The Sword and the Net

7 NEW YORK: Second Phase

“And that,” said Nils Jorgensen carefully, “is all that I can tell you.” He tried not to fix his gaze upon any one face in the hundreds turned up to him. He had been warned against this—not only by Mrs. Van Teller but also by a plump, harassed stage manager and several other well-meaning persons connected in various ways with this expensive hodge-podge of (he thought) inordinately dull ‘entertainment’ whose obviously considerable cash proceeds were for ‘Greek Relief,’ whatever exactly this ambiguous phrase might mean.

“I would like now very much,” said Nils Jorgensen, coming to the peroration upon which he had worked so carefully and which had so much delighted Mrs. Van Teller, “to say to all ‘thank you for the way you have listened’—and to express much and high appreciation of this wonderful country: it is truly a free land of free people.”

He stood straight—almost but not quite at military attention. He bowed with a little, stiff movement which should have been ungraceful but somehow was not. In the discreet but revealing limelight he was pleasing to the eye—tall and lean and wide-shouldered in the new dark clothes which were good but not too good; blond and hard and clean, with deep shadows under the high cheekbones lending a touch almost of asceticism to the frankly Nordic face; slightly constrained and awkward in manner, but saved from gaucherie by simplicity and self-respect.

He walked off the stage to a rolling wave of applause which amazed him by its volume. He smiled inside, with a curling of mental lip: what easily deluded sheep were these, fat and soft and sterile in their self-complacency!

Mrs. Van Teller herself was waiting in the wings. The applause rolled on, undiminished by his disappearance. He stood close to Mrs. Van Teller and found both his hands in hers. A curious little shock travelled up his arms, and he became aware of her perfume and the extraordinary texture of her skin, cool and thick and firm, and alive, he thought, as no other skin he had ever touched; alive as if a current flowed beneath it of some unknown, uncharted potency.

“Nils!” she said. “You were wonderful!” She still held his hands. “Wonderful!” She was tall and straight and magnificent in the gown of black velvet, and against its soft sombreness the marble sheen of her shoulders was dazzling.

“Listen!” she said—and he heard that still the applause went on. She released his hands. “You must go back,” she said. “They want to see you again.” She pushed at his shoulders. “Go back! You needn’t say anything. Bow!”

Otto turned towards the wings again.

“And Nils!” came an imperious whisper. “Smile at them!”

Otto marched out on to the stage and the spotlight picked him up and held on him. He made his stiff little bow again—and this time, as he straightened, he smiled.

The applause was redoubled as he left the stage, even continuing for several unrequited moments. . . .

There was a party after the performance, and the great Van Teller mansion on Park Avenue, unopened during the last years of the banker’s life but recently used again by his widow, overflowed with guests. All New York was there, said the papers, meaning three hundred men in dress clothes and perhaps more women. There were much gabble, a little unobtrusive music, a quantity oi strong drink—and yet more profit for the admirable Cause.

Otto wandered uncomfortably from one vast, crowded room to another. He was tired and worried and uncomfortable. He felt, although he sneered at himself for so feeling, embarrassed by the lionization he had received and acutely, ridiculously self-conscious of the special sort of prominence he was achieving visually by being in ordinary clothes. He seemed forever to be slipping out of Nils Jorgensen’s way of thought and forcing himself back into it.

It was after the grand auction that it all grew too much for him and he decided to slip quietly away, as he had seen many do even while newcomers kept arriving. He found his way, down stairs and through chattering throngs, to the main entrance hall, but he had not yet decided how and where to find his hat when a hand fell upon his arm and the troubling faint perfume came to his nostrils and a voice spoke in his ear.

“Traitor!” said Mrs. Van Teller—and he turned sharply to see her standing a little above him on the first tread of the wide, sweeping stairway. She looked amazingly beautiful, with the ripe, un-ageing beauty of Olympus, and the strange, almost blue-white hair seemed, as he looked up at her, the only possible crown for the face beneath it.

She stepped down from the slight eminence and stood beside him, her hand still on his arm. She said:

“I know it’s all very dull and stupid, Nils. But think of the money we’ll be sending to Athens!”

Otto murmured something. He was looking at her eyes and finding, for the fifth or sixth time in the three days he had known her, that they were not quite as he had remembered them.

“Don’t tell me!” she said, smiling at him. “You were going to leave! You know you were! . . . Don’t. Wait just a little while. They’ll all go soon; then well have a chat and a drink together—just you and I. I want to thank you—and talk to you about your plans, and . . .”

She broke off, catching sight of a group, about to depart, who were looking towards her expectantly. She moved towards them, talking as she went, but Otto could still feel the pressure of her fingers upon his arm.

He turned back as if to go up the stairs again. He would stay. He would, if such a thing proved possible, find himself a solitary corner and sit there, with a glass of champagne, until she found him. The waiting would probably be long, but wass denn—be had much to think about.

He went slowly up the stairs, past a steady flow of people coming down. It was a long and tedious journey, for all of them stared and many paused to speak with him and shake his hand. But he reached the second floor at last and the open doors of the huge so-called music room. It was still seething with people—and their senseless clattering suddenly filled him with rage.

He turned abruptly away, afraid he might not be able to keep his feelings from his face—and he came into hard collision with a hurrying man.

“Hey!” said Karl Etter. “Oh, hello, Jorgensen, glad to see you. Say, you went over big to-night—nice going!” He hurried away, throwing a “See you later!” over his shoulder as he went, a lean, shambling figure in dinner clothes only redeemed from disreputability by his unstudied disregard for them.

Otto stared after him without moving, smitten suddenly by an idea which, the longer he considered it, grew more and more into certainty. It explained everything—the strange delay of the Machine in approaching him, the inescapable and growing feeling that he was going through a period of test—everything!

He became conscious that someone was addressing him, and found himself looking down at a small and elderly woman who, by reason of her simple gown and crutched ebony cane, might have stepped out of another century. On the lined old face was a shy and sweet and determined smile, and the eyes which looked up at him were bright and blue and impossibly young.

“You must forgive me,” she was saying. “But I had to speak to you. I don’t know many people here and there was no one to present us to each other.” Her voice was shy, like her smile—and Otto was irresistibly reminded, despite the absence of any similarity in feature or voice or manner, of the mother he could barely remember.

He did not, this time, have to force the smile which came to his face. He bowed, perhaps a little more gracefully than Nils Jorgensen should have bowed. He said:

“I am happy that you spoke.” He waited, cutting off unborn a pleasant little phrase far too polished for any young seaman, however heroic.

She said: “I heard you speak, in the theatre. And I have been watching you.” The words came shyly and the lined face was tinted with a little flush, but the youthful eyes were steady with brave purpose.

She said: “You have suffered. They have killed the people you love. But you are going to fight them—you have fought them already: you saved one life they would have taken.”

Otto looked at her. He thought he was not hearing what she said.

She said: “They aren’t bad, you know—not the young men; they are taught and led by an evil Idea. And other young men—young men like you—are going to show them that what they have been taught is wrong.” She laid her hand upon his arm. “They don’t know—yet—that they cannot win; that an Evil Idea cannot beat a Good Idea. But you will help to teach them!”

Otto smiled down at her with vague tenderness: he was haunted increasingly by persistent, improbable reminiscence of his mother.

“I am going now,” she said, and moved the hand which had been upon his sleeve and offered it to him. He bowed over it and put it to his lips—perhaps too un-Nils-like a gesture, but there was no one to see. She smiled at him again and went away, walking slowly and leaning on her cane.

Otto looked after her for a moment; then dutifully wrenched himself from vague, lavender-scented nostalgia back to duty and the new thought which the sight of Karl Etter had given him. He walked across to a lone settee near the doors of the music room and dropped on to it and ordered his mind.

Yes, it was a good thought—more, it was right! Simply because upon two previous occasions the Machine had made the contact between him and itself did not mean that this must always be the case. Of course it did not—there had been nothing said in that strange interview on the upper floor in the Berlin suburban house which could be construed to mean that. In fact, stress had been laid upon initiative. . . .

He jumped to his feet, his course clear before him. Since his landing in New York—a landing arranged neatly by the Machine in the person of Karl Etter, he had been left to himself, as a test of his initiative! The Machine was waiting for him; waiting to see whether, left on his own in these unforeseen and unlikely circumstances, he was man enough to communicate with it or hidebound enough to wait indefinitely, an over-disciplined jelly-fish!

He found Etter at the bar in what they seemed to call the Venetian Room, talking to a group which included the Swedish Consul. He stood at the bar close to this group and ordered a glass of champagne. The Consul saw him and came over and shook hands—and he was drawn into the company.

He endured patiently while yet more people shook his hand and smiled upon him and poured out praise. He gave an excellent performance of Nils—and underneath wondered desperately how long they would all take to go, so that he could be alone with Etter.

They took, it seemed to him, an unconscionable time; but go they did, one by tardy one. The Consul was the last, and he shook hands yet again.

“Your quota number,” he said. “It will be through without any trouble. Come to the Consulate to-morrow . . . no, perhaps the next day.” He smiled again, and went away to Nils’ murmured thanks.

Etter yawned enormously, stretching long thin arms. “Better be going,” he said.

“One moment,” Otto said quickly: he was waiting for the barman to move away. “When . . . at what time do you wish to take the photographs?” He managed an embarrassed chuckle. “For the Kosmo article?” he said.

“To-morrow morning.” Etter stared at him. “Thought I told you. Around eleven—if that’s all right with you?”

The barman had moved now. “Oh, yes,” said Otto. “Yes. I wished to make sure there was no change.” He pulled a little notebook from his pocket—and then the pencil. He said:

“I will note that. To be sure.” He scribbled something in the book, feeling Etter’s eyes on the pencil-head. Without too much parade, he put book and pencil back in his pocket.

“What . . .” began Etter—and then broke off and spoke in an entirely different tone; spoke just as a faint perception of the perfume came to Otto’s nostrils.

“My dear lady!” said Etter. “I’ve been waiting on the chance of seeing you for a moment.”

Mrs. Van Teller was standing between them. She smiled upon Otto and was gracious to the journalist.

“How nice of you,” she said to Etter. “This is the first moment I’ve had to breathe!”

Etter said: “You’ve done a wonderful piece of work! Wonderful!”

She smiled at him and bowed. She looked magnificent.

“Some more like you,” said Etter, “who really did things—and Hitler wouldn’t last a month!” His eyes gleamed behind the spectacles, and Otto gave silent applause.

“We can only try,” she said, and gave the man her hand as he took his leave. She was turned in such a way that Otto could not move without rudeness, so he stood motionless, looking for some sign from Etter.

Etter glanced at him. “So long, Jorgensen,” he said casually. “See you in the morning. I’ll be around first—before the photographers.”

“Yes,” said Otto. “Yes. Thank you.” A great weight was lifted from his mind. He was conscious of the perfume again and the marble perfection of the shoulders against the dark velvet.

“Benson!” She was speaking to the man behind the bar. “Close this now. Most of the guests have gone.” She slipped a hand into the crook of Otto’s arm—and he found himself walking beside her from the room and along a corridor which he had not been in before. She said:

“There’s something about that man Etter I don’t like. . . . You were a nice boy to wait such a long time.” She laughed softly. “But it was bad of you to try and run away. Suppose I hadn’t caught you!”

They stopped walking and she was opening a door and they were entering a small, pretty room which seemed half-study, half-library. She said:

“If I were a man, I suppose they’d call this my ‘den.’ But it’s nice, don’t you think? Now you just sit down and be comfortable. There are drinks there. . . . Mix yourself one . . . and smoke . . . and wait for me just five minutes while I speed the left-overs.”

She was gone, and Otto was left staring at the door. After a moment he crossed to the side-table where the tray was and poured himself a small drink. He carried the glass around the room, looking at pictures without seeing them; noting without conscious thought the several inner doors—three in all—which led from this room to others; thinking, very deliberately, about nothing at all except that in no circumstances should his reactions be other than those of Nils Jorgensen.

She was back in less than ten minutes—and with her was a man-servant who carried a tray and champagne glasses and a silver-bound oaken bucket from which, beneath the napkin which covered the ice, protruded the neck of a gold-foiled bottle.

“Down there, Charles.” She pointed. “And the glasses here. No, don’t open it.”

The man obeyed with silent deftness and was gone, the door closing softly behind him. Otto crushed out the cigarette he had just lighted—and then took another one. He became aware that his hostess had crossed behind him and was now sitting at the strange-shaped little writing-table. He lighted the new cigarette and smiled at her—even Nils Jorgensen could do that!

She said: “We’ll have a drink in a minute, Nils.” She had opened the centre drawer of the desk and was searching in it. The strange hair gleamed and the soft light caressed the smoothness of her shoulders.

She said: “I want to write an address down for you—now, while I remember it. I’ll tell you why later.” She took a pad of paper from the drawer and began to scribble fast upon it in a large dashing script.

A sound came from Otto’s lips; a strange sound, instantly repressed, which was half grunt, half gasp. He had come nearer to the table as she took out the paper—and now he was staring at the pencil with which she was writing: it was a small, slim thing of gold and silver, but in place of its cap was a tiny, neatly whittled plug of cedar-wood!

The point broke, and she threw the thing down with a gesture of annoyance. She said, without looking up:

“Lend me a pencil, will you? This has broken.”

Automatically, Otto’s hand went to his breast-pocket and came away with his own pencil. He laid it on the table, near her hand. His mind felt numb.

She picked it up and sat back in her chair and looked at him. Her face was different somehow: the eyes seemed to have changed colour. It was difficult for Otto to meet their scrutiny.

He was waiting for her to speak; but she did not and he remembered. He said:

“It . . . must be very late. Do you please know the time?”

“It’s seventy-one minutes past the hour—or earlier.” Her voice, whetted to a sharp edge of impersonality, was as changed as her face.

“The thirtieth of February is the day,” she said then—and Otto’s cup of somehow humiliating astonishment was filled to overflowing, for this was the phrase which meant that its user was no mere cog in the Machine but a master part.

He stood stiffly to attention now, though it is doubtful that he knew he was doing so. The eyes which had seemed to change colour studied him through a long silence. His mouth felt dry, and he moistened his lips with the point of his tongue. He tried to keep all sign of feeling from his face. She said:

“You seem . . . astounded, Captain.”

“I . . . I confess I am . . . surprised.” Otto fumbled over his words. Again he tried to moisten his lips.

The eyes still studied him. “You should not show it—in your new line of duty.” She took a cigarette from a silver box and put it between her lips. “A match,” she said. “In front of you there.”

Otto had to force himself to move. He took a match from the glass bowl and broke it in striking and had to use another. He succeeded this time and bent over the desk, shielding the flame in hands which refused to obey his command to be completely steady.

She lit the cigarette and leaned back in her chair and looked at him again.

“You’ve been wondering when your orders would come.” She made the words statement rather than question. “And in what manner.”

Otto stood stiffly before the desk and was silent.

She said: “We didn’t approach you before: you were being studied.” She knocked ash from the cigarette. “You did well under the circumstances—quite well.”

She waited—and Otto knew he must speak. He said, awkwardly:

“I did not know what to do. It was difficult. I decided that I should act in all matters like a Jorgensen.” He wished she would move her eyes.

She dropped the cigarette into an ash tray, but did not shift her gaze.

“Having made the first mistake,” she said, “you were right. But it was a bad mistake—a dereliction of duty, Captain.”

The tone was cold yet hotly stinging, like a lash. She said:

“You are honoured by being chosen for special duty—and you deliberately endanger your life by endeavouring to save the lives of enemies. It is only the purest chance that you were saved. Another hour and you’d have drowned; but without the burden you could have lasted far, far longer. . . . A bad beginning, Captain!”

The tone was harsher even than the words. A tinge of red showed in Otto’s face, and he stood yet more rigidly.

She waited, but he still did not speak. She said sharply:

“Have you nothing to say?”

“A very little.” Otto’s speech was slow and heavy. “It was . . . accident. The boy showed a way to get off the ship. It was the only way. So the three of us were together when we jumped.”

A lie came to him and he clutched at it. He said:

“Something struck my head. I do not remember much until I was in the water a long time. You understand?”

“Go on,” she said.

“We were all together in . . . in a knot.” Speech was easier now, and the words came more quickly. “I do not know who was helping the other among us. I made great effort, but my head was strange again from the blow. . . . Somehow the woman’s hair is tied around my neck. I do not know whether the boy did this, or the woman. And the boy’s hands are . . . are locked around my life jacket. I cannot get loose without my head going under the water. . . . That is all there is. After a very long time, the boat found us.”

He felt suddenly flat and wilted. The lie which had seemed so good was ashes in his mouth. He wondered drearily what would happen to him now.

She said: “I see. It is possible—quite possible.” She seemed to be thinking aloud, but her voice was clear and hard again when she went on. She said:

“I will tell you now, Captain, that whether or not you were guilty of dereliction of duty, things have worked themselves out well for you—very well. You are solidly established as a gallant, German-hating Swede; so solidly that it would be almost impossible to make the fools believe that you were in the service of the Reich even if one tried to give them proof. That is excellent—more than we could have hoped for! On top of that, Nils Jorgensen will shortly be a legitimate immigrant to this country—again more than we could have hoped for in the ordinary way.”

She took another cigarette from the silver box, and this time Otto had a match burning and ready. She tilted back her chair and looked up at him through a blue veil of smoke. He met the gaze with eyes studiously blank, but behind them his mind raced. He was feeling better now: the lie had worked and the reprimand was past and he had not disgraced himself in the new service and he was rapidly adjusting to the revolutionary changes which had been wrought in the past quarter-hour; in the fifteen minutes which had seen an invisible wand transmute Nils Jorgensen back into Otto Falken, and a beautiful, exciting benefactress into a superior officer, harsh-tongued and autocratic. He stood motionless, wondering at the confusion of feeling which surged through him beneath the racing thoughts.

“So now,” she said at last, and as if there had been no pause, “you can begin duty, Captain.” She sat straight now and ground out the half-smoked cigarette. She took her eyes from Otto’s face for the first time, looking down at her hand as if in thought—and he immediately became acutely conscious of her beauty: it struck him strangely and without volition of thought. He felt almost as if he were seeing it for the first time.

Unconsciously, he relaxed the tautness of his stance a little; then, as she looked up at him, snapped once more into rigid immobility.

“Pay careful attention to what you’re going to hear.” Her words were slower than before. “You are going to be told a great deal. And you are going to receive your orders. You will repeat them to me afterwards.”

“Yes,” said Otto. “I understand.”

She leant her arms upon the edge of the table and began to talk.

She said:

“We are servants—soldiers—of the Fuehrer and the Reich. There are many thousands of us here in North America. Most of us, like myself and you, are German-born, but none of us are the ‘fifth columnists’ they write about in the newspapers. Nor are we the ‘Nazi agents’ pursued by the energetic bloodhounds of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and no one of us is remotely likely to be uncovered by the clumsy rake of Mr. Dies. . . .

“No, Captain, we (the real soldiers of the Fuehrer) are all thoroughly spangled with the stars of Liberty and thickly lacquered with the zebra stripes of Democracy. We are, in fact, a daring division of special shock troops wearing the enemy’s uniform and therefore of far greater danger to him than our numbers would suggest. . . .

“This division, of course, is split into many subsidiary units. Each unit, except that its functions are controlled by a central command, is entirely independent of any others; does not, in fact, even know where or what the others may be. I have told you that they exist—and that is all I shall tell you except as regards the one in which you yourself will serve. . . .

“This is—for the time being at least—the most important unit of them all: it is the one which brings about the major acts of general sabotage; I do not mean the destructions caused in particularized places such as factories where the damage can be done by one or two individuals who merely have to seize opportunity, I mean the outside attacks which must be carefully planned and executed by picked bodies of men. A great chain of such major operations has been brilliantly planned—and even begun. It will continue, in mounting importance, over the immensely critical period of the next six months. . . .

“The leader of this unit has been hampered by lack of trustworthy and efficient lieutenants. When you join him—which will be within the next four or five weeks—you will at once become what in this country they would probably call his Chief Executive Assistant. . . .

“That, Captain, will be your duty. It is important work—and you will carry it out efficiently, giving your superior officer all the assistance in your power. . . .

“But there is more to your appointment than this—very much more! While you will work indirectly for the Reich through Rudolph Altinger, you will, also and primarily, work directly for the Reich as an investigator of Rudolph Altinger. . . .

“In other words, Captain, there is doubt in high places concerning Herr Altinger’s personal ambitions—and you are in America primarily to report upon him. You will make such reports to me as and when I order you to, which I shall do either in person or through another of your superiors who will reveal himself to you in the manner you already know. You will never, of course, reveal to any other person the nature of your primary duty. . . .

“That is an outline of your duties, Captain. I will now, more specifically, give you detailed orders. . . .”

“And that,” said Otto, “I think is all.” He had given, carefully and with a slow, deliberate brevity, a recountal of all he had been told. The small room was very quiet, and the smoke from another of her cigarettes hung blue in the silence.

“All right,” she said. “Excellent!” Her voice was freer, softer.

He waited. She was not looking at him now, but he had a curious certainty that, when she did, her eyes would seem yet again to be changed in colour.

She stood up and moved away from the desk.

“Don’t you think,” she said, “that you’ve stood like that long enough?”

She walked past him to a small, deep settee against the wall. She sat back in its softness and pulled a cushion behind her head. Otto moved uncertainly, turning with his back to the desk so that he faced her. He put his hands behind him and leaned upon the desk. He felt oddly conscious of every movement he was making, like a schoolboy among unexpected adults.

She was playing with a bracelet upon her arm and the soft light struck from it flashing little darts of multicoloured flame.

“Open the wine,” she said—and watched him as he took the bottle from the ice-pail and stripped off wire and foil and eased out deftly the swollen, reluctant cork.

With a task to perform the feeling of awkwardness had left him and he moved freely and without thought and set a glass for her down upon the table by the couch and filled it carefully and turned to his own.

A faint smile touched the corners of her mouth. “Nils Jorgensen!” she said, and raised her glass towards him and drank from it.

Otto sat upon the arm of a chair to face her. A fresh wave of uncertainty swept uncomfortably over him. After a moment he raised his glass to her and drank without speaking. She did not seem to be looking at him. He sought desperately for words—any words—but none would come.

“You’re very silent, Otto Falken,” she said suddenly—and the voice was neither the one nor the other of the two extremes he had learned to know, but something which was somewhere in between these two so distant poles.

“I am sorry,” he said carefully, “perhaps I am confused. But the word ‘confused’ is wrong a little.”

“I probably understand.” Again the faint smile at the corners of her mouth. “There’s a lot for you to think about, isn’t there?” She turned more fully towards him, resting upon one elbow and with the other hand holding out her glass. “Refill that,” she said. “And then perhaps I’ll help you.”

He brought the bottle and poured from it.

“And your own,” she said, watching him while he obeyed. “You want to ask questions—a lot of questions—about all manner of different things. Don’t you? Well, you may. I will do my best to answer. I suggest that, first of all, you get the duty ones out of the way.” The smile was not touching her mouth now—but was it in her voice?

“Ask!” she said. “Don’t be afraid . . . Captain. This is unofficial discussion of matters already communicated to you officially: it’s what they would call here ‘off the record.’ It is your duty to seek full enlightenment, and mine to give it.”

“I understand,” said Otto. “First then, please: the journalist Etter?” He did not look at her eyes as he spoke. “Is he . . .”

She cut him short. “Absolutely not. But I thought you might be thinking so. I saw you writing for him with the pencil.” Her tone suddenly changed. “You said nothing, of course?”

The tone brought Otto to his feet again. He said, woodenly:

“No. I spoke nothing.”

“Of course not.” She sank back upon the cushions and her voice was soft again. “And you were doing your duty in trying to make contact.”

Otto remained upon his feet. “And the Consul?” he said slowly. “The Swedish Consul?”

She shook her head. “I wish he were. But he isn’t. You were naturally enough misled by the quota number gesture: it was such a stroke of luck!”

The idiom was too much for Otto. He said:

“I am sorry . . .”

“A piece of good fortune, a gift of Fate, a lucky chance. Because he thought you were a Swede and had done something heroic he gave you the best thing at his command—or what he thinks the best thing.” She was smiling at him now.

“Thank you,” Otto said. “I understand. That is one part over of my questions.” He realized for the first time that he was still standing. With a momentary return of the schoolboy self-consciousness, he sat down again upon the chair-arm. He said:

“The next perhaps I should not ask. I am not sure.” He saw that her glass was empty and rose again and fetched the wine and refilled it, looking carefully at what he was doing and not at her face. She said:

“You had better try. There’s no penalty.”

“It is this then,” Otto said: “the . . . the sabotages—the attacks to be made by my . . . my unit—you said that they had already been started?”

“Yes,” She sipped at the wine. “There have already been four, spread over the past ten weeks. They will increase, as the chain develops, in two ways: they will happen more frequently—and they will be of progressive importance.”

A startling thought came to Otto’s mind. He said:

“The big dam—in Ne . . . Neb . . . a State to the west? Was that . . . ?”

She did not speak; but she slowly nodded in answer, watching his face.

For a flicker of time, Otto’s eyes were wide: three days ago, the whole face of his newspaper had been given to this disaster—and still, even to-day, its repercussions were upon the front page, cheek by jowl with Churchill’s latest speech.

“That is big work,” he said slowly.

“It was good enough,” she said. “For only the fourth in the chain, it was excellent.”

“It was indeed clever,” Otto said. “Because everyone has written in my newspapers that it was not possibly sabotage.”

She swung her feet to the floor and was suddenly standing near to him. He had forgotten that she was so tall. She moved towards the desk and he stepped back quickly, out of her way. A tenuous, barely perceptible waft of the perfume came to him.

She went around the desk and opened an unlocked drawer. “Altinger is brilliant,” she said. “As I’ve explained, it isn’t his work which you are to watch.” She took a thick folder from the drawer and laid it upon the desk top and flipped it open to reveal a tidy mass of newspaper clippings.

“Come here, Captain,” she said—and, as Otto stood beside her, separated some dozen of the clippings from the bulk and thrust them into his hands.

He stood awkwardly, looking down at the mess of paper. She was very close to him now, and on his right sleeve, above the elbow, was a fine white dusting of powder from her shoulder. She said:

“Keep those: they’re reports on various aspects of what they call the Nazi menace.” She smiled. “And don’t be afraid of anyone knowing you have them: you can even say that I gave them to you. You see, you and I are enthusiastic enemies of the New Germany. Carolyn Van Teller and Nils Jorgensen, each in their own way, are such virulent anti-Nazis that they see the fifth column in everything—so much so, in fact, that their friends laugh at them about it!”

He thrust the clippings into an inner pocket, and as he withdrew his hand she surprisingly caught it with her own. She said:

“You understand me, don’t you?” There was a vehemence in her tone which he had not heard before. “You see how good a camouflage that is. I have used it always—and the more I use it the better it becomes.”

Her fingers were closed over his. They pressed hard, with a surprising strength, as if she were trying to drive home a point of argument. But their touch was disturbing; it sent through Otto’s arm the tingling, crepitant little shock which he could not forget.

“I . . . I understand quite,” he said uncertainly. “It is good.”

The fingers released his hand, but he could still feel their touch. She moved away from him and leaned over the desk and pulled the folder towards her. She opened it, turning over its contents one by one.

“There’s another here,” she said, “which you could have . . . a speech I made to the main Committee of the Anglo-Saxon Union . . . against the Bunds. . . .”

She stopped abruptly, staring down at a large portrait which covered a full page. Otto moved closer to her and leaned one hand on the desk and peered at the picture.

It was of Charles De Gaulle—and at the head of the page was the word “Kosmo.”

There was odd silence while she stared down at the photograph. Otto’s mind was divided: half of it wondered what this interest in the Frenchman might portend, the other was lost in contemplative admiration of the amazing contrasts between firm white skin and soft black velvet.

She straightened and turned to face him in a single swift movement. He stepped back, staring at her. The eyes had changed again, and when she spoke it was in the voice which had kept him at attention. She said:

“I had forgotten that Nils Jorgensen was to be a Kosmo Personality. When are they to take your photograph?”

Otto forced himself to meet the eyes. “To-morrow,” he said. “In the morning. At eleven o’clock.”

She went around the desk and sat in the chair. The eyes seemed never to leave his face. She closed the folder and put it back into the drawer from which she had taken it. She said:

“This is a matter of importance. It was foolish of me to let it slip my mind—extremely foolish.”

She paused for a moment, drawing a hand across her forehead. Otto stood rigid before the desk again: it was as if there had been no interlude.

“They will want to take a full-face photograph of you.” The voice and eyes might never have been other than these. “But it cannot be allowed: the wide publication of an excellent portrait can fix a face too firmly in too many minds, Captain—and while just now it is desirable enough to have Nils Jorgensen well known, it might not always be so. You follow?”

“I understand,” Otto said slowly. “Yes.” He wondered what was to come.

“Turn around,” she said suddenly. “Sideways; so that I can see your profile.”

Otto did not move at once, and she said: “Quick!” in a tone which brought instant action. He turned smartly to his right, like a parade-ground soldier, so that his left shoulder was to the desk. Under his cheekbones were two dull red patches. He was elaborately at attention.

He stood motionless for minutes which might have been hours. But she said at last:

“Now the other side.” He heard the rasp of a striking match, and while he wheeled in a full about-turn, saw that she was lighting a cigarette.

He was motionless again, his right shoulder now to the desk.

“Better.” She spoke almost at once this time. “Less character than the other. . . . All right.”

He knew that she meant him to face her and turned to do so. She said:

“You must only be taken in profile—right profile. And it would be useless merely to ask the man Etter to take you like that—we must be sure that he has to!”

Otto knew that he must speak now. He said carefully:

“There seems one way sure only.” He paused, but she merely nodded, and after a moment he went on. He was meeting her eyes now but he could read nothing in them. He said:

“With my face, on the right side, injured—” he was fumbling a little with his words—“with a bruising . . .”

She said: “Exactly,” and nothing more.

“It is simple,” he said—and turned from the desk and took two paces to the centre of the small room and stood looking about him with quick, darting glances. He was very straight—and he could feel eyes upon his back.

He chose the sharp, unrounded corner of the wall which jutted out to make a little alcove around the centre of the three inner doors. He crossed to it with quick, light steps and stood for a moment measuring his distance and then, bent nearly double, lunged at it with his head in a quick, viciously stabbing movement like the striking of a snake.

There was a bright flash of flame inside his skull, and a hollow sound in his ears and a stab of pain across his forehead, in the centre of his right eyebrow, which managed to be simultaneously vivid and numbing. He staggered. His mind rocked, but he knew everything that he was doing—even that he had lunged harder than was necessary.

With immense effort he stood upright. The floor rocked under his feet but he held himself steady with an iron will: he would not, he swore it behind jaw-muscles clenched into jutting wads of steel, so much as sway. He would turn in a moment and go back to the desk on unwavering feet.

He felt a warm trickling over his right cheek. He turned—and the floor rose up at him and he fell. He tried wildly to save himself this bitter indignity—and found himself ludicrous upon hands and knees, like an uncle playing pony for the children.

He heard a movement somewhere and reached out blindly and felt the arm of a heavy chair, comfortingly solid. Desperately, he dragged himself up on to the seat of it before he could be helped.

The effort seemed to take sight from him and there was a black whirling before his eyes. He muttered something and forced his head down low and felt the warm stream angle over his chin and drip upon his hands.

His head cleared and he raised it cautiously. He was alone in the room, but one of the inner doors stood open. He found blood on his hands and shirt and felt with tentative fingers at the eye. Above it was a hard swelling lump and below, over the high cheekbone, a soft dough-like puffiness.

She came through the open door carrying a small tray of bright metal upon which were a little bowl of china and other things which he could not see. He made a movement as if to stand but she quelled it with a gesture.

He leant back in the chair and mopped at the blood on his face with a handkerchief. The right temple was throbbing and his whole head ached a little—but it was nothing. He wished that he had lost an eye rather than fallen like that, awkward and ludicrous and abased.

She put the tray upon a side-table and moved this near to the chair. She took a little towel of linen from the tray and put it around his neck, above his collar, and in a moment was bathing the cut above his eye.

She ceased the bathing and said: “This will hurt,” and dabbed something cold upon the cut.

It did hurt—and while he was thinking about it, she took more wet cotton and wiped the dried blood from his cheek and chin. He said:

“You should not do this. It is all right. . . . I can do this.”

“Be quiet!” Her voice was so soft that it was almost a whisper.

She stood behind him and he could not see her, but he knew from the voice that her eyes had changed.

The towel was twitched from beneath his chin—and in a moment he felt her hand laid softly upon the uninjured side of his forehead and again he felt the curious tingling shock which came at her touch.