Prelude For War

deflated, trying to persuade themselves that they were not afraid. . . .

Luker's square, powerful hands lay flat on the blotter in front of him, palm downwards, in a pattern that symboli­cally and physically and quite unconsciously expressed an instinct of command that held down all opposition. He went on speaking with relentless precision, and with a subtle but incombatable change of manner.

'You, my dear Algy, have certain connections which will enable you to approach the chief commissioner at Scotland Yard. You will use those connections to find out exactly what Templar told the police in Anford, and report to my secre­tary here as soon as you have the information. I don't think he can have told them anything important, but it will be safer to find out. You,'—he turned to General and Lady Sangore—'will go down to Bledford Manor. Since the house is supposed to be shut up, some local policeman may notice that there are people there and become inquisitive. You must be there to reassure him. You need not see the prisoners if it will embarrass you. I myself am going to Paris tonight, and I have arranged for Templar and Lady Valerie to be taken there—it will be easier to question them and dis­pose of them later on the other side. But there may be a slight delay before they can be moved, and I want you at Bledford as soon as possible as a precaution. You had better leave at once.'

He did not consider any further argument. As far as he I was concerned, there was no more arguing to be done. He simply issued his commands. As he finished he stood up, and before any of them could raise any more objections he had walked out of the room.

They sat still for some moments after he had gone, each knowing what was in the minds of the others, each trying to pretend that he alone was still dominant and unshaken.

Fairweather got up first. He pulled out a big old-fashioned gold watch and consulted it with a brave imitation of his old portly pomposity.

'Well,' he said croakily, 'I must be getting along. Got things to attend to,'

He bustled out, very quickly and busily.

The Sangores looked at each other. Then Lady Sangore spoke.

'It's all that little tart's fault,' she said bitterly. 'If she'd had any sense or decency at all we shouldn't be in all this trouble now. As for Luker, he ought to be kicked out of every club in London.'

'I don't suppose he belongs to every club in London,' said General Sangore dully.

His figure, usually so ramrod erect, was bowed and sag­ging; his shoulders drooped. Suddenly he looked very old and tired and pasty. He seemed bewildered, like a man lost in a chamber of unimaginable horrors; he seemed to be groping through the rusty machinery of his mind for one wheel that would turn to a task for which it had never been designed.

2

'Once upon a time,' said the Saint, 'there was a wall­eyed wombat named Wilhelmina, who lived in a burrow in Tasmania and grieved resentfully over the fact that Nature had endowed her, like all females of the marsupial family, with an abdominal pouch or sac intended for the reception and protection of newborn marsupials. Since,' however, the strabismic asymmetry of Wilhelmina's features had always deterred discriminating males of her species from making such advances to her as might have resulted in the produc­tion of young wombats, she was easily persuaded to regard this useful and ingenious organ as an indecent excrescence invented by the Creator in a lewd and absent-minded mo­ment, and she soon became the leader of a strong movement among other unattractive wombats to suppress all references to it and to decry its use as sinful and reprehensible, and invariably wore a species of apron or sporran to conceal this obscene conformation of tissue from the world. Now it so happened that one night a purblind male wombat named Widgery, of dissolute habits . . .'

He was in the scullery of Bledford Manor with Lady Valerie Woodchester. They sat on the hard cold tile floor with their wrists and ankles bound with strong cord. A smear of blood had dried across Simon's face and in spite of his quiet satiric voice his head was aching savagely. Lady Val­