Read Online The Night Calls by David Pirie - Free Book Online

should have known better than to comment, but I had been excited by my father’s relative improvement.
    ‘Oh no,’ Waller replied with a shake of his fine head. ‘I sedated him. That is all.’
    As ever the man must have everything under his control. Waller had taken over the supervision of my father’s case at the instigation of my mother, but I was quite sure he had no wish whatsoever for his ‘patient’s’ health to improve. How I longed for a day when my father became whole again and sent him packing from the house! Alas I must have known, even then, such a day would probably never come.
    Waller was continuing in his clipped nasal tones, ‘ … your mother says you were concerning yourself about Samuel. That beggar with the fiddle?’
    I was surprised to hear Waller say his name. When describing the incident to my mother, I had never called him Samuel. ‘You knew him?’ I asked.
    ‘I heard the infernal racket he made. Sad, I suppose, in a way, but are we not better off for the streets being clear of such people? A weak strain will produce weakness.’
    His eyes fell on my father, and of course I knew quite well what he was saying to me. But, as ever, his insinuation was veiled so that he could avoid any overt opposition.
    ‘You want me to hear your pathology tonight?’
    This last, more civil, remark came, I suppose, because he had noticed my fist clench and thought he might have risked provoking me too far. As it was, I did not dignify him with a reply and left the room.
    Later that night I resorted to my friends and several glasses of ale as we lounged on the red leather upholstery of Rutherford’s bar. I cannot say I drank excessively as a student for I was poor, and at home each night I faced the living proof of what damage drink could do. But I was by no means totally abstinent. For his part, Neill had independent means from his people in Canada and sometimes, when his money came through, he insisted on buying our beer. On nights like this I was glad of it too for I wanted a diversion. And I also wished to talk to them of Samuel’s death.
    ‘But why would anyone wish to harm him?’ said Stark after I had explained that the death seemed to me suspicious.
    Obviously I had turned this over more than once. ‘I do not know enough about the man, but there may have been some quarrel or a debt. I doubt they will make any investigation whatsoever; the bottle he drained has disappeared. It could have contained any kind of poison. But if his body could be exhumed?’
    Both of them guffawed at this. ‘Doyle!’ Stark said. ‘Even if you found his grave, how could you persuade them to do that? May I remind you we are not exactly men of influence in our profession!’
    Finally I was forced to admit defeat. Even if we could establish a case, I doubted anyone would listen to us. And so, as will happen late in the evening when undergraduates are drinking, the talk became more abstract. We talked of innocence and goodness (for Samuel was my idea of innocence) and then of evil. And I suddenly remembered with indignation how at my boarding school I was told I would go to hell for playing with a ball in a corridor. ‘If that,’ I said putting down my glass with finality, ‘is what the Jesuits can class as evil, perhaps evil does not truly exist at all?’
    ‘But it does,’ said Stark.
    ‘Possibly,’ I said gloomily. For I was thinking of Samuel’s lifeless body and his staring pain.
    ‘Certainly,’ said Neill emphatically. ‘Just stand on a high cliff looking down. No death could be worse: you would be crushed on the rocks below; yet something, some imp, still whispers to you to jump. Or let us say you have an important task, something you have to do, you must do and time is desperately short. Action is essential.’ He was almost on his feet himself now, waving his hands, a peculiarity of Neill’s when he became excited with some flight of fancy. ‘But then something, a lassitude, descends. That same imp