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“Not yet, but perhaps he will some day. He has a foolish prejudice against going again to

Germany, he was a prisoner of war there, my dear young lady.”

“But,” said Liese, “if he is a great musician, he will be very welcome in Germany. We—

they—are very musical.”

“He knows that quite well. In fact, he has been invited to go, but he says he is afraid that

if he hears German spoken all round him again, he will get that locked-up feeling. It must be

terrible, to be in prison. You have heard him play somewhere, possibly,” to Denton, who was

looking at the photograph.

“No,” said Denton, “but I have seen him play.’”

“Seen, but not heard—like a good child?” But Denton did not smile.

“He was playing five-finger exercises on a packing-case when I saw him. Someone who

was with me said that was Dixon Ogilvie, a musician.”

“And this was—”

“A very long time ago,” said Denton, looking away out of the window into the dark, and

Ogilvie was too tactful to pursue the subject.

“Are you going to stay in Paris, sir?” asked Denton, returning to the present day.

“I fear not, this time. I am going straight through.”

“Couldn’t you stay for one afternoon to perform another good deed? If it is a good deed

to abet us in a rash one? Will you be a witness at our marriage?”

“My dear fellow,” said Ogilvie, “for a thing like that I would postpone any business. I am

really honoured that you should ask me—I cannot think why.”

“It’s a stupid reason,” said Denton, leaning back, “but there was a man who would have

been at my wedding, and you are connected with a friend of his, if you would stand proxy, I

should be most frightfully obliged—sentimental of me, isn’t it, but these are sentimental

occasions—”

“Tell me the time and place,” said Ogilvie.

“Dear Charles, does your head ache again? You look as though it did.”

“A little,
liebchen
. I don’t know yet, sir, but I’m going to the British Embassy in the

morning to see about it—”

“And you will both lunch with me at Maxim’s at one, eh? Splendid, and now I think we

should all try to sleep a little, it is getting late and those must be the lights of Nancy.”

Hambledon went to Weber’s, the tobacconist’s, to buy cigarettes and found him in a state

of mental disturbance. He knocked things over, produced the wrong brand, muttered to himself,

and forgot the price.

“I’m afraid something is worrying you to-day,” said the Deputy Chief of Police

sympathetically.

“It is kind of you to notice it,” said Weber. “I have had distressing news, Herr Lehmann,

that is all.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Can I do anything?”

“No one can do anything. I have lost my daughter.”

“Great heavens!” said the startled Hambledon. “That charming child dead! What can

have happened?”

“She was to go and spend a little while with an aunt in Switzerland, and in the disturbed

state of affairs at the moment I thought it better she should travel with an escort rather than

alone. She went, therefore, with a Swiss friend of mine, Herr Dedler, whom I could have sworn

to be a man completely trustworthy. But what happened?”

“For pity’s sake tell me,” said Hambledon earnestly. (What the devil had that fool Denton

been up to?)

“See this telegram, gracious sir. I received it an hour ago.”

It ran:

Paris, 15.45 16.7.34. Married to-day entreat paternal blessing letter follows. Charles and

Liese.

“Cheer up,” said the relieved Hambledon. “They’re only married.”

“She is lost to me, Herr Lehmann,” said Weber mournfully. “I want my little daughter.”

“Nonsense, my good Weber. She will return bringing her sheaves with her—probably.”

“Sheaves?”

“A poetic touch. Grandchildren, Herr Weber.”

“Grandchildren,” said Weber, “are all very well in their place, but will they order the

dinner? No. Engage and dismiss servants? No. Fetch my pipe and slippers, perhaps, in about six

years’ time but not before, and in the meantime I shall have to pay a housekeeper who will order

me about and probably rob me. Grandchildren, no. I want my daughter. I want Liese.”

“There is another disadvantage attached to these particular grandchildren,” said

Hambledon, with his eyes on the other’s face.

“What is that, Herr Lehmann?”

“Herr Dedler is, I think you said, a Swiss? They will not be Germans.”

The tobacconist dropped his eyes instantly, but Hambledon had seen in them the gleam

which he expected, also the slow colour rose to Weber’s temples.

“I—had not thought of that,” he muttered.

“They will come here to see you, of course. But they will be brought up in another land,

go to distant schools, and play in fields that are very far away.”

Weber bit his lip and did not answer.

“I did not mean to distress you, Herr Weber. I will come again some day soon,” said

Hambledon, and walked out of the shop.

“Distress me!” said Weber to himself. “That German said the one thing that would really

comfort me, if he only knew it. I have a good excuse, now, in going to see my married daughter,

and who cares if an obscure tobacconist stays in Switzerland or goes on to England? Then I

myself will walk again in those fields which are very far away.”

“Poor old buffer,” said Hambledon to himself. “I bet he bolts off to England via

Switzerland before many moons have waned. Why am I so poetic? Oh, yes, honeymoon of

course; who’d have thought it of Denton? That thump on the head must have been much too

hard, it’s softened his brain. He’s a lucky man, though, she’s a nice little thing—that is, if you

like nice domestic little things—Fancy my telling him to go and elope, and he actually did it,

what a frightful responsibility.”

He reached home without incident, since the Purge had ceased its more active

manifestations some days earlier, and went in search of Reck with a bottle of sparkling Moselle

in his hand. He found the old man in his bedroom, sitting slumped in an armchair staring at

nothing.

“Cheer up, old thing,” said Hambledon breezily, “and have a drink. I’ve got a toast for

you to honour.”

“Eh? What? I’ll have a drink, certainly, though I don’t like that gassy-stuff. What is there

to drink to; has the shooting stopped?”

“Days ago, you old dormouse,” said Hambledon, extracting the cork. “Why don’t you go

out and see for yourself instead of frowsting in here this lovely weather? Do you good.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” growled Reck. “I hate these hearty cold-bath ideas of yours about

health. The window’s open, what more d’you want?”

“Here you are,” said Hambledon, handing him a glass. “It should be Veuve Clicquot, of

course, but that’s unpatriotic so we drink Moselle. The happy pair!
Hoch!
”

“
Hoch!
But we aren’t a happy pair, at least I’m not if you are.”

“No, I’m still completely single. We are drinking to two people you’ve never met. Yes,

of course you did. Denton, remember Denton? He was in Köln with Bill after I left.”

“Was that his name? He called himself Wolff then, I remember, Ludwig Wolff. An

impertinent youth in those days. Is he married? Serve him right, I hope she beats him.”

“You’re a cheerful sort of devil to celebrate with, I must say. Never mind, here’s luck to

them. Now, here’s a message I want coded and sent out to-night ...”

Denton came to the Foreign Office to report to his Chief, and the old Colonel from

Sussex, who could not let this riddle alone, was there also.

“I found out who it is,” he said. “As you were, that’s wrong. I didn’t find him out, he

found me. It is Hambledon.”

“Hambledon,” said the Foreign Office man. “Good Lord, it can’t be, he’s dead.”

“Hambledon,” said the Colonel. “Thank God.”

Denton told his story in full detail up to the point where Hambledon left him for the last

time.

“So we don’t know now who he is in Germany,” said Denton’s Chief, “and instructions

will be issued forthwith that no attempt shall be made to find out.”

“From what I remember of the man he is probably impersonating Adolf Hitler,” said the

Colonel, “having thrown the original, wrapped in wire netting with a couple of flagstones as

anchor, down the well of somebody he doesn’t like.”

“He is certainly a star,” said Denton. “If I’d organized a man-sized revolution in a foreign

capital city and it had ‘gone wrong a little’ as he put it, I should bolt at once. Not he. He opens

the door to callers, with a gun in each of his pockets, and waits till the storm subsides. All the

same, I wouldn’t like to be the man who shot Bill Saunders, if anyone did.”

“Were there many people—er—I think liquidated is the fashionable phrase?” asked the

Colonel.

“I don’t know, sir. I was too busy skulking in a cellar to inquire.”

“By the way, you have not told us how you got out.”

“Oh, quite easily. Hambledon provided facilities and I came home via Switzerland. I had

a week in bed at Basle as my head came back at me, and then pottered home.”

“Facilities,” repeated the Colonel, and smiled.

“Anything more to report, Denton?”

“No, sir. Except that I’ve committed holy matrimony.”

If he expected surprise he was mistaken, for the Colonel merely smiled again and the

Foreign Office man uncovered a short memorandum.

“I have here,” he said, “congratulations for you, which have been awaiting you here since

4.15 a.m.”

Denton took the paper. The message ran: “T-L-T Denton Foreign Office a.a.a.

Congratulations fast work a.a.a. told you to elope didn’t I a.a.a. present follows a.a.a. sincerest

good wishes.”

Denton’s jaw dropped. “How the devil did he know?” he said slowly.

“Don’t ask me,” said his Chief. “Congratulations, Denton, wish you every happiness.”

“Congratulations, Denton,” said the Colonel. “Lucky fellow. And when may I see the

lady?”

“Now, sir, if you’d care to? She’s waiting outside in a taxi.”

“Lead on, my dear fellow. And—er—when you want a christening-mug, let me know.”

Henry Winter went to Germany to buy fancy leather goods for the large departmental

store to which he belonged. He went from place to place unhindered, a short fat man with a bald

head, sincerely welcomed by all who had to do business with him and quite unnoticed by anyone

else. In late November 1935 the Exchange was no longer so favourable to the foreigner in

Germany as it had been, but he was still able to buy advantageously goods which would sell

profitably in the English market. He spent a few pounds on the carved wooden and ivory goods

of the Black Forest area as an experiment to see if they would go, bought, as he always did, a

present for his wife, in Cologne this time, and settled himself with a sigh of relief in the train for

the frontier, homeward bound.

“I’m always glad when I’ve completed a buying tour,” he said. He had made

acquaintance with a German commercial traveller in the same compartment, he usually found

someone to talk to, for he was a sociable man. “It’s a great responsibility, and though I have

always given the firm satisfaction so far, one always wonders. It isn’t as though it were one’s

own money one is spending.”

“It is evident from what the Herr says that he is a conscientious man,” said the German

politely, “and the efforts of such men always deserve appreciation.”

“It isn’t enough just to be conscientious. One has to use imagination, for it is a sheer

gamble to try to please the public.”

“It is a gift, not a gamble, to be able to please the public. Besides, you speak our language

so well.”

“I ought to,” said Winter with a laugh, “I spent nearly three years learning it. I was a

prisoner of war.”

“Were you indeed? I myself fought on the Western Front. Where were you captured?”

“Near Souchez in ’15. You know, just north of Arras. I was out with a wiring party, when

—”

“Souchez in ’15? Why, our lot were down there in ’15. Let me see, that would be August

onwards. August the 22nd if I remember rightly.”

“Oh, I was captured before that. May the 12th, not likely to forget that date, eh? You see,

I was out with—”

“May the 12th? Why, my brother was near there then. He was killed on the 30th of May.

I wonder if his lot gathered you in. What regiment were they, d’you know?”

“Well, it was like this. I was out with a wiring party, when all of a sudden—”

After which the conversation proceeded on the lines customary in all war reminiscences.

“Gave us bread and soup—”

“My father was a sergeant of Uhlans, terribly proud of it.”

“Awful boredom, couldn’t stick it. So when I was sent on a farm—”

“I was wounded in ’16—”

“Thawing out frozen turnips—”

“The British blockade—”

“Decent old fellow, used to write to him till—”

When at last the train slowed down for the frontier station at Aachen Winter said, “Never

known this trip pass so quickly. See you again after we’ve passed the customs? Right. Damned

nuisance, these customs. There, see how talking over old times brings ’em back, don’t believe

I’ve said ‘damn’ for ten years except when I’ve hit my thumb with a hammer or some such.

Well, see you later.”

Winter pushed his suit-case across the counter to be searched for surplus currency with