“You can’t,” said Tossa fiercely, “and you can’t leave it like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have read it, but I did, and he was my step-father, even if we weren’t at all close, and do you expect me just to sit back and live with the thought that somebody murdered him, and not do anything at all about it?”
“I sincerely hope there’s going to be no need for
“No!” she protested passionately. “That isn’t good enough. That doesn’t help me.”
He had already reached the point of knowing that he was going to tell her everything. Maybe he was a good judge of human nature, and maybe he wasn’t, but it seemed to him that there was only one way of ensuring that secrecy should indeed be complete. She had the passion to demand her rights from him, maybe she had also the generosity to meet him half-way when he piled the lot into her arms without reserve.
“Miss Barber, I gave my word. There’s no way I can satisfy you, except by extending that promise to cover you as well as myself. If I tell you everything, then I shall be vouching for you, too. Staking my reputation on you. Maybe my life.”
She opened her eyes wide to stare at him in wonder and doubt, but she could find no hint of anything bogus in his face or his tone. It seemed people still existed who talked in those terms, quite without cant.
“Do you want to know on those conditions? Remember, I shall then be relying upon you absolutely.”
“You can,” she said. “I won’t breathe a word to anyone, I promise. Yes, I want to know.”
“And you understand that it’s a matter of national security that what I tell you should go no further?”
“Yes, I understand. You have my word.” Her face was earnest with the terrible solemnity of youth. Yes, he thought, she had the generosity and imagination even to be able to keep secrets. And he stopped being afraid of her, just when he should have begun to be afraid.
He sat down with her on the antique bench in Chloe’s hall, and told her the whole story, suppressing nothing, not even the significance of the notebooks Alda had smuggled out of the country with him when he vanished.
For a moment, at the end of it, her sceptical mind revolted. Spies, counter-spies, defecting scientists, all exist, of course, but as sordid professionals fumbling grimy secrets of dubious value, for which governments must be crazy to pay out a farthing in bribes or wages. Not like this, not with ideals mixed up in the squalor, and patriotism— whatever that ought to mean, in these days of supranational aspirations—and honest, clean danger. It couldn’t be true! Robert Welland was a romantic who had constructed a romantic’s ingenious theory out of a few chance facts, and all he was going back to was the long, slow let-down into the untidy world of reality. He wouldn’t find anything; there was nothing to find. Herbert Terrell had simply made a mis-step at last, the one that waits for every expert somewhere along the way, and fallen to his death.
Just for a moment she held the facts away from her, and saw them thus distantly and coolly; and then the whole erection of evidence toppled upon her and overwhelmed her, and she believed with all her heart, and was lost. She had no longer any defences against Terrell. He was dead, murdered, killed as the result of something he had undertaken out of his sense of duty to his profession and his country. He was more than she had ever given him a chance to show, and she owed him justice all the more now, because she had denied it to him living.
“So you see that everything possible will be done to find out the truth. And you will be very careful, won’t you, not to let anything out even by accident? Remember I’ve vouched for you as for myself.”
“I won’t forget. I’m very grateful for your trust, I shan’t betray it.” She was staring before her with stunned eyes, seeing herself suddenly drawn, almost against her will, into a world of noble cliches, which she vehemently distrusted, but for which there existed no substitutes.
“And you’ll try to set your mind at rest, and leave everything to us? I’m sorry that I’ve troubled your peace at all.”
“Oh, no!” she said positively. “It’s better to know.”
And to his question, with only the faintest note of reserve:
“I know you’ll do everything possible. And thank you!”
But he hadn’t her personal obligations, and he hadn’t her sense of guilt, and how could he expect her to sit back and let him lift the burden of her conscience and carry it away with him?
The first thing she looked round for, when he was gone, was the large-scale map of Central Europe she had just bought at Hatchards.
“Czech visas,” said Toddy thoughtfully, “cost money.” He sat back on his heels and pondered the delectable roads racing eastwards across the map, and his expression was speculative and tempted. “Not that I’m saying it wouldn’t be a nice thing to do, mind you.” He added ruefully: “Rather a lot of money, if you ask me!”
“I know they do, but look at the tourist exchange rate! We should more than get it back. And if we did decide on it, we could be through France and Germany in a couple of days. Eating in France is damned dear unless you picnic all the time, and who wants to do that? I bet we’d save by running through as quickly as possible, and surely Czechoslovakia would be a whole lot more interesting.”
“I always did think you had a secret urge to live dangerously.” Christine swung her legs from the edge of the table, and drew the crumbling Iron Curtain thoughtfully back into position with one toe. “Quite apart from prison cells, secret police, and all that guff—supposing it is guff, we could be wrong about that, too!—who does the talking?”
“We all do, in English. I’m told the Czechs are marvellous linguists, now’s their chance to prove it. And if we do get out of bounds for English, I bet Toddy’s German would get us by well enough.” Tossa withdrew a little, to leave them with an idea they would soon be able to persuade themselves was their own. “Whatever you think, though, I’m easy. But I’ll write for visa applications if you like. They say it only takes a few days. I’m going to make some G.I.D.,” said Tossa, judging her moment nicely, and left them holding it.
“Maybe it does seem a pity not to use the carnet, now we’ve got it,” said Christine reflectively.
“Quickest route on the map,” reported Toddy, sprawled largely across Europe, “is Cassel—Brussels—Aachen, and straight down the autobahn. It takes you right past Wurzburg now, and part-way to Nuremberg. Might have got a bit farther, too, since this was printed.”
“It’s faster travelling through France than Belgium,” warned Christine. “We could just as easily run through to
