"The M.P. who asked the question must have been briefed by someone who knew about those plans. Somebody at the conference -- or somebody who was concerned in sending or receiving the plans. Nobody else could have known about them. Their existence is admitted by the Minister."
"Yes, yes. That's true."
"It's strange that anyone in that position should spread a canard. And do you notice that in that smooth elusive way politicians have the Minister doesn't, in fact, deny that the plans were missing? He says that they weren't wanted, and that when they were wanted they were there."
"You mean there was time to photograph them?" Johns said excitedly. "Would you mind if I smoked a cigarette? Here, let me take your tray." He spilt some coffee on the bed-sheet. "Do you know," he said, "there was a suggestion of that kind made nearly three months ago? It was just after your arrival. I'll look it out for you. Dr Forester keeps a file of The Times. Some papers were missing then for several hours. They tried to hush that up -- said it was just a case of carelessness and that the papers had never been out of the Ministry. An M.P. made a fuss -- talked about photographs, and they came down on him like a sledge-hammer. Trying to undermine public confidence. The papers had never left the possession -- I can't remember whose possession. Somebody whose word you had to take or else one of you would go to Brixton, and you could feel sure that it wouldn't be he. The papers shut down on it right away."
"It would be strange, wouldn't it, if the same thing had happened again."
Johns said excitedly, "Nobody outside would know. And the others wouldn't say."
"Perhaps the first time was a failure. Perhaps the photos didn't come out properly. Someone bungled. And of course they couldn't use the same man twice. They had to wait until they got their hands on a second man. Until they had him carded and filed in the Ministry of Fear." He thought aloud, "I suppose the only men they couldn't blackmail for something shabby would be saints -- or outcasts with nothing to lose."
"You weren't a detective," Johns exclaimed, "you were a detective writer."
Digby said, "You know, I feel quite tired. The brain begins to tick and then suddenly I feel so tired I could lie down and sleep. Perhaps I will." He closed his eyes and then opened them again. "The thing to do," he said, "would be to follow up the first case. . . the bungled one, to find the point of failure." Then he slept.
5
It was a fine afternoon, and Digby went for a solitary walk in the garden. Several days had passed since Anna Hilfe's visit, and he felt restless and moody like a boy in love. He wanted an opportunity to show that he was no invalid, that his mind could work as well as another man's. There was no satisfaction in shining before Johns. . . He dreamed wildly between the box-hedges.
The garden was of a rambling kind which should have belonged to childhood and only belonged to childish men. The apple trees were old apple trees and gave the effect of growing wild; they sprang unexpectedly up in the middle of a rose-bed, trespassed on a tennis-court, shaded the window of a little outside lavatory like a potting-shed which was used by the gardener -- an old man who could always be located from far away by the sound of a scythe or the trundle of a wheelbarrow. A high red brick wall divided the flower-garden from the kitchen-garden and the orchard, but flowers and fruit could not be imprisoned by a wall. Flowers broke among the artichokes and sprang up like flames under the trees. Beyond the orchard the garden faded gradually out into paddocks and a stream and a big untidy pond with an island the size of a billiard-table.
It was by the pond that Digby found Major Stone. He heard him first: a succession of angry grunts like a dog dreaming. Digby scrambled down a bank to the black edge of the water and Major Stone turned his very clear blue military eyes on him and said, "The job's got to be done." There was mud all over his tweed suit and mud on his hands; he had been throwing large stones into the water and now he was dragging a plank he must have found in the potting-shed along the edge of the water.
"It's sheer treachery," Major Stone said, "to leave a place like that unoccupied. You could command the whole house. . ." He slid the plank forward so that one end rested on a large stone. "Steady does it," he said. He advanced the plank inch by inch towards the next stone. "Here," he said, "you ease it along. I'll take the other end."
"Surely you aren't going in?"
"No depth at this side," Major Stone said, and walked straight into the pond. The black mud closed over his shoes and the turn-ups of his trousers. "Now," he said, "push. Steady does it." Digby pushed, but pushed too hard: the plank toppled sideways into the mud. "Damnation," said Major Stone. He bent and heaved and brought the plank up: scattering mud up to his waist, he lugged it ashore.
"Apologize," he said. "My temper's damned short. You aren't a trained man. Good of you to help."
"I'm afraid I wasn't much good."
"Just give me half a dozen sappers," Major Stone said, "and you'd see. . ." He stared wistfully across at the little bushy island. "But it's no good asking for the impossible. We've just got to make do. We'd manage all right if it wasn't for all this treachery." He looked Digby in the eyes as though he were sizing him up. "I've seen you about here a lot," he said. "Never spoke to you before. Liked the look of you, if you don't mind my saying so. I suppose you've been sick like the rest of us. Thank God, I'll be leaving here soon. Able to be of use again. What's been your trouble?"
"Loss of memory," Digby said.
"Been out there?" the major asked, jerking his head in the direction of the island.
"No, it was a bomb. In London."
"A bad war, this," the major said. "Civilians with shell-shock." It was uncertain whether he disapproved of the civilians or the shell-shock. His stiff fair hair was grizzled over the ears, and his very blue eyes peered out from under a yellow thatch. The whites were beautifully clear; he was a man who had always kept himself fit and ready to be of use. Now that he wasn't fit and wasn't of use, an awful confusion ruled the poor brain. He said, "There was treachery somewhere or it would never have happened," and turning his back abruptly on the island and the muddy remnants of his causeway, he scrambled up the bank and walked briskly towards the house.
Digby strolled on. At the tennis-court a furious game was in progress -- a really furious game. The two men leapt and sweated and scowled; their immense concentration was the only thing that looked abnormal about Still and Fishguard, but when the set was over, they would grow shrill and quarrelsome and a little hysterical. The same climax would be reached at chess. . .
The rose-garden was sheltered by two walls: one the wall of the vegetable-garden, the other the high wall that cut communication -- except for one small door -- with what Dr Forester and Johns called euphemistically "the sick bay". Nobody cared to talk about the sick bay -- grim things were assumed, a padded room, strait-jackets. You could see only the top windows from the garden, and they were barred. Not one man in the sanatorium was ignorant of how close he lived to that quiet wing. Hysteria over a game, a sense of treachery, in the case of Davis tears that came too easily -- they knew those things meant sickness just as much as violence did. They had signed away their freedom to Dr Forester in the hope of escaping worse, but if worse happened the building was there on the spot -- "the sick bay" -- there would be no need to travel to a strange asylum. Only Digby felt quite free from its shadow; the sick bay was not there for a happy man. Behind him the voices rose shrilly from the tennis-court: Fishguard's "I tell you it was inside". "Out." "Are you accusing me of cheating?" "You ought to have your eyes seen to" -- that was Still. The voices sounded so irreconcilable that you would have said such a quarrel could have no other end than blows -- but no blow was ever struck. Fear of the sick bay perhaps. The voices went suddenly off the air like an unpopular turn. When the dusk fell Still and Fishguard would be in the lounge playing chess together.