'Of course. Communists are of two kinds only. Gadarene Swine whose wits have been taken from them so that they rush headlong down the slope to their own destruction, and ordinary voracious swine who, if you were standing in their sty, had a heart-attack and fell among them, would instantly set upon and devour you - just as did the pigs in T. F. Powys' novel, 'Mr. Tasker's Gods'.'
'I know, Sir. But this sort of thing really is frightful. Did poor old Ruddy cave in right away?'
'I gather so. He told Thompson that he had been happily married for twenty-four years and counted his wife his greatest blessing; but she was not the sort of woman who would even tolerate his dancing twice in an evening with the good-looking wife of another chap at a Trade Union social and that once she had made his life a misery for a couple of months because she had found out that, while she was on holiday at the seaside with the children, he had taken a pretty typist to a movie. He said that the sight of the photograph would be a terrible shock to her. He felt sure that her principles would prove stronger than her affections: that, filled with righteous indignation, she would leave him, taking their two unmarried daughters with her, and that no political success he might achieve could compensate a man of his age for the loss of his family.'
'Couldn't he explain?' Barney asked. 'Surely if his wife loves him, and he told the truth, she would believe him??
'Put yourself in his shoes, or hers.' C.B. gave a short hard laugh and tossed across the desk a photograph. 'Take a look at that. Thompson asked Ruddy to let him have the loan of it so that Scotland Yard could try to identify the woman, and Ruddy said he was glad to get it out of the house, provided it was destroyed afterwards. Can you see yourself endeavouring to persuade a middle-aged, narrow-minded and distrustful wife that you had gone to the bedroom of this naked lady for no other reason than the hope that she would predict for you the winner of the Derby?'
I Barney had picked up the photograph and was staring at it as though his eyes might pop out of their sockets. It showed the stalwart grey-haired Tom Ruddy leaning forward on the far side of a richly furnished bed. Sitting up in the bed, nude to the thighs, an inviting smile on her lips, an encouraging hand on Ruddy's shoulder, was the beautiful prophetess. Almost choking with mixed emotions, he stammered:
'But... damn it... this is Margot Mauriac! How ... how could she have lent herself to this sort of thing? How could she?
Verney raised his prawn-like eyebrows. 'Really! Is she, now? Perhaps I ought to have guessed, but somehow I didn't. Her real name isn't Mauriac, though; it's Mary Morden.'
CHAPTER XVIII 'WHEN ROGUES FALL OUT...'
What!' exclaimed Barney, dropping the photographs. 'Teddy Morden's widow! Bejasus! Well, that explains a lot of things. The last time I saw her she confessed to me that her reason for wanting to become a Satanist was to have it in her power to be avenged on somebody. I understand that now. She must have believed, just as I did, that a link existed somewhere between Mrs. Wardeel's set-up and Morden's murder, decided that Ratnadatta was the link and that it was his crew of Satanists that had done Morden in; then made up her mind to become one herself as the only way of getting evidence against his killers.'
'That's right; or, at all events, it's the line she said she intended to follow when she came to see me before starting on the job.'
'Hang it all, Sir! Since you knew that she and I were working along the same lines, why didn't you tell me about her?'
C.B. shrugged. 'In our work it often pays better to let two people carry on an investigation unknown to one another. Otherwise, if one gets on the wrong track and tells the other, both may follow it, with the result that both of them waste a lot of time. That is why I said nothing to you about Mrs. Morden when she told me what she meant to do.'
'But later, Sir. My reports made it clear that both of us were on the right track. If only ...'
'No; you are off the mark there. When you told me that an attractive young woman had begun to attend Mrs. Wardeel's evenings a little before yourself, and of her having persuaded Ratnadatta to take her along to his Satanic circle, it did occur to me that she might be Mary Morden. If you remember, I questioned you very closely about her, but the description you gave me of Mrs. Mauriac was so totally unlike that of the Mrs. Morden I knew that I concluded they must be different women.' Picking up the photograph, C.B. went on, 'I told her that she would be wise to disguise herself, but I didn't credit her with being able to do the job so thoroughly. In this, her hair, eyebrows and mouth are entirely changed from when I last saw her. In fact, it wasn't until I began to study the photograph carefully that I recognized her.'
'I see. She hasn't been reporting to you in person, then, but in writing.'
'She hasn't been reporting to me at all. She offered her services but I told her that I couldn't possibly take her on officially.'
Barney's brown eyes smouldered. 'D'you mean that you let her go into this filthy business on her own, without either guidance or protection??
'I did my best to argue her out of her idea, but she refused to be put off. I told her then that it would be better for her not to communicate with this office or myself unless she secured definite evidence which might give us a case against her husband's murderers because, if they learned that she had any connection with us, she might be murdered herself. But all this happened over seven weeks ago and, to tell the truth, I'd forgotten all about her till Thompson produced this photograph this morning.'
'Forgotten all about her!' Barney repeated angrily. 'Good God, Sir; I'd never have thought it of you. To let a lovely girl like her, with no experience of the game, go butting her head into a nest of the vilest crooks imaginable and never even give her a thought....'
'Steady on; steady on!' Verney cut in, but his voice remained as low and even as ever. 'Don't let your sense of chivalry run away with you; and try for a moment to appreciate what it means to occupy this chair. I gave you a key role in an important mission, but you are only one of a score of my people who are engaged on it. I have to receive all their reports as well as yours. And that is only one of my jobs. I have to supervise the watch that is maintained in every port in the kingdom against undesirables entering it; I'm responsible for security in all secret Scientific Establishments; I am having at least fifty potential spies or saboteurs either hunted or kept under observation. Even that is no more than half of it. I have to attend conferences at half-a-dozen Ministries and quite frequently others that take me abroad. This afternoon, for example, I shall be flying to Bonn at the invitation of my opposite number there, for a two-day visit to compare our methods with those in use by the West German Security Services. So your suggestion that I can find the time to keep a private eye upon any young woman who elects, against my advice, to play at being an amateur detective is really rather foolish.' 'I'm sorry, Sir. I'm afraid I hadn't thought of it like that, but...' 'That's all right, Barney. But if you are to go up the ladder here, as you show good promise of doing, you must train yourself to keep a sense of proportion. If it is any comfort to you, I did tell Mary Morden that should she find
