A squeaky voice spoke agitatedly from the other end. Tuppence’s face changed. ‘When?—Oh, my dear—of course—I’ll come over right away…’
She put back the receiver.
She said to Tommy:
‘That was Maureen.’
‘I thought so—I recognised her voice from here.’
Tuppence explained breathlessly:
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Grant. But I must go round to this friend of mine. She’s fallen and twisted her ankle and there’s no one with her but her little girl, so I must go round and fix up things for her and get hold of someone to come in and look after her. Do forgive me.’
‘Of course, Mrs Beresford. I quite understand.’
Tuppence smiled at him, picked up a coat which had been lying over the sofa, slipped her arms into it and hurried out. The flat door banged.
Tommy poured out another glass of sherry for his guest.
‘Don’t go yet,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’ The other accepted the glass. He sipped it for a moment in silence. Then he said, ‘In a way, you know, your wife’s being called away is a fortunate occurrence. It will save time.’
Tommy stared.
‘I don’t understand.’
Grant said deliberately:
‘You see, Beresford, if you had come to see me at the Ministry, I was empowered to put a certain proposition before you.’
The colour came slowly up in Tommy’s freckled face. He said:
‘You don’t mean—’
Grant nodded.
‘Easthampton suggested you,’ he said. ‘He told us you were the man for the job.’
Tommy gave a deep sigh.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘This is strictly confidential, of course.’
Tommy nodded.
‘Not even your wife must know. You understand?’
‘Very well—if you say so. But we worked together before.’
‘Yes, I know. But this proposition is solely for you.’
‘I see. All right.’
‘Ostensibly you will be offered work—as I said just now—office work—in a branch of the Ministry functioning in Scotland—in a prohibited area where your wife cannot accompany you. Actually you will be somewhere very different.’
Tommy merely waited.
Grant said:
‘You’ve read in the newspapers of the Fifth Column? You know, roughly at any rate, just what that term implies.’
Tommy murmured:
‘The enemy within.’
‘Exactly. This war, Beresford, started in an optimistic spirit. Oh, I don’t mean the people who really knew—we’ve known all along what we were up against—the efficiency of the enemy, his aerial strength, his deadly determination, and the co-ordination of his well-planned war machine. I mean the people as a whole. The good-hearted, muddle-headed democratic fellow who believes what he wants to believe—that Germany will crack up, that she’s on the verge of revolution, that her weapons of war are made of tin and that her men are so underfed that they’ll fall down if they try to march—all that sort of stuff. Wishful thinking as the saying goes.
‘Well, the war didn’t go that way. It started badly and it went on worse. The men were all right—the men on the battleships and in the planes and in the dug-outs. But there was mismanagement and unpreparedness—the defects, perhaps, of our qualities. We don’t want war, haven’t considered it seriously, weren’t good at preparing for it.
‘The worst of that is over. We’ve corrected our mistakes, we’re slowly getting the right men in the right place. We’re beginning to run the war as it should be run—and we can win the war—make no mistake about that—but only if we don’t lose it first. And the danger of losing it comes, not from outside—not from the might of Germany’s bombers, not from her seizure of neutral countries and fresh vantage points from which to attack—but from within. Our danger is the danger of Troy—the wooden horse within our walls. Call it the Fifth Column if you like. It is here, among us. Men and women, some of them highly placed, some of them obscure, but all believing genuinely in the Nazi aims and the Nazi creed and desiring to substitute that sternly efficient creed for the muddled easy-going liberty of our democratic institutions.’
Grant leant forward. He said, still in that same pleasant unemotional voice:
‘And we don’t know who they are…’
Tommy said: ‘But surely—’
Grant said with a touch of impatience:
‘Oh, we can round up the small fry. That’s easy enough. But it’s the others. We know about them. We know that there are at least two highly placed in the Admiralty—that one must be a member of General G—’s staff—that there are three or more in the Air Force, and that two, at least, are members of the Intelligence, and have access to Cabinet secrets. We know that because it must be so from the way things have happened. The leakage—a leakage from the top—of information to the enemy, shows us that.’
Tommy said helplessly, his pleasant face perplexed:
‘But what good should I be to you? I don’t know any of these people.’
Grant nodded.
‘Exactly. You don’t know any of them—and they don’t know you.’
He paused to let it sink in and then went on:
‘These people, these high-up people, know most of our lot. Information can’t be very well refused to them. I am at my wits’ end. I went to Easthampton. He’s out of it all now—a sick man—but his brain’s the best I’ve ever known. He thought of you. Over twenty years since you worked for the department. Name quite unconnected with it. Your face not known. What do you say—will you take it on?’
Tommy’s face was almost split in two by the magnitude of his ecstatic grin.
‘Take it on? You bet I’ll take it on. Though I can’t see how I can be of any use. I’m just a blasted amateur.’
‘My dear Beresford, amateur status is just what is needed. The professional is handicapped here. You’ll take the place of the best man we had or are likely to have.’
Tommy looked a question. Grant nodded.
‘Yes. Died in St Bridget’s Hospital last
