“That you might have done something to excuse your presence in my office. What have you got there?”
“Documentary evidence. A fifth column nest.”
“Well, put it down. I’ll have a look at it when I’ve time.”
It was not Colonel Plum’s habit to show enthusiasm before subordinates, but as soon as Basil was gone he began reading the marked passages with close attention. Presently he called for Basil.
“I believe you’re on to something here,” he said. “I’m taking this round to Scotland Yard. Who are these men Squib, Grass and Barebones-Abraham?”
“Don’t you think they sound like pseudonyms?”
“Nonsense. When a man chooses an alias he calls himself Smith or Brown.”
“Have it your own way, sir. I shall be interested to see them in the dock.”
“There won’t be any dock. We shall get this bunch under a special warrant.”
“Shall I come round to Scotland Yard with you?”
“No.”
“Just for that I won’t introduce him to Barebones-Abraham,” said Basil when the Colonel was gone.
“Have we really caught some fifth column at last?” asked Susie.
“I don’t know about ‘we’; I have.”
“Will they be shot?”
“Not all of them I should think.”
“Seems a shame really,” said Susie. “I expect they’re only a bit touched.”
In the pleasure of setting his trap, Basil had not looked forward to its consequences. When Colonel Plum returned to his office two hours later, things seemed to have gone far beyond Basil’s control. “They’re pleased as Punch at Scotland Yard,” he said. “Handing out some very handsome bouquets. The whole thing is buttoned-up. We’ve taken out a special warrant for authors, publishers and printers, but I don’t think we need worry the printers much. Tomorrow morning the man Silk will be arrested at the Ministry of Information; simultaneously Rampole and Bentley’s will be surrounded and entered, all copies of the paper and all correspondence seized. All the office staff will be held pending investigation. What we need now is a description of the men Grass, Squibb and Barebones-Abraham. You might get on to that. I’m going round to see the Home Secretary now.”
There was, at first hearing, a lot about this speech which displeased Basil, and more still when he began to turn the thing over in his mind. In the first place Colonel Plum seemed to be getting all the credit and all the fun. It was he himself, Basil felt, who should be going to see the Home Secretary; he should have been to Scotland Yard to make arrangements for the morrow’s raid; he should have had the handsome bouquets of which Colonel Plum had spoken. It was not for this that he had planned the betrayal of an old friend. Colonel Plum was putting on altogether too much dog.
In the second place the sensation of being on the side of the law was novel to Basil and not the least agreeable. Police raids, for Basil, had in the past always meant escaping over the tiles or through the area; it made him ashamed to hear these things spoken of with tolerance and familiarity.
In the third place he was not absolutely happy in his mind about what Ambrose might say. Even though he was to be deprived of the right of public trial, there would presumably be some kind of investigation at which he would be allowed to give an account of himself. Basil’s share in editing “Monument to a Spartan” was, he felt, better kept as a good story to tell in the right company at the right time not to be made the subject of official and semi-legal enquiry.
And in the fourth place Basil had from long association an appreciable softness of disposition towards Ambrose. Other things being equal, he wished him well rather than ill.
These considerations, in that order of importance, worked in Basil’s mind.
Ambrose’s flat lay in the neighborhood of the Ministry of Information; it was the top floor of a large Bloomsbury mansion; where the marble stairs changed to deal, Ambrose ascended into what had once been the servants’ bedrooms; it was an attic and, so-called, satisfied the ascetic promptings which had affected Ambrose in the year of the great slump. There was, however, little else about the flat to suggest hardship. He had the flair of his race for comfort and for enviable possessions. There were expensive continental editions of works on architecture, there were deep armchairs, an object like an ostrich egg sculptured by Brancusi, a gramophone with a prodigious horn, and a library of records these and countless other features made the living-room dear to him. It is true that the bath was served only by a gas-burning apparatus which at the best gave a niggardly trickle of warm water and, at the worst, exploded in a cloud of poisonous vapours, but apparatus of this kind is the hallmark of the higher intellectuals all the world over. Ambrose’s bedroom compensated for the dangers and discomforts of the bathroom. In this flat he was served by a motherly old Cockney who teased him at intervals for not marrying.
To this flat Basil came very late that night. He had delayed his arrival on purely artistic grounds. Colonel Plum might deny him the excitements of Scotland Yard and the Home Office, but there should be every circumstance of melodrama here. Basil knocked and rang for some time before he made himself heard. Then Ambrose came to the door in a dressing-gown.
“Oh God,” he said. “I suppose you’re drunk” for no friend of Basil’s who maintained a fixed abode in London could ever consider himself immune from his occasional nocturnal visits.
“Let me in. We havent a moment to spare.” Basil spoke in a whisper. “The police will be here at any moment.”
Slightly dazed with sleep, Ambrose admitted him. There are those for whom the word “police” holds no terror. Ambrose was not of them. All his life he had been an outlaw and the days in Munich were still fresh in his memory, when friends disappeared suddenly in the night, leaving no address.
“I’ve brought you this,” said Basil, “and this and this.” He gave Ambrose a clerical collar, a black clerical vest ornamented with a double line of jet buttons, and an Irish passport. “You are Father Flanagan returning to Dublin University. Once in Ireland you’ll be safe.”
“But surely there’s no train at this time.”
“There’s one at eight. You mustn’t be found here. You can sit in the waiting-room at Euston till it comes in. Have you got a breviary?”
“Of course not.”
“Then read a racing paper. I suppose you’ve got dark suit.”
It was significant both of Basil’s fine urgency of manner, and of Ambrose’s constitutionally guilty disposition, that he was already clothed as a clergyman before he said, “But what have I done? Why are they after me?”
“Your magazine. It’s being suppressed. They’re rounding up everyone connected with it.”
Ambrose asked no more. He accepted the fact as a pauper accepts the condition of being perpetually “moved on.” It was something inalienable from his state; the artist’s birthright.
“How did you hear about it?”
“In the War Office.”
“What am I to do about all this?” asked Ambrose helplessly. “The flat, and the furniture, and my books, and Mrs. Carver?”
“I tell you what. If you like I’ll move in and take care of it for you until it’s safe to come back.”
“Would you really, Basil?” said Ambrose, touched. “You’re being very kind.”
For some time now Basil had felt himself unfairly handicapped in his pursuit of Susie by the fact of his living with his mother. He had not thought of this solution. It had come providentially, with rapid and exemplary justice all too rare in life; goodness was being rewarded quite beyond his expectations, if not beyond his deserts.
“I’m afraid the geyser is rather a bore,” said Ambrose apologetically.
They were not far from Euston Station. Packing was the work of a quarter of an hour.
“But, Basil, I must have some clothes.”
“You are an Irish priest. What d’you think the Customs are going to say when they open a trunk full of Charvet ties and crepe-de-Chine pyjamas?”