"You won't want the cake?" Mrs Purvis asked.
"Well, perhaps this gentleman would rather have a biscuit. . .?"
"I'm very fond of cake," the stranger said sharply, "when it's good cake," as though his taste were the only thing that mattered, and he stamped out his Caporal on the floor.
"Then fetch it, Mrs Purvis, and a pot of tea."
The stranger hoisted his deformed figure round in the chair to watch the cake brought in. Certainly he was fond of cake: it was as though he couldn't keep his eyes off it. He seemed to hold his breath until it reached the table safely; then he sat impatiently forward in his chair. "A knife, Mrs Purvis?"
"Oh dear, oh dear. This time of night," Mrs Purvis explained, "I always get forgetful. It's the sireens."
"Never mind," Rowe said, "I'll use my own." He brought tenderly out of his pocket his last remaining treasure -- a big schoolboy's knife. He couldn't resist displaying its beauties to a stranger -- the corkscrew, the tweezers, the blade that shot open and locked when you pressed a catch. "There's only one shop you can get these in now," he said, "a little place off the Haymarket." But the stranger paid him no attention, waiting impatiently to see the knife slide in. Far away on the outskirts of London the sirens began their nightly wail.
The stranger's voice said, "Now you and I are intelligent men. We can talk freely. . . about things." Rowe had no idea what he meant. Somewhere two miles above their heads an enemy bomber came up from the estuary. "Where are you? Where are you?" its uneven engine-beat pronounced over and over again. Mrs Purvis had left them; there was a scrambling on the stairs as she brought her bedding down, a slam of the front door: she was making for her favourite shelter down the street. "There's no need for people like you and me to get angry," the stranger said, "about things."
He pushed his great deformed shoulder into the light, getting nearer to Rowe, sidling his body to the chair's edge. "The stupidity of this war," he said. "Why should you and I. . . intelligent men. . .?" He said, "They talk about democracy, don't they. But you and I don't swallow stuff like that. If you want democracy -- I don't say you do, but if you want it -- you must go to Germany for it. What do you want?" he suddenly inquired.
"Peace," Rowe said.
"Exactly. So do we."
"I don't suppose I mean your kind of peace."
But the stranger listened to nobody but himself. He said, "We can give you peace. We are working for peace."
"Who are we?"
"My friends and I."
"Conscientious objectors?"
The deformed shoulder moved impatiently. He said, "One can worry too much about one's conscience."
"What else could we have done? Let them take Poland too without a protest?"
"You and I are men who know the world." When the stranger leant forward, his chair slid an inch with him, so that he bore steadily down on Rowe like something mechanized. "We know that Poland was one of the most corrupt countries in Europe."
"Who are we to judge?"
The chair groaned nearer. "Exactly. A Government like the one we had. . . and have. . ."
Rowe said slowly, "It's like any other crime. It involves the innocent. It isn't any excuse that your chief victim was. . . dishonest, or that the judge drinks. . ."
The stranger took him up. Whatever he said had an intolerable confidence. "How wrong you are. Why, even murder can sometimes be excused. We've all known cases, haven't we. . .?"
"Murder. . ." Rowe considered slowly and painfully. He had never felt this man's confidence about anything. He said, "They say, don't they, that you shouldn't do evil that good may come."
"Oh, poppycock," sneered the little man. "The Christian ethic. You're intelligent. Now I challenge you. Have you ever really followed that rule?"
"No," Rowe said. "No."
"Of course not," the stranger said. "Haven't we checked up on you? But even without that, I could have told. . . you're intelligent. . ." It was as if intelligence was the password to some small exclusive society. "The moment I saw you, I knew you weren't -- one of the sheep." He started violently as a gun in a square near-by went suddenly off, shaking the house, and again faintly up from the coast came the noise of another plane. Nearer and nearer the guns opened up, but the plane pursued its steady deadly tenor until again one heard, "Where are you? Where are you?" overhead and the house shook to the explosion of the neighbouring gun. Then a whine began, came down towards them like something aimed deliberately at this one insignificant building. But the bomb burst half a mile away: you could feel the ground dent. "I was saying," the stranger said, but he'd lost touch, he had mislaid his confidence: now he was just a cripple trying not to be frightened of death. He said, "We're going to have it properly tonight. I hoped they were just passing. . ."
Again the drone began.
"Have another piece of cake?" Rowe asked. He couldn't help feeling sorry for the man: it wasn't courage in his own case that freed him from fear so much as loneliness. "It may not be. . ." he waited till the scream stopped and the bomb exploded -- very near this time -- probably the end of the next street: The Little Duke had fallen on its side. . . "much." They waited for a stick of bombs to drop, pounding a path towards them, but there were no more.
"No, thank you -- that's to say, please, yes." The man had a curious way of crumbling the cake when he took a slice: it might have been nerves. To be a cripple in wartime, Rowe thought, is a terrible thing; he felt dangerous pity stirring in the bowels. "You say you checked me up, but who are you?" He cut himself a piece of cake and felt the stranger's eyes on him all the time like a starving man watching through the heavy plate-glass window the gourmet in the restaurant. Outside an ambulance screamed by, and again a plane came up. The night's noise and fires and deaths were now in train; they would go on like a routine till three or four in the morning: a bombing pilot's eight-hour day. He said, "I was telling you about this knife. . ." During the intense preoccupation of a raid it was hard to stick to any one line of thought.
The stranger interrupted, laying a hand on his wrist -- a nervous bony hand attached to an enormous arm. "You know there's been a mistake. That cake was never meant for you."
"I won it. What do you mean?"
"You weren't meant to win it. There was a mistake in the figures."
"It's a bit late now to worry, isn't it?" Rowe said. "We've eaten nearly half."
But the cripple took no notice of that. He said, "They've sent me here to get it back. We'll pay in reason."
"Who are they?"
But he knew who they were. It was comic; he could see the whole ineffective rabble coming across the grass at him: the elderly woman in the floppy hat who almost certainly painted water-colours, the intense whimsical lady who had managed the raffle, and wonderful Mrs Bellairs. He smiled and drew his hand away. "What are you all playing at?" he asked. Never had a raffle, surely, been treated quite so seriously before. "What good is the cake to you now?"
The other watched him with gloom. Rowe tried to raise the cloud. "I suppose," he said, "it's the principle of the thing. Forget it and have another cup of tea. I'll fetch the kettle."