No plan was discernable on first or second floor or in the long empty attics. Only familiarity could reduce the maze-like quality of room and corridor. At least there was ample time for familiarity.
Harley spent a long while walking about, hands in pockets. At one point he met Dapple: she was drooping gracefully over a sketchbook, amateurishly copying a picture that hung on one of the walls – a picture fo the room in which she sat. They exchanged a few words, then Harley moved on.
Something lurked in the edge of his mind like a spider in the corner of its web. He stepped into what they called the piano room and then he realized what was worrying him. Almost furtively, he glanced round as the darkness slipped away, and then he looked at the big piano. Some strange things had arrived on the shelf from time to time and had been distributed over the house: one of them stood on the top of the piano now.
It was a model, heavy and about two feet high, squat, almost round, with a sharp nose and four buttressed vanes. Harley knew what it was. It was a ground-to-space ship, a model of the burly ferries that lumbered up to the spaceship proper.
That had caused them more unsettlement than when the piano itself had appeared in the store. Keeping his eyes on the model, Harley seated himself at the piano stool and sat tensely, trying to draw something from the rear of his mind … something connected with spaceships.
Whatever it was, it was unpleasant, and it dodged backwards whenever he thought he had laid a mental finger on it. So it always eluded him. If only he could discuss it with someone, it might be teased out of its hiding place. Unpleasant: menacing, yet with a promise entangled in the menace.
If he could get at it, meet it boldly face to face, he could do … something definite. And until he faced it, he could not even say what the something definite was he wanted to do.
A footfall behind him. Without turning, Harley deftly pushed up the piano lid and ran a finger along the keys. Only then did he look back carelessly over his shoulder. Calvin stood there, hands in pockets, looking solid and comfortable.
“Saw the light in here,” he said easily. “I thought I’d drop in as I was passing.”
“I was thinking I would play the piano awhile,” Harley answered with a smile. The thing was not discussable, even with a near acquaintance like Calvin because … because of the nature of the thing … because one had to behave like a normal, unworried human being. That at least was sound and clear and gave him comfort: behave like a normal human being.
Reassured, he pulled a gentle tumble of music from the keyboard. He played well. They all played well, Dapple, May, Pief … as soon as they had assembled the piano, they had all played well. Was that – natural? Harley shot a glance at Calvin. The stocky man leaned against the instrument, back to that disconcerting model, not a care in the world. Nothing showed on his face but an expression of bland amiability. They were all amiable, never quarrelling together.
The six of them gathered for a scanty lunch, their talk was trite and cheerful, and the afternoon followed on the same pattern as the morning, as all the other mornings: secure, comfortable, aimless. Only to Harley did the pattern seem slightly out of focus; he now had a clue to the problem. It was small enough, but in the dead calm of their days it was large enough.
May had dropped the clue. When she helped herself to jelly, Jagger laughingly accused her of taking more than her fair share. Dapple, who always defended May, said: “She’s taken less than you, Jagger.”
“No,” May corrected, “I think I have more than anyone else. I took it for an interior motive.”
It was the kind of pun anyone made at times. But Harley carried it away to consider. He paced round one of the silent rooms. Interior, ulterior motives… Did the others here feel the disquiet he felt? Had they a reason for concealing that disquiet? And another question: