ear. 'Or if not about you, about your wife. And you're perfectly correct: I should have included you. But I wanted Darcy's opinion first.'
Now Darcy was looking at Grieve in the same puzzled fashion. 'What? What's going on?'
That's what I was trying to tell you. It's about Brenda.' And quickly, before Darcy and the Necroscope could break into a bout of angry questioning: 'We seem to have lost her - and the baby.' In the Necroscope's mind, Grieve's dry, official, almost emotionless voice seemed to ring like an echo chamber; Darcy's, too. Perhaps it was an irritating effect of the empty corridor and rooms, he thought, and put it aside if only for the moment. But Brenda and Little Harry, missing? That was something else!
'Lost them?' he repeated Grieve. 'My wife and child? What do you mean, "lost" them?' The phrase seemed too well-chosen, too final. Harry's tired eyes were wide awake now, unblinking. 'Have they . . . come to any harm?' He grabbed the DO's elbow.
Grieve looked him straight in the eyes and said, 'No, not that we know of. Now, do you want to let go of my arm so I can talk to you in what's left of comfort?'
Harry gritted his teeth but released him. And waiting for Grieve to speak, he re-evaluated what he knew of the man.
Grieve had two talents; one of them 'dodgy,' Branch parlance for an as yet undeveloped ESP ability, and the other very remarkable and possibly unique. His first gift was that of far-seeing: he was a human crystal ball. The only trouble was he had to know exactly where and what he was looking for, otherwise he could see nothing. His talent didn't work at random but had to be directed: he had to have a definite target.
His second string made him doubly valuable. It could wel prove to be a reflection of his first talent, but occasionally it was a godsend. Grieve was a telepath, but a mind-reader with a difference. Yet again he had to 'aim' his talent; he could only read a person's mind when he was talking to him ... but if he knew the person in question, that included when they were talking on the telephone! Using John Grieve, there was no need for mechanical scrambler devices. It was one reason why Darcy used him as frequently as possible in the role of Duty Officer.
But. . . had it been something of Grieve's talent that the Necroscope had experienced just a moment ago? Was it even possible?
'You weren't talking about me?' Harry frowned and licked his dry lips, his mind returning to that peculiar sensation he had felt when he'd entered his room: the feeling that his name had been whispered. And then there was the echo chamber effect, which was still present: as if his head were hollow - or as if it were . . . what, occupied? By someone else?
Someone who was spying on his thoughts? 'Were you thinking about me, then? And if so, would I be able to hear you thinking?' Suddenly Brenda and the child had taken a back seat in Harry's order of priorities. Or if not that exactly, then he'd seen the possibility of a connection with their disappearance and this new problem. A remote one (he hoped and prayed), but a possibility.
Again Harry gripped Grieve's arm, then both of them, as he read the other's negative stare. No, he wouldn't have been able to hear Grieve thinking about him. And so: 'John, I want you to read my mind,' he snapped. 'Go on in there and see what you can find. See who you can find! Do it now, as quickly as you can.'
Almost instinctively Grieve looked, and recoiled at once! He wrenched himself free of Harry, took a stumbling step backwards, said, 'What...?'
'Wel?' Harry caught up with him and held him against the wal of the corridor. 'What did you see?' (Perhaps not surprisingly, the echo had vanished now; the voices of everyone involved were remarkably clear and ordinary; there was no whisperer in the Necroscope's mind).
Darcy was looking worriedly from Harry to Grieve and back again. 'What on earth ...?' he began to say. But Grieve cut him short with: Two of you?' (This to Harry). 'A moment ago, two of you. But now, only one. Only ... you!'
Again Harry released him, and turned tremblingly away. He had been invaded, his mind broken into. Just like Banks, Stevens, and Jakes before him. For