The Big Book of Reel Murders: Stories that Inspired Great Crime

From a View to a Kill IAN FLEMING

Original publication: Daily Express and, simultaneously, Scottish Daily Express, as a five-part serial with the title “Murder Before Breakfast,” September 1959; first collected in For Your Eyes Only by Ian Fleming (London, Jonathan Cape, 1960)

Following the success of a television adaptation of Casino Royale (1953) for an episode of the series Climax! in 1954, CBS made contact with Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908–1964) about creating a series based on his James Bond character, asking him to write thirty-two episodes over a two-year period. Fleming came up with seven new story ideas plus recycled episodes from his previously published novels, stating that he didn’t want to be contracted to “writing episodes or otherwise slaving,” and the series never came to fruition.

Later in the year, apparently having difficulty coming up with plots for new books, Fleming pulled the ideas together for a collection of stories; “From a View to a Kill” was one of them. The original title for the book publication was “The Rough with the Smooth.”

The story is set in Paris and its environs, an area Fleming evidently knew well as he describes several hotels and cafés and has Bond eat and drink appropriately for the time and place. In the story, a Cold War motorcycle dispatch rider is assassinated and his killer steals the secret documents he was carrying from SHAPE (Supreme Allied Powers Europe). M has Bond investigate. He disguises himself as a dispatch rider and takes the same route to the Allies’ base. As expected, the motorcycle assassin shows up and tries to kill Bond but, as also expected, Bond turns the tables on him.

The “Bond girl” in the story is named Mary Ann Russell, probably after Fleming’s former girlfriend, Maud Russell.

Fleming, born in London, began his career as a journalist and, while officially a correspondent in Moscow for the London Times, he unofficially worked for the Foreign Office. Although he wrote other books, notably the children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1964), it is for the creation of James Bond, the most famous spy in literature and probably the most famous literary creation of the twentieth century, that he is best known. He wrote twelve books about the charismatic 007, beginning with Casino Royale, and enjoyed modest but not spectacular success until President John F. Kennedy publicly expressed his fondness for the books.

Title: A View to a Kill, 1985

Studio: MGM/UA Entertainment

Director: John Glen

Screenwriters: Michael G. Wilson, Richard Maibaum

Producers: Albert R. Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson

• Roger Moore (James Bond)

• Christopher Walken (Max Zorin)

• Tanya Roberts (Stacey Sutton)

• Grace Jones (May Day)

• Patrick Macnee (Sir Godfrey Tibbett)

The screenplay has as great a similarity to Fleming’s short story as it does to a Miss Marple novel. Apart from retaining Bond and part of the title, it would not be recognizable to Fleming himself if he rose from his grave.

That is not to say it isn’t any good. It is, if you like James Bond movies — which, if you don’t, probably means you don’t like ice cream, sunshine, or puppies, either. The most popular film franchise in the history of crime/thriller/mystery cinema, it carried Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and other actors who played Bond to a kind of international stardom that dwarfed their previous fame.

FROM A VIEW TO A KILL Ian Fleming

The eyes behind the wide black rubber goggles were cold as flint. In the howling speed-turmoil of a B.S.A. M.20 doing seventy, they were the only quiet things in the hurtling flesh and metal. Protected by the glass of the goggles, they stared fixedly ahead from just above the centre of the handle-bars, and their dark unwavering focus was that of gun muzzles. Below the goggles, the wind had got into the face through the mouth and had wrenched the lips back into a square grin that showed big tombstone teeth and strips of whitish gum. On both sides of the grin the cheeks had been blown out by the wind into pouches that fluttered slightly. To right and left of the hurtling face under the crash helmet, the black gauntlets, broken-wristed at the controls, looked like the attacking paws of a big animal.

The man was dressed in the uniform of a dispatch-rider in the Royal Corps of Signals, and his machine, painted olive green, was, with certain modifications to the valves and the carburettor and the removal of some of the silencer baffles to give more speed, identical with a standard British Army machine. There was nothing in the man or his equipment to suggest that he was not what he appeared to be, except a fully loaded Luger held by a clip to the top of the petrol tank.

It was seven o’clock on a May morning and the dead straight road through the forest glittered with the tiny luminous mist of spring. On both sides of the road the moss- and flower-carpeted depths between the great oak trees held the theatrical enchantment of the royal forests of Versailles and St. Germain. The road was D.98, a secondary road serving local traffic in the St. Germain area, and the motor-cyclist had just passed beneath the Paris — Mantes autoroute already thundering with commuter traffic for Paris. He was heading north towards St. Germain and there was no one else in sight in either direction, except, perhaps half a mile ahead, an almost identical figure — another Royal Corps dispatch-rider. He was a younger, slimmer man and he sat comfortably back on his machine, enjoying the morning and keeping his speed to around forty. He was well on time and it was a beautiful day. He wondered whether to have his eggs fried or scrambled when he got back to H.Q. around eight.

Five hundred yards, four hundred, three, two, one. The man coming up from behind slowed to fifty. He put his right gauntlet up to his teeth and pulled it off. He stuffed the gauntlet between the buttons of his tunic and reached down and unclipped the gun.

By now he must have been big in the driving-mirror of the young man ahead, for suddenly the young man jerked his head round, surprised to find another dispatch-rider on his run at that time of the morning. He expected that it would be an American or perhaps French military police. It might be anyone from the eight N.A.T.O. nations that made up the staff of SHAPE, but when he recognized the uniform of the Corps he was astonished and delighted. Who the hell could it be? He raised a cheerful right thumb in recognition and cut his speed to thirty, waiting for the other man to drift up alongside. With one eye on the road ahead and the other on the approaching silhouette in the mirror, he ran through the names of the British riders in the Special Service Transportation Unit at Headquarters Command. Albert, Sid, Wally — might be Wally, same thick build. Good show! He’d be able to pull his leg about that little frog bit in the canteen — Louise, Elise, Lise — what the hell was her name.

The man with the gun had slowed. Now he was fifty yards away. His face, undistorted by the wind, had set into blunt, hard, perhaps Slav lines. A red spark burned behind the black, aimed muzzles of the eyes. Forty yards, thirty. A single magpie flew out of the forest ahead of the young dispatch-rider. It fled clumsily across the road into the bushes behind a Michelin sign that said that St. Germain was one kilometre to go. The young man grinned and raised an ironical finger in salute and self-protection — “One magpie is sorrow.”

Twenty yards behind him the man with the gun took both hands off the handle-bars, lifted the Luger, rested it carefully on his left forearm and fired one shot.

The young man’s hands whipped off his controls and met across the centre of his backward-arching spine. His machine veered across the road, jumped a narrow ditch and ploughed into a patch of grass and lilies of the valley. There it rose up on its screaming back wheel and slowly crashed backwards on top of its dead rider. The B.S.A. coughed and kicked and tore at the young man’s clothes and at the flowers, and then lay quiet.

The killer executed a narrow turn and stopped with his machine pointing back the way he had come. He stamped down the wheel-rest, pulled his machine up on to it and walked in among the wild flowers under the trees. He knelt down beside the dead man and brusquely pulled back an eyelid. Just as roughly he tore the black leather dispatch-case off the corpse and ripped open the buttons of the tunic and removed a battered leather wallet. He wrenched a cheap wristwatch so sharply off the left wrist that the chrome expanding bracelet snapped in half. He stood up and slung the dispatch-case over his shoulder. While he stowed the wallet and the watch away in his tunic pocket he listened. There were only forest sounds and the slow tick of hot metal from the crashed B.S.A. The killer retraced his steps to the road. He walked slowly, scuffing leaves over the tyre marks in the soft earth and moss. He took extra trouble over the deep scars in the ditch and the grass verge, and then stood beside his motor-cycle and looked back towards the lily of the valley patch. Not bad! Probably only the police dogs would get it, and, with ten miles of road to cover, they would be hours, perhaps days — plenty long enough. The main thing in these jobs was to have enough safety margin. He could have shot the man at forty yards, but he had preferred to get to twenty. And taking the watch and the wallet had been nice touches — pro touches.

Pleased with himself, the man heaved his machine off its rest, vaulted smartly into the saddle and kicked down on the starter. Slowly, so as not to show skid marks, he accelerated away back down the road and in a minute or so he was doing seventy again and the wind had redrawn the empty turnip grin across his face.

Around the scene of the killing, the forest, which had held its breath while it was done, slowly began to breathe again.

James Bond had his first drink of the evening at Fouquet’s. It was not a solid drink. One cannot drink seriously in French cafés. Out of doors on a pavement in the sun is no place for vodka or whisky or gin. A fine à l’eau is fairly serious, but it intoxicates without tasting very good. A quart de champagne or a champagne à l’orange is all right before luncheon, but in the evening one quart leads to another quart and a bottle of indifferent champagne is a bad foundation for the night. Pernod is possible, but it should be drunk in company, and anyway Bond had never liked the stuff because its liquorice taste reminded him of his childhood. No, in cafés you have to drink the least offensive of the musical comedy drinks that go with them, and Bond always had the same thing — an Americano — Bitter Campari, Cinzano, a large slice of lemon peel and soda. For the soda he always stipulated Perrier, for in his opinion expensive soda water was the cheapest way to improve a poor drink.

When Bond was in Paris he invariably stuck to the same addresses. He stayed at the Terminus Nord, because he liked station hotels and because this was the least pretentious and most anonymous of them. He had luncheon at the Café de la Paix, the Rotonde or the Dôme, because the food was good enough and it amused him to watch the people. If he wanted a solid drink he had it at Harry’s Bar, both because of the solidity of the drinks and because, on his first ignorant visit to Paris at the age of sixteen, he had done what Harry’s advertisement in the Continental Daily Mail had told him to do and had said to his taxi-driver “Sank Roo Doe Noo.” That had started one of the memorable evenings of his life, culminating in the loss, almost simultaneous, of his virginity and his notecase. For dinner, Bond went to one of the great restaurants — Véfour, the Caneton, Lucas-Carton, or the Cochon d’Or. These he considered, whatever Michelin might say about the Tour d’Argent, Maxims, and the like, to have somehow avoided the tarnish of the expense account and the dollar. Anyway, he preferred their cooking. After dinner he generally went to the Place Pigalle to see what would happen to him. When, as usual, nothing did, he would walk home across Paris to the Gare du Nord and go to bed.

Tonight Bond decided to tear up this dusty address-book and have himself an old-fashioned ball. He was on his way through Paris after a dismally failed assignment on the Austro-Hungarian border. It had been a question of getting a certain Hungarian out. Bond had been sent from London specially to direct the operation over the head of Station V. This had been unpopular with the Vienna Station. There had been misunderstandings — wilful ones. The man had been killed in the frontier minefield. There would have to be a Court of Inquiry. Bond was due back at his London headquarters on the following day to make his report, and the thought of it all depressed him. Today had been so beautiful — one of those days when you almost believe that Paris is beautiful and gay — and Bond had decided to give the town just one more chance. He would somehow find himself a girl who was a real girl, and he would take her to dinner at some make-believe place in the Bois like the Armenonville. To clean the money-look out of her eyes — for it would certainly be there — he would as soon as possible give her fifty thousand francs. He would say to her: “I propose to call you Donatienne, or possibly Solange, because these are names that suit my mood and the evening. We knew each other before and you lent me this money because I was in a jam. Here it is, and now we will tell each other what we have been doing since we last met in St. Tropez just a year ago. In the meantime, here is the menu and the wine list and you must choose what will make you happy and fat.” And she would look relieved at not having to try any more, and she would laugh and say: “But, James, I do not want to be fat.” And there they would be, started on the myth of “Paris in the Spring,” and Bond would stay sober and be interested in her and everything she said. And, by God, by the end of the evening it would not be his fault if it transpired that there was in fact no shred of stuffing left in the hoary old fairytale of “A good time in Paris.”

Sitting in Fouquet’s, waiting for his Americano, Bond smiled at his vehemence. He knew that he was only playing at this fantasy for the satisfaction of launching a last kick at a town he had cordially disliked since the War. Since 1945, he had not had a happy day in Paris. It was not that the town had sold its body. Many towns have done that. It was its heart that was gone — pawned to the tourists, pawned to the Russians and Roumanians and Bulgars, pawned to the scum of the world who had gradually taken the town over. And, of course, pawned to the Germans. You could see it in the people’s eyes — sullen, envious, ashamed. Architecture? Bond glanced across the pavement at the shiny black ribbons of cars off which the sun glinted painfully. Everywhere it was the same as in the Champs-Elysées. There were only two hours in which you could even see the town — between five and seven in the morning. After seven it was engulfed in a thundering stream of black metal with which no beautiful buildings, no spacious, tree-lined boulevards, could compete.

The waiter’s tray clattered down on the marble-topped table. With a slick one-handed jerk that Bond had never been able to copy, the waiter’s bottle-opener prised the cap off the Perrier. The man slipped the tab under the ice-bucket, said a mechanical “Voilà, M’sieur” and darted away. Bond put ice into his drink, filled it to the top with soda and took a long pull at it. He sat back and lit a Laurens jaune. Of course the evening would be a disaster. Even supposing he found the girl in the next hour or so, the contents would certainly not stand up to the wrapping. On closer examination she would turn out to have the heavy, dank, wide-pored skin of the bourgeois French. The blonde hair under the rakish velvet beret would be brown at the roots and as coarse as piano wire. The peppermint on the breath would not conceal the midday garlic. The alluring figure would be intricately scaffolded with wire and rubber. She would be from Lille and she would ask him if he was American. And, Bond smiled to himself, she or her maquereau would probably steal his notecase. La ronde! He would be back where he came in. More or less, that was. Well, to hell with it!

A battered black Peugeot 403 broke out of the centre stream of traffic, cut across the inside line of cars and pulled in to double park at the kerb. There was the usual screaming of brakes, hooting and yelling. Quite unmoved, a girl got out of the car and, leaving the traffic to sort itself out, walked purposefully across the sidewalk. Bond sat up. She had everything, but absolutely everything that belonged in his fantasy. She was tall and, although her figure was hidden by a light raincoat, the way she moved and the way she held herself promised that it would be beautiful. The face had the gaiety and bravado that went with her driving, but now there was impatience in the compressed lips and the eyes fretted as she pushed diagonally through the moving crowd on the pavement.

Bond watched her narrowly as she reached the edge of the tables and came up the aisle. Of course it was hopeless. She was coming to meet someone — her lover. She was the sort of woman who always belongs to somebody else. She was late for him. That’s why she was in such a hurry. What damnable luck — right down to the long blonde hair under the rakish beret! And she was looking straight at him. She was smiling...!

Before Bond could pull himself together, the girl had come up to his table and had drawn out a chair and sat down.

She smiled rather tautly into his startled eyes. “I’m sorry I’m late, and I’m afraid we’ve got to get moving at once. You’re wanted at the office.” She added under her breath: “Crash dive.”

Bond jerked himself back to reality. Whoever she was, she was certainly from “the firm.” “Crash dive” was a slang expression the Secret Service had borrowed from the Submarine Service. It meant bad news — the worst. Bond dug into his pocket and slid some coins over the table. He said “Right. Let’s go,” and got up and followed her down through the tables and across to her car. It was still obstructing the inner lane of traffic. Any minute now there would be a policeman. Angry faces glared at them as they climbed in. The girl had left the engine running. She banged the gears into second and slid out into the traffic.

Bond looked sideways at her. The pale skin was velvet. The blonde hair was silk — to the roots. He said: “Where are you from and what’s it all about?”

She said, concentrating on the traffic: “From the Station. Grade two assistant. Number 765 on duty, Mary Ann Russell off. I’ve no idea what it’s all about. I just saw the signal from H.Q. — personal from M. to Head of Station. Most Immediate and all that. He was to find you at once and if necessary use the Deuxième to help. Head of F said you always went to the same places when you were in Paris, and I and another girl were given a list.” She smiled. “I’d only tried Harry’s Bar, and after Fouquet’s I was going to start on the restaurants. It was marvellous picking you up like that.” She gave him a quick glance. “I hope I wasn’t very clumsy.”

Bond said: “You were fine. How were you going to handle it if I’d had a girl with me?”

She laughed. “I was going to do much the same except call you ‘sir.’ I was only worried about how you’d dispose of the girl. If she started a scene I was going to offer to take her home in my car and for you to take a taxi.”

“You sound pretty resourceful. How long have you been in the Service?”

“Five years. This is my first time with a Station.”

“How do you like it?”

“I like the work all right. The evenings and days off drag a bit. It’s not easy to make friends in Paris without” — her mouth turned down with irony — “without all the rest. I mean,” she hastened to add, “I’m not a prude and all that, but somehow the French make the whole business such a bore. I mean I’ve had to give up taking the Metro or buses. Whatever time of day it is, you end up with your behind black and blue.” She laughed. “Apart from the boredom of it and not knowing what to say to the man, some of the pinches really hurt. It’s the limit. So to get around I bought this car cheap, and other cars seem to keep out of my way. As long as you don’t catch the other driver’s eye, you can take on even the meanest of them. They’re afraid you haven’t seen them. And they’re worried by the bashed-about look of the car. They give you a wide berth.”

They had come to the Rond Point. As if to demonstrate her theory, she tore round it and went straight at the line of traffic coming up from the Place de la Concorde. Miraculously it divided and let her through into the Avenue Matignon.

Bond said: “Pretty good. But don’t make it a habit. There may be some French Mary Anns about.”

She laughed. She turned into the Avenue Gabrielle and pulled up outside the Paris headquarters of the Secret Service: “I only try that sort of manoeuvre in the line of duty.”

Bond got out and came round to her side of the car. He said: “Well, thanks for picking me up. When this whirl is over, can I pick you up in exchange? I don’t get the pinches, but I’m just as bored in Paris as you are.”

Her eyes were blue and wide apart. They searched his. She said seriously: “I’d like that. The switchboard here can always find me.”

Bond reached in through the window and pressed the hand on the wheel. He said “Good,” and turned and walked quickly in through the archway.

Wing Commander Rattray, Head of Station F, was a fattish man with pink cheeks and fair hair brushed straight back. He dressed in a mannered fashion with turned-back cuffs and double slits to his coat, bow-ties and fancy waistcoats. He made a good-living, wine-and-food-society impression in which only the slow, rather cunning blue eyes struck a false note. He chain-smoked Gauloises and his office stank of them. He greeted Bond with relief. “Who found you?”

“Russell. At Fouquet’s. Is she new?”

“Six months. She’s a good one. But take a pew. There’s the hell of a flap on and I’ve got to brief you and get you going.” He bent to his intercom and pressed down a switch. “Signal to M., please. Personal from Head of Station. ‘Located 007 briefing now.’ Okay?” He let go the switch.

Bond pulled a chair over by the open window to keep away from the fog of Gauloises. The traffic on the Champs-Elysées was a soft roar in the background. Half an hour before he had been fed up with Paris, glad to be going. Now he hoped he would be staying.

Head of F said: “Somebody got our dawn dispatch-rider from SHAPE to the St. Germain Station yesterday morning. The weekly run from the SHAPE Intelligence Division with the Summaries, Joint Intelligence papers, Iron Curtain Order of Battle — all the top gen. One shot in the back. Took his dispatch-case and his wallet and watch.”

Bond said: “That’s bad. No chance that it was an ordinary hold-up? Or do they think the wallet and watch were cover?”

“SHAPE Security can’t make up their minds. On the whole they guess it was cover. Seven o’clock in the morning’s a rum time for a hold-up. But you can argue it out with them when you get down there. M.’s sending you as his personal representative. He’s worried as hell. Apart from the loss of the Intelligence dope, their I. people have never liked having one of our Stations outside the Reservation so to speak. For years they’ve been trying to get the St. Germain unit incorporated in the SHAPE Intelligence set-up. But you know what M. is, independent old devil. He’s never been happy about N.A.T.O. Security. Why, right in the SHAPE Intelligence Division there are not only a couple of Frenchmen and an Italian, but the head of their Counter Intelligence and Security section is a German!”

Bond whistled.

“The trouble is that this damnable business is all SHAPE needs to bring M. to heel. Anyway, he says you’re to get down there right away. I’ve fixed up clearance for you. Got the passes. You’re to report to Colonel Schreiber, Headquarters Command Security Branch. American. Efficient chap. He’s been handling the thing from the beginning. As far as I can gather, he’s already done just about all there was to be done.”

“What’s he done? What actually happened?”

Head of F picked up a map from his desk and walked over with it. It was the big-scale Michelin Environs de Paris. He pointed with a pencil. “Here’s Versailles, and here, just north of the park, is the big junction of the Paris-Mantes and the Versailles autoroutes. A couple of hundred yards north of that, on N.184, is SHAPE. Every Wednesday, at seven in the morning, a Special Services dispatch-rider leaves SHAPE with the weekly Intelligence stuff I told you about. He has to get to this little village called Fourqueux, just outside St. Germain, deliver his stuff to the duty officer at our H.Q., and report back to SHAPE by seven-thirty. Rather than go through all this built-up area, for security reasons his orders are to take this N.307 to St. Nom, turn right-handed on to D.98 and go under the autoroute and through the forest of St. Germain. The distance is about twelve kilometres, and taking it easy he’ll do the trip in under a quarter of an hour. Well, yesterday it was a corporal from the Corps of Signals, good solid man called Bates, and when he hadn’t reported back to SHAPE by seven-forty-five they sent another rider to look for him. Not a trace, and he hadn’t reported at our H.Q. By eight-fifteen the Security Branch was on the job, and by nine the roadblocks were up. The police and the Deuxième were told and search parties got under way. The dogs found him, but not till the evening around six, and by that time if there had been any clues on the road they’d have been wiped out by the traffic.” Head of F handed the map to Bond and walked back to his desk. “And that’s about the lot, except that all the usual steps have been taken — frontiers, ports, aerodromes, and so forth. But that sort of thing won’t help. If it was a professional job, whoever did it could have had the stuff out of the country by midday or into an embassy in Paris inside an hour.”

Bond said impatiently: “Exactly! And so what the hell does M. expect me to do? Tell SHAPE Security to do it all over again, but better? This sort of thing isn’t my line at all. Bloody waste of time.”

Head of F smiled sympathetically. “Matter of fact I put much the same point of view to M. over the scrambler. Tactfully. The old man was quite reasonable. Said he wanted to show SHAPE he was taking the business just as seriously as they were. You happened to be available and more or less on the spot, and he said you had the sort of mind that might pick up the invisible factor. I asked him what he meant, and he said that at all closely guarded headquarters there’s bound to be an invisible man — a man everyone takes so much for granted that he just isn’t noticed — gardener, window cleaner, postman. I said that SHAPE had thought of that, and that all those sort of jobs were done by enlisted men. M. told me not to be so literal-minded and hung up.”

Bond laughed. He could see M.’s frown and hear the crusty voice. He said: “All right, then. I’ll see what I can do. Who do I report back to?”

“Here. M. doesn’t want the St. Germain unit to get involved. Anything you have to say I’ll put straight on the printer to London. But I may not be available when you call up. I’ll make someone your duty officer and you’ll be able to get them any time in the twenty-four hours. Russell can do it. She picked you up. She might as well carry you. Suit you?”

“Yes,” said Bond. “That’ll be all right.”

The battered Peugeot, commandeered by Rattray, smelled of her. There were bits of her in the glove compartment — half a packet of Suchard milk chocolate, a twist of paper containing bobby pins, a paperback John O’Hara, a single black suede glove. Bond thought about her as far as the Etoile and then closed his mind to her and pushed the car along fast through the Bois. Rattray had said it would take about fifteen minutes at fifty. Bond said to halve the speed and double the time and to tell Colonel Schreiber that he would be with him by nine-thirty. After the Porte de St. Cloud there was little traffic, and Bond held seventy on the autoroute until the second exit road came up on his right and there was the red arrow for SHAPE. Bond turned up the slope and on to N.184. Two hundred yards farther, in the centre of the road, was the traffic policeman Bond had been told to look out for. The policeman waved him in through the big gates on the left and he pulled up at the first checkpoint. A grey-uniformed American policeman hung out of his cabin and glanced at his pass. He was told to pull inside and hold it. Now a French policeman took his pass, noted the details on a printed form clipped to a board, gave him a large plastic windscreen number and waved him on. As Bond pulled in to the car park, with theatrical suddenness a hundred arc-lights blazed and lit up the acre of low-lying hutments in front of him as if it was day. Feeling naked, Bond walked across the open gravel beneath the flags of the N.A.T.O. countries and ran up the four shallow steps to the wide glass doors that gave entrance to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces Europe. Now there was the main Security desk. American and French military police checked his pass and noted the details. He was handed over to a red-capped British M.P. and led off down the main corridor past endless office doors. They bore no names but the usual alphabetical abracadabra of all headquarters. One said COMSTRIKFLTLANT AND SACLANT LIAISON TO SACEUR. Bond asked what it meant. The military policeman, either ignorant or, more probably, security-minded, said stolidly: “Couldn’t rightly say, sir.”

Behind a door that said Colonel G. A. Schreiber, Chief of Security, Headquarters Command was a ramrod-straight, middle-aged American with greying hair and the politely negative manner of a bank manager. There were several family photographs in silver frames on his desk and a vase containing one white rose. There was no smell of tobacco smoke in the room. After cautiously amiable preliminaries, Bond congratulated the Colonel on his security. He said: “All these checks and double checks don’t make it easy for the opposition. Have you ever lost anything before, or have you ever found signs of a serious attempt at a coup?”

“No to both questions, Commander. I’m quite satisfied about Headquarters. It’s only the outlying units that worry me. Apart from this section of your Secret Service, we have various detached signal units. Then, of course, there are the Home Ministries of fourteen different nations. I can’t answer for what may leak from those quarters.”

“It can’t be an easy job,” agreed Bond. “Now, about this mess. Has anything else come up since Wing Commander Rattray spoke to you last?”

“Got the bullet. Luger. Severed the spinal cord. Probably fired at around thirty yards, give or take ten yards. Assuming our man was riding a straight course, the bullet must have been fired from dead astern on a level trajectory. Since it can’t have been a man standing in the road, the killer must have been moving in or on some vehicle.”

“So your man would have seen him in the driving-mirror?”

“Probably.”

“If your riders find themselves being followed, do they have any instructions about taking evasive action?”

The Colonel smiled slightly. “Sure. They’re told to go like hell.”

“And at what speed did your man crash?”

“Not fast, they think. Between twenty and forty. What are you getting at, Commander?”

“I was wondering if you’d decided whether it was a pro or an amateur job. If your man wasn’t trying to get away, and assuming he saw the killer in his mirror, which I agree is only a probability, that suggests that he accepted the man on his tail as friend rather than foe. That could mean some sort of disguise that would fit in with the set-up here — something your man would accept even at that hour of the morning.”

A small frown had been gathering across Colonel Schreiber’s smooth forehead. “Commander,” there was an edge of tension in the voice, “we have, of course, been considering every angle of this case, including the one you mention. At midday yesterday the Commanding General declared emergency in this matter, standing security and security ops committees were set up, and from that moment on every angle, every hint of a clue, has been systematically run to earth. And I can tell you, Commander,” the Colonel raised one well-manicured hand and let it descend in soft emphasis on his blotting-pad, “any man who can come up with an even remotely original idea on this case will have to be closely related to Einstein. There is nothing, repeat nothing, to go on in this case whatsoever.”

Bond smiled sympathetically. He got to his feet. “In that case, Colonel, I won’t waste any more of your time this evening. If I could just have the minutes of the various meetings to bring myself up to date, and if one of your men could show me the way to the canteen and my quarters...”

“Sure, sure.” The Colonel pressed a bell. A young crew-cutted aide came in. “Proctor, show the Commander to his room in the V.I.P. wing, would you, and then take him along to the bar and the canteen.” He turned to Bond. “I’ll have those papers ready for you after you’ve had a meal and a drink. They’ll be in my office. They can’t be taken out, of course, but you’ll find everything to hand next door, and Proctor will be able to fill you in on anything that’s missing.” He held out his hand. “Okay? Then we’ll meet again in the morning.”

Bond said goodnight and followed the aide out. As he walked along the neutral-painted, neutral-smelling corridors, he reflected that this was probably the most hopeless assignment he had ever been on. If the top security brains of fourteen countries were stumped, what hope had he got? By the time he was in bed that night, in the Spartan luxury of the visitors’ overnight quarters, Bond had decided he would give it a couple more days — largely for the sake of keeping in touch with Mary Ann Russell for as long as possible — and then chuck it. On this decision he fell immediately into a deep and untroubled sleep.

Not two, but four days later, as the dawn came up over the Forest of St. Germain, James Bond was lying along the thick branch of an oak tree keeping watch over a small empty glade that lay deep among the trees bordering D.98, the road of the murder.

He was dressed from head to foot in parachutists’ camouflage — green, brown and black. Even his hands were covered with the stuff, and there was a hood over his head with slits cut for the eyes and mouth. It was good camouflage which would be still better when the sun was higher and the shadows blacker, and from anywhere on the ground, even directly below the high branch, he could not be seen.

It had come about like this. The first two days at SHAPE had been the expected waste of time. Bond had achieved nothing except to make himself mildly unpopular with the persistence of his double-checking questions. On the morning of the third day he was about to go and say his goodbyes when he had a telephone call from the Colonel. “Oh, Commander, thought I’d let you know that the last team of police dogs got in late last night — your idea that it might be worth while covering the whole forest. Sorry” — the voice sounded un-sorry — “but negative, absolutely negative.”

“Oh. My fault for the wasted time.” As much to annoy the Colonel as anything, Bond said: “Mind if I have a talk with the handler?”

“Sure, sure. Anything you want. By the way, Commander, how long are you planning to be around? Glad to have you with us for as long as you like. But it’s a question of your room. Seems there’s a big party coming in from Holland in a few days’ time. Top level staff course or something of the kind, and Admin says they’re a bit pushed for space.”

Bond had not expected to get on well with Colonel Schreiber and he had not done so. He said amiably: “I’ll see what my Chief has to say and call you back, Colonel.”

“Do that, would you.” The Colonel’s voice was equally polite, but the manners of both men were running out and the two receivers broke the line simultaneously.

The chief handler was a Frenchman from the Landes. He had the quick sly eyes of a poacher. Bond met him at the kennels, but the handler’s proximity was too much for the Alsatians and, to get away from the noise, he took Bond into the duty-room, a tiny office with binoculars hanging from pegs, and waterproofs, gum-boots, dog-harness and other gear stacked round the walls. There were a couple of deal chairs and a table covered with a large-scale map of the Forest of St. Germain. This had been marked off into pencilled squares. The handler made a gesture over the map. “Our dogs covered it all, Monsieur. There is nothing there.”

“Do you mean to say they didn’t check once?”

The handler scratched his head. “We had trouble with a bit of game, Monsieur. There was a hare or two. A couple of foxes’ earths. We had quite a time getting them away from a clearing near the Carrefour Royal. They probably still smelled the gipsies.”

“Oh.” Bond was only mildly interested. “Show me. Who were these gipsies?”

The handler pointed daintily with a grimy little finger. “These are the names from the old days. Here is the Etoile Parfaite, and here, where the killing took place, is the Carrefour des Curieux. And here, forming the bottom of the triangle, is the Carrefour Royal. It makes,” he added dramatically, “a cross with the road of death.” He took a pencil out of his pocket and made a dot just off the crossroads. “And this is the clearing, Monsieur. There was a gipsy caravan there for most of the winter. They left last month. Cleaned the place up all right, but, for the dogs, their scent will hang about there for months.”

Bond thanked him, and after inspecting and admiring the dogs and making some small talk about the handler’s profession, he got into the Peugeot and went off to the gendarmerie in St. Germain. “Yes, certainly they had known the gipsies. Real Romany-looking fellows. Hardly spoke a word of French, but they had behaved themselves. There had been no complaints. Six men and two women. No. No one had seen them go. One morning they just weren’t there any more. Might have been gone a week for all one knew. They had chosen an isolated spot.”

Bond took the D.98 through the forest. When the great autoroute bridge showed up a quarter of a mile ahead over the road, Bond accelerated and then switched off the engine and coasted silently until he came to the Carrefour Royal. He stopped and got out of the car without a sound, and, feeling rather foolish, softly entered the forest and walked with great circumspection towards where the clearing would be. Twenty yards inside the trees he came to it. He stood in the fringe of bushes and trees and examined it carefully. Then he walked in and went over it from end to end.

The clearing was about as big as two tennis courts and floored in thick grass and moss. There was one large patch of lilies of the valley and, under the bordering trees, a scattering of bluebells. To one side there was a low mound, perhaps a tumulus, completely surrounded and covered with brambles and brier roses now thickly in bloom. Bond walked round this and gazed in among the roots, but there was nothing to see except the earthy shape of the mound.

Bond took one last look round and then went to the corner of the clearing that would be nearest to the road. Here there was easy access through the trees. Were there traces of a path, a slight flattening of the leaves? Not more than would have been left by the gipsies or last year’s picnickers. On the edge of the road there was a narrow passage between two trees. Casually Bond bent to examine the trunks. He stiffened and dropped to a crouch. With a fingernail, he delicately scraped away a narrow sliver of caked mud. It hid a deep scratch in the tree-trunk. He caught the scraps of mud in his free hand. He now spat and moistened the mud and carefully filled up the scratch again. There were three camouflaged scratches on one tree and four on the other. Bond walked quickly out of the trees onto the road. His car had stopped on a slight slope leading down under the autoroute bridge. Although there was some protection from the boom of the traffic on the autoroute, Bond pushed the car, jumped in, and only engaged the gears when he was well under the bridge.

And now Bond was back in the clearing, above it, and he still did not know if his hunch had been right. It had been M.’s dictum that had put him on the scent — if it was a scent — and the mention of the gipsies. “It was the gipsies the dogs smelled... Most of the winter... they went last month. No complaints... morning they just weren’t there any more.” The invisible factor. The invisible man. The people who are so much part of the background that you don’t know if they’re there or not. Six men and two girls and they hardly spoke a word of French. Good cover, gipsies. You could be a foreigner and yet not a foreigner, because you were only a gipsy. Some of them had gone off in the caravan. Had some of them stayed, built themselves a hide-out during the winter, a secret place from which the hijacking of the top secret dispatches had been the first sortie? Bond had thought he was building fantasies until he found the scratches, the carefully camouflaged scratches, on the two trees. They were just at the height where, if one was carrying any kind of a cycle, the pedals might catch against the bark. It could all be a pipe-dream, but it was good enough for Bond. The only question in his mind was whether these people had made a one-time-only coup or whether they were so confident of their security that they would try again. He confided only in Station F. Mary Ann Russell told him to be careful. Head of F, more constructively, ordered his unit at St. Germain to cooperate. Bond said goodbye to Colonel Schreiber and moved to a camp bed in the unit’s H.Q. — an anonymous house in an anonymous village back street. The unit had provided the camouflage outfit and the four Secret Service men who ran the unit had happily put themselves under Bond’s orders. They realized as well as Bond did that if Bond managed to wipe the eye of the whole security machine of SHAPE, the Secret Service would have won a priceless feather in its cap vis-à-vis the SHAPE High Command, and M.’s worries over the independence of his unit would be gone for ever.

Bond, lying along the oak branch, smiled to himself. Private armies, private wars. How much energy they siphoned off from the common cause, how much fire they directed away from the common enemy!

Six-thirty. Time for breakfast. Cautiously Bond’s right hand fumbled in his clothing and came up to the slit of his mouth. Bond made the glucose tablet last as long as possible and then sucked another. His eyes never left the glade. The red squirrel that had appeared at first light and had been steadily eating away at young beech shoots ever since, ran a few feet nearer to the rose-bushes on the mound, picked up something and began turning it in his paws and nibbling at it. Two wood-pigeons that had been noisily courting among the thick grass started to make clumsy, fluttering love. A pair of hedge-sparrows went busily on collecting bits and pieces for a nest they were tardily building in a thorn-bush. The fat thrush finally located its worm and began pulling at it, its legs braced. Bees clustered thick among the roses on the mound, and from where he was, perhaps twenty yards away from and above the mound, Bond could just hear their summery sound. It was a scene from a fairy-tale — the roses, the lilies of the valley, the birds and the great shafts of sunlight lancing down through the tall trees into the pool of glistening green. Bond had climbed to his hide-out at four in the morning and he had never examined so closely or for so long the transition from night to a glorious day. He suddenly felt rather foolish. Any moment now and some damned bird would come and sit on his head!

It was the pigeons that gave the first alarm. With a loud clatter they took off and dashed into the trees. All the birds followed, and the squirrel. Now the glade was quiet except for the soft hum of the bees. What had sounded the alarm? Bond’s heart began to thump. His eyes hunted, quartering the glade for a clue. Something was moving among the roses. It was a tiny movement, but an extraordinary one. Slowly, inch by inch, a single thorny stem, an unnaturally straight and rather thick one, was rising through the upper branches. It went on rising until it was a clear foot above the bush. Then it stopped. There was a solitary pink rose at the tip of the stem. Separated from the bush, it looked unnatural, but only if one happened to have watched the whole process. At a casual glance it was a stray stem and nothing else. Now, silently, the petals of the rose seemed to swivel and expand, the yellow pistils drew aside and sun glinted on a glass lens the size of a shilling. The lens seemed to be looking straight at Bond, but then very, very slowly, the rose-eye began to turn on its stem and continued to turn until the lens was again looking at Bond and the whole glade had been minutely surveyed. As if satisfied, the petals softly swivelled to cover the eye and very slowly the single rose descended to join the others.

Bond’s breath came out with a rush. He momentarily closed his eyes to rest them. Gipsies! If that piece of machinery was any evidence, inside the mound, deep down in the earth, was certainly the most professional left-behind spy unit that had ever been devised — far more brilliant than anything England had prepared to operate in the wake of a successful German invasion, far better than what the Germans themselves had left behind in the Ardennes. A shiver of excitement and anticipation — almost of fear — ran down Bond’s spine. So he had been right! But what was to be the next act?

Now, from the direction of the mound, came a thin high-pitched whine — the sound of an electric motor at very high revs. The rose-bush trembled slightly. The bees took off, hovered, and settled again. Slowly, a jagged fissure formed down the centre of the big bush and smoothly widened. Now the two halves of the bush were opening like double doors. The dark aperture broadened until Bond could see the roots of the bush running into the earth on both sides of the opening doorway. The whine of machinery was louder and there was a glint of metal from the edges of the curved doors. It was like the opening of a hinged Easter egg. In a moment the two segments stood apart and the two halves of the rose-bush, still alive with bees, were splayed widely open. Now the inside of the metal caisson that supported the earth and the roots of the bush were naked to the sun. There was a glint of pale electric light from the dark aperture between the curved doors. The whine of the motor had stopped. A head and shoulders appeared, and then the rest of the man. He climbed softly out and crouched, looking sharply round the glade. There was a gun — a Luger — in his hand. Satisfied, he turned and gestured into the shaft. The head and shoulders of a second man appeared. He handed up three pairs of what looked like snowshoes and ducked out of sight. The first man selected a pair and knelt and strapped them over his boots. Now he moved about more freely, leaving no footprints, for the grass flattened only momentarily under the wide mesh and then rose slowly again. Bond smiled to himself. Clever bastards!

The second man emerged. He was followed by a third. Between them they manhandled a motor-cycle out of the shaft and stood holding it slung between them by harness webbing while the first man, who was clearly the leader, knelt and strapped the snowshoes under their boots. Then, in single file, they moved off through the trees towards the road. There was something extraordinarily sinister about the way they softly high-stepped along through the shadows, lifting and carefully placing each big webbed foot in turn.

Bond let out a long sigh of released tension and laid his head softly down on the branch to relax the strain in his neck muscles. So that was the score! Even the last small detail could now be added to the file. While the two underlings were dressed in grey overalls, the leader was wearing the uniform of the Royal Corps of Signals and his motor-cycle was an olive green B.S.A. M.20 with a British Army registration number on its petrol tank. No wonder the SHAPE dispatch-rider had let him get within range. And what did the unit do with its top secret booty? Probably radioed the cream of it out at night. Instead of the periscope, a rose-stalk aerial would rise up from the bush, the pedal generator would get going deep down under the earth and off would go the high-speed cipher groups. Ciphers? There would be many good enemy secrets down that shaft if Bond could round up the unit when it was outside the hide-out. And what a chance to feed back phoney intelligence to GRU, the Soviet Military Intelligence Apparat which was presumably the control! Bond’s thoughts raced.

The two underlings were coming back. They went into the shaft and the rose-bush closed over it. The leader with his machine would be among the bushes on the verge of the road. Bond glanced at his watch. Six-fifty-five. Of course! He would be waiting to see if a dispatch-rider came along. Either he did not know the man he had killed was doing a weekly run, which was unlikely, or he was assuming that SHAPE would now change the routine for additional security. These were careful people. Probably their orders were to clean up as much as possible before the summer came and there were too many holiday-makers about in the forest. Then the unit might be pulled out and put back again in the winter. Who could say what the long-term plans were? Sufficient that the leader was preparing for another kill.

The minutes ticked by. At seven-ten the leader reappeared. He stood in the shadow of a big tree at the edge of the clearing and whistled once on a brief, high, birdlike note. Immediately the rose-bush began to open and the two underlings came out and followed the leader back into the trees. In two minutes they were back with the motor-cycle slung between them. The leader, after a careful look round to see that they had left no traces, followed them down into the shaft and the two halves of the rose-bush closed swiftly behind him.

Half an hour later life had started up in the glade again. An hour later still, when the high sun had darkened the shadows, James Bond silently edged backwards along his branch, dropped softly on to a patch of moss behind some brambles and melted carefully back into the forest.

That evening Bond’s routine call with Mary Ann Russell was a stormy one. She said: “You’re crazy. I’m not going to let you do it. I’m going to get Head of F to ring up Colonel Schreiber and tell him the whole story. This is SHAPE’s job. Not yours.”

Bond said sharply: “You’ll do nothing of the sort. Colonel Schreiber says he’s perfectly happy to let me make a dummy run tomorrow morning instead of the duty dispatch-rider. That’s all he needs to know at this stage. Reconstruction of the crime sort of thing. He couldn’t care less. He’s practically closed the file on this business. Now, be a good girl and do as you’re told. Just put my report on the printer to M. He’ll see the point of me cleaning this thing up. He won’t object.”

“Damn M.! Damn you! Damn the whole silly Service!” There were angry tears in the voice. “You’re just a lot of children playing at Red Indians. Taking these people on by yourself! It’s... it’s showing off. That’s all it is. Showing off.”

Bond was beginning to get annoyed. He said: “That’s enough, Mary Ann. Put that report on the printer. I’m sorry, but it’s an order.”

There was resignation in the voice. “Oh, all right. You don’t have to pull your rank on me. But don’t get hurt. At least you’ll have the boys from the local Station to pick up the bits. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Mary Ann. And will you have dinner with me tomorrow night? Some place like Armenonville. Pink champagne and gipsy violins. Paris in the spring routine.”

“Yes,” she said seriously. “I’d like that. But then take care all the more, would you? Please?”

“Of course I will. Don’t worry. Goodnight.”

“Night.”

Bond spent the rest of the evening putting a last high polish on his plans and giving a final briefing to the four men from the Station.

It was another beautiful day. Bond, sitting comfortably astride the throbbing B.S.A. waiting for the off, could hardly believe in the ambush that would now be waiting for him just beyond the Carrefour Royal. The corporal from the Signal Corps who had handed him his empty dispatch-case and was about to give him the signal to go said: “You look as if you’d been in the Royal Corps all your life, sir. Time for a haircut soon, I’d say, but the uniform’s bang on. How d’you like the bike, sir?”

“Goes like a dream. I’d forgotten what fun these damned things are.”

“Give me a nice little Austin A.40 any day, sir.” The corporal looked at his watch. “Seven o’clock just coming up.” He held up his thumb. “Okay.”

Bond pulled the goggles down over his eyes, lifted a hand to the corporal, kicked the machine into gear and wheeled off across the gravel and through the main gates.

Off 184 and on to 307, through Bailly and Noisy-le-Roi and there was the straggle of St. Nom. Here he would be turning sharp right on to D.98 — the “route de la mort,” as the handler had called it. Bond pulled into the grass verge and once more looked to the long-barrel .45 Colt. He put the warm gun back against his stomach and left the jacket button undone. On your marks! Get set...!

Bond took the sharp corner and accelerated up to fifty. The viaduct carrying the Paris autoroute loomed up ahead. The dark mouth of the tunnel beneath it opened and swallowed him. The noise of his exhaust was gigantic, and for an instant there was a tunnel smell of cold and damp. Then he was out in the sunshine again and immediately across the Carrefour Royal. Ahead the oily tarmac glittered dead straight for two miles through the enchanted forest and there was a sweet smell of leaves and dew. Bond cut his speed to forty. The driving-mirror by his left hand shivered slightly with his speed. It showed nothing but an empty unfurling vista of road between lines of trees that curled away behind him like a green wake. No sign of the killer. Had he taken fright? Had there been some hitch? But then there was a tiny black speck in the centre of the convex glass — a midge that became a fly and then a bee and then a beetle. Now it was a crash-helmet bent low over handle-bars between two big black paws. God, he was coming fast! Bond’s eyes flickered from the mirror to the road ahead and back to the mirror. When the killer’s right hand went for his gun...

Bond slowed — thirty-five, thirty, twenty. Ahead the tarmac was smooth as metal. A last quick look in the mirror. The right hand had left the handle-bars. The sun on the man’s goggles made huge fiery eyes below the rim of the crash-helmet. Now! Bond braked fiercely and skidded the B.S.A. through forty-five degrees, killing the engine. He was not quite quick enough on the draw. The killer’s gun flared twice and a bullet tore into the saddle-springs beside Bond’s thigh. But then the Colt spoke its single word, and the killer and his B.S.A., as if lassoed from within the forest, veered crazily off the road, leapt the ditch and crashed head-on into the trunk of a beech. For a moment the tangle of man and machinery clung to the broad trunk and then, with a metallic death-rattle, toppled backwards into the grass.

Bond got off his machine and walked over to the ugly twist of khaki and smoking steel. There was no need to feel for a pulse. Wherever the bullet had struck, the crash-helmet had smashed like an eggshell. Bond turned away and thrust his gun back into the front of his tunic. He had been lucky. It would not do to press his luck. He got on the B.S.A. and accelerated back down the road.

He leant the B.S.A. up against one of the scarred trees just inside the forest and walked softly through to the edge of the clearing. He took up his stand in the shadow of the big beech. He moistened his lips and gave, as near as he could, the killer’s bird-whistle. He waited. Had he got the whistle wrong? But then the bush trembled and the high thin whine began. Bond hooked his right thumb through his belt within inches of his gun-butt. He hoped he would not have to do any more killing. The two underlings had not seemed to be armed. With any luck they would come quietly.

Now the curved doors were open. From where he was, Bond could not see down the shaft, but within seconds the first man was out and putting on his snow-shoes and the second followed. Snow-shoes! Bond’s heart missed a beat. He had forgotten them! They must be hidden back there in the bushes. Blasted fool! Would they notice?

The two men came slowly towards him, delicately placing their feet. When he was about twenty feet away, the leading man said something softly in what sounded like Russian. When Bond did not reply, the two men stopped in their tracks. They stared at him in astonishment, waiting perhaps for the answer to a password. Bond sensed trouble. He whipped out his gun and moved towards them, crouching. “Hands up.” He gestured with the muzzle of the Colt. The leading man shouted an order and threw himself forward. At the same time the second man made a dash back towards the hide-out. A rifle boomed from among the trees and the man’s right leg buckled under him. The men from the Station broke cover and came running. Bond fell to one knee and clubbed upwards with his gun-barrel at the hurtling body. It made contact, but then the man was on him. Bond saw fingernails flashing towards his eyes, ducked and ran into an upper-cut. Now a hand was at his right wrist and his gun was being slowly turned on him. Not wanting to kill, he had kept the safety catch up. He tried to get his thumb to it. A boot hit him in the side of the head and he let the gun go and fell back. Through a red mist he saw the muzzle of the gun pointing at his face. The thought flashed through his mind that he was going to die — die for showing mercy...

Suddenly the gun-muzzle had gone and the weight of the man was off him. Bond got to his knees and then to his feet. The body, spread-eagled in the grass beside him, gave a last kick. There were bloody rents in the back of the dungarees. Bond looked round. The four men from the Station were in a group. Bond undid the strap of his crash-helmet and rubbed the side of his head. He said: “Well, thanks. Who did it?”

Nobody answered. The men looked embarrassed.

Bond walked towards them, puzzled. “What’s up?”

Suddenly Bond caught a trace of movement behind the men. An extra leg showed — a woman’s leg. Bond laughed out loud. The men grinned sheepishly and looked behind them. Mary Ann Russell, in a brown shirt and black jeans, came out from behind them with her hands up. One of the hands held what looked like a .22 target pistol. She brought her hands down and tucked the pistol into the top of her jeans. She came up to Bond. She said anxiously: “You won’t blame anybody, will you? I just wouldn’t let them leave this morning without me.” Her eyes pleaded. “Rather lucky I did come, really. I mean, I just happened to get to you first. No one wanted to shoot for fear of hitting you.”

Bond smiled into her eyes. He said: “If you hadn’t come, I’d have had to break that dinner date.” He turned back to the men, his voice business-like. “All right. One of you take the motor-bike and report the gist of this to Colonel Schreiber. Say we’re waiting for his team before we take a look at the hide-out. And would he include a couple of anti-sabotage men. That shaft may be booby-trapped. All right?”

Bond took the girl by the arm. He said: “Come over here. I want to show you a bird’s nest.”

“Is that an order?”

“Yes.”

The Most Dangerous Game RICHARD CONNELL

Original publication: Collier’s, January 19, 1924, winning the O. Henry Memorial Prize; first collected in Variety by Richard Connell (New York, Minton, 1925)

A successful and prolific short story writer who also enjoyed success in Hollywood, Richard Edward Connell (1893–1949) is best known today for “The Most Dangerous Game,” one of the most anthologized stories ever written and the basis for numerous film versions, including the 1932 RKO film of the same title (called The Hounds of Zaroff in England).

At the age of eighteen, Connell became the city editor of The New York Times, then went to Harvard, where he was the editor of the Harvard Lampoon and the Harvard Crimson. Upon graduation, he returned to journalism but was soon offered a lucrative job writing advertising copy. After serving in World War I, he sold several short stories and became a full-time freelancer, becoming one of America’s most popular and prolific magazine writers; several of his stories served as the basis for motion pictures.

Connell also produced four novels: The Mad Lover (1927), a romantic work in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald in which a wealthy young man falls in love with a woman who rejects him because he is a wastrel without drive or ambition; the book ends with a surprisingly humorous denouement. In Murder at Sea (1929), twelve passengers are on the Pendragon, bound for Bermuda, when one is brutally murdered and the question is who did it but, even more baffling, is why? Playboy (1936) is a light comedy about the idle rich, featuring the titular character, “Million-a-Year-Mike,” the heir to the Van Dyke fortune, amassed by his grandfather with his Two-Bit chain of stores. What Ho! (1937) is a British country house romantic comedy in the P. G. Wodehouse manner (though not a competitor on the hilarity scale) in which an Iowa taxidermist sells his business to rent the manor house of an earl with whom he shares a last name.

Title: The Most Dangerous Game, 1932

Studio: RKO Radio Pictures

Directors: Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Screenwriter: James Ashmore Creelman

Producers: David O. Selznick (executive); Merian C. Cooper (associate)

• Joel McCrea (Bob Rainsford)

• Fay Wray (Eve Trowbridge)

• Robert Armstrong (Martin Trowbridge)

• Leslie Banks (General Zaroff)

The essential storyline remains intact for the film version of Connell’s thrilling tale. Robert Rainsford, a famous big-game hunter, is on a yacht, making his way to hunt jaguars with a friend, when it crashes on a reef. He swims to an island where he comes upon a luxurious mansion, the home of General Zaroff, also a noted hunter. Apart from Zaroff’s menacing assistant, Ivan, only a young woman and her brother, also survivors of a shipwreck, are in the house. Zaroff has a conversation with Rainsford in which he explains that hunting has come to bore him but that there is one prey that he finds truly challenging and exhilarating and Rainsford realizes that he means humans. After Martin disappears, Eve and Rainsford recognize that they are scheduled to be the next quarry.

There is no woman or brother in the short story, but it is not a surprise that Hollywood wanted a pretty girl to serve as a love interest. The film is otherwise true to its inspiration.

The following year, the wildly successful King Kong (1933) was released and brought back virtually the entire team who had made The Most Dangerous Game: stars Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, directors Cooper and Schoedsack, screenwriter Creelman (with Ruth Rose), executive producer Selznick, and producers Cooper and Schoedsack.

Connell’s story has inspired numerous dramatic versions, including feature films A Game of Death (RKO, 1945, with John Loder, Edgar Barrier, and Audrey Long); Run for the Sun (United Artists, 1956, with Richard Widmark, Jane Greer, and Trevor Howard); The Most Dangerous Game (Wild Eye, 2016; rereleased as Never Leave Alive, 2017), with John Hennigan, Michelle Taylor, and Eric Etebari; and The Hounds of Zaroff (Lucky 70, 2016; not released until 2018), with Rachel Schrey, Devin Schmidt, and Timo Schrey.

Other theatrical films inspired by the story have different titles and have not always credited Connell. These include Bloodlust! (1961), The Woman Hunt (1972), Hard Target (1993), Surviving the Game (1994), and The Eliminator (2004), as well as The Pest (1997), a parody.

“The Most Dangerous Game” has served as the basis for numerous episodes of radio and television series, sometimes credited and sometimes not, but most famously was broadcast as the September 23, 1943, episode of the CBS series Suspense, which starred Orson Welles as Zaroff and Keenan Wynn as Rainsford.

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME Richard Connell

“Off there to the right — somewhere — is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery—”

“What island is it?” Rainsford asked.

“The old charts called it Ship-Trap Island,” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it? Sailors have a curious dread of the place. I don’t know why. Some superstition—”

“Can’t see it,” remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.

“You’ve good eyes,” said Whitney with a laugh, “and I’ve seen you pick off a moose moving in the brown fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can’t see four miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night.”

“Nor four yards,” admitted Rainsford. “Ugh! It’s like moist black velvet.”

“It will be light enough in Rio,” promised Whitney. “We should make it in a few days. I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey’s. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting.”

“The best sport in the world,” agreed Rainsford.

“For the hunter,” amended Whitney. “Not for the jaguar.”

“Don’t talk rot, Whitney. You’re a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?”

“Perhaps the jaguar does.”

“Bah! They’ve no understanding.”

“Even so, I rather think they understand one thing — fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death.”

“Nonsense,” laughed Rainsford. “This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made up of two classes — the hunters and the huntees. Luckily you and I are hunters. Do you think we have passed that island yet?”

“I can’t tell in the dark. I hope so.”

“Why?”

“The place has a reputation — a bad one.”

“Cannibals?”

“Hardly. Even cannibals wouldn’t live in such a God-forsaken place. But it’s gotten into sailor lore, somehow. Didn’t you notice that the crew’s nerves seemed a bit jumpy today?”

“They were a bit strange, now you mention it. Even Captain Nielsen.”

“Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who’d go up to the devil himself and ask him for a light. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. All I could get out of him was: ‘This place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir.’ Then he said, gravely: ‘Don’t you feel anything?’ Now you mustn’t laugh but I did feel a sort of chill, and there wasn’t a breeze. What I felt was a — a mental chill, a sort of dread.”

“Pure imagination,” said Rainsford. “One superstitious sailor can taint a whole ship’s company with his fear.”

“Maybe. Sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense which tells them when they are in danger... anyhow I’m glad we are getting out of this zone. Well, I’ll turn in now, Rainsford.”

“I’m not sleepy. I’m going to smoke another pipe on the after deck.”

There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the yacht’s engine and the swish and ripple of the propeller.

Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, puffed at his favourite briar. The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him. “It’s so dark,” he thought, “that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids—”

An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times.

Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry came from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost his balance. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea closed over his head.

He struggled to the surface and cried out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain cool-headedness had come to him, for this was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. The lights of the boat became faint and vanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out by the night.

Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and doggedly he swam in that direction, swimming slowly, conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes; he could do possibly a hundred more and then—

He heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high, screaming sound, the cry of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror. He did not know what animal made the sound. With fresh vitality he swam towards it. He heard it again; then it was cut short by another noise, crisp, staccato.

“Pistol shot,” muttered Rainsford, swimming on.

Ten minutes of determined effort brought to his ears the most welcome sound he had ever heard, the breaking of the sea on a rocky shore. He was almost on the rocks before he saw them; on a night less calm he would have been shattered against them. With his remaining strength he dragged himself from the swirling waters. Jagged crags appeared to jut into the opaqueness; he forced himself up hand over hand. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place at the top. Dense jungle came down to the edge of the cliffs, and careless of everything but his weariness Rainsford flung himself down and tumbled into the deepest sleep of his life.

When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the afternoon. Sleep had given him vigour; a sharp hunger was picking at him.

“Where there are pistol shots there are men. Where there are men there is food,” he thought; but he saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web of weeds and trees; it was easier to go along the shore. Not far from where he had landed, he stopped.

Some wounded thing, by the evidence a large animal, had crashed about in the underwood. A small glittering object caught Rainsford’s eye and he picked it up. It was an empty cartridge.

“A twenty-two,” he remarked. “That’s odd. It must have been a fairly large animal, too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. It is clear the brute put up a fight. I suppose the first three shots I heard were when the hunter flushed his quarry and wounded it. The last shot was when he trailed it here and finished it.”

He examined the ground closely and found what he had hoped to find — the print of hunting boots. They pointed along the cliff in the direction he had been going. Eagerly he hurried along, for night was beginning to settle down on the island.

Darkness was blacking out sea and jungle before Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line, and his first thought was that he had come upon a village, as there were so many lights. But as he forged along he saw that all the lights were in one building — a château on a high bluff.

“Mirage,” thought Rainsford. But the stone steps were real enough. He lifted the knocker and it creaked up stiffly as if it had never before been used.

The door, opening, let out a river of glaring light. A tall man, solidly built and black-bearded to the waist, stood facing Rainsford with a revolver in his hand.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Rainsford, with a smile that he hoped was disarming. “I’m no robber. I fell off a yacht. My name is Sanger Rainsford of New York City.”

The man gave no sign that he understood the words or had even heard them. The menacing revolver pointed as rigidly as if the giant were a statue.

Another man was coming down the broad, marble steps, an erect slender man in evening clothes. He advanced and held out his hand.

In a cultivated voice marked by a slight accent which gave it added precision and deliberateness, he said: “It is a great pleasure and honour to welcome Mr. Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home.”

Automatically Rainsford shook the man’s hand.

“I’ve read your book about hunting snow leopards in Tibet,” explained the man. “I am General Zaroff.”

Rainsford’s first impression was that the man was singularly handsome; his second, that there was a bizarre quality about the face. The general was a tall man past middle age, for his hair was white; but his eyebrows and moustache were black. His eyes, too, were black and very bright. He had the face of a man used to giving orders. Turning to the man in uniform, he made a sign. The fellow put away his pistol, saluted, withdrew.

“Ivan is an incredibly strong fellow,” remarked the general, “but he has the misfortune to be deaf and dumb. A simple fellow, but a bit of a savage.”

“Is he Russian?”

“A Cossack,” said the general, and his smile showed red lips and pointed teeth. “So am I.”

“Come,” he said, “we shouldn’t be chatting here. You want clothes, food, rest. You shall have them. This is a most restful spot.”

Ivan had reappeared and the general spoke to him with lips that moved but gave forth no sound.

“Follow Ivan if you please, Mr. Rainsford. I was about to have my dinner, but will wait. I think my clothes will fit you.”

It was to a huge beam-ceilinged bedroom with a canopied bed large enough for six men that Rainsford followed the man. Ivan laid out an evening suit and Rainsford, as he put it on, noticed that it came from a London tailor.

“Perhaps you were surprised,” said the general as they sat down to dinner in a room which suggested a baronial hall of feudal times, “that I recognized your name; but I read all books on hunting published in English, French, and Russian. I have but one passion in life, and that is the hunt.”

“You have some wonderful heads here,” said Rainsford, glancing at the walls. “That Cape buffalo is the largest I ever saw.”

“Oh, that fellow? He charged me, hurled me against a tree and fractured my skull. But I got the brute.”

“I’ve always thought,” said Rainsford, “that the Cape buffalo is the most dangerous of all big game.”

For a moment the general did not reply, then he said slowly: “No, the Cape buffalo is not the most dangerous.” He sipped his wine. “Here in my preserve on this island I hunt more dangerous game.”

“Is there big game on this island?”

The general nodded. “The biggest.”

“Really?”

“Oh, it isn’t here naturally. I have to stock the island.”

“What have you imported, General? Tigers?”

The general grinned. “No, hunting tigers ceased to interest me when I exhausted their possibilities. No thrill left in tigers, no real danger. I live for danger, Mr. Rainsford.”

The general took from his pocket a gold cigarette case and offered his guest a long black cigarette with a silver tip; it was perfumed and gave off a smell like incense.

“We will have some capital hunting, you and I,” said the general.

“But what game—” began Rainsford.

“I’ll tell you. You will be amused, I know. I think I may say, in all modesty, that I have done a rare thing. I have invented a new sensation. May I pour you another glass of port?”

“Thank you, General.”

The general filled both glasses and said: “God makes some men poets. Some he makes kings, some beggars. Me he made a hunter. But after years of enjoyment I found that the hunt no longer fascinated me. You can perhaps guess why?”

“No — why?”

“Simply this: hunting had ceased to be what you call a ‘sporting proposition.’ I always got my quarry... always... and there is no greater bore than perfection.”

The general lit a fresh cigarette.

“The animal has nothing but his legs and his instinct. Instinct is no match for reason. When I realized this, it was a tragic moment for me.”

Rainsford leaned cross the table, absorbed in what his host was saying.

“It came to me as an inspiration what I must do.”

“And that was?”

“I had to invent a new animal to hunt.”

“A new animal? You are joking.”

“I never joke about hunting. I needed a new animal. I found one. So I bought this island, built this house, and here I do my hunting. The island is perfect for my purpose — there are jungles with a maze of trails in them, hills, swamps—”

“But the animal, General Zaroff?”

“Oh,” said the general, “it supplies me with the most exciting hunting in the world. Every day I hunt, and I never grow bored now, for I have a quarry with which I can match my wits.”

Rainsford’s bewilderment showed in his face.

“I wanted the ideal animal to hunt, so I said, ‘What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?’ and the answer was, of course: ‘It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.’ ”

“But no animal can reason,” objected Rainsford.

“My dear fellow,” said the general, “there is one that can.”

“But you can’t mean—”

“And why not?”

“I can’t believe you are serious, General Zaroff. This is a grisly joke.”

“Why should I not be serious? I am speaking of hunting.”

“Hunting? Good God, General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder.”

The general regarded Rainsford quizzically. “Surely your experiences in the war—”

“Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder,” finished Rainsford stiffly.

Laughter shook the general. “I’ll wager you’ll forget your notions when you go hunting with me. You’ve a genuine new thrill in store for you, Mr. Rainsford.”

“Thank you, I am a hunter, not a murderer.”

“Dear me,” said the general, quite unruffled, “again that unpleasant word; but I hunt the scum of the earth — sailors from tramp ships — lascars, blacks, Chinese, whites, mongrels.”

“Where do you get them?”

The general’s left eyelid fluttered down in a wink. “This island is called Ship-Trap. Come to the window with me.”

Rainsford went to the window and looked out towards the sea.

“Watch! Out there!” exclaimed the general, as he pressed a button. Far out Rainsford saw a flash of lights. “They indicate a channel where there’s none. Rocks with razor edges crouch there like a sea-monster. They can crush a ship like a nut. Oh, yes, that is electricity. We try to be civilized.”

“Civilized? And you shoot down men?”

“But I treat my visitors with every consideration,” said the general in his most pleasant manner. “They get plenty of good food and exercise. They get into splendid physical condition. You shall see for yourself tomorrow.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll visit my training school,” smiled the general. “It is in the cellar. I have about a dozen there now. They’re from the Spanish bark Sanlucar, which had the bad luck to go on the rocks out there. An inferior lot, I regret to say, and more accustomed to the deck than the jungle.”

He raised his hand and Ivan brought thick Turkish coffee. “It is a game, you see,” pursued the general blandly. “I suggest to one of them that we go hunting. I give him three hours’ start. I am to follow, armed only with a pistol of smallest calibre and range. If my quarry eludes me for three whole days, he wins the game. If I find him” — the general smiled — “he loses.”

“Suppose he refuses to be hunted?”

“I give him the option. If he does not wish to hunt I turn him over to Ivan. Ivan once served as official knouter to the Great White Tsar, and he has his own ideas of sport. Invariably they choose the hunt.”

“And if they win?”

The smile on the general’s face widened. “To date I have not lost.”

Then he added, hastily: “I don’t wish you to think me a braggart, Mr. Rainsford, and one did almost win. I eventually had to use the dogs.”

“The dogs?”

“This way, please. I’ll show you.”

The general led the way to another window. The lights sent a flickering illumination that made grotesque patterns on the courtyard below, and Rainsford could see a dozen or so huge black shapes moving about. As they turned towards him he caught the green glitter of eyes.

“They are let out at seven every night. If anyone should try to get into my house — or out of it — something regrettable would happen to him. And now I want to show you my new collection of heads. Will you come to the library?”

“I hope,” said Rainsford, “that you will excuse me tonight. I’m really not feeling at all well.”

“Ah, indeed? You need a good restful night’s sleep. Tomorrow you’ll feel like a new man. Then we’ll hunt, eh? I’ve one rather promising prospect—”

Rainsford was hurrying from the room.

“Sorry you can’t go with me tonight,” called the general. “I expect rather fair sport. A big, strong black. He looks resourceful—”

The bed was good and Rainsford was tired, but nevertheless he could not sleep, and had only achieved a doze when, as morning broke, he heard, far off in the jungle, the faint report of a pistol.

General Zaroff did not appear till luncheon. He was solicitous about Rainsford’s health. “As for me,” he said, “I do not feel so well. The hunting was not good last night. He made a straight trail that offered no problems at all.”

“General,” said Rainsford firmly, “I want to leave the island at once.”

He saw the dead black eyes of the general on him, studying him. The eyes suddenly brightened. “Tonight,” said he, “we will hunt — you and I.”

Rainsford shook his head. “No, General,” he said, “I will not hunt.”

The general shrugged his shoulders. “As you wish. The choice rests with you, but I would suggest that my idea of sport is more diverting than Ivan’s.”

“You don’t mean—” cried Rainsford.

“My dear fellow,” said the general, “have I not told you I always mean what I say about hunting? This is really an inspiration. I drink to a foeman worthy of my steel at last.”

The general raised his glass, but Rainsford sat staring at him. “You’ll find this game worth playing,” the general said, enthusiastically. “Your brain against mine. Your woodcraft against mine. Your strength and stamina against mine. Outdoor chess! And the stake is not without value, eh?”

“And if I win—” began Rainsford huskily.

“If I do not find you by midnight of the third day, I’ll cheerfully acknowledge myself defeated,” said General Zaroff. “My sloop will place you on the mainland near a town.”

The general read what Rainsford was thinking.

“Oh, you can trust me,” said the Cossack. “I will give you my word as a gentleman and a sportsman. Of course, you, in turn, must agree to say nothing of your visit here.”

“I’ll agree to nothing of the kind.”

“Oh, in that case — but why discuss that now? Three days hence we can discuss it over a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, unless—”

The general sipped his wine.

Then a business-like air animated him. “Ivan,” he said, “will supply you with hunting clothes, food, a knife. I suggest you wear moccasins; they leave a poorer trail. I suggest, too, that you avoid the big swamp in the southeast corner of the island. We call it Death Swamp. There’s quicksand there. One foolish fellow tried it. The deplorable part of it was that Lazarus followed him. You can’t imagine my feelings, Mr. Rainsford. I loved Lazarus; he was the finest hound in my pack. Well, I must beg you to excuse me now. I always take a siesta after lunch. You’ll hardly have time for a nap, I fear. You’ll want to start, no doubt. I shall not follow until dusk. Hunting at night is so much more exciting than by day, don’t you think? Au revoir, Mr. Rainsford, au revoir.”

As General Zaroff, with a courtly bow, strolled from the room, Ivan entered by another door. Under one arm he carried hunting clothes, a haversack of food, a leathern sheath containing a long-bladed hunting knife; his right hand rested on a cocked revolver thrust in the crimson sash about his waist...

Rainsford had fought his way through the bush for two hours, but at length he paused, saying to himself through tight teeth, “I must keep my nerve.”

He had not been entirely clear-headed when the château gates closed behind him. His first idea was to put distance between himself and General Zaroff and, to this end, he had plunged along, spurred by the sharp rowels of something approaching panic. Now, having got a grip on himself, he had stopped to take stock of himself and the situation.

Straight flight was futile for it must inevitably bring him to the sea. Being in a picture with a frame of water, his operations, clearly, must take place within that frame.

“I’ll give him a trail to follow,” thought Rainsford, striking off from the path into trackless wilderness. Recalling the lore of the fox-hunt and the dodges of the fox, he executed a series of intricate loops, doubling again and again on his trail. Night found him leg-weary, with hands and face lashed by the branches. He was on a thickly wooded ridge. As his need for rest was imperative, he thought: “I have played the fox, now I must play the cat of the fable.”

A big tree with a thick trunk and outspread branches was near by, and, taking care to leave no marks, he climbed into the crotch and stretched out on one of the broad limbs. Rest brought him new confidence and almost a feeling of security.

An apprehensive night crawled slowly by like a wounded snake. Towards morning, when a dingy grey was varnishing the sky, the cry of a startled bird focussed Rainsford’s attention in its direction. Something was coming through the bush, coming slowly, carefully, coming by the same winding way that Rainsford had come. He flattened himself against the bough and, through a screen of leaves almost as thick as tapestry, watched.

It was General Zaroff. He made his way along, with his eyes fixed in concentration on the ground. He paused, almost beneath the tree, dropped to his knees and studied the ground. Rainsford’s impulse was to leap on him like a panther, but he saw that the general’s right hand held a small automatic.

The hunter shook his head several times as if he were puzzled. Then, straightening himself, he took from his case one of his black cigarettes; its pungent incense-like smoke rose to Rainsford’s nostrils.

Rainsford held his breath. The general’s eyes had left the ground and were travelling inch by inch up the tree. Rainsford froze, every muscle tensed for a spring. But the sharp eyes of the hunter stopped before they reached the limb where Rainsford lay. A smile spread over his brown face. Very deliberately he blew a smoke ring into the air; then he turned his back on the tree and walked carelessly away along the trail he had come. The swish of the underbrush against his hunting boots grew fainter and fainter.

The pent-up air burst hotly from Rainsford’s lungs. His first thought made him feel sick and numb. The general could follow a trail through the woods at night; he could follow an extremely difficult trail; he must have uncanny powers; only by the merest chance had he failed to see his quarry.

Rainsford’s second thought was more terrible. It sent a shudder through him. Why had the general smiled? Why had he turned back?

Rainsford did not want to believe what his reason told him was true — the general was playing with him, saving him for another day’s sport. The Cossack was the cat; he was the mouse. Then it was that Rainsford knew the meaning of terror.

“I will not lose my nerve,” he told himself, “I will not.”

Sliding down from the tree, he set off into the woods. Three hundred yards from his hiding-place he stopped where a huge dead tree leaned precariously on a smaller, living one. Throwing off his sack of food, he took his knife from its sheath and set to work.

When the job was finished, he threw himself down behind a fallen log a hundred feet away. He did not have to wait long. The cat was coming back to play with the mouse.

Following the trail with the sureness of a bloodhound came General Zaroff. Nothing escaped those searching black eyes, no crushed blade of grass, no bent twig, no mark, no matter how faint, in the moss. So intent was the Cossack on his stalking that he was upon the thing Rainsford had made before he saw it. His foot touched the protruding bough that was the trigger. Even as he touched it, the general sensed his danger, and leaped back with the agility of an ape. But he was not quite quick enough; the dead tree, delicately adjusted to rest on the cut living one, crashed down and struck the general a glancing blow on the shoulder as it fell; but for his alertness he must have been crushed beneath it. He staggered but he did not fall; nor did he drop his revolver. He stood there, rubbing his injured shoulder, and Rainsford, with fear again gripping his heart, heard the general’s mocking laugh ring through the jungle.

“Rainsford,” called the general, “if you are within sound of my voice let me congratulate you. Not many men know how to make a Malay man catcher. Luckily for me I, too, have hunted in Malacca. You are proving interesting, Mr. Rainsford. I am now going to have my wound dressed; it is only a slight one. But I shall be back. I shall be back.”

When the general, nursing his wounded shoulder, had gone, Rainsford again took up his flight. It was flight now, and it carried him on for some hours. Dusk came, then darkness, and still he pressed on. The ground grew softer under his moccasins; the vegetation grew ranker, denser; insects bit him savagely. He stepped forward and his foot sank into ooze. He tried to wrench it back, but the mud sucked viciously at his foot as if it had been a giant leech. With a violent effort he tore his foot loose. He knew where he was now. Death Swamp and its quicksand.

The softness of the earth had given him an idea. Stepping back from the quicksand a dozen feet, he began, like some huge prehistoric beaver, to dig.

Rainsford had dug himself in, in France, when a second’s delay would have meant death. Compared to his digging now, that had been a placid pastime. The pit grew deeper; when it was above his shoulders he climbed out and from some hard saplings cut stakes, sharpening them to a fine point. These stakes he planted at the bottom of the pit with the points up. With flying fingers he wove a rough carpet of weeds and branches and with it covered the mouth of the pit. Then, wet with sweat and aching with tiredness, he crouched behind the stump of a lightning-blasted tree.

By the padding sound of feet on the soft earth he knew his pursuer was coming. The night breeze brought him the perfume of the general’s cigarette. It seemed to the hunted man that the general was coming with unusual swiftness; that he was not feeling his way along, foot by foot. Rainsford, from where he was crouching, could not see the general, neither could he see the pit. He lived a year in a minute. Then he heard the sharp crackle of breaking branches as the cover of the pit gave way; heard the sharp scream of pain as the pointed stakes found their mark. Then he cowered back. Three feet from the pit a man was standing with an electric torch in his hand.

“You’ve done well, Rainsford,” cried the general. “Your Burmese tiger pit has claimed one of my best dogs. Again you score. I must now see what you can do against my whole pack. I’m going home for a rest now. Thank you for a most amusing evening.”

At daybreak Rainsford, lying near the swamp, was awakened by a distant sound, faint and wavering, but he knew it for the baying of a pack of hounds.

Rainsford knew he could do one of two things. He could stay where he was. That was suicide. He could flee. That was postponing the inevitable. For a moment, he stood there thinking. An idea that held a wild chance came to him, and, tightening his belt, he headed away from the swamp.

The baying of the hounds drew nearer, nearer. Rainsford climbed a tree. Down a watercourse, not a quarter of a mile away, he could see the bush moving. Straining his eyes, he saw the lean figure of General Zaroff. Just ahead of him Rainsford made out another figure, with wide shoulders, which surged through the jungle reeds. It was the gigantic Ivan and he seemed to be pulled along. Rainsford realized that he must be holding the pack in leash.

They would be on him at any moment now. His mind worked frantically, and he thought of a native trick he had learned in Uganda. Sliding down the tree, he caught hold of a springy young sapling and to it fastened his hunting knife, with the blade pointing down the trail. With a bit of wild grape-vine he tied back the sapling... and ran for his life. As the hounds hit the fresh scent, they raised their voices and Rainsford knew how an animal at bay feels.

He had to stop to get his breath. The baying of the hounds stopped abruptly, and Rainsford’s heart stopped, too. They must have reached the knife.

Shinning excitedly up a tree, he looked back. His pursuers had stopped. But the hope in Rainsford’s brain died, for he saw that General Zaroff was still on his feet. Ivan, however, was not. The knife, driven by the recoil of the springing tree, had not wholly failed.

Hardly had Rainsford got back to the ground when, once more, the pack took up the cry.

“Nerve, nerve, nerve!” he panted to himself as he dashed along. A blue gap showed through the trees dead ahead. The hounds drew nearer. Rainsford forced himself on towards that gap. He reached the sea, and across a cove could see the grey stone of the château. Twenty feet below him the sea rumbled and hissed. Rainsford hesitated. He heard the hounds. Then he leaped far out into the water.

When the general and his pack reached the opening, the Cossack stopped. For some moments he stood regarding the blue-green expanse of water. Then he sat down, took a drink of brandy from a silver flask, lit a perfumed cigarette, and hummed a bit from Madame Butterfly.

General Zaroff ate an exceedingly good dinner in his great panelled hall that evening. With it he had a bottle of Pol Roger and half a bottle of Chambertin. Two slight annoyances kept him from perfect enjoyment. One was that it would be difficult to replace Ivan; the other, that his quarry had escaped him. Of course — so thought the general, as he tasted his after-dinner liqueur — the American had not played the game.

To soothe himself, he read in his library from the works of Marcus Aurelius. At ten he went to his bedroom. He was comfortably tired, he said to himself, as he turned the key of his door. There was a little moonlight, so before turning on the light he went to the window and looked down on the courtyard. He could see the great hounds, and he called: “Better luck another time.” Then he switched on the light.

A man who had been hiding in the curtains of the bed, was standing before him.

“Rainsford!” screamed the general. “How in God’s name did you get here?”

“Swam. I found it quicker than walking through the jungle.”

The other sucked in his breath and smiled. “I congratulate you. You have won the game.”

Rainsford did not smile. “I am still a beast at bay,” he said, in a low, hoarse voice. “Get ready, General Zaroff.”

The general made one of his deepest bows. “I see,” he said. “Splendid. One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford...”

He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.

Thirteen Lead Soldiers H. C. McNEILE

Original publication: The Strand Magazine, December 1937; first collected in The Best Short Stories by “Sapper” (London, Dent, 1984)

Herman Cyril McNeile (1888–1937) served in the British Army Corps of Engineers for twelve years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel shortly after the end of World War I. During his years of service, he wrote numerous military adventure stories, but it was with the creation of Bulldog Drummond in 1920 that he became one of the most popular writers in England, using the pseudonym “Sapper” for his British publications, a word derived from the military slang term for an engineer. Most of McNeile’s fiction is fast-paced, with cliff-hangers, romance, and action in long supply, while stylistic nuance and characterization are not.

Partially based on his friend Gerard Fairlie (who continued the Drummond adventures when McNeile died of a war-related illness), Captain Hugh Drummond was bored after the war and ran a newspaper advertisement that read: “Demobilized officer, finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate, if possible; but crime, if of a comparatively humorous description, no objection. Excitement essential. Would be prepared to consider permanent job if suitably impressed by applicant for his services. Reply at once Box X10.”

The fiercely patriotic Drummond finds England’s enemies everywhere, especially among Germans and Russians, and will risk his life (as well as that of his wife, Phyllis, and his valet, Algy) if needed to protect England. His greatest adversary is Carl Peterson, a supervillain who cares nothing about countries or nationalities as long as his allies aid his selfish goals.

McNeile wrote ten novels about Bulldog Drummond, Fairlie wrote seven, and there were more than twenty films based on his exploits. The heroic Englishman also starred in a somewhat inauthentic 1940s radio series that opened with, “Out of the fog, out of the night, and into his American adventures steps Bulldog Drummond...”

According to an article by Christopher Fowler in the April 1, 2012, issue of London’s The Independent on Sunday, McNeile was the highest-paid short story writer in the world during the 1920s, an honor that also has been attributed by others to Edgar Wallace and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“Thirteen Lead Soldiers” is a story that uncharacteristically presents Drummond mostly as a detective, not as a spy.

Title: Thirteen Lead Soldiers, 1948

Studio: Twentieth Century-Fox

Director: Frank McDonald

Screenwriters: Irving Elman, Dwight V. Babcock

Producers: Bernard Small, Ben Pivar

• Tom Conway (Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond)

• John Newland (Algernon “Algy” Longworth)

• Maria Palmer (Estelle Prager, aka Estelle Gorday)

• Helen Westcott (Cynthia Stedman)

• William Stelling (Phillip Coleman)

McNeile’s short story is a relatively straightforward mystery that has been dramatically altered and fleshed out to fill the brief running time of the film’s sixty-four minutes, adding some characters and a good story to go along with the discovery of a rare manuscript. The major contribution of the story to the screenplay was its title.

As popular as Bulldog Drummond was in book and magazine stories, he was an even greater presence on the screen, with more than twenty films produced that featured the patriotic British adventurer.

The first, simply titled Bulldog Drummond (1922), was a silent, as was the second, amusingly called Bulldog Drummond’s Third Round (1925). The first sound version was also titled Bulldog Drummond (1929) and starred Ronald Colman, beginning the parade of big-name actors who went on to play Drummond for nearly a half century; he reprised the role in Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934).

Among the A-list stars who played the role of the “isn’t this fun?” hero were Ralph Richardson, in The Return of Bulldog Drummond (1934); Ray Milland, in Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937); John Barrymore, in Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937), Bulldog Drummond’s Revenge (1937), and Bulldog Drummond’s Peril (1938); Tom Conway, in The Challenge (1948) and Thirteen Lead Soldiers (1948); and Walter Pidgeon, in Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951).

The last Bulldog Drummond film was Some Girls Do, which was clearly influenced by the success of the James Bond movies; it was released in 1969.

Alfred Hitchcock had planned to direct a Bulldog Drummond film in 1933 and already had a screenplay by Charles Bennett titled Bulldog Drummond’s Baby. The rights to the character, however, were controlled by British International Pictures, which declined to allow the use of the character. Hitchcock and Bennett rewrote the screenplay, turning it into The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), without Drummond.

Ian Fleming admitted that his James Bond character was “ ‘Sapper (H. C. McNeile)’ from the waist up and Mickey Spillane below.” (Presumably, he meant their characters, Bulldog Drummond and Mike Hammer, rather than the authors themselves.)

THIRTEEN LEAD SOLDIERS H. C. McNeile

“You mustn’t touch them, Uncle Hugh, because they’re still wet. Mr. Stedman is going to paint some more when he comes back.”

Hugh Drummond — uncle by courtesy — looked down at the small boy on the floor. Around him was strewn the litter inseparable from small boys, be it trains, airplanes, or hairy bugs. In this case, the central motif consisted of toy soldiers, with paints and brushes and pools of multi-colored water. In addition, there were boxes of infantry, and cavalry, and guns all of a dull-grey color, whilst on a tray, resplendent in scarlet, stood some freshly painted heroes.

“Mr. Stedman says it’s far more fun to paint them oneself,” explained the proud owner. “He says it doesn’t matter if there is no full dress no more.”

“I quite agree with Mr. Stedman, Billy,” said Drummond. “Red looks much better than khaki, doesn’t it. That’s a good-looking Highlander next door to the General on the horse.”

“Yes. I’ve got some more of those. They’re Cameron Highlanders.”

“Not Camerons, old man. They might be Gordons.”

“Mr. Stedman said Camerons,” persisted the boy. “Didn’t you?” He looked up as a tall, dark man entered the room.

“Didn’t I say what, Billy?”

“Say these were Cameron Highlanders. Uncle Hugh says they’re Gordons.”

“Only after they’re painted, son,” said Drummond. “Before they’re painted, they might be any Highland regiment.”

“But Mr. Stedman painted him and he said he was a Cameron. Why can’t he be a Cameron?”

“Because he’s got the wrong-colored kilt on, old man. I might stretch a point and say he was a Seaforth, but I can’t allow Cameron, I’m afraid. You see, that kilt gives the general impression of being dark-green, or even black, whereas the Cameron kilt strikes one as red.”

“The complete Scotchman, I see,” said Stedman with a smile, and Drummond glanced at him. There was no friendliness behind the smile.

“Even to the extent of always saying, ‘Guid nicht the noo,’ ” he answered placidly.

“The color of a kilt seems a somewhat trifling matter to worry the child’s head with.”

Drummond raised his eyebrows and laughed.

“I don’t suppose that it would materially affect Billy’s future career if he was told that the Archbishop of Canterbury always preached in purple pajamas,” he remarked. “At the same time, if you are painting soldiers and thereby giving the child a little lesson in things military, it does no harm to get such trifles as facings and kilts correct.”

He lit a cigarette and strolled over to the window.

“The rain has stopped: I think I shall take exercise. I suppose the great ones are still conferring?”

“They are,” said Stedman shortly — and with an amused glance at him, Drummond lounged out of the room. One of those tedious individuals, he reflected, who hate to be found wrong in anything. And yet able, presumably, or he wouldn’t have his present job.

“Algy, you noxious blight,” he remarked to Longworth, whom he found in the hall, “you may accompany me to the village. The evening paper should be in by now, and I want to see if I’ve backed my fifteenth consecutive loser. Tell me,” he continued as they walked down the drive, “what do you think of the man Stedman?”

“I don’t,” said Algy, “if I can help it. Why?”

“I just wondered. We’ve been chatting on kilts and things and I don’t think he was amused. Incidentally, painting toy soldiers is a new one on me.”

“Same here. But the kid seems to like it. And I suppose it was decent of the fellow to go all the way to Manchester to get unpainted ones. What’s this about kilts?”

“Nothing of importance,” answered Drummond, halting for a moment and looking back at the house. “What a magnificent old pile it is.”

Outlined against the westering sun, the towers and battlements of Oxshott Castle stood out dark and somber. Trees as old as the house flanked it on each side: in front lay a lake, placid as a sheet of glass. And as they looked, four men came through the front door and strolled across the drive.

It was easy to recognize them even at this distance. Slim and upright, their seventy-year, silver-haired host, Lord Surrey, came first with the Frenchman, the Comte de Dinard. Behind them, the smoke from their cigars almost motionless in the still air, were the Belgian, Monsieur Meteren, with Sir Charles Dorking. And as they disappeared round a corner of the house, Drummond gave a short laugh.

“It’s quaint, Algy, you know, when you think of it,” he said. “At this moment the fate of Europe is quite possibly being settled: Stedman is painting toy soldiers for Billy, and you and I are going to see who won the two-thirty.”

Algy looked at him anxiously. “You’ll be quoting Ella Wheeler Wilcox in a moment, my lad,” he remarked. “What you want is beer in a large can. And what has stung you now?”

Drummond, his eyes narrowed, was staring down the drive toward the lodge.

“I’d know that walk anywhere,” he said. “If that isn’t our old friend Andrews of Scotland Yard, I will consume my headgear. Now what the deuce is he doing here?”

They strolled on, and a few moments later the three men met.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” cried the jovial-faced Inspector cheerily. “I was hoping I might meet you.”

Drummond glanced at him in surprise.

“Very kind of you, old lad,” he remarked, “and the same to you and all that. But may I inquire how you knew we were here?”

“Because I suggested that you should be asked,” answered Andrews calmly. “When discussing the house party with his Lordship, it transpired that he knew both you and Mr. Longworth very well. So, as I say, I suggested that he should send you invitations for the weekend.”

“Again very kind of you,” said Drummond, looking even more surprised. “But why?”

“Because I may want your assistance,” replied the Inspector. “What about a pint at the Barley-Mow, and I’ll tell you the lay of the ground.”

“A brave thought, bravely spoken,” said Drummond. “By the way, d’you know what won the two-thirty?”

“Moonlight. Sharpshooter second.”

“Hell!” said Drummond. “Another fiver down the drain. I shall soon be known as the bookmaker’s friend.”

They entered the bar, and found it empty.

“What about that table over in the corner?” suggested Drummond. “I am frankly very curious, Andrews, to hear why you should have discussed the party with Lord Surrey.”

“I suppose you’re aware, Captain Drummond,” said the Inspector as they sat down, “that some very important discussions are on foot at the present moment between England, France, and Belgium.”

“I am,” replied Drummond.

“That being the case, has it struck you as strange that a reporter isn’t lurking behind every bush on Oxshott Castle?”

“It had not struck me up to date,” admitted Drummond. “But now that you mention it, I get your meaning.”

“The reason why they’re not here,” continued Andrews, “is that this conference has been kept a profound secret. The Press, of course, know that Meteren and the Comte de Dinard are in England. They know further that they are not over here to enjoy the English climate, but for the express purpose of meeting Sir Charles. And since the one thing the statesmen wished to avoid at the present stage of affairs was publicity, this weekend was arranged at Lord Surrey’s suggestion. The whole plan was kept completely dark, and the very fact that there are no reporters here proves that we succeeded.”

He paused and took a pull at his tankard, while the others waited.

“Yes, Captain Drummond,” he repeated, “we succeeded — so far as the reporters are concerned — which, believe me, is no mean feat. But we have not succeeded entirely. Some unauthorized person knew of this conference four days ago.”

“At any rate, he seems to have kept the information to himself,” remarked Drummond. “Incidentally, how did you find out that somebody knew?”

“I’m coming to that,” continued Andrews. “Four days ago, when I went to my office in the morning, I was as certain as a man could be that everything was all right. The only people who knew about the weekend were Lord Surrey himself, the three statesmen and their confidential secretaries — Mr. Stedman and the other two — and, of course, myself. I had fixed all the staff work over cars and, as I say, I felt quite confident that all was well. You can judge then my consternation when I received a letter by the second post that blew my optimism sky high. It was undated, bore no address, and naturally was not signed. And it ran as follows. ‘Guard the Comte de Dinard at Oxshott. Guns are useless.’ ”

He took another pull at his beer.

“Short and pithy, you’ll agree,” he went on. “It gave me the devil of a jolt. To trace the writer was, of course, an utter impossibility, even if there had been time. And there we were confronted with the fact that what we thought was a jealously guarded secret was nothing of the sort. So I went off posthaste to see Lord Surrey. Should we alter the arrangements, postpone the conference, or what?

“Well, postponement was out of the question: Mr. Meteren has to be back in Brussels on Monday. To alter arrangements would have been difficult since the Comte had just flown back to Paris and was only returning that night. So we decided to carry on — and do as the anonymous writer had suggested, guard the Comte. And it was then that I took the liberty, when I found out that his Lordship knew you both, of asking him to invite you. Your methods, Captain Drummond, may at times be irregular, but there are few people I would sooner have beside me if there’s any trouble about than yourself.” He made a little bow.

“Very nice of you to say so,” said Drummond. “I should like to play.”

“The trouble is,” continued Andrews, “that I have no idea whatever as to what the game is likely to be.”

“It’s just possible,” put in Algy, “that the letter is a hoax.”

“Possibly, but not likely, Mr. Longworth. And even if it were, it doesn’t alter the fact that somebody, inadvertently or otherwise, has spilled the beans. Because it’s preposterous to think that any of the other seven people in the know could have sent me that note. No: I don’t think that letter is a hoax. It is, I believe, a definite warning, sent by someone who has found out about this weekend, who knows that an attempt may be made on the Frenchman’s life, and whose conscience has pricked him. You see, there’s no secret about the fact that there is a large section of people in France, and in other countries, too, who would rejoice if the Comte was out of the way.”

“Has he been told about it?” asked Drummond.

“He has. And pooh-poohs the whole thing. Takes the line that if people in his position paid any attention to threats of that sort they might as well chuck up the sponge straight away. Which is quite true. But the last thing I or Lord Surrey want is that the chucking up should occur here.”

“Naturally,” agreed Drummond. “You’ve got some men down, I suppose?”

“Four,” said Andrews. “They’re on the grounds now — they’ll be in the house tonight.”

“ ‘Guns are useless.’ I wonder what that means. Poison?”

The Inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Possibly. But unless he eats or drinks something different to everybody else, the whole house party is in for it.”

“Thanks,” said Drummond with a grin. “What about the servants?”

“Been with his Lordship for years. Besides, it’s inconceivable that one of them should have sent the note, or given the show away. It would mean that Lord Surrey himself had been indiscreet — otherwise they could never have known.”

“Still, somebody has given it away,” remarked Drummond. “And assuming what you’ve said to be correct, it must be one of you eight.”

“My own belief is that it’s the Comte himself,” said Andrews. “Quite unintentionally, of course. He’s one of those men who is reckless to the point of foolhardiness where his own safety is concerned. For all that, he’s got to submit to some safety measures tonight, whether he likes it or not.”

“Are they hush-hush?” asked Drummond.

“Not from you,” said the Inspector, “though I don’t want you to pass them on at present. But he’s not going to sleep in the room he occupies now. He will dress for dinner there, and then just before he goes to bed a strange defect will be discovered in a fuse. Or else Lord Surrey will tell him the truth point-blank. He will sleep in another room, with one of my men outside his door, and I shall spend the night in his present one. Which may lead to us finding out something.”

“You evidently take this as serious,” said Drummond.

“I do. But in any case it’s just as well to be on the safe side. And I think my arrangements, simple though they are, give the maximum of security with the minimum of inconvenience. If trouble comes from the outside, it finds me; if it comes from the inside, it has to pass one of my men.”

“And what do you want us to do?”

“Keep your eyes open during the evening for anything that strikes you as being suspicious. I shall be on hand in one of the sitting rooms, if you want to get hold of me. And if the phrase ‘Guns are useless’ means anything in the nature of a rough house, you won’t want any prompting,” he added with a grin as he rose. “No, I won’t have another, thanks. I must go and inspect my myrmidons. Probably see you later.”

“So that’s why we were honored, Algy,” said Drummond as the door closed behind the Inspector. “I had hoped that my advice was going to be asked on high matters of state, but life is full of disappointments. However, if we’ve got to do the Sherlock Holmes stunt, more beer is indicated. And then we’d better toddle back. But one wonders,” he continued as another tankard was put before him, “why the letter-writer was so cryptic. Having gone to the trouble of saying what he did, why the dickens didn’t he say more? Didn’t he know himself, or what stung him?”

“It’s that that made me suspect a hoax,” said Algy.

“You frightful liar,” remarked Drummond dispassionately. “You never thought of the point till I mentioned it. Now mop up your ale, and wipe your chin, and then you must go back and change your dickey. And for heaven’s sake, don’t tell old Dinard that French story of yours or all Andrews’s precautions will be wasted. Though I admit,” he added brutally, “that death could only be regarded as a merciful release from listening to it.”

Any setting less suggestive of violence or murder than Oxshott Castle that night it would have been hard to imagine. They had dined in state in the large banqueting hall, a dinner which reflected credit on even Lord Surrey’s far-famed chef — and the conversation at times had been amazingly indiscreet. It had taken the three diplomats a certain amount of time to understand the reason for Drummond’s and Algy’s presence, since by tacit consent no mention was made of the threatening note. The Comte especially appeared to think that Algy was mental — a skeleton in the family cupboard and Drummond his keeper — but the fact did not prevent him making one or two remarks that Fleet Street would have paid thousands for. And Meteren was not far behind in frankness.

It was a dinner to remember.

No women were present, and no other guests had been asked in. And as the meal progressed, Drummond found himself so absorbed in the glimpses — the human, scandalous glimpses — that lie at times behind the wheels of state that he almost forgot the real reason for his presence. And then, the drawn curtains — drawn ostensibly to keep out the mosquitoes — with the motionless bulges behind them on each side of the open window would bring him back to reality. For the bulges were two of Andrews’s men, and two more were outside the door.

He was sitting between the Belgian minister and Mark Stedman, who seemed to have recovered from his temporary irritation of the afternoon.

“I had no idea, Captain Drummond,” he said over the port, “that you were such a friend of Lord Surrey’s.”

“Hardly the way to put it,” smiled Drummond. “His eldest son, who married my first cousin, and I were at Sandhurst together, and the old boy has asked me to shoot several times. Hence grandson Billy calls me uncle.”

“Quite. I thought you were a sort of unofficial bravo brought in to help to protect our guest.”

“You’re perfectly right — I am. I shouldn’t be here but for the anonymous threat.”

“What’s your opinion of it?” asked Stedman.

“I haven’t one,” said Drummond frankly.

“I saw Inspector Andrews before dinner, and he seems equally at sea. However, he’s neglecting no precautions. Would it be indiscreet to ask what is your role?”

“Not at all,” answered Drummond. “Since neither Andrews nor his merry men can actually join the party, my job is to keep my eyes skinned in the room itself for anything unusual that may happen.”

“But what could happen?” said Stedman with an amused smile. “It sounds like the thriller of fiction: a secret death-dealing ray or something ridiculous of that sort.”

“It does rather, I admit,” agreed Drummond. “Certainly nothing could appear more removed from anything of that sort than the table at present.”

“And yet,” said Stedman thoughtfully, “it’s an amazing thing how science has helped crime, though it sounds rather as if I were contradicting myself.”

“It has helped the detection of crime just as much,” Drummond argued.

“I wonder. I agree with you, of course, over crude commonplace crime, but in those cases the criminal is not availing himself of science, whereas the detective is. The crime I’m alluding to belongs to a higher category, and of necessity must be murder.”

“Why, of necessity?”

“Because in burglary or forgery, let us say, however much science is employed in the committing of the crime, the criminal can only obtain his reward by a process where science is of no avail. He must go to a fence: he must pass his dud fivers. And it is in the disposal of his goods, a thing over which the technique is much the same as it was last century, that he gets caught. That does not apply to murder.”

“Perhaps not. But since the time of Cain and Abel there is one thing that has always applied to murder, and no science can alter that.”

“And supposing there is no motive.”

“Then the murderer is a madman,” said Drummond. “Or someone of the Jack the Ripper type.”

“I will amend my remark. Supposing there is no motive that points to any particular individual.”

“I don’t quite get you,” remarked Drummond.

Stedman hitched his chair a little nearer and lowered his voice.

“Let us take an academic case,” he said, “our friend over whom the precautions are being taken tonight. Now the reasons why anyone desires his removal are nothing whatever to do with his private life. There is no question of love, or jealousy, or personal hatred pointing at a specific being and saying, ‘Thou art the man.’ The reasons are purely public and apply to his political views, which are intensely unpopular amongst thousands of people. That is why I say that if the Comte was murdered tonight, though the motive would be obvious, it wouldn’t help the police to find the murderer.”

“That’s true,” agreed Drummond. “And provided the crime was committed with such skill that the criminal made a clear getaway and left no obvious clues behind him, doubtless he would never be discovered.”

“Which is what I was getting at in the first place,” said Stedman. “Fifty years ago, with the precautions that have been taken tonight, a getaway would have been impossible because the methods of committing the crime were so crude. Short of a gang of men overpowering the police and shooting him, or someone poisoning his whiskey, there was no method of doing the deed. Today that is not the case. And that is where science has helped the criminal more than the detective.”

“I wonder if the Yard would agree with you,” remarked Drummond with a smile.

“Somewhat improbable,” grinned Stedman. “Though it doesn’t alter the fact that it’s the truth. I am firmly convinced that, given time, brains, and a sufficiency of money, it would be a comparatively simple matter to commit an undiscoverable murder.”

“A good many people have thought the same thing and found they were wrong,” said Drummond as they all rose from the table.

“And quite as many have found they were right,” replied Stedman as they moved into the hall. “However, let’s hope there’s no question of its being put to the test tonight. I’ve promised to finish two more soldiers for Billy, and high art of that sort requires a steady hand.”

Certainly there had been no question of it when the house party reassembled about midnight prior to going to bed. The three statesmen had disappeared with their host into secret conclave. Stedman, refusing to join the others at drink, had devoted himself to things military in a corner of the billiard room. And now, as everyone helped himself to his own particular nightcap, he pointed with pardonable pride to the result of his labors.

Ranged in single file on a tray were the twelve gallant infantrymen and the field marshal on his prancing black horse. The command was small, Stedman admitted, for such an exalted officer, but any attempt to reduce him in rank had been firmly vetoed by Billy. And his actual position on parade was hardly according to the drill book. Instead of leading his Army into action, the cowardly old gentleman very nearly brought up the rear. Behind him strode a Greenjacket, a stout-hearted warrior leading an Army mule, and the sanitary squad in the shape of an R.A.M.C. orderly. The remainder of the force led by the drum major stretched out in front, glistening in their scarlet tunics.

“Don’t touch,” warned Stedman. “They’re still wet.”

“I don’t envy the Highlander,” laughed his Lordship. “It seems to me that the off fore of the field marshal’s charger is down his neck.”

“Specially arranged by Billy, sir,” said Stedman. “The Highlander is the field marshal’s own private guard.”

He put the tray on the windowsill and glanced at Drummond.

“We compromised on the Black Watch,” he laughed. “So honor is satisfied. Hullo — what has stung the Comte?”

He was gesticulating freely by the fireplace, and Lord Surrey was soothing him down.

“But, my dear fellow,” cried the Frenchman, “it is absurd! I appreciate greatly your care for my safety, and the precautions of the good Inspector, but to change my bedroom because some madman has written a crazy note — it is surely ridiculous! You will be asking that I look under the bed next, like a hopeful old lady. However — if you insist, I can only obey my so charming host. I will go, I think now, if I may.”

“What’s all the excitement?” whispered Stedman to Drummond.

“One of Inspector Andrews’s precautions,” answered Drummond. “Even the servants don’t know. The Comte’s bedroom has been changed, and Andrews himself is occupying the one he had originally. What on earth is the matter?” he added with a laugh. “You seem quite distressed about it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Stedman. “Why should it distress me? Though I’m inclined to agree with the Comte as to its being most unnecessary.”

“Perhaps. Still, it’s as well to be on the safe side.”

He turned away. Why had Stedman registered any reaction at all on hearing the news? It had only been momentary — gone in a flash — but to a shrewd observer like Drummond it had stuck out a yard. And how could it possibly affect Stedman personally if the Comte slept in his own bedroom or in the coal hole?

He sipped his drink thoughtfully, the conversation at dinner coming back to him. Also Stedman’s annoyance over the matter of the kilt. Could it be possible that they were two widely different manifestations of the same failing — conceit? The kilt, irritability because he had been proved wrong; the other, a sort of inverted pride in something planned, and which he could not resist bragging about even though his audience should be unaware of the fact.

“ ’Old ’ard,” muttered Drummond to himself, “you ain’t even trotting — you’re galloping. You’re accusing this bloke Stedman of being the thorn in the flesh. And that’s rot.

“Then why,” came the reiterated question, “should he care the snap of a finger which is old Dinard’s bedroom? And he did. Of that there’s not a shadow of doubt.”

He turned round to find Algy at his elbow.

“Coming to bed, old bird?” remarked that worthy. “I thought of taking up one of the pikes out of the hall in case a general action occurs during the night. The only thing against it is that a man impaled on the end of a pike would be a dreadful sight at three in the morning. He wouldn’t go with my yellow pajamas at all well.”

He looked at Drummond curiously. “What’s stung you, Hugh? You seem devilish thoughtful.”

“I’m just wondering, Algy, if I’m being a complete halfwit, or if I’m not. By the way, Andrews did say, didn’t he, that one of his minions was going to be on guard outside Dinard’s door tonight?”

“He did, and there he is. Further, there is one on guard in the corridor. I’ve just been up to fill my cigarette case and I saw ’em.”

“Good. Then let’s go to bed. I’ve probably got the mental jitters.”

It was half an hour later that the door of Algy’s room opened. He had just smashed his tooth glass with his slipper, in an unsuccessful attempt to swat a mosquito, and was engaged in picking up the fragments when Drummond came in.

“Unless I’m much mistaken, Algy,” he remarked quietly, “strange things will be abroad tonight.”

The other one stared. “What sort of things?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Drummond. “So the curtain goes up on a completely unknown play.”

“You annoying blighter,” cried Algy, “can’t you be a bit more explicit?”

“I can’t,” answered Drummond simply. “I give you my word of honor, I’m completely in the dark.”

And he still was the following morning, when by ones and twos the guests drifted into breakfast. For nothing had happened in the night, except that, in common with most of the others, he had been bitten by a mosquito. Once in the distance he thought he had heard the sound of a motor being started and driven away; beyond that, nothing had occurred. And with the coming of dawn he had slept.

Breakfast over, he strolled out of doors — followed by an openly derisive Algy. And outside the open window of the billiard room, he paused and looked through at Billy arranging his Army, now dry, in new formations, whilst fresh victims were being prepared for Stedman’s art. Then, still in silence, he walked on with Algy beside him.

“What did you think was going to happen, old boy?” asked that worthy for the tenth time. “Or what made you think that anything was going to happen?”

“The Cameron Highlanders,” said Drummond. “Anyone who is sufficiently interested in toy soldiers as to paint them ought to know the color of their kilts. Hullo — what has Andrews got hold of?”

Coming toward them was the Inspector, with one of his men, holding in his hand what seemed to be a long, thin twig.

“Good morning, Captain Drummond,” he cried cheerfully. “What do you make of this?”

On closer inspection, it proved to be part of the top joint of a salmon rod, snapped off about three feet from the end. But the interesting thing was the small attachment. About an inch below the top of the rod was a small muslin box, fastened securely to the rod. The box was about two inches square, and the framework was made of wood with the fabric stretched taut between. To one side was tied a piece of fine string, which passed through the top ring of the rod in the fashion of an ordinary fishing line, and now hung trailing on the ground.

“As you can see,” said Andrews, “when you pull that string, you open the box. And unless you pull the string, the box can’t open because the lid is held in position by that bit of elastic inside.”

“Where did you find it?” asked Drummond.

“Snapped off in the bush which is Jenkins’s hiding place by day. Moreover, it was not there yesterday or he’d have seen it then.”

“Which means it was broken off last night. Any footprints?”

“None. But with the ground like a board, one wouldn’t expect any help in that direction.”

“What do you make of it, Andrews?” said Drummond.

“Since it obviously didn’t get there by itself, there must have been someone prowling around last night carrying the rod of which this is the top. In the darkness it got tangled up in the bush and snapped off, and whatever was inside here escaped. It was something, Captain Drummond, that he intended to poke up from outside through a window in the castle and allow to escape into the Comte de Dinard’s room. ‘Guns are useless,’ don’t forget. But when he broke his rod and the thing escaped, the whole plan failed.”

“Somehow or other I don’t think I’d have left that in the bush even if it was broken,” said Drummond thoughtfully. “That little muslin box is beautifully made and could be used again on another rod.”

“But he did leave it there.”

“Yes. But I wonder if it was on the way to the castle. I wonder if by any chance he did just what you have suggested, then got alarmed or something and broke it on the way back, when the box was no longer of any use and he didn’t mind losing it.”

“Ingenious, my dear Captain Drummond, except for one point you overlooked. You forget that so far as any outsider could know, I was occupying the Comte’s room. And you may take it from me that nobody flapped boxes outside my window last night.”

“No, I hadn’t overlooked it, old boy,” said Drummond quietly. “Anyway, the great point is that the Comte’s health, judging by his verbosity at breakfast, is quite unimpaired.”

The Inspector looked at him curiously. “You’re not satisfied, sir?” he said.

“I’m not,” answered Drummond. “Though I daresay I shall prove utterly wrong.”

“But what’s stinging you?”

Drummond frowned. “The fact that the kilt of the Camerons is reddish in hue.”

The Inspector looked at Algy. Algy looked at the Inspector.

“He’ll be better after he’s had some beer, Andrews,” he said. “Captain Drummond gets taken like this at times.”

That afternoon, the party broke up, and a few days later the whole episode was beginning to fade from Drummond’s mind. He had made a mistake: his suspicions had been fantastic. In any event, the Comte de Dinard was still going strong in Paris, which was all that really mattered. No harm had come to him at Oxshott Castle — the worthy Andrews deserved full marks. And, so far as he knew, no harm had come to anyone else. So it came as almost a shock to him when, returning to dress for dinner one evening, he found the Inspector waiting for him in his sitting room.

“Have you a few minutes to spare, Captain Drummond?” he said gravely.

“Certainly, Andrews. As long as you like. I see,” he added, “that something has happened.”

“Something so strange that I have come straight to you. I remember that you were not satisfied when you left the castle, but at the time you would say nothing. Now you must.”

“Go on,” said Drummond quietly.

“Have you ever heard of yellow fever?” asked Andrews.

“I have. A tropical disease,” answered Drummond, surprised.

“And a very dangerous one. It is fatal more often than not. Do you know how it is carried?”

“I can’t say that I do,” Drummond acknowledged.

“By mosquitoes.” Andrews paused. “You may remember there were a good many mosquitoes at the castle,” he continued.

“There were,” agreed Drummond.

“You may also remember that little muslin box?”

Drummond nodded.

“And our theory as to what it was for? To let out something — we knew not what — into the Comte’s bedroom?”

Once again Drummond nodded.

“We were right. And what is more, you were right when you suggested that the rod had been broken after the owner had been to the castle and not before.”

“I was, was I?” said Drummond softly.

“That muslin box, Captain Drummond, contained mosquitoes carrying the germs of yellow fever. And the owner of the rod succeeded in reaching the castle and liberating those mosquitoes. Only he set them free in the wrong room. This afternoon Mr. Stedman died of yellow fever in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.”

There was a long silence, then Drummond rose and began pacing up and down the room.

“You may further remember,” continued Andrews, “that you told me you hadn’t overlooked the point when I alluded to the nocturnal visitor coming to my window. That now requires elucidation. Have you any idea as to why he went to Mr. Stedman’s? Or was it a fluke?”

“It wasn’t a fluke,” said Drummond gravely. “I sent him there.”

“You sent him there?” The Inspector shot out of his chair as if he had been stung. “What on earth do you mean?”

“You needn’t think I took him by the hand and led him there,” answered Drummond with a faint smile. “Until this moment I didn’t even know he’d been there. In fact, I’ve never seen him or spoken to him. For all that, I sent him there. Listen, Andrews, and I’ll tell you.

“You remember the billiard room, don’t you, with its broad window sill? Before we went to bed that night, a tray of newly painted toy soldiers was placed on the sill. They had been painted by Stedman for the little boy, and we were all of us instructed not to touch them. They were arranged in single file — twelve infantrymen and one large man on a prancing horse. And one of the infantrymen was a Highlander in whom I was particularly interested, because of an argument on kilts that I had had with the artist. And my Highlander was placed so that he was just in front of the horseman.

“Then quite unexpectedly it was announced that the Comte de Dinard was going to change his room. He protested but complied, and everybody went to bed — everybody, that is, except me. I wasn’t feeling sleepy, and I sat down in an alcove in the room with a book. I was practically hidden, so that when Stedman returned he didn’t see me. And he crossed to the window, remained there a second, and then went out again.

“So after a moment or two, I also went to the window — and there I noticed a very strange thing. My Highlander, in whom I was so interested, had changed places with the field marshal!”

“Good heavens!” whispered Andrews.

“You see it, don’t you?” said Drummond gravely. “Stedman neither knew nor cared anything about soldiers, but hearing that little Billy did he thought of a darned original scheme for indicating the Comte’s bedroom to someone on the outside. Soldiers that had to be painted and so couldn’t be moved. A tray placed on the windowsill so that any man looking in from outside could see it and see where the field marshal was. Thirteen bedrooms were on our floor — thirteen soldiers were on the tray. And when the Comte moved into the next room—” Drummond shrugged his shoulders.

“I wonder why Stedman wanted to have him murdered,” he went on thoughtfully.

For a space, there was silence whilst Andrews stared at him.

“Stedman’s bedroom was third from the other end,” he said at length.

“I know. That’s why the field marshal made yet another move. Just before I turned out the lights and went to bed, I placed two men in front of him. Have a drink.”

The Traitor W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Original publication: Cosmopolitan, September 1927; first collected in Ashenden; or, The British Agent (London, Heinemann, 1928)

Noted as one of the most popular and successful authors of the twentieth century and the most highly paid author of the 1930s, William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was an important historical figure in the world of mystery and thriller fiction. His groundbreaking work, Ashenden; or, The British Agent (1928), variously called a novel (inaccurately) and a short story collection, is generally regarded as the first modern book of espionage fiction.

In Ashenden, secret agents are portrayed as ordinary people in unusual circumstances, not as dashing heroes whose lives are filled with beautiful, compliant women, secret societies, and cliff-hanging adventures.

It was Maugham’s World War I experience with British Intelligence that provided him with material for the connected stories about Richard Ashenden, a well-known author who meets a British colonel known to the Intelligence Department only as R., who asks the author to work as a secret agent.

It is thought that his profession as a writer will allow him to travel freely without causing suspicion and that his knowledge of European languages will prove useful. The last advice that R. gives to Ashenden before his first assignment impresses the author: “If you do well, you’ll get no thanks, and if you get into trouble you’ll get no help.”

Ashenden admires goodness in others but has learned to live with evil. His interest in other people goes no further than the scientist’s feelings for experimental rabbits. They are source material for future books, and he is as realistic about their bad points as he is about their good qualities. Never bored, he believes that only stupid people require external stimulation to be amused; a man of intellect can avoid boredom by using his own resources.

Ashenden, a quiet, gentlemanly figure, was to a degree based on the exceptionally shy Maugham himself, and is said to have inspired some of the characteristics of Ian Fleming’s own espionage agent, James Bond — though only some, as it would be difficult to think of 007 as shy.

Title: Secret Agent, 1936

Studio: Gaumont-British Pictures

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenwriters: Charles Bennett, Alma Reville, Ian Hay

Producers: Michael Balcon, Ivor Montagu

• John Gielgud (Ashenden)

• Peter Lorre (The General)

• Madeleine Carroll (Elsa Carrington/Mrs. Ashenden)

• Robert Young (Robert Marvin)

• Percy Marmont (Caypor)

• Florence Kahn (Mrs. Caypor)

• Charles Carson (R.)

• Lilli Palmer (Lilli)

Secret Agent makes liberal use of two of the stories in Ashenden with important elements of the film based on the incidents in “The Hairless Mexican,” “The Traitor,” and a play by Campbell Dixon (1895–1960), an Australian film critic who had adapted Maugham’s book for the stage, though it does not appear ever to have been produced or published. It is Dixon’s play that adds a woman and a love interest to the storyline.

Another major difference between the stories in Ashenden and the screenplay, as noted by British censors, is that in the original, R. is never shown as suggesting that murder would be acceptable, nor that he would countenance it. It was not until many years later that any British secret agent would be portrayed in popular fiction or motion picture as having a “license to kill.”

At the outset of World War I, novelist Edgar Brodie is invited to serve as a secret agent under the nom de guerre Richard Ashenden. His job is to identify a German spy who is believed to be at a Swiss hotel and, it is tacitly understood, to kill him with the assistance of an odd companion, a killer known variously as “the Hairless Mexican” and “the General,” though he is not Mexican, hairless, or a general.

When Ashenden arrives at the hotel, he finds that he has been teamed with an attractive “wife” as part of his cover. Ashenden has determined that the suspicious, secretive Caypor, a guest at the little hotel, is their man but, after the “Hairless Mexican” kills him, they learn that he was not the spy after all.

For filmgoers, Hitchcock resorted to the tropes of many of his other films, as well as of other popular films, adding an attractive woman to the core of the plot, which is why Dixon’s play is given credit above Maugham’s book. It worked for Hitchcock with The 39 Steps (1935), his much-loved previous film, which also starred Madeleine Carroll, a character added to John Buchan’s novel; it also did not have a female love interest.

Remarkably, John Gielgud shot the film with Hitchcock during the day while starring on the London stage at night in Romeo and Juliet with Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, and Laurence Olivier.

Perhaps even more remarkably, the organist Louis Vierne was found dead in 1937 with one foot on a pedal note at the organ of Notre Dame in Paris — the exact same fate that befell the organist in Secret Agent.

Although Secret Agent is not a candidate for the honor roll of the greatest Alfred Hitchcock films, it certainly bears his directorial flair, notably with a great train wreck that serves to end the chase after an enemy agent, and a police chase through a chocolate factory, the unlikely headquarters of the spy ring. Incidentally, the Hays office cautioned Hitchcock that the scene in the Swiss chocolate factory should be handled with “careful consideration” in order “not to give offense to the Swiss nation.”

Hitchcock had wanted Robert Donat, who had teamed with Madeleine Carroll in The 39 Steps, to be reunited with her in Secret Agent but he wouldn’t commit, so he tried to get Leslie Howard, who was under contract to another studio and would not be released. When he settled for the lesser-known John Gielgud, Hitchcock had the roles of a couple of subsidiary characters beefed up so that he could cast the popular actors Peter Lorre and Lilli Palmer.

THE TRAITOR W. Somerset Maugham

Having taken a room at the hotel at which he had been instructed to stay Ashenden went out; it was a lovely day, early in August, and the sun shone in an unclouded sky. He had not been to Lucerne since he was a boy and but vaguely remembered a covered bridge, a great stone lion, and a church in which he had sat, bored yet impressed, while they played an organ; and now wandering along a shady quay (and the lake looked just as tawdry and unreal as it looked on the picture-postcards) he tried not so much to find his way about a half-forgotten scene as to reform in his mind some recollection of the shy and eager lad, so impatient for life (which he saw not in the present of his adolescence but only in the future of his manhood) who so long ago had wandered there. But it seemed to him that the most vivid of his memories was not of himself, but of the crowd; he seemed to remember sun and heat and people; the train was crowded and so was the hotel, the lake steamers were packed and on the quays and in the streets you threaded your way among the throng of holiday makers. They were fat and old and ugly and odd, and they stank. Now, in war-time, Lucerne was as deserted as it must have been before the world at large discovered that Switzerland was the playground of Europe. Most of the hotels were closed, the streets were empty, the rowing boats for hire rocked idly at the water’s edge and there was none to take them, and in the avenues by the lake the only persons to be seen were serious Swiss taking their neutrality, like a dachshund, for a walk with them. Ashenden felt exhilarated by the solitude, and sitting down on a bench that faced the water surrendered himself deliberately to the sensation. It was true that the lake was absurd, the water was too blue, the mountains too snowy, and its beauty, hitting you in the face, exasperated rather than thrilled; but all the same there was something pleasing in the prospect, an artless candour, like one of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, that made Ashenden smile with complacency. Lucerne reminded him of wax flowers under glass cases and cuckoo clocks and fancy work in Berlin wool. So long at all events as the fine weather lasted he was prepared to enjoy himself. He did not see why he should not at least try to combine pleasure to himself with profit to his country. He was travelling with a brand-new passport in his pocket, under a borrowed name, and this gave him an agreeable sense of owning a new personality. He was often slightly tired of himself and it diverted him for a while to be merely a creature of R.’s facile invention. The experience he had just enjoyed appealed to his acute sense of the absurd. R., it is true, had not seen the fun of it: what humour R. possessed was of a sardonic turn and he had no facility for taking in good part a joke at his own expense. To do that you must be able to look at yourself from the outside and be at the same time spectator and actor in the pleasant comedy of life. R. was a soldier and regarded introspection as unhealthy, un-English, and unpatriotic.

Ashenden got up and strolled slowly to his hotel. It was a small German hotel, of the second class, spotlessly clean, and his bedroom had a nice view; it was furnished with brightly varnished pitch-pine, and though on a cold wet day it would have been wretched, in that warm and sunny weather it was gay and pleasing. There were tables in the hall and he sat down at one of these and ordered a bottle of beer. The landlady was curious to know why in that dead season he had come to stay and he was glad to satisfy her curiosity. He told her that he had recently recovered from an attack of typhoid and had come to Lucerne to get back his strength. He was employed in the Censorship Department and was taking the opportunity to brush up his rusty German. He asked her if she could recommend to him a German teacher. The landlady was a blond and blowsy Swiss, good-humoured and talkative, so that Ashenden felt pretty sure that she would repeat in the proper quarter the information he gave her. It was his turn now to ask a few questions. She was voluble on the subject of the war on account of which the hotel, in that month so full that rooms had to be found for visitors in neighbouring houses, was nearly empty. A few people came in from outside to eat their meals en pension, but she had only too lots of resident guests. One was an old Irish couple who lived in Vevey and passed their summers in Lucerne and the other was an Englishman and his wife. She was a German and they were obliged on that account to live in a neutral country. Ashenden took care to show little curiosity about them-he recognized in the description Grantley Caypor-but of her own accord she told him that they spent most of the day walking about the mountains. Herr Caypor was a botanist and much interested in the flora of the country. His lady was a very nice woman and she felt her position keenly. Ah, well, the war could not last for ever. The landlady bustled away and Ashenden went upstairs.

Dinner was at seven, and, wishing to be in the dining-room before anyone else so that he could take stock of his fellow-guests as they entered, he went down as soon as he heard the bell. It was a very plain, stiff, whitewashed room, with chairs of the same shiny pitch-pine as in his bedroom, and on the walls were oleographs of Swiss lakes. On each little table was a bunch of flowers. It was all neat and clean and presaged a bad dinner. Ashenden would have liked to make up for it by ordering a bottle of the best Rhine-wine to be found in the hotel, but did not venture to draw attention to himself by extravagance (he saw on two or three tables half-empty bottles of table hock, which made him surmise that his fellow-guests drank thriftily, and so contended himself with ordering a pint of lager. Presently one or two persons came in, single men with some occupation in Lucerne and obviously Swiss, and sat down each at his own little table and untied the napkins that at the end of luncheon they had neatly tied up. They propped newspapers against their water-jugs and read while they somewhat noisily ate their soup. Then entered a very old tall bent man, with white hair and a drooping white moustache, accompanied by a little old white-haired lady in black. These were certainly the Irish colonel and his wife of whom the landlady had spoken. They took their seats and the colonel poured out a thimbleful of wine for his wife and a thimbleful for himself. They waited in silence for their dinner to be served to them by the buxom, hearty maid.

At last the persons arrived for whom Ashenden had been waiting. He was doing his best to read a German book and it was only by an exercise of self-control that he allowed himself only for one instant to raise his eyes as they came in. His glance showed him a man of about forty-five with short dark hair, somewhat grizzled, of the middle height, but corpulent, with a broad red clean-shaven face. He wore a shirt open at the neck, with a wide collar, and a grey suit. He walked ahead of his wife, and of her Ashenden only caught the impression of a German woman self-effaced and dusty. Grantley Caypor sat down and began in a loud voice explaining to the waitress that they had taken an immense walk. They had been up some mountain the name of which meant nothing to Ashenden but which excited in the maid expressions of astonishment and enthusiasm. Then Caypor, still in fluent German but with a marked English accent, said that they were so late they had not even gone up to wash, but had just rinsed their hands outside. He had a resonant voice and a jovial manner.

“Serve me quick, we’re starving with hunger, and bring beer, bring three bottles. Lieber Gott, what a thirst I have!”

He seemed to be a man of exuberant vitality. He brought into that dull, overclean dining-room the breath of life and everyone in it appeared on a sudden more alert. He began to talk to his wife, in English, and everything he said could be heard by all; but presently she interrupted him with a remark made in an undertone. Caypor stopped and Ashenden felt that his eyes were turned in his direction. Mrs. Caypor had noticed the arrival of a stranger and had drawn her husband’s attention to it. Ashenden turned the page of the book he was pretending to read, but he felt that Caypor’s gaze was fixed intently upon him. When he addressed his wife again it was in so low a tone that Ashenden could not even tell what language he used, but when the maid brought them their soup Caypor, his voice still low, asked her a question. It was plain that he was enquiring who Ashenden was. Ashenden could catch of the maid’s reply but the one word länder.

One or two people finished their dinner and went out picking their teeth. The old Irish colonel and his old wife rose from their table and he stood aside to let her pass. They had eaten their meal without exchanging a word. She walked slowly to the door; but the colonel stopped to say a word to a Swiss who might have been a local attorney, and when she reached it she stood there, bowed and with a sheep-like look, patiently waiting for her husband to come and open it for her. Ashenden realized that she had never opened a door for herself. She did not know how to. In a minute the colonel with his old, old gait came to the door and opened it; she passed out and he followed. The little incident offered a key to their whole lives, and from it Ashenden began to reconstruct their histories, circumstances, and characters; but he pulled himself up: he could not allow himself the luxury of creation. He finished his dinner.

When he went into the hall he saw tied to the leg of a table a bull-terrier and in passing mechanically put down his hand to fondle the dog’s drooping, soft ears. The landlady was standing at the foot of the stairs.

“Whose is this lovely beast?” asked Ashenden.

“He belongs to Herr Caypor. Fritzi, he is called. Herr Caypor says he has a longer pedigree than the King of England.”

Fritzi rubbed himself against Ashenden’s leg and with his nose sought the palm of his hand. Ashenden went upstairs to fetch his hat, and when he came down saw Caypor standing at the entrance of the hotel talking with the landlady. From the sudden silence and their constrained manner he guessed that Caypor had been making enquiries about him. When he passed between them, into the street, out of the corner of his eye he saw Caypor give him a suspicious stare. That frank, jovial red face bore then a look of shifty cunning.

Ashenden strolled along till he found a tavern where he could have his coffee in the open and to compensate himself for the bottle of beer that his sense of duty had urged him to drink at dinner ordered the best brandy the house provided. He was pleased at last to have come face to face with the man of whom he had heard so much and in a day or two hoped to become acquainted with him. It is never very difficult to get to know anyone who has a dog. But he was in no hurry; he would let things take their course: with the object he had in view he could not afford to be hasty.

Ashenden reviewed the circumstances. Grantley Caypor was an Englishman, born according to his passport in Birmingham, and he was forty-two years of age. His wife, to whom he had been married for eleven years, was of German birth and parentage. That was public knowledge. Information about his antecedents was contained in a private document. He had started life, according to this, in a lawyer’s office in Birmingham and then had drifted into journalism. He had been connected with an English paper in Cairo and with another in Shanghai. There he got into trouble for attempting to get money on false pretences and was sentenced to a short term of imprisonment. All trace of him was lost for two years after his release, when he reappeared in a shipping-office in Marseilles. From there, still in the shipping business, he went to Hamburg, where he married, and to London. In London he set up for himself, in the export business, but after some time failed and was made a bankrupt. He returned to journalism. At the outbreak of war he was once more in the shipping business and in August 1914 was living quietly with his German wife at Southampton. In the beginning of the following year he told his employers that owing to the nationality of his wife his position was intolerable; they had no fault to find with him and, recognizing that he was in an awkward fix, granted his request that he should be transferred to Genoa. Here he remained till Italy entered the war, but then gave notice and with his papers in perfect order crossed the border and took up his residence in Switzerland.

All this indicated a man of doubtful honesty and unsettled disposition, with no background and of no financial standing; but the facts were of no importance to anyone till it was discovered that Caypor, certainly from the beginning of the war and perhaps sooner, was in the service of the German Intelligence Department. He had a salary of forty pounds a month. But though dangerous and wily no steps would have been taken to deal with him if he had contented himself with transmitting such news as he was able to get in Switzerland. He could do no great harm there and it might even be possible to make use of him to convey information that it was desirable to let the enemy have. He had no notion that anything was known of him. His letters, and he received a good many, were closely censored; there were few codes that the people who dealt with such matters could not in the end decipher and it might be that sooner or later through him it would be possible to lay hands on the organization that still flourished in England. But then he did something that drew R.’s attention to him. Had he known it none could have blamed him for shaking in his shoes: R. was not a very nice man to get on the wrong side of. Caypor scraped acquaintance in Zürich with a young Spaniard, Gomez by name, who had lately entered the British secret service, by his nationality inspired him with confidence, and managed to worm out of him the fact that he was engaged in espionage. Probably the Spaniard, with a very human desire to seem important, had done no more than talk mysteriously; but on Caypor’s information he was watched when he went to Germany and one day caught just as he was posting a letter in a code that was eventually deciphered. He was tried, convicted, and shot. It was bad enough to lose a useful and disinterested agent, but it entailed besides the changing of a safe and simple code. R. was not pleased. But R. was not the man to let any desire of revenge stand in the way of his main object and it occurred to him that if Caypor was merely betraying his country for money it might be possible to get him to take more money to betray his employers. The fact that he had succeeded in delivering into their hands an agent of the Allies must seem to them an earnest of his good faith. He might be very useful. But R. had no notion what kind of man Caypor was, he had lived his shabby, furtive life obscurely, and the only photograph that existed of him was one taken for a passport. Ashenden’s instructions were to get acquainted with Caypor and see whether there was any chance that he would work honestly for the British: if he thought there was, he was entitled to sound him and if his suggestions were met with favour to make certain propositions. It was a task that needed tact and a knowledge of men. If on the other hand Ashenden came to the conclusion that Caypor could not be bought he was to watch and report his movements. The information he had obtained from Gustav was vague, but important; there was only one point in it that was interesting, and this was that the head of the German Intelligence Department in Berne was growing restive at Caypor’s lack of activity. Caypor was asking for a higher salary and Mayor von P. had told him that he must earn it. It might be that he was urging him to go to England. If he could be induced to cross the frontier Ashenden’s work was done.

“How the devil do you expect me to persuade him to put his head in a noose?” asked Ashenden.

“It won’t be a noose, it’ll be a firing squad,” said R.

“Caypor’s clever.”

“Well, be cleverer, damn your eyes.”

Ashenden made up his mind that he would take no steps to make Caypor’s acquaintance, but allow the first advances to be made by him. If he was being pressed for results it must surely occur to him that it would be worthwhile to get into conversation with an Englishman who was employed in the Censorship Department. Ashenden was prepared with a supply of information that it could not in the least benefit the Central Powers to possess. With a false name and a false passport he had little fear that Caypor would guess that he was a British agent.

Ashenden did not have to wait long. Next day he was sitting in the doorway of the hotel, drinking a cup of coffee and already half asleep after a substantial mittagessen, when the Caypors came out of the dining-room. Mrs. Caypor went upstairs and Caypor released his dog. The dog bounded along and in a friendly fashion leaped up against Ashenden.

“Come here, Fritzi,” cried Caypor, and then to Ashenden: “I’m so sorry. But he’s quite gentle.”

“Oh, that’s all right. He won’t hurt me.”

Caypor stopped at the doorway.

“He’s a bull-terrier. You don’t often see them on the Continent.” He seemed while he spoke to be taking Ashenden’s measure; he called to the maid. “A coffee, please, fräulein. You’ve just arrived, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I came yesterday.”

“Really? I didn’t see you in the dining-room last night. Are you making a stay?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been ill and I’ve come here to recuperate.”

The maid came with the coffee and seeing Caypor talking to Ashenden put the tray on the table at which he was sitting. Caypor gave a laugh of faint embarrassment.

“I don’t want to force myself upon you. I don’t know why the maid put my coffee on your table.”

“Please sit down,” said Ashenden.

“It’s very good of you. I’ve lived so long on the Continent that I’m always forgetting that my countrymen are apt to look upon it as confounded cheek if you talk to them. Are you English, by the way, or American?”

“English,” said Ashenden.

Ashenden was by nature a very shy person, and he had in vain tried to cure himself of a failing that at his age was unseemly, but on occasion he knew how to make effective use of it. He explained now in a hesitating and awkward manner the facts that he had the day before told the landlady and that he was convinced she had already passed on to Caypor.

“You couldn’t have come to a better place than Lucerne. It’s an oasis of peace in this war-weary world. When you’re here you might almost forget that there is such a thing as a war going on. That is why I’ve come here. I’m a journalist by profession.”

“I couldn’t help wondering if you wrote,” said Ashenden, with an eagerly timid smile.

It was clear that he had not learnt that “oasis of peace in a war-weary world” at the shipping-office.

“You see, I married a German lady,” said Caypor gravely.

“Oh, really?”

“I don’t think anyone could be more patriotic than I am, I’m English through and through and I don’t mind telling you that in my opinion the British Empire is the greatest instrument for good that the world has ever seen, but having a German wife I naturally see a good deal of the reverse of the medal. You don’t have to tell me that the Germans have faults, but frankly I’m not prepared to admit that they’re devils incarnate. At the beginning of the war my poor wife had a very rough time in England and I for one couldn’t have blamed her if she’d felt rather bitter about it. Everyone thought she was a spy. It’ll make you laugh when you know her. She’s the typical German hausfrau who cares for nothing but her house and her husband and our only child Fritzi.” Caypor fondled his dog and gave a little laugh. “Yes, Fritzi, you are our child, aren’t you? Naturally it made my position very awkward, I was connected with some very important papers, and my editors weren’t quite comfortable about it. Well, to cut a long story short I thought the most dignified course was to resign and come to a neutral country till the storm blew over. My wife and I never discuss the war, though I’m bound to tell you that it’s more on my account than hers, she’s much more tolerant than I am and she’s more willing to look upon this terrible business from my point of view than I am from hers.”

“That is strange,” said Ashenden. “As a rule women are so much more rabid than men.”

“My wife is a very remarkable person. I should like to introduce you to her. By the way, I don’t know if you know my name. Grantley Caypor.”

“My name is Somerville,” said Ashenden.

He told him then of the work he had been doing in the Censorship Department, and he fancied that into Caypor’s eyes came a certain intentness. Presently he told him that he was looking for someone to give him conversation-lessons in German so that he might rub up his rusty knowledge of the language; and as he spoke a notion flashed across his mind: he gave Caypor a look and saw that the same notion had come to him. It had occurred to them at the same instant that it would be a very good plan for Ashenden’s teacher to be Mrs. Caypor.

“I asked our landlady if she could find me someone and she said she thought she could. I must ask her again. It ought not to be very hard to find a man who is prepared to come and talk German to me for an hour a day.”

“I wouldn’t take anyone on the landlady’s recommendation,” said Caypor. “After all you want someone with a good north-German accent and she only talks Swiss. I’ll ask my wife if she knows anyone. My wife’s a very highly educated woman and you could trust her recommendation.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

Ashenden observed Grantley Caypor at his ease. He noticed how the small, grey-green eyes, which last night he had not been able to see, contradicted the red good-humoured frankness of the face. They were quick and shifty, but when the mind behind them was seized by an unexpected notion they were suddenly still. It gave one a peculiar feeling of the working of the brain. They were not eyes that inspired confidence; Caypor did that with his jolly, good-natured smile, the openness of his broad, weather-beaten face, his comfortable obesity and the cheeriness of his loud, deep voice. He was doing his best now to be agreeable. While Ashenden talked to him, a little shyly still but gaining confidence from that breezy, cordial manner, capable of putting anyone at his ease, it intrigued him to remember that the man was a common spy. It gave a tang to his conversation to reflect that he had been ready to sell his country for no more than forty pounds a month. Ashenden had known Gomez, the young Spaniard whom Caypor had betrayed. He was a high-spirited youth, with a love of adventure, and he had undertaken his dangerous mission not for the money he earned by it, but from a passion for romance. It amused him to outwit the clumsy German and it appealed to his sense of the absurd to play a part in a shilling shocker. It was not very nice to think of him now six feet underground in a prison yard. He was young and he had a certain grace of gesture. Ashenden wondered whether Caypor had felt a qualm when he delivered him up to destruction.

“I suppose you know a little German?” asked Caypor, interested in the stranger.

“Oh, yes, I was a student in Germany, and I used to talk it fluently, but that is long ago and I have forgotten. I can still read it very comfortably.”

“Oh, yes, I noticed you were reading a German book last night.”

Fool! It was only a little while since he had told Ashenden that he had not seen him at dinner. He wondered whether Caypor had observed the slip. How difficult it was never to make one! Ashenden must be on his guard; the thing that made him most nervous was the thought that he might not answer readily enough to his assumed name of Somerville. Of course there was always the chance that Caypor had made the slip on purpose to see by Ashenden’s face whether he noticed anything. Caypor got up.

“There is my wife. We go for a walk up one of the mountains every afternoon. I can tell you some charming walks. The flowers even now are lovely.”

“I’m afraid I must wait till I’m a bit stronger,” said Ashenden, with a little sigh.

He had naturally a pale face and never looked as robust as he was. Mrs. Caypor came downstairs and her husband joined her. They walked down the road, Fritzi bounding round them, and Ashenden saw that Caypor immediately began to speak with volubility. He was evidently telling his wife the results of his interview with Ashenden. Ashenden looked at the sun shining so gaily on the lake; the shadow of a breeze fluttered the green leaves of the trees; everything invited to a stroll: he got up, went to his room and throwing himself on his bed had a very pleasant sleep.

He went into dinner that evening as the Caypors were finishing, for he had wandered melancholy about Lucerne in the hope of finding a cocktail that would enable him to face the potato salad that he foresaw, and on their way out of the dining-room Caypor stopped and asked him if he would drink coffee with them. When Ashenden joined them in the hall Caypor got up and introduced him to his wife. She bowed stiffly and no answering smile came to her face to respond to Ashenden’s civil greeting. It was not hard to see that her attitude was definitely hostile. It put Ashenden at his ease. She was a plainish woman, nearing forty, with a muddy skin and vague features; her drab hair was arranged in a plait round her head like that of Napoleon’s Queen of Prussia; and she was squarely built, plump rather than fat, and solid. But she did not look stupid; she looked on the contrary a woman of character and Ashenden, who had lived enough in Germany to recognize the type, was ready to believe that though capable of doing the housework, cooking the dinner, and climbing a mountain, she might be also prodigiously well-informed. She wore a white blouse that showed a sunburned neck, a black skirt and heavy walking boots. Caypor addressing her in English told her in his jovial way, as though she did not know it already, what Ashenden had told him about himself. She listened grimly.

“I think you told me you understood German,” said Caypor, his big red face wreathed in polite smiles but his little eyes darting about restlessly.

“Yes, I was for some time a student in Heidelberg.”

“Really?” said Mrs. Caypor in English, an expression of faint interest for a moment chasing away the sullenness from her face. “I know Heidelberg very well. I was at school there for one year.”

Her English was correct, but throaty, and the mouthing emphasis she gave her words was disagreeable. Ashenden was diffuse in praise of the old university town and the beauty of the neighbourhood. She heard him, from the standpoint of her Teutonic superiority, with toleration rather than with enthusiasm.

“It is well known that the valley of the Neckar is one of the beauty places of the whole world,” she said.

“I have not told you, my dear,” said Caypor then, “that Mr. Somerville is looking for someone to give him conversation lessons while he is here. I told him that perhaps you could suggest a teacher.”

“No, I know no one whom I could conscientiously recommend,” she answered. “The Swiss accent is hateful beyond words. It could do Mr. Somerville only harm to converse with a Swiss.”

“If I were in your place, Mr. Somerville, I would try and persuade my wife to give you lessons. She is, if I may say so, a very cultivated and highly educated woman.”

“Ach, Grantley, I have not the time. I have my own work to do.”

Ashenden saw that he was being given his opportunity. The trap was prepared and all he had to do was to fall in. He turned to Mrs. Caypor with a manner that he tried to make shy, deprecating, and modest.

“Of course it would be too wonderful if you would give me lessons. I should look upon it as a real privilege. Naturally I wouldn’t want to interfere with your work, I am just here to get well, with nothing in the world to do, and I would suit my time entirely to your convenience.”

He felt a flash of satisfaction pass from one to the other and in Mrs. Caypor’s blue eyes he fancied that he saw a dark glow.

“Of course it would be a purely business arrangement,” said Caypor. “There’s no reason that my good wife shouldn’t earn a little pin-money. Would you think ten francs an hour too much?”

“No,” said Ashenden, “I should think myself lucky to get a first-rate teacher for that.”

“What do you say, my dear? Surely you can spare an hour, and you would be doing this gentlemen a kindness. He would learn that all Germans are not the devilish fiends that they think them in England.”

On Mrs. Caypor’s brow was an uneasy frown and Ashenden could not but think with apprehension of that hour’s conversation a day that he was going to exchange with her. Heaven only knew how he would have to rack his brain for subjects of discourse with that heavy and morose woman. Now she made a visible effort.

“I shall be very pleased to give Mr. Somerville conversation lessons.”

“I congratulate you, Mr. Somerville,” said Caypor noisily. “You’re in for a treat. When will you start, to-morrow at eleven?”

“That would suit me very well if it suits Mrs. Caypor.”

“Yes, that is as good an hour as another,” she answered.

Ashenden left them to discuss the happy outcome of their diplomacy. But when, punctually at eleven next morning, he heard a knock at his door (for it had been arranged that Mrs. Caypor should give him his lesson in his room) it was not without trepidation that he opened it. It behooved him to be frank, a trifle indiscreet, but obviously wary of a German woman, sufficiently intelligent, and impulsive. Mrs. Caypor’s face was dark and sulky. She plainly hated having anything to do with him. But they sat down and she began, somewhat peremptorily, to ask him questions about his knowledge of German literature. She corrected his mistakes with exactness and when he put before her some difficulty in German construction explained it with clearness and precision. It was obvious that though she hated giving him a lesson she meant to give it conscientiously. She seemed to have not only an aptitude for teaching, but a love of it, and as the hour went on she began to speak with greater earnestness. It was already only by an effort that she remembered that he was a brutal Englishman. Ashenden, noticing the unconscious struggle within her, found himself not a little entertained; and it was with truth that, when later in the day Caypor asked him how the lesson had gone, he answered that it was highly satisfactory; Mrs. Caypor was an excellent teacher and a most interesting person.

“I told you so. She’s the most remarkable woman I know.”

And Ashenden had a feeling that when in his hearty, laughing way Caypor said this he was for the first time entirely sincere.

In a day or two Ashenden guessed that Mrs. Caypor was giving him lessons only in order to enable Caypor to arrive at a closer intimacy with him, for she confined herself strictly to matters of literature, music, and painting; and when Ashenden, by way of experiment, brought the conversation round to the war, she cut him short.

“I think that is a topic that we had better avoid, Herr Somerville,” she said.

She continued to give her lessons with the greatest thoroughness, and he had his money’s worth, but every day she came with the same sullen face and it was only in the interest of teaching that she lost for a moment her instinctive dislike of him. Ashenden exercised in turn, but in vain, all his wiles. He was ingratiating, ingenuous, humble, grateful, flattering, simple, and timid. She remained coldly hostile. She was a fanatic. Her patriotism was aggressive, but disinterested, and obsessed with the notion of the superiority of all things German she loathed England with a virulent hatred because in that country she saw the chief obstacle to their diffusion. Her ideal was a German world in which the rest of the nations under a hegemony greater than that of Rome should enjoy the benefits of German science and German art and German culture. There was in the conception a magnificent impudence that appealed to Ashenden’s sense of humour. She was no fool. She had read much, in several languages, and she could talk of the books she had read with good sense. She had a knowledge of modern painting and modern music that not a little impressed Ashenden. It was amusing once to hear her before luncheon play one of those silvery little pieces of Debussy: she played it disdainfully because it was French and so light, but with an angry appreciation of its grace and gaiety. When Ashenden congratulated her she shrugged her shoulders.

“The decadent music of a decadent nation,” she said. Then with powerful hands she struck the first resounding chords of a sonata by Beethoven; but she stopped. “I cannot play, I am out of practice, and you English, what do you know of music? You have not produced a composer since Purcell!”

“What do you think of that statement?” Ashenden, smiling, asked Caypor who was standing near.

“I confess its truth. The little I know of music my wife taught me. I wish you could hear her play when she is in practice.” He put his fat hand, with its square, stumpy fingers, on her shoulder. “She can wring your heart-strings with pure beauty.”

“Dummer Kerl,” she said, in a soft voice, “Stupid fellow,” and Ashenden saw her mouth for a moment quiver, but she quickly recovered. “You English, you cannot paint, you cannot model, you cannot write music.”

“Some of us can at times write pleasing verses,” said Ashenden, with good humour, for it was not his business to be put out, and, he did not know why, two lines occurring to him he said them:

“Yes,” said Mrs. Caypor, with a strange gesture, “you can write poetry. I wonder why.”

And to Ashenden’s surprise she went on, in her guttural English, to recite the next two lines of the poem he had quoted.

“Come, Grantley, mittagessen is ready, let us go into the dining-room.”

They left Ashenden reflective.

Ashenden admired goodness, but was not outraged by wickedness. People sometimes thought him heartless because he was more often interested in others than attached to them, and even in the few to whom he was attached his eyes saw with equal clearness the merits and the defects. When he liked people it was not because he was blind to their faults, he did not mind their faults but accepted them with a tolerant shrug of the shoulders, or because he ascribed to them excellencies that they did not possess; and since he judged his friends with candour they never disappointed him and so he seldom lost one. He asked from none more than he could give. He was able to pursue his study of the Caypors without prejudice and without passion. Mrs. Caypor seemed to him more of a piece and therefore the easier of the two to understand; she obviously detested him; though it was so necessary for her to be civil to him her antipathy was strong enough to wring from her now and then an expression of rudeness; and had she been safely able to do so she would have killed him without a qualm. But in the pressure of Caypor’s chubby hand on his wife’s shoulder and in the fugitive trembling of her lips Ashenden had divined that this unprepossessing woman and that mean fat man were joined together by a deep and sincere love. It was touching. Ashenden assembled the observations that he had been making for the past few days and little things that he had noticed but to which he had attached no significance returned to him. It seemed to him that Mrs. Caypor loved her husband because she was of a stronger character than he and because she felt his dependence on her; she loved him for his admiration of her, and you might guess that till she met him this dumpy, plain woman with her dullness, good sense and want of humour could not have much enjoyed the admiration of men; she enjoyed his heartiness and his noisy jokes, and his high spirits stirred her sluggish blood; he was a great big bouncing boy and he would never be anything else and she felt like a mother towards him; she had made him what he was, and he was her man and she was his woman, and she loved him, notwithstanding his weakness (for with her clear head she must always have been conscious of that), she loved him, ach, was, as Isolde loved Tristan. But then there was the espionage. Even Ashenden with all his tolerance for human frailty could not but feel that to betray your country for money is not a very pretty proceeding. Of course she knew of it, indeed it was probably through her that Caypor had first been approached; he would never have undertaken such work if she had not urged him to it. She loved him and she was an honest and an upright woman. By what devious means had she persuaded herself to force her husband to adopt so base and dishonourable a calling? Ashenden lost himself in a labyrinth of conjecture as he tried to piece together the actions of her mind.

Grantley Caypor was another story. There was little to admire in him, but at that moment Ashenden was not looking for an object of admiration; but there was much that was singular and much that was unexpected in that gross and vulgar fellow. Ashenden watched with entertainment the suave manner in which the spy tried to inveigle him in his toils. It was a couple of days after his first lesson that Caypor after dinner, his wife having gone upstairs, threw himself heavily into a chair by Ashenden’s side. His faithful Fritzi came up to him and put his long muzzle with its black nose on his knee.

“He has no brain,” said Caypor, “but a heart of gold. Look at those little pink eyes. Did you ever see anything so stupid? And what an ugly face, but what incredible charm!”

“Have you had him long?” asked Ashenden.

“I got him in 1914 just before the outbreak of war. By the way, what do you think of the news to-day? Of course my wife and I never discuss the war. You can’t think what a relief to me it is to find a fellow countryman to whom I can open my heart.”

He handed Ashenden a cheap Swiss cigar and Ashenden, making a rueful sacrifice to duty, accepted it.

“Of course they haven’t got a chance, the Germans,” said Caypor, “not a dog’s chance. I knew they were beaten the moment we came in.”

His manner was earnest, sincere, and confidential. Ashenden made a commonplace rejoinder.

“It’s the greatest grief of my life that owing to my wife’s nationality I was unable to do any war work. I tried to enlist the day war broke out, but they wouldn’t have me on account of my age, but I don’t mind telling you, if the war goes on much longer, wife or no wife, I’m going to do something. With my knowledge of languages I ought to be of some service in the Censorship Department. That’s where you were, wasn’t it?”

That was the mark at which he had been aiming and in answer now to his well-directed questions Ashenden gave him the information that he had already prepared. Caypor drew his chair a little nearer and dropped his voice.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t tell me anything that anyone shouldn’t know, but after all these Swiss are absolutely pro-German and we don’t want to give anyone the chance of overhearing.”

Then he went on another tack. He told Ashenden a number of things that were of a certain secrecy.

“I wouldn’t tell this to anybody else, you know, but I have one or two friends who are in pretty influential positions, and they know they can trust me.”

Thus encouraged Ashenden was a little more deliberately indiscreet and when they parted both had reason to be satisfied. Ashenden guessed that Caypor’s typewriter would be kept busy next morning and that extremely energetic Major in Berne would shortly receive a most interesting report.

One evening, going upstairs after dinner, Ashenden passed an open bath-room. He caught sight of the Caypors.

“Come in,” cried Caypor in his cordial way. “We’re washing our Fritzi.”

The bull-terrier was constantly getting himself very dirty, and it was Caypor’s pride to see him clean and white. Ashenden went in. Mrs. Caypor with her sleeves turned up and a large white apron was standing at one end of the bath, while Caypor, in a pair of trousers and a singlet, his fat, freckled arms bare, was soaping the wretched hound.

“We have to do it at night,” he said, “because the Fitzgeralds use this bath and they’d have a fit if they knew we washed the dog in it. We wait till they go to bed. Come along, Fritzi, show the gentleman how beautifully you behave when you have your face scrubbed.”

The poor brute, woe-begone but faintly wagging his tail to show that however foul was this operation performed on him he bore no malice to the god who did it, was standing in the middle of the bath in six inches of water. He was soaped all over and Caypor, talking the while, shampooed him with his great fat hands.

“Oh, what a beautiful dog he’s going to be when he’s as white as the driven snow. His master will be as proud as Punch to walk out with him and all the little lady-dogs will say: good gracious, who’s that beautiful aristocratic-looking bull-terrier walking as though he owned the whole of Switzerland? Now stand still while you have your ears washed. You couldn’t bear to go out into the street with dirty ears, could you? like a nasty little Swiss schoolboy. Noblesse oblige. Now the black nose. Oh, and all the soap is going into his little pink eyes and they’ll smart.”

Mrs. Caypor listened to this nonsense with a good-humoured sluggish smile on her broad, plain face, and presently gravely took a towel.

“Now he’s going to have a ducking. Upsie-daisy.”

Caypor seized the dog by the fore legs and ducked him once and ducked him twice. There was a struggle, a flurry and a splashing. Caypor lifted him out of the bath.

“Now go to mother and she’ll dry you.”

Mrs. Caypor sat down and taking the dog between her strong legs rubbed him till the sweat poured off her forehead. And Fritzi, a little shaken and breathless, but happy it was all over stood, with his sweet stupid face, white and shining.

“Blood will tell,” cried Caypor exultantly. “He knows the names of no less than sixty-four of his ancestors, and they were all nobly born.”

Ashenden was faintly troubled. He shivered a little as he walked upstairs.

Then, one Sunday, Caypor told him that he and his wife were going on an excursion and would eat their luncheon at some little mountain restaurant; and he suggested that Ashenden, each paying his share, should come with them. After three weeks at Lucerne Ashenden thought that his strength would permit him to venture the exertion. They started early, Mrs. Caypor businesslike in her walking boots and Tyrolese hat and alpenstock, and Caypor in stockings and plus-fours looking very British. The situation amused Ashenden and he was prepared to enjoy his day; but he meant to keep his eyes open; it was not inconceivable that the Caypors had discovered what he was and it would not do to go too near a precipice: Mrs. Caypor would not hesitate to give him a push and Caypor for all his jolliness was an ugly customer. But on the face of it there was nothing to mar Ashenden’s pleasure in the golden morning. The air was fragrant. Caypor was full of conversation. He told funny stories. He was gay and jovial. The sweat rolled off his great red face and he laughed at himself because he was so fat. To Ashenden’s astonishment he showed a peculiar knowledge of the mountain flowers. Once he went out of the way to pick one he saw a little distance from the path and brought it back to his wife. He looked at it tenderly.

“Isn’t it lovely?” he cried, and his shifty grey-green eyes for a moment were as candid as a child’s. “It’s like a poem by Walter Savage Landor.”

“Botany is my husband’s favourite science,” said Mrs. Caypor. “I laugh at him sometimes. He is devoted to flowers. Often when we have hardly had enough money to pay the butcher he has spent everything in his pocket to bring me a bunch of roses.”

“Qui fleurit sa maison fleurit son coeur,” said Grantley Caypor.

Ashenden had once or twice seen Caypor, coming in from a walk, offer Mrs. Fitzgerald a nosegay of mountain flowers with an elephantine courtesy that was not entirely displeasing; and what he had just learned added a certain significance to the pretty little action. His passion for flowers was genuine and when he gave them to the old Irish lady he gave her something he valued. It showed a real kindness of heart. Ashenden had always thought botany a tedious science, but Caypor, talking exuberantly as they walked along, was able to impart to it life and interest. He must have given it a good deal of study.

“I’ve never written a book,” he said. “There are too many books already and any desire to write I have is satisfied by the more immediately profitable and quite ephemeral composition of an article for a daily paper. But if I stay here much longer I have half a mind to write a book about the wild flowers of Switzerland. Oh, I wish you’d been here a little earlier. They were marvellous. But one wants to be a poet for that, and I’m only a poor newspaper man.”

It was curious to observe how he was able to combine real emotion with false fact.

When they reached the inn, with its view of the mountains and the lake, it was good to see the sensual pleasure with which he poured down his throat a bottle of ice-cold beer. You could not but feel sympathy for a man who took so much delight in simple things. They lunched deliciously off scrambled eggs and mountain trout. Even Mrs. Caypor was moved to an unwonted gentleness by her surroundings; the inn was in an agreeably rural spot, it looked like a picture of a Swiss châlet in a book of early nineteenth century travels; and she treated Ashenden with something less than her usual hostility. When they arrived she had burst into loud German exclamations on the beauty of the scene, and now, softened perhaps too by food and drink, her eyes, dwelling on the grandeur before her, filled with tears. She stretched out her hand.

“It is dreadful and I am ashamed, notwithstanding this horrible and unjust war I can feel in my heart at the moment nothing but happiness and gratitude.”

Caypor took her hand and pressed it and, an unusual thing with him, addressing her in German, called her little pet-names. It was absurd, but touching. Ashenden, leaving them to their emotions, strolled through the garden and sat down on a bench that had been prepared for the comfort of the tourist. The view was of course spectacular, but it captured you; it was like a piece of music that was obvious and meretricious, but for the moment shattered your self-control.

And as Ashenden lingered idly in that spot he pondered over the mystery of Grantley Caypor’s treachery. If he liked strange people he had found in him one who was strange beyond belief. It would be foolish to deny that he had amiable traits. His joviality was not assumed, he was without pretence a hearty fellow, and he had real good nature. He was always ready to do a kindness. Ashenden had often watched him with the old Irish Colonel and his wife who were the only other residents of the hotel; he would listen good-humouredly to the old man’s tedious stories of the Egyptian war, and he was charming with her. Now that Ashenden had arrived at terms of some familiarity with Caypor he found that he regarded him less with repulsion than with curiosity. He did not think that he had become a spy merely for the money; he was a man of modest tastes and what he had earned in a shipping-office must have sufficed to so good a manager as Mrs. Caypor; and after war was declared there was no lack of remunerative work for men over the military age. It might be that he was one of those men who prefer devious ways to straight for some intricate pleasure they get in fooling their fellows; and that he had turned spy, not from hatred of the country that had imprisoned him, not even from love of his wife, but from a desire to score off the big-wigs who never even knew of his existence. It might be that it was vanity that impelled him, a feeling that his talents had not received the recognition they merited, or just a puckish, impish desire to do mischief. He was a crook. It is true that only two cases of dishonesty had been brought home to him, but if he had been caught twice it might be surmised that he had often been dishonest without being caught. What did Mrs. Caypor think of this? They were so united that she must be aware of it. Did it make her ashamed, for her own uprightness surely none could doubt, or did she accept it as an inevitable kink in the man she loved? Did she do all she could to prevent it or did she close her eyes to something she could not help?

How much easier life would be if people were all black or all white and how much simpler it would be to act in regard to them! Was Caypor a good man who loved evil or a bad man who loved good? And how could such unreconcilable elements exist side by side and in harmony within the same heart? For one thing was clear, Caypor was disturbed by no gnawing of conscience; he did his mean and despicable work with gusto. He was a traitor who enjoyed his treachery. Though Ashenden had been studying human nature more or less consciously all his life, it seemed to him that he knew as little about it now in middle age as he had done when he was a child. Of course R. would have said to him: why the devil do you waste your time with such nonsense? The man’s a dangerous spy and your business is to lay him by the heels.

That was true enough. Ashenden had decided that it would be useless to attempt to make any arrangement with Caypor. Though doubtless he would have no feeling about betraying his employers he could certainly not be trusted. His wife’s influence was too strong. Besides, notwithstanding what he had from time to time told Ashenden, he was in his heart convinced that the Central Powers must win the war, and he meant to be on the winning side. Well, then Caypor must be laid by the heels, but how he was to effect that Ashenden had no notion. Suddenly he heard a voice.

“There you are. We’ve been wondering where you had hidden yourself.”

He looked round and saw the Caypors strolling towards him. They were walking hand in hand.

“So this is what has kept you so quiet,” said Caypor as his eyes fell on the view. “What a spot!”

Mrs. Caypor clasped her hands.

“Ach Gott, wie schön!” she cried. “Wie schön. When I look at that blue lake and those snowy mountains I feel inclined, like Goëthe’s Faust, to cry to the passing moment: tarry.”

“This is better than being in England with the excursions and alarums of war, isn’t it?” said Caypor.

“Much,” said Ashenden.

“By the way, did you have any difficulty in getting out?”

“No, not the smallest.”

“I’m told they make rather a nuisance of themselves at the frontier nowadays.”

“I came through without the smallest difficulty. I don’t fancy they bother much about the English. I thought the examination of passports was quite perfunctory.”

A fleeting glance passed between Caypor and his wife. Ashenden wondered what it meant. It would be strange if Caypor’s thoughts were occupied with the chances of a journey to England at the very moment when he was himself reflecting on its possibility. In a little while Mrs. Caypor suggested that they had better be starting back and they wandered together in the shade of trees down the mountain paths.

Ashenden was watchful. He could do nothing (and his inactivity irked him) but wait with his eyes open to seize the opportunity that might present itself. A couple of days later an incident occurred that made him certain something was in the wind. In the course of his morning lesson Mrs. Caypor remarked:

“My husband has gone to Geneva to-day. He had some business to do there.”

“Oh,” said Ashenden, “will he be gone long?”

“No, only two days.”

It is not everyone who can tell a lie and Ashenden had the feeling, he hardly knew why, that Mrs. Caypor was telling one then. Her manner perhaps was not quite as indifferent as you would have expected when she was mentioning a fact that could be of no interest to Ashenden. It flashed across his mind that Caypor had been summoned to Berne to see the redoubtable head of the German secret service. When he had the chance he said casually to the waitress:

“A little less work for you to do, fräulein. I hear that Herr Caypor has gone to Berne.”

“Yes. But he’ll be back to-morrow.”

That proved nothing, but it was something to go upon. Ashenden knew in Lucerne a Swiss who was willing on emergency to do odd jobs and, looking him up, asked him to take a letter to Berne. It might be possible to pick up Caypor and trace his movements. Next day Caypor appeared once more with his wife at the dinner-table, but merely nodded to Ashenden and afterwards both went straight upstairs. They looked troubled. Caypor, as a rule so animated, walked with bowed shoulders and looked neither to the right nor to the left. Next morning Ashenden received a reply to his letter: Caypor had seen Major von P. It was possible to guess what the Major had said to him. Ashenden well knew how rough he could be: he was a hard man and a brutal, clever, and unscrupulous one and he was not accustomed to mince his words. They were tired of paying Caypor a salary to sit still in Lucerne and do nothing; the time was come for him to go to England. Guess-work? Of course it was guess-work, but in that trade it mostly was: you had to deduce the animal from its jaw-bone. Ashenden knew from Gustav that the Germans wanted to send someone to England. He drew a long breath; if Caypor went he would have to get busy.

When Mrs. Caypor came in to give him his lesson she was dull and listless. She looked tired and her mouth was set obstinately. It occurred to Ashenden that the Caypors had spent most of the night talking. He wished he knew what they had said. Did she urge him to go or did she try to dissuade him? Ashenden watched them again at luncheon. Something was the matter, for they hardly spoke to one another and as a rule they found plenty to talk about. They left the room early, but when Ashenden went out he saw Caypor sitting in the hall by himself.

“Hulloa,” he cried jovially, but surely the effort was patent, “how are you getting on? I’ve been to Geneva.”

“So I heard,” said Ashenden.

“Come and have your coffee with me. My poor wife’s got a headache. I told her she’d better go and lie down.” In his shifty green eyes was an expression that Ashenden could not read. “The fact is, she’s rather worried, poor dear; I’m thinking of going to England.”

Ashenden’s heart gave a sudden leap against his ribs, but his face remained impassive:

“Oh, are you going for long? We shall miss you.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m fed up with doing nothing. The war looks as though it were going on for years and I can’t sit here indefinitely. Besides, I can’t afford it, I’ve got to earn my living. I may have a German wife, but I am an Englishman, hang it all, and I want to do my bit. I could never face my friends again if I just stayed here in ease and comfort till the end of the war and never attempted to do a thing to help the country. My wife takes her German point of view and I don’t mind telling you that she’s a bit upset. You know what women are.”

Now Ashenden knew what it was that he saw in Caypor’s eyes. Fear. It gave him a nasty turn. Caypor didn’t want to go to England, he wanted to stay safely in Switzerland; Ashenden knew now what the major had said to him when he went to see him in Berne. He had got to go or lose his salary. What was it that his wife had said when he told her what had happened? He had wanted her to press him to stay, but, it was plain, she hadn’t done that; perhaps he had not dared tell her how frightened he was; to her he had always been gay, bold, adventurous, and devil-may-care; and now, the prisoner of his own lies, he had not found it in him to confess himself the mean and sneaking coward he was.

“Are you going to take your wife with you?” asked Ashenden.

“No, she’ll stay here.”

It had been arranged very neatly. Mrs. Caypor would receive his letters and forward the information they contained to Berne.

“I’ve been out of England so long that I don’t quite know how to set about getting war-work. What would you do in my place?”

“I don’t know; what sort of work are you thinking of?”

“Well, you know, I imagine I could do the same thing as you did. I wonder if there’s anyone in the Censorship Department that you could give me a letter of introduction to.”

It was only by a miracle that Ashenden saved himself from showing by a smothered cry or by a broken gesture how startled he was; but not by Caypor’s request, by what had just dawned upon him. What an idiot he had been! He had been disturbed by the thought that he was wasting his time at Lucerne, he was doing nothing, and though in fact, as it turned out, Caypor was going to England it was due to no cleverness of his. He could take to himself no credit for the result. And now he saw that he had been put in Lucerne, told how to describe himself and given the proper information, so that what actually had occurred should occur. It would be a wonderful thing for the German secret service to get an agent into the Censorship Department; and by a happy accident there was Grantley Caypor, the very man for the job, on friendly terms with someone who had worked there. What a bit of luck! Major von P. was a man of culture and, rubbing his hands, he must surely have murmured: stultum facit fortuna quem bult perdere. It was a trap of that devilish R. and the grim major at Berne had fallen into it. Ashenden had done his work just by sitting still and doing nothing. He almost laughed as he thought what a fool R. had made of him.

“I was on very good terms with the chief of my department, I could give you a note to him if you liked.”

“That would be just the thing.”

“But of course I must give the facts. I must say I’ve met you here and only known you a fortnight.”

“Of course. But you’ll say what else you can for me, won’t you?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“I don’t know yet if I can get a visa. I’m told they’re rather fussy.”

“I don’t see why. I shall be very sick if they refuse me one when I want to go back.”

“I’ll go and see how my wife is getting on,” said Caypor suddenly, getting up. “When will you let me have that letter?”

“Whenever you like. Are you going at once?”

“As soon as possible.”

Caypor left him. Ashenden waited in the hall for a quarter of an hour so that there should appear in him no sign of hurry. Then he went upstairs and prepared various communications. In one he informed R. that Caypor was going to England; in another he made arrangements through Berne that wherever Caypor applied for a visa it should be granted to him without question; and these he despatched forthwith. When he went down to dinner he handed Caypor a cordial letter of introduction.

Next day but one Caypor left Lucerne.

Ashenden waited. He continued to have his hour’s lesson with Mrs. Caypor and under her conscientious tuition began now to speak German with ease. They talked of Goethe and Winckelmann, of art and life and travel. Fritzi sat quietly by her chair.

“He misses his master,” she said, pulling his ears. “He only really cares for him, he suffers me only as belonging to him.”

After his lesson Ashenden went every morning to Cook’s to ask for his letters. It was here that all communications were addressed to him. He could not move till he received instructions, but R. could be trusted not to leave him idle long; and meanwhile there was nothing for him to do but have patience. Presently he received a letter from the consul in Geneva to say that Caypor had there applied for his visa and had set out for France. Having read this Ashenden went on for a little stroll by the lake and on his way back happened to see Mrs. Caypor coming out of Cook’s office. He guessed that she was having her letters addressed there too. He went up to her.

“Have you had news of Herr Caypor?” he asked her.

“No,” she said. “I suppose I could hardly expect to yet.”

He walked along by her side. She was disappointed, but not yet anxious; she knew how irregular at that time was the post. But next day during the lesson he could not but see that she was impatient to have done with it. The post was delivered at noon and at five minutes to she looked at her watch and him. Though Ashenden knew very well that no letter would ever come for her he had not the heart to keep her on tenter-hooks.

“Don’t you think that’s enough for the day? I’m sure you want to go down to Cook’s,” he said.

“Thank you. That is very amiable of you.”

When a little later he went there himself he found her standing in the middle of the office. Her face was distraught. She addressed him wildly.

“My husband promised to write from Paris. I am sure there is a letter for me, but these stupid people say there’s nothing. They’re so careless, it’s a scandal.”

Ashenden did not know what to say. While the clerk was looking through the bundle to see if there was anything for him she came up to the desk again.

“When does the next post come in from France?” she asked.

“Sometimes there are letters about five.”

“I’ll come then.”

She turned and walked rapidly away. Fritzi followed her with his tail between his legs. There was no doubt of it, already the fear had seized her that something was wrong. Next morning she looked dreadful; she could not have closed her eyes all night; and in the middle of the lesson she started up from her chair.

“You must excuse me, Herr Somerville, I cannot give you a lesson to-day. I am not feeling well.”

Before Ashenden could say anything she had flung nervously from the room, and in the evening he got a note from her to say that she regretted that she must discontinue giving him conversation lessons. She gave no reason. Then Ashenden saw no more of her; she ceased coming in to meals; except to go morning and afternoon to Cook’s she spent apparently the whole day in her room. Ashenden thought of her sitting there hour after hour with that hideous fear gnawing at her heart. Who could help feeling sorry for her? The time hung heavy on his hands too. He read a good deal and wrote a little, he hired a canoe and went for long leisurely paddles on the lake; and at last one morning the clerk at Cook’s handed him a letter. It was from R. It had all the appearance of a business communication, but between the lines he read a good deal.

Dear Sir, it began, The goods, with accompanying letter, despatched by you from Lucerne have been duly delivered. We are obliged to you for executing our instructions with such promptness.

It went on in this strain. R. was exultant. Ashenden guessed that Caypor had been arrested and by now had paid the penalty of his crime. He shuddered. He remembered a dreadful scene. Dawn. A cold, grey dawn, with a drizzling rain falling. A man, blindfolded, standing against a wall, an officer very pale giving an order, a volley, and then a young soldier, one of the firing-party, turning round and holding on to his gun for support, vomiting. The officer turned paler still, and he, Ashenden, feeling dreadfully faint. How terrified Caypor must have been! It was awful when the tears ran down their faces. Ashenden shook himself. He went to the ticket-office and obedient to his orders bought himself a ticket for Geneva.

As he was waiting for his change Mrs. Caypor came in. He was shocked at the sight of her. She was blowsy and dishevelled and there were heavy rings round her eyes. She was deathly pale. She staggered up to the desk and asked for a letter. The clerk shook his head.

“I’m sorry, madam, there’s nothing yet.”

“But look, look. Are you sure? Please look again.”

The misery in her voice was heart-rending. The clerk with a shrug of the shoulders took out the letters from a pigeon-hole and sorted them once more.

“No, there’s nothing, madam.”

She gave a hoarse cry of despair and her face was distorted with anguish.

“Oh, God, oh, God,” she moaned.

She turned away, the tears streaming from her weary eyes, and for a moment she stood there like a blind man groping and not knowing which way to go. Then a fearful thing happened. Fritzi, the bull-terrier, sat down on his haunches and threw back his head and gave a long, long melancholy howl. Mrs. Caypor looked at him with terror; her eyes seemed really to start from her head. The doubt, the gnawing doubt that had tortured her during those dreadful days of suspense, was a doubt no longer. She knew. She staggered blindly into the street.