Read Online Carson's Conspiracy by Michael Innes - Free Book Online

this whole line of thought was a waste of time, and it would be better to acknowledge the risks and get on with the job. He had merely sketched his rough idea to Pluckworthy at that rather heavy (and wickedly expensive) lunch. No doubt Pluckworthy’s own brains – which were by no means to be despised – would now be at work on it. But the main burden of the thing, what might be called the intellectual labour, remained with him. And he had to admit that there was still a good deal of mere groping in front of him. He was rather in the position, he reflected, of some poor devil churning out a whodunit – pushing along, he didn’t know quite where. He did, of course, command that beautiful main thought: that for an hour or thereabout Robin Carson would come into existence and then again cease to be. (Henry James himself – of whom Carson hadn’t heard – could not have been more overcome by the ‘beauty’ of an idea than was our hero when confronted by this one.) Of course the imagined Robin would simply have become the quite real Pluckworthy again, and this meant that Pluckworthy would thereafter be something of an inconvenience. He would know far too much. But what he wouldn’t know was the destination – some highly agreeable destination, it was to be hoped – for which his late employer had departed.
    Would there have to be other inconvenient persons? Cynthia had perhaps to be reckoned as in that category. Knowing her dream-son to have been kidnapped and subsequently killed (for that, Carson quite understood, would have to be the implication) would she not be drastically cured of her delusion, and announce Robin to have been a fiction? He had dimly foreseen this risk already; now it became enhancedly formidable. Of course, it was true here, too, that nothing of the kind could happen until he was over the hills and far away. But it might mean that he would be hunted for. Unless, that was, he had himself joined Robin among the reputedly slain. Of that, also, he had thought already, but so imprecisely that he had almost forgotten about it. And yet it was the crown of the whole thing! Decidedly, he must now hold on to it, fit it in as he could. Wheels within wheels, he told himself rather desperately. The beauty of the idea wasn’t exactly going to be the beauty of simplicity, after all.
    Kidnappings are usually perpetrated by gangs. On the continent, where they have been chiefly fashionable, the gangs may be suddenly-assembled small armies, sufficiently equipped with automatic weapons to overpower even substantial opposition from security police, private bodyguards and the like. Nothing of the sort was in question for the projected operation. But wouldn’t at least two or three accomplices be required? Carson was surprised and displeased to notice the term ‘accomplices’ coming into his head. ‘Assistants’ might be better. But, whatever they might be called, where were they to be found? A citizen as blameless as himself naturally had no connections with anything that could be called an underworld. If suddenly required, for instance, to find what was known as a hired gun, he would be as stumped as the local vicar or GP. For a moment, and surprisingly, he found his mind turning to Punter. Perhaps because of the mask-like effect achieved by Punter’s perpetual ‘Thank you, sir’, and the like, he had several times extended his doubts about Punter beyond the bugging business to wondering whether the man might not be the kind of villain that gets along on sudden and ruthless violence; whether, in fact, Punter might not any night tie him up with his own pyjama cord and depart with the spoons.
    This was an extravagant apprehension, but it did set Carson wondering whether it mightn’t be possible to enlist Punter for the task ahead. Eventually, however, he dismissed this as a messy idea. And, even as he did so, he remembered that he had already