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shudder, “Thank you, I would so very much rather not. You may go, I don’t think this prisoner is

dangerous.”

The man saluted and went. Lehmann beckoned the old man up to his desk, and said,

“Next time you are asked for your name, think up a nice one, don’t just read one off an

advertisement calendar on the wall. It arouses suspicion in the most credulous breast.”

“I—my name is Schaffer—”

“It is not. It is Reck. If you are going to wilt like that you had better sit down, there’s

nothing to be afraid of. You know me, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” said Reck, clutching at a chair and dropping into it. “Never seen you

before.”

“So? Perhaps I can help you to remember. Your name is Reck, before and during the last

war you were science master at a school at Mülheim, near Köln. There was a tower to the school

buildings with a lightning conductor on it, do you remember now? You were something of an

amateur wireless enthusiast in those days, and you had a small wireless transmitter, you used the

lightning conductor as an aerial. You knew enough morse to send out messages in code, I will

say for you that you were pretty hot stuff at coding messages. Does it begin to come back to you

now? No, don’t faint again, because if you do I shall empty this jug over you, and it’s full of cold

water. You remember on whose behalf you sent the messages, don’t you? British Intelligence.”

Lehmann paused, largely because poor old Reck looked so dreadfully ill that it was

doubtful whether he could take in what was said to him without a short respite.

“Well, I think after that a drink would do us both good,” said the Deputy Chief, and rang

the bell.

“Bring some beer, Hagen, will you, and a bottle of schnapps and glasses.”

“Drink this,” he said, when his orders had been carried out, “it will do you good. You

always liked schnapps, didn’t you? I’m sorry I’m not the red-haired waitress from the Germania

in Köln, but I—”

“Stop!” shrieked Reck. “I can’t stand it—who the devil are you?”

“I think you know,” said Tommy Hambledon. “I think you knew yesterday when you

tapped out T-L-T on the table. What sent your mind back to that if you did not recognize me?

Incidentally, that’s what gave you away, for I certainly didn’t recognize you. It’s true we have

both changed a good deal in fifteen years, but—who am I?”

“I thought you were Tommy Hambledon,” said Reck, with the empty glass shaking in his

hand, “but you can’t be, because he’s dead. If you are Hambledon, you’re dead and I’m mad

again, that’s all. I was mad at one time, you know, they shut me up in one of those places where

they keep them, at Mainz, that was. Not a bad place, though some of the other people were a

little uncomfortable to live with. I was all right, of course,” went on Reck, talking faster and

faster. “It was only the things one saw at night sometimes, but they weren’t so bad, one knew

they weren’t real, only tiresome, but you look so horribly real and ordinary, and how can you

when you’ve been in the sea for fifteen years? Perhaps you don’t really look ordinary at all, it’s

only my fancy, and if I look again,” said Reck, scrabbling round in his chair, “I shall see you as

you really are and I can’t bear it, I tell you! Go away and get somebody to bury you—”

“Reck, old chap,” said Hambledon, seriously distressed, “don’t be a fool. I wasn’t

drowned, of course I wasn’t. I got a clout on the head which made me lose my memory, but I got

ashore all right. Here, give me your glass and have another drink. I’m sorry I upset you like that,

I never meant to, look at me and see, I’m perfectly wholesome. Drink this up, there’s a good

fellow.”

Reck drank and a little colour returned to his ghastly face. After a moment a fresh

thought came to alarm him and he struggled to his feet.

“Here, let’s go,” he said, “before he comes back and finds us in his office. I don’t want to

face a firing-squad.”

“He? Who d’you mean?”

“The Deputy Chief of Police,” said Reck. “They told me I was to be taken to him.”

“I am the Deputy Chief of the German Police,” said the British Intelligence agent.

“Don’t be absurd,” said Reck testily. “The thing is simply impossible.”

“It isn’t impossible, because it’s happened. Here I am.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Why not? There was one of our fellows on the German General Staff all through the last

war, you know. This is comparatively simple.”

“Let me go back to the asylum,” pleaded Reck. “Life is simpler in there. More

reasonable, if you see what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you go back to the asylum yet,” said Tommy Hambledon. “I want

you to help me. I don’t yet quite know how, but some scheme will doubtless present itself. You

see, I have to get in touch with London, and—”

“Not through me,” said Reck with unexpected firmness.

“Eh? Oh, you’ll be all right, I’ll look after you. I think I had better find you a post in my

house—can you clean knives and boots? You shall have a bedroom to yourself, and food and

wages. Isn’t that better than wandering about the streets selling papers and sleeping rough?”

“No. Not if I’ve got to be mixed up in espionage again at my age.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Hambledon. “Anyone would think I wanted you to run along and

fire the President’s palace.”

“From what I remember of you,” said Reck acidly, “that is precisely the sort of thing you

would suggest.”

“Listen,” said Hambledon patiently. “D’Artagnan is not the character which naturally

rises to my mind when I look at you. Definitely no. If I wanted someone to go leaping in and out

of first-floor windows with an automatic in one hand and a flaming torch in the other, I shouldn’t

offer the job to you first, I shouldn’t really. What you’re going to do is to obtain from various

sources the component parts of a spark transmitter—”

“I’ve forgotten what they are—”

“Assemble it in your lonely bedroom—thank goodness we’ve got a top flat—and stand

by to send out messages to London in the dear old Mülheim code. That’s all.”

“No,” said Reck obstinately.

“You see, normally I could get messages through in various ways, but they might be

slow. If I wanted to get a message through quickly, wireless is the obvious method.”

“Doubtless. But with some other fool operating it.”

“It will also be useful,” said Hambledon, disregarding this, “for confirmatory purposes.

‘What I tell you three times is true.’ “

“I have already told you four times that I won’t have anything to do with it, and that’s

true, too.”

“You obstinate old fool,” exploded Hambledon, “will you take this in? You—are—going

—to—do this, or by Gog and Magog I’ll make you sweat for it! Ever heard of a concentration

camp?”

Reck winced.

“I am not the Deputy Chief for nothing, you know, and I haven’t been in the Nazi Party

for ten years without learning how to persuade people, believe me! Now then?”

“Listen,” said Reck with unexpected dignity, “I was born in England of English folk, but

I have lived in Germany since I was a boy. I worked for England in the last war—yes, I was paid

for it, you need not remind me—but Germany is my home, I have almost forgotten how to speak

English. Ever since I worked for you I have been afraid, afraid somebody would find out or

somebody would talk, afraid of the police, afraid of my old friends, afraid to drink for fear I

might talk, afraid to sleep for fear I might dream aloud. Let me alone now, I will not be troubled

by you any more. I am tired of being afraid.”

The old man sank back in his chair and the animation died in his face and his manner.

“Leave me alone,” he whimpered. “I do very well, selling papers—”

Hambledon’s face softened. “Look here,” he said, “where could you be safer than with

me? You shall be housed and fed and paid, and who looks twice at my servants? No one would

dare suspect you. I am sorry, but it is necessary that you should do this. Necessary, you know

what that means? Better men than you or I have died because it was necessary, and I’m only

asking you—”

“And I refuse,” shrieked Reck, shaking with passion. “I will not, I tell you. I’ll tell

everyone who you are—”

“And who’ll believe you? Don’t be a damned old fool! Go to the British Government and

tell them Winston Churchill’s a Nazi agent, and see what happens. It would be nothing to what

will happen if you talk about me here. You must agree, I’m sorry, but I need you and you must.

Well?”

“I won’t. I don’t believe it. Tommy Hambledon’s dead and you’re just trying to make me

incriminate myself. I won’t work against the Nazi Government, Herr Deputy Chief, I am a good

German, I am really. I talk nonsense sometimes but I can’t help it, I was mad once, you know, it

doesn’t mean anything. I wouldn’t do a thing like that—”

“Reck! Stop it at once. You will do as I tell you or take the consequences. Well?”

“I won’t.”

“Very well.” The Deputy Chief rang the bell and the Storm Trooper returned.

“This man’s explanations do not satisfy me, but I can’t waste any more time over him

now. He will go to a concentration camp for ten days, perhaps he will be more willing to talk

after that, eh, Hagen? Take him away.”

About a week later Gustav Niehl, who was Klaus Lehmann’s Chief in the German police,

came into his room and said, “There’s a man coming to Berlin to-morrow whom I want you to

arrest, please. He is an Englishman named Heckstall, and pretends to be an innocent traveller in

brewery fittings, but I have reason to believe that he is an English Intelligence agent. He has

been over here a good deal in the last year or two without being suspected, but he’s done it once

too often.”

“How very interesting,” said Lehmann truthfully. “It enthralls me to have even the

smallest contact with enemy espionage, one’s boyhood storybooks come true! When is he

expected and where does he stay in Berlin?”

Niehl gave him particulars, and added, “He is clever. We have always kept an eye on

him, of course, but he never gave us the smallest grounds for suspicion and I had no idea there

was anything shady about him.”

“Then what makes you suspect him now?”

“Our agents in London report that he is in close touch with British Intelligence. Of

course, it may be that the Foreign Office and the War Office in London have secret beer engines

installed in every cupboard and he merely goes in to see that they are working properly, but

somehow I doubt it, Lehmann, I doubt it.”

“The idea seems to me so excellent,” said Lehmann laughing, “that it might well be

adopted in the Wilhelmstrasse.”

“You might suggest it to the Führer,” said Niehl, “and see what he thinks of the idea.”

Instantly Lehmann’s laughter vanished. “Our Führer’s views on the subject are well

known,” he said stiffly, “and have my unalterable respect. I spoke in the merest jest.”

“I know, my dear Lehmann, I know,” said Niehl soothingly, and took his leave.

“Trying to trap me into speaking disrespectfully of the all-highest Adolf,” thought

Hambledon indignantly, “and then you’d run to him with the whole story embellished with

ornate embroidery, you lop-eared lounge lizard, would you?”

Hambledon lit a cigar and sat down to do a little hard thinking. So the German agents in

London reported Heckstall to be in touch with M.I.; German Intelligence must have some fairly

good men. Hambledon’s first idea had naturally been to report to London by the earliest possible

means, but the more he thought about it the less he liked it. His own position was so desperately

dangerous that one unguarded word, one careless exposure of his name, would destroy him at

once, apart from these clever agents of whom Niehl spoke, and goodness alone knew who they

were. By degrees it became clear to him that he dared not let anyone whatever know his secret,

not even the head of his Service in London. “Three may keep a secret,” he murmured, “if two of

them are dead.” Only Reck knew and he was safe, since even if he talked nobody would believe

him.

Then the problem arose as to how he was to communicate with London. It would be a

sound scheme to give them something dramatic the first time, such as the release of this fellow

Heckstall for example, “with brass band
obbligato
,” said the unmusical Tommy. Suitably

heralded by a fanfare of trumpets, the rescue of Heckstall should impress even M.I. His return

should be announced beforehand, Heckstall himself should have a little story to tell, and there

must be a follow-up of some kind just to round it off, to make the third act in the little drama.

Drama. Why not write a play and broadcast it? A play on the Prodigal Son theme. He

went into a far-off country among strange people, so did Heckstall, and returned without tangible

results, again Heckstall’s case.

Too obscure, they’d never understand it in London. Something definite was wanted.

“Heckstall returned to stock undamaged Thursday next,” that sort of thing, but one couldn’t put

that in a play unless it was in code. Code. Reck. A play with morse coming into it. Then the play

could be about anything, a wireless operator was the most obvious choice, some of that