Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

The News in English by Graham Greene

Graham Greene, as you know, is the author of THIS GUN FOR HIRE and THE MINISTRY OF FEAR. It has been said that his literary preoccupation is with abnormal psychology — remember Alan Ladd in the moving picture version of THIS GUN FOR HIRE? Phyllis Bentley once wrote that Graham Greene “seems able to investigate sinister psychologies without sentimentalizing them.”

And yet the story we bring you by Graham Greene is not one of abnormal psychology at all Quite the contrary, it illustrates an heroic form of normal psychology. Nor does this story avoid sentimentality. Quite the contrary, it illustrates an heroic form of sentimentality. It illustrates something else too — what William Rose Benét meant when he said of Mr. Greene that “no man writing today is more a master of suspense.”

“The News in English” is one of the finest secret service stories to come out of The War of Liberation.

Lord Haw-Haw of Zeesen was off the air.

All over England the new voice was noticed: precise and rather lifeless, it was the voice of a typical English don.

In his first broadcast he referred to himself as a man young enough to sympathize with what he called “the resurgence of youth all over the new Germany,” and that was the reason — combined with the pedantic tone — he was at once nicknamed Dr. Funkhole.

It is the tragedy of such men that they are never alone in the world.

Old Mrs. Bishop was knitting by the fire at her house in Crowborough when young Mrs. Bishop tuned in to Zeesen. The sock was khaki: it was as if she had picked up at the point where she had dropped a stitch in 1918. The grim comfortable house stood in one of the long avenues, all spruce and laurel and a coating of snow, which are used to nothing but the footsteps of old retired people. Young Mrs. Bishop never forgot that moment: the wind beating up across Ashdown Forest against the blacked-out window, and her mother-in-law happily knitting, and the sense of everything waiting for this moment. Then the voice came into the room from Zeesen in the middle of a sentence, and old Mrs. Bishop said firmly, “That’s David.”

Young Mary Bishop made a hopeless protest — “It can’t be,” but she knew.

“I know my son if you don’t know your husband.”

It seemed incredible that the man speaking couldn’t hear them, that he should just go on, reiterating for the hundredth time the old lies, as if there were nobody anywhere in the world who knew him — a wife or a mother.

Old Mrs. Bishop had stopped knitting. She said, “Is that the man they’ve been writing about — Doctor Funkhole?”

“It must be.”

“It’s David.”

The voice was extraordinarily convincing: he was going into exact engineering details — David Bishop had been a mathematics don at Oxford. Mary Bishop twisted the wireless off and sat down beside her mother-in-law. “They’ll want to know who it is,” Mrs. Bishop said.

“We mustn’t tell them,” said Mary.

The old fingers had begun again on the khaki sock. She said, “It’s our duty.” Duty, it seemed to Mary Bishop, was a disease you caught with age: you ceased to feel the tug of personal ties; you gave yourself up to the great tides of patriotism and hate. She said, “They must have made him do it. We don’t know what threats...”

“That’s neither here nor there.”

She gave weakly in to hopeless wishes. “If only he’d got away in time. I never wanted him to give that lecture course.”

“He always was stubborn,” said old Mrs. Bishop.

“He said there wouldn’t be a war.”

“Give me the telephone.”

“But you see what it means,” said Mary Bishop. “He may be tried for treason if we win.”

“When we win,” old Mrs. Bishop said.

The nickname was not altered, even after the interviews with the two Mrs. Bishops, even after the sub-acid derogatory little article about David Bishop’s previous career. It was suggested now that he had known all along that war was coming, that he had gone to Germany to evade military service, leaving his wife and his mother to be bombed. Mary Bishop fought, almost in vain, with the reporters for some recognition that he might have been forced... by threats or even physical violence. The most one paper would admit was that if threats had been used David Bishop had taken a very unheroic way out. We praise heroes as though they are rare, and yet we are always ready to blame another man for lack of heroism. The name Dr. Funkhole stuck.

But the worst of it to Mary Bishop was old Mrs. Bishop’s attitude. She turned a knife in the wound every evening at 9.15. The radio set must be tuned in to Zeesen, and there she sat listening to her son’s voice and knitting socks for some unknown soldier on the Maginot Line. To young Mrs. Bishop none of it made sense — least of all that flat, pedantic voice with its smooth, well-thought-out elaborate lies. She was afraid to go out now into Crowborough: the whispers in the post office, the old faces watching her covertly in the library. Sometimes she thought almost with hatred, why has David done this to me? Why?

Then suddenly she got her answer.

The voice for once broke new ground. It said, “Somewhere back in England my wife may be listening to me. I am a stranger to the rest of you, but she knows that I am not in the habit of lying.”

A personal appeal was too much. Mary Bishop had faced her mother-in-law and the reporters: she couldn’t face her husband. She began to cry, sitting close beside the radio set like a child beside its doll’s house when something has been broken in it which nobody can repair. She heard the voice of her husband speaking as if he were at her elbow from a country which was now as distant and as inaccessible as another planet.

“The fact of the matter is...”

The words came slowly out as if he were emphasizing a point in a lecture, and then he went on — to what would concern a wife. The low price of food, the quantity of meat in the shops: he went into great detail, giving figures, picking out odd, irrelevant things — like Mandarin oranges and toy zebras — perhaps to give an effect of richness and variety.

Suddenly Mary Bishop sat up with a jerk as if she had been asleep. She said “Oh, God, where’s that pencil?” and upset one of the too many ornaments looking for one. Then she began to write, but in no time at all the voice was saying, “Thank you for having listened to me so attentively,” and Zeesen had died out on the air. She said, “Too late.”

“What’s too late?” said old Mrs. Bishop sharply. “Why did you want a pencil?”

“Just an idea,” Mary Bishop said.

She was led next day up and down the cold, unheated corridors of a War Office in which half the rooms were empty, evacuated. Oddly enough, her relationship to David Bishop was of use to her now, if only because it evoked some curiosity and a little pity. But she no longer wanted the pity, and at last she reached the right man.

He listened to her with great politeness. He was not in uniform: his rather good tweeds made him look as if he had just come up from the country for a day or two, to attend to the war. When she had finished he said, “It’s rather a tall story, you know, Mrs. Bishop. Of course it’s been a great shock to you — this — well... action of your husband’s.”

“I’m proud of it.”

“Just because in the old days you had this — scheme, you really believe...?”

“If he was away from me and he telephoned ‘The fact of the matter is’ it always meant, ‘this is all lies, but take the initial letters which follow...?’ Oh, Colonel, if you only knew the number of unhappy week-ends I’ve saved him from — because, you see, he could always telephone to me, even in front of his host.” She said with tears in her voice, “Then I’d send him a telegram...”

“Yes. But still... you didn’t get anything this time, did you?”

“I was too late. I hadn’t a pencil. I only got this — I know it doesn’t seem to make sense.” She pushed the paper across. SOSPIC. “I know it might easily be coincidence — that it does seem to make a kind of word.”

“An odd word.”

“Mightn’t it be a man’s name?”

The officer in tweeds was looking at it, she suddenly realized, with real interest — as if it was a rare kind of pheasant. He said, “Excuse me a moment,” and left her. She could hear him telephoning to somebody from another room: the little ting of the bell, silence, and then a low voice she couldn’t overhear. Then he returned, and she could tell at once from his face that all was well.

He sat down and fiddled with a fountain-pen: he was obviously embarrassed. He started a sentence and stopped it. Then he brought out in an embarrassed gulp, “We’ll all have to apologize to your husband.”

“It meant something?”

He was obviously making his mind up about something difficult and out of the way: he was not in the habit of confiding in members of the public. But she had ceased to be a member of the public.

“My dear Mrs. Bishop,” he said, “I’ve got to ask a great deal from you.”

“Of course. Anything.”

He seemed to reach a decision and stopped fiddling. “A neutral ship called the Pic was sunk this morning at 4 A.M., with a loss of two hundred lives. S.O.S. Pic. If we’d had your husband’s warning, we could have got destroyers to her in time. I’ve been speaking to the Admiralty.”

Mary Bishop said in a tone of fury, “The things they are writing about David. Is there one of them who’d have the courage...?”

“That’s the worst part of it, Mrs. Bishop. They must go on writing. Nobody must know, except my department and yourself.”

“His mother?”

“You mustn’t even tell her.”

“But can’t you make them just leave him alone?”

“This afternoon I shall ask them to intensify their campaign — in order to discourage others. An article on the legal aspect of treason.”

“And if I refuse to keep quiet?”

“Your husband’s life won’t be worth much, will it?”

“So he’s just got to go on?”

“Yes. Just go on.”

He went on for four weeks. Every night now she tuned in to Zeesen with a new horror — that he would be off the air. The code was a child’s code. How could they fail to detect it? But they did fail. Men with complicated minds can be deceived by simplicity. And every night, too, she had to listen to her mother-in-law’s indictment; every episode which she thought discreditable out of a child’s past was brought out — the tiniest incident. Women in the last war had found a kind of pride in “giving” their sons: this, too, was a gift on the altar of a warped patriotism. But now young Mrs. Bishop didn’t cry: she just held on — it was relief enough to hear his voice.

It wasn’t often that he had information to give — the phrase “the fact of the matter is” was a rare one in his talks: sometimes there were the numbers of the regiments passing through Berlin, or of men on leave: very small details, which might be of value to military intelligence, but to her seemed hardly worth the risk of a life. If this was all he could do, why, why hadn’t he allowed them simply to intern him?

At last she could bear it no longer. She visited the War Office again. The man in tweeds was still there, but this time for some reason he was wearing a black tail coat and a black stock as if he had been to a funeral: he must have been to a funeral, and she thought with more fear than ever of her husband.

“He’s a brave man, Mrs. Bishop,” he said.

“You needn’t tell me that,” she cried bitterly.

“We shall see that he gets the highest possible decoration...”

“Decorations!”

“What do you want, Mrs. Bishop? He’s doing his duty.”

“So are other men. But they come home on leave. Sometime. He can’t go on for ever. Soon they are bound to find out.”

“What can we do?”

“You can get him out of there. Hasn’t he done enough for you?”

He said gently: “It’s beyond our power. How can we communicate with him?”

“Surely you have agents.”

“Two lives would be lost. Can’t you imagine how they watch him?”

Yes. She could imagine all that clearly. She had spent too many holidays in Germany — as the Press had not failed to discover — not to know how men were watched, telephone lines tapped, table companions scrutinized.

He said, “If there was some way we could get a message to him, it might be managed. We do owe him that.”

Young Mrs. Bishop said quickly before he could change his mind: “Well, the code works both ways. The fact of the matter is... We have news broadcast in German. He might one day listen in.”

“Yes. There’s a chance.”

She became privy to the plan because again they needed her help. They wanted to attract his notice first by some phrase peculiar to her. For years they had spoken German together on their annual holiday. That phrase was to be varied in every broadcast, and elaborately they worked out a series of messages which would convey to him the same instructions — to go to a certain station on the Cologne-Wesel line and contact there a railway worker who had already helped five men and two women to escape from Germany.

Mary Bishop felt she knew the place well — the small country station which probably served only a few dozen houses and a big hotel where people went in the old days for cures. The opportunity was offered him, if he could only take it, by an elaborate account of a railway accident at that point — so many people killed — sabotage — arrests. It was plugged in the news as relentlessly as the Germans repeated the news of false sinkings, and they answered indignantly back that there had been no accident.

It seemed more horrible than ever to Mary Bishop — those nightly broadcasts from Zeesen. The voice was in the room with her, and yet he couldn’t know whether any message for which he risked his life reached home, and she couldn’t know whether their messages to him just petered out unheard or unrecognized.

Old Mrs. Bishop said, “Well, we can do without David to-night, I should hope.” It was a new turn in her bitterness: now she would simply wipe him off the air. Mary Bishop protested. She said she must hear — then at least she would know that he was well.

“It serves him right if he’s not well.”

“I’m going to listen,” Mary Bishop persisted.

“Then I’ll go out of the room. I’m tired of his lies.”

“You’re his mother, aren’t you?”

“That’s not my fault. I didn’t choose — like you did. I tell you I won’t listen to it.”

Mary Bishop turned the knob. “Then stop your ears,” she cried in a sudden fury, and heard David’s voice coming over.

“The lies,” he was saying, “put over by the British capitalist Press. There has not even been a railway accident — leave alone any sabotage — at the place so persistently mentioned in the broadcasts from England. To-morrow I am leaving myself for the so-called scene of the accident, and I propose in my broadcast the day after to-morrow to give you an impartial observer’s report, with records of the very rail-waymen who are said to have been shot for sabotage. To-morrow, therefore, I shall not be on the air...”

“Oh, thank God, thank God,” Mary Bishop said.

The old woman grumbled by the fire. “You haven’t much to thank Him for.”

“You don’t know how much.”

All next day she found herself praying, although she didn’t much believe in prayer. She visualized that station “on the Rhine not far from Wesel”: and not far either from the Dutch frontier. There must be some method of getting across — with the help of that unknown worker — possibly in a refrigerating van — no idea was too fantastic to be true: others had succeeded before him.

All through the day she tried to keep pace with him — he would have to leave early, and she imagined his cup of ersatz coffee and the slow wartime train taking him south and west: she thought of his fear and of his excitement — he was coming home to her. Ah, when he landed safely, what a day that would be! The papers then would have to eat their words: no more Dr. Funkhole and no more of this place, side by side with his unloving mother.

At midday, she thought, he has arrived: he has his black discs with him to record the men’s voices, he is probably watched, but he will find his chance — and now he is not alone. He has someone with him helping him. In one way or another he will miss his train home. The freight train will draw in — perhaps a signal will stop it outside the station. She saw it all so vividly, as the early winter dark came down and she blacked the windows out, that she found herself thankful he possessed, as she knew, a white mackintosh. He would be less visible waiting there in the snow.

Her imagination took wings, and by dinnertime she felt sure that he was already on the way to the frontier. That night there was no broadcast from Dr. Funkhole, and she sang as she bathed and old Mrs. Bishop beat furiously on her bedroom floor above.

In bed she could almost feel herself vibrating with the heavy movement of his train. She saw the landscape going by outside — there must be a crack in any van in which he lay hid, so that he could mark the distances. It was very much the landscape of Crow-borough — spruces powdered with snow, the wide dreary waste they called a forest, dark avenues — she fell asleep.

When she woke she was still happy. Perhaps before night she would receive a cable from Holland, but if it didn’t come she would not be anxious because so many things in war-time might delay it. It didn’t come.

That night she made no attempt to turn on the radio, so old Mrs. Bishop changed her tactics again. “Well,” she said, “aren’t you going to listen to your husband?”

“He won’t be broadcasting.” Very soon now she could turn on his mother in triumph and say — there, I knew it all the time, my husband’s a hero.

“That was last night.”

“He won’t be broadcasting again.”

“What do you mean? Turn it on and let me hear.”

There was no harm in proving that she knew — she turned it on.

A voice was talking in German — something about an accident and English lies, she didn’t bother to listen. She felt too happy. “There,” she said, “I told you. It’s not David.”

And then David spoke.

He said, “You have been listening to the actual voices of the men your English broadcasters have told you were shot by the German police. Perhaps now you will be less inclined to believe the exaggerated stories you hear of life inside Germany to-day.”

“There,” old Mrs. Bishop said, “I told you.”

And all the world, she thought, will go on telling me now, for ever... Dr. Funkhole. He never got those messages. He’s there for keeps. David’s voice said with curious haste and harshness: “The fact of the matter is—”

He spoke rapidly for about two minutes as if he were afraid they would fade him at any moment, and yet it sounded harmless enough — the old stories about plentiful food and how much you could buy for an English pound — figures. But some of the examples this time, she thought with dread, are surely so fantastic that even the German brain will realize something is wrong. How had he ever dared to show up this copy to his chiefs?

She could hardly keep pace with her pencil, so rapidly did he speak. The words grouped themselves on her pad: “Five U’s refuelling hodie noon 53.23 by 10.5. News reliable source Wesel so returned. Talk unauthorized. The end.”

“This order. Many young wives I feel enjoy giving one” — he hesitated — “one day’s butter in every dozen...” the voice faded, gave out altogether. She saw on her pad: “To my wife, goodbie d...”

The end, good-bye, the end... the words rang on like funeral bells. She began to cry, sitting as she had done before, close up against the radio set. Old Mrs. Bishop said with a kind of delight: “He ought never to have been born. I never wanted him. The coward,” and now Mary Bishop could stand no more of it.

“Oh,” she cried to her mother-in-law across the little over-heated, over-furnished Crowborough room, “if only he were a coward, if only he were. But he’s a hero, a damned hero, a hero, a hero...” she cried hopelessly on, feeling the room reel round her, and dimly supposing behind all the pain and horror that one day she would have to feel, like other women, pride.