The Tenth Man

4

NEXT CRISIS: THE ENEMY BEGINS TO TAKE TRIPP SERIOUSLY. He becomes aware that he is followed everywhere-even to the Anglo-Latesthian musical soiree-“an evening with Edward German and Vaughan Williams.” Miss Jixon’s security arrangements have been a little too good and the Germans are no longer able to keep an eye on the reports he sends.

She has objected to the use of the Chief of Police as transmitter and has evolved an elaborate method of sending secret ink messages on postage stamps. (There is a moment when Miss Jixon skirts shyly round the possibility of bird shit as secret ink.) Unfortunately the ink never develops properly-single words will appear and disappear with disconcerting rapidity.

Tripp, in order to be able to fake his expenses sheet and show the expenditure of huge sums for entertainment, is forced to dine out at least three times a week. He hates restaurant meals-and in any case it would be fatal if one of his assistants saw him dining alone. He therefore rents a room in the suburbs and retires there for a quiet read (his favorite authors are Charles Lamb and Newbolt) or the writing of a bogus report, taking a little food out of the larder with him. (In his account book this appears as “Dinner for three (political sources) with wines, cigars, etc., Ł5. l0s.0d.”) This constant dining out had never been necessary in the old days before his assistants came, and Mrs. Tripp resents it.

The domestic crisis reaches its culmination when on payday Tripp has to pretend to visit the home of the cinema actress with pay for her subsources. Cobb keeps guard in the street outside and Tripp, wearing a false mustache, proceeds up to the actress’s flat, rings the bell and inquires for an imaginary person. He turns away from the closing door just as Mrs. Tripp comes down from visiting a friend in the flat above. His excuse that he was trying to sell a sewing machine seems weak to Mrs. Tripp in view of his false mustache.

Domestic harmony is further shattered when Cobb, anxious to make peace between his hero and his heroine, tells Mrs. Tripp everything-or what he thinks is everything. “It’s for his country, Mrs. Tripp,” he says.

Mrs. Tripp decides that she too will go in for patriotism. She begins to dine out too, and Tripp, not unduly disturbed, takes the opportunity of appointing her as agent with a notional lover in the Foreign Ministry.

“That fellow Tripp,” they say in London, “deserves a decoration. The Service comes even before his wife. Good show.”

His notional mistress and his wife’s notional lover are among his most interesting sources. Unfortunately, of course, his wife does not believe that his mistress is notional, and her dinner companion, unlike the notional member of the Foreign Ministry, is a very real young man attached to Agriculture and Fisheries.

Mrs. Tripp gets news of Tripp’s hideout and decides to track him down. She is certain she will find him in the company of the actress and that he will not be engaged in work of national importance.

The enemy are aware of his hideout.