It was true that he was fair-minded, more so than most men, He would not receive more credit than he had earned. Better than anyone, he could estimate Luke’s share in the project, and he wanted it made clear.
But although what he said of Luke was truthful, he also knew that men required it. Men liked fairness: it was part of the amenities, if in Bevill’s and Rose’s world you wanted your own way.
Now Martin was coming to his last move but one.
To Drawbell’s room, Bevill and he and Drawbell himself returned from the sickbed. Mounteney and Getliffe accompanied them. Martin wanted those two on his side as well as the officials. If the opportunity did not arrive without forcing it, he was ready to wait. In fact, it came when Bevill asked about Luke’s health.
‘Is that poor chap,’ said Bevill, ‘going to get back into harness?’
‘I hope so,’ said Martin. ‘The doctors seem to think so.’
‘We just don’t know,’ said Drawbell
‘He may never come back, you mean?’ said Bevill.
‘I believe he will,’ said Martin, once more speaking out deliberately on Luke’s behalf.
‘Well,’ said Bevill to Drawbell, ‘I suppose Eliot will carry on?’
‘He’s been doing it for months,’ said Drawbell. ‘I always tell my team no one is indispensable. If any of you go there’s always a better man behind you!’
‘I suppose you can carry on, Eliot, my lad?’ said Bevill to Martin in a jollying tone.
At last Martin saw his opening.
Instead of giving a junior’s yes, he stared down at his hand, and then, after a pause, suddenly looked straight at Bevill with sharp, frowning eyes.
‘There is a difficulty,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether this is the time to raise it.’
Drawbell bobbed and smiled. Now that the young man had grown up, he was having to struggle for his say.
‘I don’t see the difficulty,’ said Bevill. ‘You’ve been doing splendidly, why, you’ve been delivering the goods.’
‘It would ease my mind,’ said Martin, ‘if I could explain a little what I mean.’
Bevill said, ‘That’s what we’re here for.’
Martin said: ‘Well, sir, anyone who is asked to take responsibility for this project is taking responsibility for a good deal more. I think it may be unreasonable to ask him, if he can’t persuade his colleagues that we’re shutting our eyes to trouble.’
Bevill said: ‘The water is getting a bit deep for me.’
Martin asked a question: ‘Does anyone believe we can leave the Sawbridge question where it is?’
‘I see,’ said Bevill.
In fact, the old man had seen minutes before. He was playing stupid to help Martin on.
‘I am sorry to press this,’ said Martin, ‘but I couldn’t let myself be responsible for another Sawbridge.’
‘God forbid,’ said Bevill.
‘Is there any evidence of another?’ said Getliffe.
‘None that I know of,’ said Martin. He was speaking as though determined not to overstate his case. ‘But if we can’t touch this man, it seems to me not impossible that we should have someone follow suit before we’re through.’
‘It’s not impossible.’ Francis Getliffe had to give him the point.
‘It’s not exactly our fault that we haven’t touched your present colleague,’ said Rose.
‘I have a view on that,’ said Martin quietly.
‘We want to hear,’ said Bevill, still keeping the court for Martin.
‘Everything I say here is privileged?’
‘Within these four walls,’ the old man replied.
‘I think there’s a chance that Sawbridge can be broken down,’ said Martin.
‘Captain Hook has tried long enough.’
‘That’s true,’ said Martin, ‘but I think there’s a chance.’
‘How do you see it happening?’
‘It could only be done by someone who knows him.’
‘Who?’
‘I’m ready to try,’ said Martin.
Martin, in the same tone, went on to state his terms. If Sawbridge stayed at large in the project, it was not reasonable to ask Martin, feeling as he did, to take the responsibility. If he were to take it, he needed sanction to join Captain Smith and try to settle ‘the Sawbridge question’ for good and all.
Bevill was enthusiastically in favour; Rose thought it a fair proposal. ‘We want two things,’ said Rose. ‘The first is safety, and the second is as little publicity as we can humanly manage. We should be eternally grateful, my dear Eliot,’ (he was speaking to Martin) ‘if only you could keep us out of the papers.’
‘That won’t be possible,’ said Martin.
‘You mean, there’ll be another trial?’ said Getliffe.
‘It’s necessary,’ said Martin.
Martin had counted on support front Bevill and Rose; he had also set himself to get acquiescence from the scientists. Suddenly he got more than acquiescence, he got wholehearted support where one would have looked for it last. It came from Mounteney. It happened that Mounteney possessed, as well as his scientific ideals, a passionate sense of a man’s pledged word. He forgot about national secrecy (which he loathed) and communism (which in principle he approved of) in his horror that a man like Sawbridge could sign the undertaking of secrecy and then break it. In his pure unpadded integrity Mounteney saw nothing but the monstrosity of breaking one’s oath, and, like Thomas Bevill whom he resembled in no other conceivable fashion, he cried out: ‘I should shoot them! The sooner we shoot them the better!’
In that instant I understood at last the mystery of Mounteney’s surrender before the bomb was dropped, the reason his protest fizzled out.
It was Francis Getliffe who took longest to come round.
‘I should have thought it was enough,’ he said, ‘for you to give Smith all the information you can. I don’t see why you should get involved further than that.’
‘I’m afraid that I must,’ said Martin patiently.
‘There are a great many disadvantages, and no advantages to put against them, in scientists becoming mixed up in police work, even now.’
‘From a long-term view, I think that’s right,’ said Martin.
‘Good work,’ said Francis Getliffe.
‘But,’ said Martin, ‘there are times when one can’t think of the long term, and I suggest this is one.’
‘Why?’
‘Because otherwise no one will make this man confess.’
‘It isn’t proved that you can make the difference.’
‘No,’ Martin replied. ‘I may fail. But I suggest that is not a reason for stopping me.’
At last Francis shook his head, unwittingly assenting, and said: ‘We’ve gone so far, someone was bound to go the whole distance.’ He, who carried so much authority, sounded for once indecisive: as though the things he and others had been forced to do had prepared the way for younger, harder men.
Then Martin put in his last word that afternoon: ‘I think, before we settle it, that I ought to mention Luke and I have not been in complete agreement on this problem.’
‘That’s appreciated,’ said Hector Rose.
Martin spoke as fairly, as firmly, as when he had been giving the credit to Luke.
‘I proposed easing Sawbridge out last summer,’ he remarked. ‘I felt sufficiently strongly about it to put it on the file.’
‘I take it,’ asked Rose, ‘that Luke resisted?’
‘It’s no use crying over spilt milk,’ said Bevill. ‘Now you put us straight.
35: The Brilliance of Suspicion
The day after Martin’s piece of persuasion I did what, at any previous time, I should not have thought twice about. Now I did it deliberately. It was a little thing: I invited Kurt Puchwein to dinner.