always. Isn’t it, Matt?”

No, thought Matlock, no it isn’t, my darling, and I doubt if it ever can be again. But it’s better than it might have been.

And with a slight contraction of his forearm muscle he eased back up his sleeve the hand force-gun which the Abbot had pressed upon him the day before. He had not taken it to the Embassy the previous night. Now he would not be without it again.

“Thank you, Colin,” he said as he took his drink, and pushed to the back of his mind the thought that Colin might have noticed the small but menacing arm-movement as he set off across the room.

Would I have fired? Matlock asked himself. Who knows?

But he realized he knew very well and his glass was the longer at his lips because of the sudden knowledge.

It was nearly lunchtime so they made a rapid meal out of the contents of Matlock’s fridge, then settled down to work out a plan of action. As their normal discussion pattern unfolded — Ernst the lover of words; Colin the thoughtful and analytical one; Lizzie the recorder, and the realist; himself the chairman — Matlock began to realize just how conditioned they had been by the environment provided for them for so many years. His own growing uncertainties must have stemmed in part from a feeling of repetitiveness, of substituting activity for action. Now they were finding it strangely difficult to make any headway along the new avenues which had opened up. Ernst and Colin were soon locked in a disagreement which became progressively more theoretical, less particular.

Lizzie said nothing but watched Matlock who sat with a strange and complete stillness that was not unfamiliar. She recalled with a slight shock that this had been a characteristic of his in the days when she first knew him, before his separation from the springs of power had been complete.

Now the wheel has turned she thought. It pulled him under, but now he’s up on the other side, still clinging, and rising again. It’s a long circle to make twice.

Matlock turned his gaze on her as if he had caught her unspoken musings.

I wonder what has changed in me, she thought. And whether it can change back. Whether I want it to.

She smiled at him, but he did not accept the invitation to intimacy. Instead he turned and, in a perfectly normal tone of voice, he cut right through the heated discussion which filled the room, halting it in mid-sentence.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” he said. “We must for the time being come to terms with the Abbot. He is the only contact I have so far with this alleged underground movement whose spiritual leader I seem to be. I do not trust the Scots, begging your pardon, Lizzie. And I cannot know how much we need their help till I have some better idea of our own strength. The only other group we’ve had any positive contact with is the anonymous lot who tried to kill me yesterday. At least my relationship with them is straightforward. ”

“What about Browning?” asked Lizzie. The other two were sitting very still.

“Browning is still waiting for my answer. I’m surprised he hasn’t contacted me already. But he will do soon if I don’t contact him first. I have no illusions about the man — once he knows I haven’t accepted his offer, he’ll carry out his threats against all of us. He hasn’t got where he is by meaningless promises.”

“So what do we do?”

“I accept. Or at least indicate I will accept when I meet him tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’ll get you nowhere, Matt. He’ll have you in front of the television cameras in thirty seconds. Whatever standing or influence you have in these revolutionary circles would be wiped out in a moment. This is something you can’t bluff over.”

Matlock looked approvingly at Ernst.

“You’re right, of course. But I’ve no intention of trying to bluff, at least not longer than tomorrow morning. Browning cannot see me till tomorrow afternoon, he’s opening a trade conference in Manchester in the morning, that’s a piece of useful information I picked up last night. But the Abbot can see me in the morning. We have an arrangement. He foresaw that this might be necessary. We’re going to go underground, all of us.”

They took the news with a pleasing calmness, though whether this was due to the inevitability of the decision or their slow recognition of all its implications Matlock could not tell. Abruptly he stood up.

“Meeting’s over. Go your ways now. Act normally, but stop by your ’phones tomorrow morning till you hear from me.”

“Matt,” said Colin slowly, “you mean we’re going to go into hiding, just turn our backs on our lives? For how long, Matt, how long?”

“Till Budget Day, you fool,” laughed Ernst who seemed to have been elated by the prospect of action. His eyes were sparkling and a smile played constantly around his lips.

“That’s right,” agreed Matlock. “Till Budget Day. Till Browning takes the step which will instantly unite all the forces of discontent, strengthen the waverers, confirm the doubters. He has to do it or the bottom falls out of the Economy. He has to lower the E.O.L. a couple of points at least. Then it all starts, Colin, and we have to be there. This is the only way to make sure.”

Colin said nothing in reply, but his long frame was stooped with melancholy as he unfolded slowly from his chair.

“I see how it is, Matt. I’ll expect to hear from you in the morning. Goodnight now.”

“Night?” laughed Ernst. “It isn’t four o’clock yet.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Colin. “Of course. Good-bye, Matt.”

He shook Matlock’s hand, a formal and uncharacteristic gesture.

Ernst followed him to the door, talking excitedly all the while.

“Matt,” he said, “you’re right to do it this way. This is the greatest thing that ever happened to us. We’ll take Browning apart.”

Lizzie said quietly underneath Ernst’s chatter, “Take care, Matt. I know I don’t need to tell you not to underestimate Browning. If what you say of the man is true, he’ll have every contingency covered as well. Possibly, including this one.” “I’m sure he will,” smiled Matlock. “Off you go too, darling. Buy something for your bottom drawer. You’ll probably be watched, so make it something that would suit a Cabinet Minister’s wife.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start looking, Matt.”

After they had all left, Matlock sat in deep thought for a while. Then he looked at his watch. It was coming up to two minutes to four. He picked up his ’phone and dialled a number. He heard the automatic linkage connect and the buzzer at the other end sound. He let it sound twice, then replaced his receiver.

So much for the Abbot, he thought. This next one requires a little more skill. Carefully he dialled again. “Matlock,” he said shortly when the answer came. A second later he felt the amplified resonance of Browning’s heartiest greeting vibrating in his ear.

“My dear Matt. I’d just about given you up. How nice of you to ’phone. Now what can I do for you?”

“I’d like to see you, Prime Minister.”

“But, of course. Now let me see. Can I fit you in tonight. Or would tomorrow do? Eh?”

He knows, thought Matlock. But he can’t. Remember, that’s part of his strength. Apparent omniscience.

“As you wish, Prime Minister.”

“Then tomorrow let it be, eh? It’ll have to be after lunch. I’m off North in the morning. Shall we say two-thirty here? Shall I send you another car, Matt? But you must promise to ride in it this time.”

“That would be kind of you.”

“Think nothing of it, old chap. Well, see you then. Cheery-bye.”

The ’phone went dead. Matlock nursed it on his shoulder as he considered the interchange.

No curiosity. Not a trace. He had shown no curiosity at all. Supreme confidence? Or bluff? Or genuine unconcern?

Analysing Browning’s thought-processes was a pointless exercise, he had long ago decided. But it was with difficulty that he put it out of his head, and after a quiet evening spent listening to records and making certain small preparations for the next day, he needed a small hypo to put him to sleep and out of reach of the troublesome thoughts which pattered round the dome of his mind.

Tomorrow will tell, he thought banally as he fell asleep.

He was right. Tomorrow told.

He awoke with a thick, heavy head and glanced at his bedside clock. Instead he saw a pair of elegant shoes resting on the table. They were occupied. He followed the sweep of the neatly-trousered leg, the white shirt, the blue tie with the thin silver line. He ended by looking into the face of the police inspector who had called to investigate the force-gun shooting.

The man was sitting in an armchair and seemed to be asleep. Matlock began stealthily to edge to the side of the bed, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the sleeping man’s face.

There was a cough from elsewhere in the room. He looked round. Seated on an upright chair by his dressing-table was a uniformed policeman with a gun resting in his lap.

The Inspector opened his eyes at the cough.

“Good-morning, Mr. Matlock. Now what the hell am I doing here, is the question you’re about to ask. Or how the hell did I get in? Well, technically we had to force an entry, but you’ll be pleased to know that we had keys and no damage has been done. As to why I’m here, Mr. Matlock, the answer’s simple. To protect you. And at ten a.m., which is now, to conduct you to the telephone. Better still we can conduct a telephone to you.”

He clapped his hands, the door opened and a constable came in bearing before him, like a butler with a tray, the telephone. Matlock saw through the open door that the living-room was full of cigarette smoke. And men.

The telephone was put down beside him, the Inspector rose and with a curt nod dismissed the constable and the man with the gun. He himself followed them, turning as he went through the door to say reassuringly, “Don’t worry. We’ll just be next door.”

Matlock slowly picked up the receiver.

“Matt! I hope I haven’t woken you. I’m just ringing to say don’t bother to come this afternoon. I’ll be a bit busy. Though actually I might have fitted you in this morning sometime. I didn’t go North after all. There’s been a bit of trouble up there. A lot of arrests; so I was probably better out of it. In any case, something came up, Matt. I’ve just come from the House. We’ve been in emergency session for a couple of hours. Incredible eh? They managed things better in your day. Well, the long and the short of it is, Matt, that as things turned out, I’ve had to bring in an emergency budget. Mind you, I often think that’s the best way. It cuts out speculation. But the really important thing, Matt, is that I’ve had to cut the E.O.L. Well, you knew I’d have to do that, didn’t you? So I did it. And I thought I’d let you know in case you missed it on the News.”

Matlock’s mouth was drier than even a drugged sleep warranted.

“What’s it down to Prime Minister?”

“In for a shilling, in for a pound, Matt. We’ve broken all records. We’re down to seventy. We’ve reached the Barrier, Matt. Are you listening, Matt? Hullo, are you still there?”

Matlock had no difficulty in drawing out the silence into the long dumbstruck pause he felt Browning expected. No difficulty at all.

Then, “I’m still here,” he said. “For a while. I’m still here for a while.”

“For a while, Matt? What do you mean? Oh yes. Of course. Your nearly seventy yourself, Matt, aren’t you? Two weeks time, I think. Or is it one and a half? I’m sorry about that, but we politicians can’t allow personal considerations to bend us from public duty. You should have accepted my offer the other day. But there it is. I’m afraid the post isn’t vacant any longer.”

“I thought that you were of sufficient stature not to gloat.”

There was an indignant snort from the other end of the line. Matlock was pleased to find he had recovered sufficiently to be able to admire its perfection.

“Gloating? Over what? No, what I rang to say was that I’ve been very worried about your safety since I heard someone took a shot at you. So I’ve decided to increase your protection and extra men have been detailed. They should be there now. Don’t worry about a thing, they’ll be keeping a very close watch. You deserve to live out your life in peace, Matt. The country owes you a lot. And by the way. Don’t bother to go down to the Heart Centre for your adjustment. I’m sending my own doctor round. You’ve earned a bit of privacy. Cheery-bye for now Matt.”

Matlock put the ’phone down and stared at the wall. The impact dents from the force gun looked like a pair of breasts, he thought. Perhaps I won’t have it repaired, just paint around them.

“I think you had better get up now, Mr. Matlock,” said the Inspector briskly from the door. “Have your brekkers before the Doc. comes.”

Matlock got up.