valuable.'
'I'll see what I can do. Go left here.'
'Wasn't that the Colonel's car that went by?' asked Leonard suddenly a little later still.
Ross-Donaldson rolled his window down and looked back the way they had come. 'I believe it was, yes.'
'Indicative. It would naturally be assumed that he knew more than his juniors.'
'Logic plus inaccuracy in the pre-informed phase.'
'That's right.' Leonard, who recognized the expression from one of his manuals, was delighted. 'I had no idea you were practiced in phylactological thought.'
'I try to keep up with most things,' said Ross-Donaldson modestly. 'You can park next to these three.'
'Isn't that your jeep there?'
'Indeed it is. Churchill asked if he might borrow it.'
'Ah, there's no danger to be feared in that quarter. I wish everybody was like him.'
'So do I.'
Within another two minutes they were standing in a dimly lit room where a bald-headed man in his forties was reading a journal with the aid of a pencil-torch.
'Where's that man who let us in?' asked Leonard.
'Somewhere. It's often like that here.'
The bald man looked up at them from ten yards away. With a deliberate movement of his wrist alone he brought the light of his torch round so that it illuminated in turn each of the soldiers from head to foot and back again. Then abruptly he returned to his reading.
Leonard was rather disconcerted. 'Has that fellow been round the place before?' He spoke more quietly than usual, but just as thickly and urgently.
'I've never seen him. What about a drink?'
'I'd like some sherry if there is any.'
'There won't be. Gin and tonic or nothing.'
'Gin and tonic, then. Easy on the gin.'
'Right.' Ross-Donaldson raised his voice. 'Can I get you something?'
The bald man continued to read.
While Ross-Donaldson was preparing the drinks, Leonard strolled across the room. His training had stressed the importance of attending to hunch and instinct, especially in what he had learned to call under-facted situations, and there was no doubt that hunch and instinct were telling him something now, though he could not have said quite what.
'Good evening,' he said.
The bald man looked up again, but otherwise stayed as he was. Ten seconds later he said, 'Good evening.'
'Do you come here often?' asked Leonard helplessly.
'No. In fact this is my first visit.'
'Mine too. How did you come to hear about it?'
'Hear about it? The fact of its existence is well known. As is that of its owner.'
'Oh yes, of course, but I mean about what happens here.'
'I think it possible that the two of us may have come here for different purposes.'
'I think we probably have. What have you come for?'
The man raised the light of his torch briefly to Leonard's face, switched it off and put it in his pocket. 'Who are you?' he asked.
'I'm an Army officer. I'm stationed at the camp not far from here. I expect you know the place.'
'I know where it is.'
'I'm engaged on some extremely important and very secret work there.'
'Indeed?' said the man, becoming more friendly. 'It seems as if it may not go on being secret very much longer.'
'Oh? What makes you think that?'
'Logic. If those engaged on it go round telling total strangers they're on secret work, the secret itself is halfway towards being found out. Effective concealment conceals the fact of concealment.'
This was so like something out of his manuals that Leonard needed all his conditioning not to start or exclaim. He took his drink from Ross-Donaldson without looking at him and sipped it with careful slowness.
'That's interesting,' he said. 'What suggested that idea to you?'
'My work.'
