And then again: ‘This isn’t the time to drop bricks. They couldn’t have picked a worse time to drop bricks!’
When I heard Smith talking to scientist after scientist, the monotony, the strain, seemed to resonate with each other, so that the light in the little room became dazzling on the eyes.
To the seniors, Smith had to tell more than he liked. In his creaking, faded, vicarage voice, he said that his ‘people’ knew that Sawbridge had passed information on.
‘How do you know?’ said one of them.
‘Steady on, old son,’ said Captain Smith. He would not explain, but said that beyond doubt they knew.
They also knew which information had ‘gone over’.
Another of the scientists speculated on how much time that data would save the Russians. Not long, he thought; a few months at the most.
Bevill could not contain himself. He burst out: ‘If our people are killed by their bomb, it will be this man’s doing.’ The scientist contradicted him, astonished that laymen should not realize how little scientific secrets were worth. He and Bevill could not understand each other.
Bevill did not have to put on his indignation; it was not just the kind of politician’s horror which sounded as though it had been learnt by heart. He was speaking as he had done yesterday, and as I was to hear others speak, not only among the old ruling classes, but among the humble and obscure for years to come. Bevill had not been shocked by the dropping of the bomb; but this was a blow to the viscera.
Whereas, as they heard the first news of the spies, the scientists were unhappy, but unhappy in a different tone from Bevill’s. They had been appalled by Hiroshima, still more by Nagasaki, and, sitting in that typist’s office, I thought that some at least had got beyond being appalled any more. They were shocked; confused; angry that this news would put them all back in the dark. They felt trapped.
To two of them, Smith, for reasons I did not know, said that one arrest, of the man who had been working in Canada, would happen within days. There had been at least three scientific spies, whom most of the men Smith interviewed that day had known as friendly acquaintances.
For once even Luke was at a loss. Smith seemed to be wasting his time. He had come for two purposes, first to satisfy himself about some of the scientists whom we knew least, and second, to get help in proving his case against Sawbridge. But all he discovered were men shocked, bewildered, sullen.
There was one man, however, who was not shocked nor bewildered nor sullen. It was Martin. His mind was cool, he heard the news as though he had foreseen it and made his calculations. I did not need to look at him, as Smith brought out his elaborate piece of partial explanation. I had expected Martin to see it as his time to act.
Smith asked to have a ‘confab’ with him and Luke together, since Sawbridge was working directly under them. As they sat on the secretary’s desk, he told them, speaking frankly but as though giving an impersonation of frankness, that Sawbridge’s was the most thorough piece of spying so far. The difficulty was, to bring it out against him. Smith’s conclusive evidence could not be produced. The only way was to break him down.
‘You’ve tried?’ said Luke.
‘We should be remiss if we haven’t, said Smith, with his false smile.
‘Without any result?’
‘He’s a tough one,’ said Smith.
‘What does he say?’
‘He just denies it flat and laughs at us, said Smith.
Bevill’s voice and Luke’s sounded soggy with exasperation, but not Martin’s, as he asked:
‘How long can he keep that up?’
His eyes met Smith’s, but Luke disturbed them.
‘Anyway,’ Luke was saying, ‘the first thing is to get this chap out of the laboratory before we shut up shop tonight.’
‘I don’t think that’s right,’ said Martin.
‘What are you getting at, Eliot?’ asked Bevill.
‘I suggest that the sensible thing, sir,’ said Martin, speaking both modestly and certainly, ‘is to leave him exactly where he is.’
‘With great respect,’ Smith said to Luke, after a pause, ‘I wonder if that isn’t the wisest course?’
‘I won’t have him in my lab a day longer,’ said Luke.
‘He might get away with your latest stuff,’ cried old Bevill.
Martin answered him quietly: ‘That can be taken care of, sir.’
‘If we move him,’ Smith appeared to be thinking aloud, ‘we’ve got to make some excuse, and if he isn’t rattled he might require a very good excuse.’
‘How in God’s name can you expect us to work,’ Luke shouted, ‘with a man we can’t talk in front of?’
‘If we leave him where he is,’ said Martin, without a sign of excitement, ‘he would be under my eyes.’
He added: ‘I should very much prefer it so.’
In the middle of the argument, the telephone rang on the far table. It was from Drawbell’s personal assistant, the only person who could get through to us; she was asking to speak to me urgently. In a whisper, only four feet from old Bevill, I took the call.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Eliot,’ she said, ‘but Hanna Puchwein is pressing me, she says that she must speak to you and your brother this afternoon. I said that I mightn’t be able to find you.’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘I suppose you can’t speak to her?’
‘No,’ I said with routine prudence.
‘She said, if I couldn’t get you, that I was to leave a message. She’s most anxious. She told me to say it was urgent for her — for you and Dr Eliot (Martin) to see her before dinner tonight.’
I went back to my place, wrote down the message, put it in an envelope (it was curious how the fug of secrecy caught hold of one, how easy it was to feel like a criminal) and had it passed across the room to Martin. I watched him staring at the note, with his pen raised. Without his face changing, he wrote: ‘No, not until we have discussed it with Smith M.’
Uncertain of himself as I had not seen him, Luke soon gave way. Sawbridge was to stay under observation, and we left Smith alone with Luke and Martin, making arrangements about how Sawbridge must be watched.
Although Martin and I had not once talked without reserve since the August afternoon, I was staying, as usual, in his house. So I waited for him in his laboratory, while he finished the interview with Captain Smith.
As I waited there alone, I could not help trying to catch a glimpse of Sawbridge. His state of jeopardy, of being in danger of hearing a captor’s summons (next week? next month?), drew me with a degrading fascination of which I was ashamed.
It was the same with others, even with Smith, who should have been used to it. The sullen, pale face had only to come within sight — and it was hard to force one’s glance away. It might have been a school through which there moved, catching eyes afraid, ashamed, desiring, a boy of superlative attraction. On the plane of reason, I detested our secret; yet I found myself scratching at it, coming back to it.
Waiting for Martin, I manufactured an excuse to pass through Sawbridge’s laboratory, so that I could study him.
He knew his danger. Just like us who were watching him, he was apprehending when the time — the precise instant of time — would come. It seemed that at moments he was holding his breath, and he found himself taking care of ordinary involuntary physical acts. Instead of walking about the laboratory with his heavy, confident clatter, he went lightly and jaggedly, sometimes on tiptoe, like a man in trepidation by a sickbed. He had grown a moustache, fair against the large-pored skin. He was working on, taking his measurements, writing results in his stationery office notebook. He knew that we were watching. He knew all we knew. He was a brave man, and his opaque, sky-blue eyes looked back with contempt.