The Bat that Flits (16 page)

This evening, for instance, he would keep trying to tell me how poor his people were.

“There is my mother, my grandmother and my sister,” he said. “There is only one room. That is not much, no?”

“It's close quarters,” I agreed with him.

“And they can afford so little,” he went on. “One meal a day. That is all they have.”

“What time of day do they have it?” I asked.

I wasn't meaning to be callous. I really wanted to know. But Dr. Mann merely shrugged his shoulders.

“For everyone in Germany it is bad,” he said. “People say that it is more bad for the old. I tell you that the old do not matter. For them it is nearly over. It is for the young ones that it is most bad of all.”

“That's one way of looking at it,” I agreed.

But by now Dr. Mann had tears in his eyes.

“What is to happen to my mother if my gifts to her are to cease? If I go to prison she will die.”

“You're not there yet,” I reminded him.

But Dr. Mann shook his head.

“I have no hope,” he said. “I wish I were to be executed. Then I should not know what happens to my family.”

He was really crying by now. And I wished that he would stop. But when he resumed he was calmer. He was reaching that Weltpolitik stage that all Germans so easily slide into. And it can be pretty anaesthetising, except presumably to other Germans.

“To understand Germany,” he led up to it, “you must
realise his position in the land mass of Europe. And his history. Also his imperial tradition. Likewise his birth-rate and his need for the colonies that he has lost.”

I didn't say anything, and Dr. Mann continued like the voice of the old
Bundesrat
speaking.

“And in the nineteen-thirties,” he said, “Germany was a moral waste land. He had lost his soul. All women sold themselves. Perversion was everywhere. The revolution was waiting.”

“You mean the Nazi revolution?” I asked.

Dr. Mann jumped to his feet. He was trembling all over.

“Never,” he said. “Never. There were always two ways. The Nazi way that called up the dragon that is in the heart of every German. And the Communist way. The way of order and human reason. I chose the Communist Party. I joined a
Betrtibs-Zelle
and a
Strassen-Zelle
when I was nineteen. My family disowned me.”

“You don't say.”

Somehow I had never imagined Dr. Mann in any role as active as that of a Communist. If he had been sent out at night to put up illegal posters, I felt pretty sure that he would have contrived to paste them on upside down. But, in any case, that meant that there were two of us for certain with a C.P. past and I wondered how much Wilton knew about that.

I was still wondering when Dr. Mann came up very close and started to whisper as though the N.K.V.D. and the Gestapo were both listening just outside the door.

“And there is another,” he said. “Why else should someone among us change his name and use a poste restante address for secret communications?”

“Could be shyness,” I suggested.

But Dr. Mann shook his head.

“He is not shy,” he answered. “He is proud. Very proud.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Dr. Smith.”

There was a pause.

“Have you told the Inspector?” I asked.

Dr. Mann shook his head.

“It would serve no purpose,” he said sadly. “I am no longer believed.”

Walking has always seemed to me to combine all the disadvantages of being too tiring with those of being too slow. If the same amount of pedal energy could take you along at about fifteen m.p.h. I would have nothing against it. But even at four miles an hour it is a useful way of keeping the body ticking over while the mind is doing its thinking. And it was precisely because I wanted to think without interruption that I took myself out on the moor that afternoon.

The path that I had taken led towards the more distant of the tors. But I hadn't the slightest intention of going as far. That would have meant walking about four or five miles across wet bog-land. And even if I'd been out there in search of exercise—which I wasn't—it still didn't look like the sort of afternoon for really serious walking. The mist wasn't exactly thick. But there was enough of it about to take the sparkle out of everything. The whole moor was one subdued general dampness. And I didn't trust the moor any longer.

It was when I stood still for a moment to light a cigarette that I discovered that I was being followed. I don't mean that there was anyone on all fours darting about among the bushes. The man who was coming up the path behind me was as unconcealed as a policeman on patrol. But not half so impressive. He was a short fat man in a dark mackintosh. And he was wearing one of those black snap-brim trilbys that were put on the market specially for literary journalists. The snap-brim wasn't being given its fair chance, however. That was because it had just started to rain, and the short fat man had pulled the brim down all round like a small black umbrella.

It wasn't until we were practically on top of each other that he looked up. And then he shied away as if he hadn't been wanting to meet anyone. Whatever the reason, he turned his face away again the instant he had looked up.

Not that there was anything very remarkable about the face. You see whole rows of faces just like that in every café between Dieppe and Naples. It is the continental common denominator countenance. It was simply
here
that it was remarkable. If I'd been a casting director going round the agents in search of a foreign spy second grade, I'd have agreed to any terms if I could have been sure of getting hold of the little dago in the black trilby.

It occurred to me later that it might have been cleverer to have done a bit of shadowing myself. But I'm not awfully bright all the time. Particularly when I'm thinking about something else. And it was mostly Una that I was thinking about. I was heavy enough with my own cares already. My country brogues were letting in the water like a pair of superior double-welted sponges. I'd had a slight headache all day because of a miscalculation at the bar on the previous evening when I had fooled around with the gin, and mixed
two different brands. And I was wondering why nobody really seemed to like me. That question, I must admit, had passed through my mind several times before. But it was only now that I suspected that I knew the answer. It could have been that I didn't like other people very much.

It was getting on for dusk by now. And the landscape might have been made to order to match my thoughts. During the last five minutes the moor had turned a deep lead colour that was about as bright and as cheerful as a coffin lining, and the path across it glistened slightly like the trail a snail lays. Even Maida Vale seemed preferable, and I wondered why I had ever come here.

Then as I breasted one of the little hills I saw two people standing on the path ahead of me. One of them was Hilda. She was wearing a light-coloured transparent sort of raincoat that I'd have recognised anywhere. I couldn't see the other person. But they were obviously in conversation about something. And they were holding hands. It was a man that she was with all right. He was clasping her right hand in his, and he'd got his left hand cupped over them both. If he had been using adhesive tape he could not have made more sure of her.

It was round about this point that they both noticed me. And, as soon as they saw that I was watching them, they sprang apart. Then I saw who the man was. And I wished I hadn't.

It was my little dago friend.

Then something happened that put Hilda's dago friend right out of my mind. A big something. And, in the result, a very unpleasant one.

It all started with another of those cryptic messages. Only this time the method of delivery was different. Instead of being left for me on my pillow-case, it came by test tube. Or, rather, it was in the test tube and I collected it.

There were five of us in the lab. at that time—Bansted, Rogers, Mellon, Gillett and myself. Bansted and Rogers were on my side. And Mellon was opposite. Gillett had a bench under the window just behind. Lunch was over, and altogether it promised to be one of those long, quiet, boring, unsatisfying afternoons that all research workers know so well. It was an afternoon that would end at about five-thirty, with eternity left behind somewhere around tea-time.

I was just coming away from the steriliser where I had been to collect another frame of test tubes when I saw that there was something inside one of them. It shouldn't have been there, and I held it up against the light to see what it was. It was obviously a screw of paper. But the one thing that simply didn't occur to me was that there would be any writing on it. Let alone that the writing would be intended for me.

I removed the stopper of cotton-wool and shook out the little paper spill. The steriliser had been set a bit on the high side, and the paper like the cotton-wool was slightly
charred. But not so charred that the words did not stand out plainly. The letters were all in good bold capitals. There in best office typing I read the message: KEEP AWAY. THIS MEANS YOU. It made even less sense than usual. And I spread it out on the bench in front of me, and sat there staring at it.

There were several points about it that were odd. In the first place, all five of us went to the same oven for our sterilised tubes. And if that particular tube had really been intended for me the odds were precisely five to one against my ever getting it at all. Then there is a note of privacy and intimacy about a pillow-case that is distinctly lacking from a test tube that is going to be unstoppered in a busy laboratory. But that, I realised, could mean one of several things. It might be that I hadn't taken as much notice as somebody wanted me to take of the messages that I had already received. This last one could have been intended as a sort of in-thy-bed-or-at-thy-work-bench-I-am-beside-you reminder. If so, it struck me as rather artistic and well conceived. The only difficulty was that if it really did mean ME, I still didn't know what ME had to keep away from. There was a third possibility, viz., that someone, still for purposes that I couldn't understand, wanted me to sound the tocsin on a bell-jar and announce at the top of my voice that I was being persecuted—and that, in turn, might be to provide a brief but effective distraction while something a good deal more important was going on elsewhere. Possibility number four was that the instruction might not have been intended for me at all and that I had been guilty of the offence of opening somebody else's mail: for all I knew, the whole Institute might have been living under a snowstorm of these little bits of paper. It could all have been a game in which I was simply odd man out. . . .

Before I had reached the nth variant, however, I was cut short by young Mellon. He was exactly opposite to me, and not more than six feet away.

“Say, what is it—a date with a dame?” he asked.

It struck me then that if it were variant Number Three, the tocsin-and-persecution device that had been intended, I could hardly have responded better. And I don't like being made a stooge at any time. So I screwed up the little piece of paper and chucked it into the waste-bin at my feet.

“They're all after me,” I said. “When I don't reply, they just go crazy. It's something to do with the hair line.”

That seemed to satisfy Mellon who went back to his blood-counts again. And it satisfied me, too. I meant to recover the piece of paper later on because I wanted it to add to my collection.

It was just then that the Old Man sent for me. i! though he was such a mild whiskery old thing he didn't to be kept waiting. Moreover, as the hag secretary herself had come to collect me there was nothing for it but to go along. But I might have known it. There was nothing urgent or even important about the Old Man's summons. It was simply that he wanted to find out if I'd give a lantion lecture on
B. typhosus
to the student nurses in the local isolation hospital.

I could have done without that. Student nurses in the mass somehow lack the charm that they may or may not possess individually. But after my bad black over the one-day visa, I felt that I owed it to myself to show something of the charm side of my nature.

“May I really?” I asked eagerly. “If they don't mind something a bit elementary, I'd love to have a shot at it.”

The Old Man was so pleased that I think, if the Government hadn't been cutting down on everything, he would have recommended me for an increment on the spot. I learnt afterwards that I had been number nine on his list of candidates, and the other eight had all risked their careers by refusing.

I waited long enough to inquire after Una. And immediately the Old Man gave one of his nervous starts that always reminded me of someone who has just reached the theatre and then finds that he has left the tickets at home.

“That reminds me,” he said. “She was asking for you just now.”

“For me?” I asked, keeping my voice as level-sounding as possible.

“Probably wants to say thank you,” he went on. “After all, you did save her life, you know.”

made the ordinary pooh-pounds. Then, so that you might have thought that I was simply talking in my sleep, I added: “Of course. I'd be delighted. It's only because I thought she needed rest that I haven't been bothering her.”

Because Ma Clewes was out scouring the Bodmin market, it was he Clewes's maid who showed me up to Una's room. And because she was only the maid she withdrew as soon as she had knocked on the door. That, I considered, was very understanding of her. I registered her action for an extra shilling in the Christmas box. It occurred to me only afterwards that it might have been Una herself who had arranged it.

“I wanted to see you alone,” was what she said.

I told her that I thought that was nice of her, and took the chair that was drawn up alongside the bed. I have never denied that there is a lot to be said for really dark hair when it is cut rather short. That is when it is the kind of hair that reflects the light and takes on other colours as well. Una's was that kind. And the pink bed-jacket was just right for it. Between the two of them, they showed her eyes up to perfection. And except for an occasional flicker that I kept waiting for because I liked it, the blinds weren't drawn at all. For most of the time I was looking full into a pair of eyes that were so dark that I had to keep on taking another look just to make sure whether they were really violet or only an astonishingly deep blue.