The lights in the annex were controlled from some central point. They were put on and off by an unseen hand. In the mornings he was often awakened by the sudden blaze of the single overhead light in his room. At night he would be hastened to bed by perfunctory darkness. It was only nine o’clock as he entered the annex, and the lights were already out. Usually they stayed on till eleven, but now they were out and the shutters had been lowered. He had left the- connecting door from the house open, so that the pale twilight from the hallway reached, but scarcely penetrated, the guards’ bedroom, and by it he could just see the two empty beds. As he stood there peering into the room, surprised to find it empty, the door behind him closed. Perhaps by itself, but Leamas made no attempt to open it. It was pitch-dark. No sound accompanied the closing of the door, no click nor footstep. To Leanias, his instinct suddenly alert, it was as if the sound track had stopped. Then he smelled the cigar smoke. It must have been hanging in the air but he had not noticed it till now. Like a blind man, his senses of touch and smell were sharpened by the darkness.
There were matches in his pocket but he did not use them. He took one pace sideways, pressed his back against the wall and remained motionless. To Leamas there could only be one explanation—-they were waiting for him to pass from the guards’ room to his own and therefore he determined to remain where he was. Then from the direction of the main building whence he had come he heard clearly the sound of a footstep. The door which had just closed was tested, the lock turned and made fast. Stifi Leamas did not move. Not yet. There was no pretense: he was a prisoner in the hut. Very slowly, Leamas now lowered himself into a crouch, putting his hand in the side pocket of his jacket as he did so. He was quite calm, almost relieved at the prospect of action, but memories were racing through his mind. “You’ve nearly always got a weapon: an ashtray, a couple of coins, a fountain pen– anything that will gouge or cut.” It was the favorite dictum of the mild little Welsh sergeant at that house near Oxford in the war: “Never use both hands at once, not with a knife, a stick or a pistol; keep your left arm free, and hold it across the belly. If you can’t find anything to hit with, keep the hands -open and the thumbs stiff.” Taking the box of matches in his right hand, he clasped it longways and deliberately crushed it, so that the small, jagged edges of boxwood protruded from between his fingers. This done, he edged his way along the wall until he came to a chair which be knew was in the corner of the room. Indifferent now to the noise he made, he shoved the chair into the center of the floor. Counting his footsteps as he moved back from the chair, he positioned himself in the angle of the two walls. As he did so, he heard the door of his own bedroom flung open. Vainly he tried to discern the figure that must be standing in the doorway, but there was no light from his own room either. The darkness was impenetrable. He dared not move forward to attack, for the chair was now in the middle of the room; it was his tactical advantage, for he knew where it was, and they did not. They must come for him, they must; he could not let them wait until their helper outside had reached the master switch and put onthelights.
“Come on, you windy bastards,” he hissed in German. “I’m here, in the corner. Come and get me, can’t you?” Not a move, not a sound.
“I’m here, can’t you see me? What’s the matter then? What’s the matter, children, come on, can’t you?”
And then he heard one stepping forward, and another following; and then the oath of a man – as he stumbled against the chair, and that was the sign that Leamas was waiting for. Tossing away the box of matches he slowly, cautiously crept forward, pace by pace, his left arm extended in the attitude of a man warding off twigs in a wood until, quite gently, he had touched an arm and felt the warm prickly cloth of a military uniform. Stifi with his left hand Leamas deliberately tapped the arm twice–two distinct taps–and heard a frightened voice whisper close to his ear in German: