Another peculiar silence, even more peculiar than the one that had gone before. Everybody was looking at their first Secret Service man, and they couldn’t have been unduly impressed. With a drawn haggard face like that of a cadaver and a body that looked even more so, I wouldn’t have done at all as a subject for a poster to attract fresh recruits to the service. Not, of course, that they used posters. I wondered how on earth Witherspoon had known. The Chinese guard, Hang, had heard us, of course, but he hadn’t yet spoken to Witherspoon.
“You are a government agent, Bentall, aren’t you?” Witherspoon asked softly.
“I’m a scientist,” I said, just to see how it would go. “A fuel research technician. Liquid fuel,” I added pointedly.
A sign that I didn’t see and a guard advanced and pressed his gun-barrel against Captain Griffith’s neck.
“Counter-espionage,” I said.
“Thank you.” The guard fell back. “Honest to goodness plain scientists aren’t expert in codes, wireless telegraphy and Morse. You appear to be well versed in all of them, don’t you, Bentall?”
I looked at Lieutenant Brookman. “I wonder if you would be kind enough to fix up this arm of mine?”
Witherspoon took a long step towards me. His mouth was as white as the knuckles of the hand that held the malacca cane, but his voice was as unperturbed as ever. “When I’m finished. It may interest you to know that within two minutes of my returning home tonight after the fire a message started coming through on our radio transmitter. From a vessel by the name of the Pelican, in which I have a considerable interest.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that my nervous system seemed to have completely stopped working, I’d probably have jumped a foot. If I’d the strength for any gymnastics like that, which I hadn’t. As it was, I didn’t move a muscle of my face. The Pelican! That had been the first name I’d seen on that list under the blotter, the copied list that now lay between my sock and the sole of my right foot.
“The Pelican was listening in on a certain frequency,” he continued. “It had instructions to do so. You may imagine the radio operator’s astonishment when an S.O.S. started coming through on that frequency, a frequency far removed from the distress channels.”
I still didn’t move any facial muscles, but it called for no will-power this time, the shock of realization was enough, the shock of appreciating the enormity of my blunder. But it wasn’t really my fault. I had had no means of knowing that the 46 in the list I had picked up meant that the Pelican and the other ships-probably all the other names were ships’ names too-were to begin listening in, to keep a radio watch at forty-six minutes past every hour. And, as nearly as I could remember, I had begun to transmit my first experimental S.O.S., when I was trying to line up the receiver and transmitter, at almost exactly that time and on the pre-set wave-length of Foochow, which just happened to be the transmitting wave-length they were using.
“He was a clever man, this operator,” Witherspoon continued. “He lost you, and guessed it was because you had dropped down to the distress frequencies. He found you there and followed you. He heard the name Vardu mentioned twice, and knew something was far wrong. He copied down letter for letter your signal to the Annandale. And then he waited ten minutes and called back.”
I was still giving my impression of one of the statues on Easter Island, carved from stone and badly battered. This wasn’t the end, this wasn’t necessarily the end. But it was the end, I knew it was.
” ‘combo ridex london’-the telegraphic address of the chief of your service, wasn’t it, Bentall?” he asked. It seemed unlikely that I could convince him that all I had been doing was sending a birthday message to my Aunt Myrtle in Putney, so I nodded. “I guessed so. And I thought it might be rather useful if I sent a message myself. While Hewell-who bad now discovered you were missing-and his men were already pickaxeing away ‘what was left of the tunnel, I composed a second message. I had no idea, of course, what your coded message had been, but the one I sent to ‘combo ridex london’ should meet the case. I sent: ‘please disregard PREVIOUS MESSAGE EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL ESSENTIAL YOU DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CONTACT ME FORTY EIGHT hours no time code’, and took the liberty of adding your name. Do you think that will meet the case, Bentall?”
I said nothing. There was nothing I could say. I looked round the faces at the table, but no one was looking at me any more, they were almost all staring down at their hands. I glanced in Marie’s direction, but even she wasn’t looking at me. I’d been born in the wrong time and place, I should have been in Rome two thousand years ago and toppling slowly forward on to my sword. I thought of the nasty big hole a sword would make and then, by association of ideas, of the nasty big holes in my upper left arm, so I said to Wither-spoon: “Would you permit Surgeon-Lieutenant Brookman to fix up my arm now?”
He looked at me long and consideringly, then said quietly: “I could almost regret that life has placed us on opposite sides of the fence. I can well understand why your chief sent you on this mission: you are a highly dangerous man.”
“I’m better than that,” I said. “I’m a lucky man. I’ll carry your coffin yet.”
He looked at me for a brief moment, then turned to Brookman. “Fix this man’s arm.”
“Thank you, Professor Witherspoon,” I said politely.
“LeClerc,” he said indifferently. “Not Witherspoon. That babbling old idiot has served his purpose.”
Brookman made a good job. He opened and cleaned the wounds with something that felt like a wire brush, stitched them up neatly, covered them all with aluminium foil and bandage, fed me a variety of pills then, for good measure, jabbed me a couple of times with a hypodermic syringe. Had I been alone I’d have put any dancing dervish to shame but I felt I’d done damage enough to future Secret Service recruitment so I kept reasonably still. By the time he was finished the room itself was beginning to go into a dancing dervish routine, so I thanked Brookman and without a by-your-leave made shakily for the table and sat down heavily opposite Captain Griffiths. Witherspoon-or LeClerc, as I had to think of him now-sat beside me.
“You feel better, Bentall?”
“I couldn’t feel worse. If there’s a hell for dogs I hope that damned hound of yours is roasting.”
“Quite. Who is the senior scientist among those present, Captain Griffiths?”
“What damnable evil are you up to now?” the grey-haired man demanded.
“I won’t repeat the question, Captain Griffiths,” LeClerc said mildly. His misted white eyes flickered for a moment in the direction of the dead man collapsed on the table.
“Hargreaves,” Griffiths said wearily. He glanced in the direction of the sound of the voices behind the closed doors of the P.O.’s mess. “Must you, LeClerc? He’s only just met his wife for the first time in many months. He won’t be fit to answer anything. There’s not much going on that I don’t know. I’m the man in overall charge, you understand, not Hargreaves.”
LeClerc considered, then said: “Very well. In what state of readiness is the Black Shrike?”
“Is that all you want to know?”
“That’s all.”
“The Black Shrike is completely ready in every respect except for the wiring up and fusing of the firing circuitry.”
“Why wasn’t this done?”
“Because of the disappearance of Dr. Fairfield…” I tried to focus on Captain Griffith’s face among the kaleidoscopic whirl of people and furniture and dimly realised that it was only now that Griffiths was beginning to understand why Fairfield had disappeared. He stared at LeClerc for long moments, then whispered huskily: “My God! Of course, of course.”
“Yes, of course,” LeClerc snapped. “But I didn’t mean that. Why was the circuitry and fusing not finished earlier. I understand that the loading of the propellant charge was completed over a month ago.”
“How-how in heaven’s name do you know that?”
“Answer my question.”
“Fairfield feared that the propellant mixture might show inherent instability in very hot weather and regarded that as sufficient risk in itself without the additional risk of fusing it.” Griffiths rubbed a sun-tanned hand across his damp and bleeding face. “You should know that no projectile or missile, from a two-pounder to a hydrogen bomb, is ever fused until the last possible moment.”
“How long did Fairfield say the fusing would take?”
“I once heard him mention a period of forty minutes.”
LeClerc said softly: “You’re lying, Captain. I know the great virtue of the Shrike is that it can be fired instantaneously.”