N or M? Page 5

  Tommy said:

  "Then he's all right?"

  "Not necessarily. Our German friends are notorious for their thoroughness. If von Deinim was sent as an agent to England, special care would be taken that his record should be consistent with his own account of himself. There are two possibilities. The whole von Deinim family may be parties to the arrangement - not improbable under the painstaking Nazi regime. Or else this is not really Carl von Deinim but a man playing the part of Carl von Deinim."

  Tommy said slowly: "I see." He added inconsequently:

  "He seems an awfully nice young fellow."

  Sighing, Grant said: "They are - they nearly always are. It's an odd life this service of ours. We respect our adversaries and they respect us. You usually like your opposite number, you know - even when you're doing your best to down him."

  There was a silence as Tommy thought over the strange anomaly of war. Grant's voice broke into his musings.

  "But there are those for whom we've neither respect nor liking - and those are the traitors within our own ranks - the men who are willing to betray their country and accept office and promotion from the foreigner who has conquered it."

  Tommy said with feeling:

  "My God, I'm with you, sir. That's a skunk's trick."

  "And deserves a skunk's end."

  Tommy said incredulously:

  "And there really are these - these swine?"

  "Everywhere. As I told you. In our service. In the fighting forces. On Parliamentary benches. High up in the Ministries. We've got to comb them out - we've got to! And we must do it quickly. It can't be done from the bottom - the small fry, the people who speak in the parks, who sell their wretched little news-sheets, they don't know who the big bugs are. It's the big bugs we want, they're the people who can do untold damage - and will do it unless we're in time."

  Tommy said confidently:

  "We shall be in time, sir."

  Grant asked:

  "What makes you say that?"

  Tommy said:

  "You've just said it - we've got to be!"

  The man with the fishing line turned and looked full at his subordinate for a minute or two, taking in anew the quiet resolute line of the jaw. He had a new liking and appreciation of what he saw. He said quietly:

  "Good man."

  He went on:

  "What about the women in this place? Anything strike you as suspicious there?"

  "I think there's something odd about the woman who runs it."

  "Mrs Perenna?"

  "Yes. You don't - know anything about her?"

  Grant said slowly:

  "I might see what I could do about checking her antecedents, but as I told you, it's risky."

  "Yes, better not take any chances. She's the only one who strikes me as suspicious in any way. There's a young mother, a fussy spinster, the hypochondriac's brainless wife, and a rather fearsome-looking old Irish-woman. All seem harmless on the face of it."

  "That's the lot, is it?"

  "No. There's a Mrs Blenkensop - arrived three days ago."

  "Well?"

  Tommy said: "Mrs Blenkensop is my wife."

  "What?"

  In the surprise of the announcement Grant's voice was raised. He spun around, sharp anger in his face. "I thought I told you, Beresford, not to breathe a word to your wife!"

  "Quite right, sir, and I didn't. If you'll just listen -"

  Succinctiy, Tommy narrated what had occurred. He did not dare look at the other. He carefully kept out of his voice the pride that he secretly felt.

  There was a silence when he brought the story to an end. Then a queer noise escaped from the other. Grant was laughing. He laughed for some minutes.

  He said: "I take my hat off to the woman! She's one in a thousand!"

  "I agree," said Tommy.

  "Easthampton will laugh when I tell him this. He warned me not to leave her out. Said she'd get the better of me if I did. I wouldn't listen to him. It shows you, though, how damned careful you've got to be. I thought I'd taken every precaution about being overheard. I'd satisfied myself beforehand that you and your wife were alone in the flat. I actually heard the voice in the telephone asking your wife to come round at once, and so - and so I was tricked by the old simple device of the banged door. Yes, she's a smart woman, your wife."

  He was silent for a minute, then he said:

  "Tell her from me, will you, that I eat dirt?"

  "And I suppose, now, she's in on this?"

  Mr Grant made an expressive grimace.

  "She's in on it whether we like it or not. Tell her the department will esteem it an honour if she will condescend to work with us over the matter."

  "I'll tell her," said Tommy with a faint grin.

  Grant said seriously:

  "You couldn't persuade her, I suppose, to go home and stay home?"

  Tommy shook his head.

  "You don't know Tuppence."

  "I think I'm beginning to. I said that because - well, it's a dangerous business. If they get wise to you or to her -"

  He left the sentence unfinished.

  Tommy said gravely: "I do understand that, sir."

  "But I suppose even you couldn't persuade your wife to keep out of danger."

  Tommy said slowly:

  "I don't know that I really would want to do that... Tuppence and I, you see, aren't on those terms. We go into things - together!"

  In his mind was that phrase, uttered years ago, at the close of an earlier war. A joint venture...

  That was what his life with Tuppence had been and would always be - a Joint Venture...

  Chapter 4

  When Tuppence entered the lounge at Sans Souci just before dinner, the only occupant of the room was the monumental Mrs O'Rourke, who was sitting by the window looking like some gigantic Buddha.

  She greeted Tuppence with a lot of geniality and verve.

  "Ah now, if it isn't Mrs Blenkensop! You're like myself; it pleases you to be down to time and get a quiet minute or two here before going into the dining-room, and a pleasant room this is in good weather with the windows open in the way that you'll not be noticing the smell of cooking. Terrible that is, in all of these places, and more especially if it's onion or cabbage that's on the fire. Sit here now, Mrs Blenkensop, and tell me what you've been doing with yourself this fine day and how you like Leahampton."

  There was something about Mrs O'Rourke that had an unholy fascination for Tuppence. She was rather like an ogress dimly remembered from early fairy tales. With her bulk, her deep voice, her unabashed beard and moustache, her deep twinkling eyes and the impression she gave of being more than life-size, she was indeed not unlike some childhood's fantasy.

  Tuppence replied that she thought she was going to like Leahampton very much, and be happy there.

  "That is," she added in a melancholy voice, "as happy as I can be anywhere with this terrible anxiety weighing on me all the time."

  "Ah now, don't you be worrying yourself," Mrs O'Rourke advised comfortably. "Those fine boys of yours will come back to you safe and sound. Not a doubt of it. One of them's in the Air Force, so I think you said?"

  "Yes, Raymond."

  "And is he in France now, or in England?"

  "He's in Egypt at the moment, but from what he said in his last letter - not exactly said - but we have a little private code if you know what I mean? - certain sentences mean certain things. I think that's quite justified, don't you?"

  Mrs O'Rourke replied promptly:

  "Indeed I do. 'Tis a mother's privilege."

  "Yes, you see I feel I must know just where he is."

  Mrs O'Rourke nodded the Buddha-like head.

  "I feel for you entirely, so I do. If I had a boy out there I'd be deceiving the censor the very same way, so I would. And your other boy, the one in the Navy?"

  Tuppence entered obligingly upon a saga of Douglas.

  "You see," she ended. "I feel so lost without my three boys. They've never been a
ll away together from me before. They're all so sweet to me. I really do think they treat me more as a friend than a mother." She laughed self-consciously. "I have to scold them sometimes and make them go out without me."

  ("What a pestilential woman I sound," thought Tuppence to herself.)

  She went on aloud.

  "And really I didn't know quite what to do or where to go. The lease of my house in London was up and it seemed so foolish to renew it and I thought if I came somewhere quiet, and yet with a good train service -" She broke off.

  Again the Buddha nodded.

  "I agree with you entirely. London is no place at the present. Ah! the gloom of it! I've lived there myself for many a year now. I'm by way of being an antique dealer, you know. You may know my shop in Cornaby Street, Chelsea? Kate Kelly's the name over the door. Lovely stuff I had there, too - oh, lovely stuff - mostly glass - Waterford, Cork - beautiful. Chandeliers and lustres and punchbowls and all the rest of it. Foreign glass, too. And small furniture - nothing large - just small period pieces - mostly walnut and oak. Oh, lovely stuff - and I had some good customers. But there, when there's a war on, all that goes west. I'm lucky to be out of it with as little loss as I've had."

  A faint memory flickered through Tuppence's mind. A shop filled with glass, through which it was difficult to move, a rich persuasive voice, a compelling massive woman. Yes, surely, she had been into that shop.

  Mrs O'Rourke went on.

  "I'm not one of those that like to be always complaining - not like some that's in this house. Mr Cayley for one, with his muffler and his shawls and his moans about his business going to pieces. Of course it's to pieces, there's a war on - and his wife with never Boo to say to a goose. Then there's that little Mrs Sprot, always fussing about her husband."

  "Is he out at the front?"

  "Not he. He's a tuppenny-halfpenny clerk in an Insurance office, that's all, and so terrified of air raids he's had his wife down here since the beginning of the war. Mind you, I think that's right where the child's concerned - and a nice wee mite she is - but Mrs Sprot, she frets, for all that her husband comes down when he can... Keeps saying Arthur must miss her so. But if you ask me Arthur's not missing her overmuch - maybe he's got other fish to fry."

  Tuppence murmured:

  "I'm terribly sorry for all these mothers. If you let your children go away without you, you never stop worrying. And if you go with them it's hard on the husbands being left."

  "Ah! yes, and it comes expensive running two establishments."

  "This place seems quite reasonable," said Tuppence.

  "Yes, I'd say you get your money's worth. Mrs Perenna's a good manager. There's a queer woman for you now."

  "In what way?" asked Tuppence.

  Mrs O'Rourke said with a twinkle:

  "You'll be thinking I'm a terrible talker. It's true. I'm interested in all my fellow creatures, that's why I sit in this chair as often as I can. You see who goes in and who goes out and who's on the verandah and what goes on in the garden. What were we talking of now - ah, yes, Mrs Perenna, and the queerness of her. There's been a grand drama in that woman's life or I'm much mistaken."

  "Do you really think so?"

  "I do now. And the mystery she makes of herself! 'And where might you come from in Ireland?' I asked her. And would you believe it, she held out on me, declaring she was not from Ireland at all."

  "You think she is Irish?"

  "Of course she's Irish. I know my own countrywomen. I could name you the county she comes from. But there! 'I'm English,' she says, 'and my husband was a Spaniard' -"

  Mrs O'Rourke broke off abruptly as Mrs Sprot came in, closely followed by Tommy.

  Tuppence immediately assumed a sprightly manner.

  "Good evening, Mr Meadowes. You look very brisk this evening."

  Tommy said:

  "Plenty of exercise, that's the secret. A round of golf this morning and a walk along the front this afternoon."

  Millicent Sprot said:

  "I took Baby down to the beach this afternoon. She wanted to paddle but I really thought it was rather cold. I was helping her build a castle and a dog ran off with my knitting and pulled out yards of it. So annoying, and so difficult picking up all the stitches again. I'm such a bad knitter."

  "You're getting along fine with that helmet, Mrs Blenkensop," said Mrs O'Rourke, suddenly turning her attention to Tuppence. "You've been just racing along. I thought Miss Minton said that you were an inexperienced knitter."

  Tuppence flushed faintly. Mrs O'Rourke's eyes were sharp. With a slightly vexed air, Tuppence said:

  "I have really done quite a lot of knitting. I told Miss Minton so. But I think she likes teaching people."

  Everybody laughed in agreement, and a few minutes later the rest of the party came in and the gong was sounded.

  The conversation during the meal turned on the absorbing subject of spies. Well-known hoary chestnuts were retold. The nun with the muscular arm, the clergyman descending from his parachute and using unclergymanlike language as he landed with a bump, the Austrian cook who secreted a wireless in her bedroom chimney, and all the things that had happened or nearly happened to aunts and second cousins of those present. That led easily to Fifth Column activities. To denunciations of the British Fascists, of the Communists, of the Peace Party, of conscientious objectors. It was a very normal conversation, of the kind that may be heard almost every day, nevertheless Tuppence watched keenly the faces and demeanour of the people as they talked, striving to catch some tell-tale expression or word. But there was nothing. Sheila Perenna alone took no part in the conversation, but that might be put down to her habitual taciturnity. She sat there, her dark rebellious face sullen and brooding.

  Carl von Deinim was out tonight, so tongues could be quite unrestrained.

  Sheila only spoke once towards the end of diner.

  Mrs Sprot had just said in her thin fluting voice:

  "Where I do think the Germans made such a mistake in the last war was to shoot Nurse Cavell. It turned everybody against them."

  It was then that Sheila, flinging back her head, demanded in her fierce young voice: "Why shouldn't they shoot her? She was a spy, wasn't she?"

  "Oh, no, not a spy."

  "She helped English people to escape - in an enemy country. That's the same thing. Why shouldn't she be shot?"

  "Oh, but shooting a woman - and a nurse."

  Sheila got up.

  "I think the Germans were quite right," she said.

  She went out of the window into the garden.

  Dessert, consisting of some under-ripe bananas and some tired oranges, had been on the table some time. Everyone rose and adjourned to the lounge for coffee.

  Only Tommy unobtrusively betook himself to the garden. He found Sheila Perenna leaning over the terrace wall staring out at the sea. He came and stood beside her.

  By her hurried, quick breathing he knew that something had upset her badly. He offered her a cigarette, which she accepted.

  He said: "Lovely night."

  In a low intense voice the girl answered:

  "It could be..."

  Tommy looked at her doubtfully. He felt, suddenly, the attraction and the vitality of this girl. There was a tumultuous life in her, a kind of compelling power. She was the kind of girl, he thought, that a man might easily lose his head over.

  "If it weren't for the war, you mean?" he said.

  "I don't mean that at all, I hate the war."

  "So do we all."

  "Not in the way I mean. I hate the cant about it, the smugness - the horrible, horrible patriotism."

  "Patriotism?" Tommy was startled.

  "Yes, I hate patriotism, do you understand? All this country, country, country! Betraying your country - dying for your country - serving your country. Why should one's country mean anything at all?"

  Tommy said simply: "I don't know. It just does."

  "Not to me! Oh, it would to you - you go abroad and buy and sell in th
e British Empire and come back bronzed and full of clichés, talking about the natives and calling for Chota Pegs and all that sort of thing."

  Tommy said gently:

  "I'm not quite as bad as that, I hope, my dear."