Colonel Butler's Wolf

She had come straight to the point, rightly assuming that her own brush with death was merely incidental to that answer. There were reserves of strength in adversity there as well as common sense: dummy2.htm

she might need the one, but he must beware of the other.

'I can't tell you. I'm sorry.'

'Because I mustn't ask any questions?'

'Partly that.'

'But that was before—before my car was wrecked. I've more right to ask now.'

'That's true. But there are such things as Official Secrets—' he raised his hand to silence her '—which means there are some things it's safer for people not to know. No point in increasing the risk, eh ?'

He knew as he spoke that he had suddenly struck the wrong note with them. Secrecy had somehow become anathema to young people, an evil in itself, even though a moment's thought should have convinced them that it was inescapable, and that openness was either a meaningless playing to the gallery or a dangerous snare and delusion.

'I should have thought Polly's risk was about at the limit already,' McLachlan said drily.

'That's precisely why you must answer my questions about Neil, Miss Epton. What he knew became a risk— and now what you know has become a risk. But now you have the chance of passing that risk to me.' He looked from one to the other, hopefully. 'It's what I'm paid to carry, after all.'

It was true again. But evidently it still wasn't quite the right key with which to open their suspicious young minds to him, and bend their wills to his purpose. It was a situation Audley would have enjoyed, but which he found sickening.

Before he could stifle that thought an answer came back, undesired and undesirable: Audley would have lied more smoothly and enjoyed the game of lying more, and he would also have pretended to take them into the heart of his confidence and would have sought their help.

The thought of it made Butler's soul cringe—that cynical delight in manipulating the innocent. And though he had heard Audley argue that it was no worse than conscription, the analogy seemed to him.as false and as dangerous as ever: it was far more like the guerrilla trick of pushing civilians out into a no-man's-land to draw the enemy fire.

McLachlan stared at his injured hand for a moment, and then raised his eyes to Butler's, a frown of concentration on his face. 'Whatever Boozy knew, it hadn't anything to do with Oxford,' he began reflectively, speaking aloud to himself. 'There's been nothing cooking here lately—the last lot of Proctors had things buttoned down nicely . . . And if he hadn't been up since he went down . . .'

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Butler grappled with the jargon: coming to Oxford was always 'up' and leaving it was 'down', no matter what one's direction.

'So it was likely at Cumbria . . .' He nodded to himself. 'I seem to remember they've been having their troubles there with the lefties—'

'But nothing like—' Polly searched for a word '—like this.'

They looked at each other solemnly across the kitchen table, oblivious of Butler. He saw with a pang of sympathetic insight what their trouble was: it was to keep hold of reality—to convince themselves that they were inside a nightmare from which no morning alarm clock would free them, and that the anguish and involvement this time was not of their own choice. It had not been a Bengali or a Vietnamese or a Bantu who had been murdered by the 20th century this time; but Neil Smith, who had sat with them at this very same table in this very room.

He wanted desperately to help them, or at least to leave them alone. But Neil Smith had not been Neil Smith, so there was no escape for any of them.

'No,' McLachlan murmured to himself. 'Nothing like this before. But now. . .' He paused, frowning to himself. 'You know, now I come to think of it Hobson's been acting rather strangely just recently. He's been full of dire warnings about dangerous influences.'

Polly shrugged. 'Uncle Geoff's always been pathological about the Communists and the Revolutionary Left. And he's got much worse ever since he ducked his retirement.'

'Oh, I know that,' McLachlan agreed only in order to disagree. 'But this was different. He's usually pretty explicit, but this time he was . . . mysterious. It was almost as though he was warning me that someone was gunning for me.'

He stared at Butler speculatively. 'And not just me. Mike Klobucki got much the same feeling . . . Mike said it was like there was something prowling the crags up at Castleshields and we ought to lock our doors at night. He said it was like being told that Grendel was loose again.' Grendel? Who the devil was Grendel? 'So, Colonel sir—' McLachlan's tone was too elaborately I casual to be anything but deadly serious '—if Grendel's loose up at Castleshields you're going to have to tell us why. Because we're going to be there as well, and you're going to need our help.'

Butler looked at the boy in surprise for a moment before realising that he had let his mouth fall open.

Then he closed his teeth on the irony of it: by refusing to take Audley's way he had done better than even Audley might have done—he had turned conscripts into volunteers.

With a little help from Sir Geoffrey Hobson—and from Grendel, whoever Grendel was.

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XI

IT TOOK BUTLER just over twenty-four hours to find out what he was really doing on Hadrian's Wall, and then he didn't much fancy what he'd discovered.

But there was nothing he could do about it except mutter mutinously under his breath: the thing had gone too far for any protest to be dignified, and in any case he was hamstrung by his own reputation. He could only go forward.

And by God—he couldn't grumble about lack of instructions; he had never had so many orders, or so precise, in