sir, may I tell you about my discovery?”
When Basil had told him, Colonel Plum said: “That’s all right as far as it goes. We can’t take any action, of course. This fellow Silk is a well-known writer, working in the Ministry of Information.”
“He’s a most dangerous type. I know him well. He was living in Munich before the war ? never out of the Brown House.”
“That’s as may be, but this isn’t Spain. We can’t go arresting people for what they say in a private conversation in a cafe. I’ve no doubt we shall come to that eventually, but at the present stage of our struggle for freedom, it just can’t be done.”
“But this paper he’s starting.”
“Yes, that’s another matter. But Rampole and Bentley are a perfectly respectable little firm. I can’t apply for a search warrant until I’ve got something to go on. We’ve got pretty wide powers, but we have to be careful how we use them. We’ll keep an eye on this paper and if it seems dangerous we’ll stop it. Meanwhile get to work. Here’s an anonymous denunciation of a retired admiral in South Kensington. There won’t be anything in it. See what the police know about him.”
“Don’t we ever investigate night clubs? I’m sure they’re bursting with enemy agents.”
Susie said, “I do. You don’t.”
A quiet day at the Ministry of Information…The more energetic neutral correspondents had mostly left the country by now, finding Axis sources a happier hunting-ground for front-page news. The Ministry could get on with its work undisturbed. That afternoon a film was showing in the Ministry theatre; it dealt with otter-hunting and was designed to impress neutral countries with the pastoral beauty of English life. The Religious Department were all keen film-goers. Basil found the room empty. On Ambrose’s table lay two sets of galley-proofs of the new magazine. Basil pocketed one of them. There was also a passport; Basil took it up with interest. He had never seen an Irish one before. It was made out for a Father Flanagan, S.J., Professor of Dublin University. The photograph showed a cadaverous face of indeterminate age. Father Flanagan was in his leisure from higher education the correspondent of an Irish newspaper. He wanted to visit the Maginot Line during his vacation and after numerous disappointments had found his way to the Religious Department of the Ministry of Information, where the Roman Catholic director had promised to try and get him a visa. Basil took this too; an additional passport often came in useful. Then he sauntered away.
He took the proofs home and read until dinner, marking a passage here and there as material to his brief. The style throughout was homogeneous but the authors’ names were multiform. Ambrose rather let himself go on names: “Hucklebury Squib,” “Bartholomew Grass,” “Tom Barebones-Abraham.” Only “Monument to a Spartan” bore Ambrose’s own name. Later that evening Basil sought Ambrose where he was sure to find him, at the Cafe Royal.
“I’ve been reading your magazine,” he said.
“So it was you. I thought one of those nasty Jesuits had stolen it. They’re always flapping in and out the Department like jackdaws. Geoffrey Bentley was in a great stew about it. He doesn’t want old Rampole to see a copy until the thing’s out.”
“Why should the Jesuits want to show your magazine to old Rampole?”
“They’re up to any mischief. What d’you think of it?”
“Well,” said Basil, “I think you might have made it a bit stronger. You know what you want to do is to shock people a bit. That’s the way to put a new magazine across. You can’t shock people nowadays with sex, of course; I don’t mean that. But suppose you had a little poem in praise of Himmler ? something like that?”
“I don’t believe that would be a good idea; besides as far as I know no one has written a poem like that.”
“I daresay I could rake one up for you.”
“No,” said Ambrose. “What did you think of ‘Monument to a Spartan’?”
“All the first part is first-rate. I suppose they made you put on that ending?”
“Who?”
“The Ministry of Information.”
“They’ve had nothing to do with it.”
“Haven’t they? Well, of course, you know best. I can only say how it reads to an outsider. What I felt was: Here is a first-class work of art; something no one but you could have written. And then, suddenly, it degenerates into mere propaganda. Jolly good propaganda, of course; I wish half the stuff your Ministry turns out was as good ? but propaganda. An atrocity story ? the sort of stuff American journalists turn out by the ream. It glares a bit, you know, Ambrose. Still, of course, we all have to make sacrifices in wartime. Don’t think I don’t respect you for it. But artistically, Ambrose, it’s shocking.”
“Is it?” said Ambrose, dismayed. “Is that how it reads?”
“Leaps to the eye, old boy. Still it ought to give you a leg up in the Department.”
“Basil,” said Ambrose solemnly, “if I thought that was how people would take it, I’d scrap the whole thing.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t do that. The first forty-five pages are grand. Why don’t you leave it like that, with Hans still full of his illusions marching into Poland?”
“I might.”
“And you could bring Himmler in, just at the end in a kind of apotheosis of Nazism.”
“No.”
“Well, Himmler isn’t necessary. Just leave Hans in the first exhilaration of victory.”
“I’ll think about it… D’you really mean that intelligent readers would think I was writing propaganda?”
“They couldn’t think anything else, old boy, could they?”
