Put Out More Flags

  “I believe you’re on to something here,” he said. “I’m taking this round to Scotland Yard. Who are these men Squib, Grass and Barebones-Abraham?”

  “Don’t you think they sound like pseudonyms?”

  “Nonsense. When a man chooses an alias he calls himself Smith or Brown.”

  “Have it your own way, sir. I shall be interested to see them in the dock.”

  “There won’t be any dock. We shall get this bunch under a special warrant.”

  “Shall I come round to Scotland Yard with you?”

  “No.”

  “Just for that I won’t introduce him to Barebones-Abraham,” said Basil when the Colonel was gone.

  “Have we really caught some fifth column at last?” asked Susie.

  “I don’t know about ‘we’; I have.”

  “Will they be shot?”

  “Not all of them I should think.”

  “Seems a shame really,” said Susie. “I expect they’re only a bit touched.”

  In the pleasure of setting his trap, Basil had not looked forward to its consequences. When Colonel Plum returned to his office two hours later, things seemed to have gone far beyond Basil’s control. “They’re pleased as Punch at Scotland Yard,” he said. “Handing out some very handsome bouquets. The whole thing is buttoned up. We’ve taken out a special warrant for authors, publishers and printers, but I don’t think we need worry the printers much. Tomorrow morning the man Silk will be arrested at the Ministry of Information; simultaneously Rampole and Bentley’s will be surrounded and entered, all copies of the paper and all correspondence seized. All the office staff will be held pending investigation. What we need now is a description of the men Grass, Squib and Barebones-Abraham. You might get on to that. I’m going round to see the Home Secretary now.”

  There was, at first hearing, a lot about this speech which displeased Basil, and more still when he began to turn the thing over in his mind. In the first place Colonel Plum seemed to be getting all the credit and all the fun. It was he himself, Basil felt, who should be going to see the Home Secretary; he should have been to Scotland Yard to make arrangements for the morrow’s raid; he should have had the handsome bouquets of which Colonel Plum had spoken. It was not for this that he had planned the betrayal of an old friend. Colonel Plum was putting on altogether too much dog.

  In the second place the sensation of being on the side of the law was novel to Basil and not the least agreeable. Police raids, for Basil, had in the past always meant escaping over the tiles or through the area; it made him ashamed to hear these things spoken of with tolerance and familiarity.

  In the third place he was not absolutely happy in his mind about what Ambrose might say. Even though he was to be deprived of the right of public trial, there would presumably be some kind of investigation at which he would be allowed to give an account of himself. Basil’s share in editing Monument to a Spartan was, he felt, better kept as a good story to tell in the right company at the right time; not to be made the subject of official and semi-legal enquiry.

  And in the fourth place Basil had from long association an appreciable softness of disposition towards Ambrose. Other things being equal, he wished him well rather than ill.

  These considerations, in that order of importance, worked in Basil’s mind.

  Ambrose’s flat lay in the neighborhood of the Ministry of Information; it was the top floor of a large Bloomsbury mansion; where the marble stairs changed to deal, Ambrose ascended into what had once been the servants’ bedrooms; it was an attic and, so called, satisfied the ascetic promptings which had affected Ambrose in the year of the great slump. There was, however, little else about the flat to suggest hardship. He had the flair of his race for comfort and for enviable possessions. There were expensive continental editions of works on architecture, there were deep armchairs, an object like an ostrich egg sculptured by Brancusi, a gramophone with a prodigious horn and a library of records—these and countless other features made the living-room dear to him. It is true that the bath was served only by a gas-burning apparatus which at the best gave a niggardly trickle of warm water and, at the worst, exploded in a cloud of poisonous vapors, but apparatus of this kind is the hall-mark of the higher intellectuals all the world over. Ambrose’s bedroom compensated for the dangers and discomforts of the bathroom. In this flat he was served by a motherly old Cockney who teased him at intervals for not marrying.

  To this flat Basil came very late that night. He had delayed his arrival on purely artistic grounds. Colonel Plum might deny him the excitements of Scotland Yard and the Home Office, but there should be every circumstance of melodrama here. Basil knocked and rang for some time before he made himself heard. Then Ambrose came to the door in a dressing-gown.

  “Oh God,” he said. “I suppose you’re drunk,” for no friend of Basil’s who maintained a fixed abode in London could ever consider himself immune from his occasional nocturnal visits.

  “Let me in. We haven’t a moment to spare.” Basil spoke in a whisper. “The police will be here at any moment.”

  Slightly dazed with sleep, Ambrose admitted him. There are those for whom the word “police” hold no terror. Ambrose was not of them. All his life he had been an outlaw and the days in Munich were still fresh in his memory when friends disappeared suddenly in the night, leaving no address.

  “I’ve brought you this,” said Basil, “and this and this.” He gave Ambrose a clerical collar, a black clerical vest ornamented with a double line of jet buttons and an Irish passport. “You are Father Flanagan returning to Dublin University. Once in Ireland you’ll be safe.”

  “But surely there’s no train at this time.”

  “There’s one at eight. You mustn’t be found here. You can sit in the waiting-room at Euston till it comes in. Have you got a breviary?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then read a racing paper. I suppose you’ve got a dark suit.”

  It was significant both of Basil’s fine urgency of manner, and of Ambrose’s constitutionally guilty disposition, that he was already clothed as a clergyman before he said, “But what have I done? Why are they after me?”

  “Your magazine. It’s being suppressed. They’re rounding up everyone connected with it.”

  Ambrose asked no more. He accepted the fact as a pauper accepts the condition of being perpetually “moved on.” It was something inalienable from his state; the artist’s birthright.

  “How did you hear about it?”

  “In the War Office.”

  “What am I to do about all this?” asked Ambrose helplessly. “The flat, and the furniture and my books and Mrs. Carver.”

  “I tell you what. If you like I’ll move in and take care of it for you until it’s safe to come back.”

  “Would you really, Basil?” said Ambrose, touched. “You’re being very kind.”

  For some time now Basil had felt himself unfairly handicapped in his pursuit of Susie, by the fact of his living with his mother. He had not thought of this solution. It had come providentially, with rapid and exemplary justice all too rare in life; goodness was being rewarded quite beyond his expectations, if not beyond his deserts.

  “I’m afraid the geyser is rather a bore,” said Ambrose apologetically.

  They were not far from Euston Station. Packing was the work of a quarter of an hour.

  “But, Basil, I must have some clothes.”

  “You are an Irish priest. What d’you think the Customs are going to say when they open a trunk full of Charvet ties and crêpe-de-Chine pajamas?”

  Ambrose was allowed one suitcase.

  “I’ll look after all this for you,” said Basil, surveying the oriental profusion of expensive underclothes which filled the many drawers and presses of the bedroom. “You’ll have to walk to the station, you know.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?”

  “Taxi might be traced. Can’t take any chances.”

  The suitcase had seemed small enough when
Basil first selected it as the most priestly of the rather too smart receptacles in Ambrose’s box-room; it seemed enormous as they trudged northward through the dark streets of Bloomsbury. At last they reached the classic columns of the railway terminus. It is not a cheerful place at the best of times, striking a chill in the heart of the gayest holiday-maker. Now in war time, before dawn on a cold Spring morning, it seemed the entrance to a sepulcher.

  “I’ll leave you here,” said Basil. “Keep out of sight until the train is in. If anyone speaks to you, tell your beads.”

  “I haven’t any beads.”

  “Then contemplate. Go into an ecstasy. But don’t open your mouth or you’re done.”

  “I’ll write to you when I get to Ireland.”

  “Better not,” said Basil, cheerfully.

  He turned away and was immediately lost in the darkness. Ambrose entered the station. A few soldiers slept on benches, surrounded by their kit and equipment. Ambrose found a corner darker, even, than the general gloom. Here, on a packing-case that seemed by its smell to contain fish of a sort, he sat waiting for dawn; black hat perched over his eyes, black overcoat wrapped close about his knees, mournful and black eyes open, staring into the blackness. From the fishy freight below him water oozed slowly on to the pavement making a little pool, as though of tears.

  Mr. Rampole was not, as many of his club acquaintances supposed, a bachelor, but a widower of long standing. He lived in a small but substantial house at Hampstead and there maintained in servitude a spinster daughter. On this fateful morning his daughter saw him off from the front gate as had been her habit years without number, at precisely 8.45. Mr. Rampole paused on the flagged path to comment on the buds which were breaking everywhere in the little garden.

  Look well at those buds, old Rampole; you will not see the full leaf.

  “I’ll be back at six,” he said.

  Presumptuous Rampole, who shall tell what the day will bring forth? Not his daughter, who returned unmoved by the separation, to eat a second slice of toast in the dining-room; not old Rampole who strode at a good pace towards the Hampstead Underground.

  He showed his season ticket to the man at the lift.

  “I shall have to get it renewed the day after tomorrow,” he said affably, and tied a knot in the corner of his large white handkerchief to remind him of the fact.

  There is no need for that knot, old Rampole; you will never again travel in the Hampstead Underground.

  He opened his morning paper as he had done, five days a week, years without number. He turned first to the Deaths, then to the correspondence, then, reluctantly, to the news of the day.

  Never again, old Rampole, never again.

  The police raid on the Ministry of Information, like so many similar enterprises, fell flat. First the plain clothes men had the utmost difficulty in getting past the gate-keeper.

  “Is Mr. Silk expecting you?”

  “We hope not.”

  “Then you can’t see him.”

  When finally they were identified and allowed to pass, there was a confused episode in the religious department where they found only the Nonconformist minister, whom, too zealously, they proceeded to handcuff. It was explained that Ambrose was unaccountably absent from duty that morning. Two constables were left to await his arrival. All through the day they sat there, casting a gloom over the religious department. The plain clothes men proceeded to Mr. Bentley’s room where they were received with great frankness and charm.

  Mr. Bentley answered all their questions in a manner befitting an honest citizen. Yes, he knew Ambrose Silk both as a colleague at the Ministry and, formerly, as one of their authors at Rampoles. No, he had almost nothing to do with publishing these days; he was too busy with all this (an explanatory gesture which embraced the dripping sink, the Nollekens busts and the page of arabesques beside the telephone). Mr. Rampole was in entire charge of the publishing firm. Yes, he thought he had heard of some magazine which Silk was starting. The Ivory Tower? Was that the name? Very likely. No, he had no copy. Was it already out? Mr. Bentley had formed the impression that it was not yet ready for publication. The contributors? Hucklebury Squib, Bartholomew Grass, Tom Barebones-Abraham? Mr. Bentley thought he had heard the names; he might have met them in literary circles in the old days. He had the idea that Barebones-Abraham was rather below normal height, corpulent, bald—yes, Mr. Bentley was quite sure he was bald as an egg; he spoke with a stammer and dragged his left leg as he walked. Hucklebury Squib was a very tall young man; easily recognizable for he had lost the lobe of his left ear in extraordinary circumstances when sailing before the mast; he had a front tooth missing and wore a gold ear-ring.

  The plain clothes men recorded these details in shorthand. This was the sort of witness they liked, circumstantial, precise, unhesitating.

  When it came to Bartholomew Grass, Mr. Bentley’s invention flagged. He had never seen the man. He rather thought it might be the pseudonym for a woman.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bentley,” said the chief of the plain clothes men. “I don’t think we need trouble you anymore. If we want you I suppose we can always find you here.”

  “Always,” said Mr. Bentley sweetly. “I often, whimsically, refer to this little table as my grindstone. I keep my nose to it. We live in arduous times, Inspector.”

  A posse of police went to Ambrose’s flat, where all they got was a piece of his housekeeper’s mind.

  “Our man’s got away,” they reported when they returned to their superiors.

  Colonel Plum, the Inspector of Police and Basil were summoned late that afternoon to the office of the Director of Internal Security.

  “I can’t congratulate you,” he said, “on the way this case has been handled. I’m not blaming you, Inspector, or you, Seal,” and he fixed Colonel Plum with a look of detestation. “We were clearly on to a very dangerous set of men and you let four out of five slip through your fingers. I’ve no doubt that at this moment they are sitting in a German submarine, laughing at us.”

  “We’ve got Rampole, sir,” said Colonel Plum. “I’m inclined to think he’s the ringleader.”

  “I’m inclined to think he’s an old booby.”

  “He has behaved in the most hostile and defiant manner throughout. He refuses to give any particulars about any of his accomplices.”

  “He threw a telephone directory at one of our men,” said the Inspector, “and used the following expressions about them: ‘nincompoops’, ‘jacks-in-office’…”

  “Yes, yes, I have the report. Rampole is obviously a violent and thoroughly unreasonable type. It won’t do him any harm to cool his heels for the rest of the war. But he’s not the ringleader. This fellow Barebones-Abraham is the man I want and you haven’t been able to find a trace of him.”

  “We’ve got his description.”

  “A fat lot of good that is when he’s halfway back to Germany. No, the whole thing has been grossly mismanaged. The Home Secretary takes a very poor view of it. Somebody talked and I mean to find out who.”

  When the interview, painfully protracted, came to an end, the Director told Basil to remain behind.

  “Seal,” he said, “I understand you were the first man to get onto this gang. Have you any idea how they were warned?”

  “You put me in a very difficult position, sir.”

  “Come, come, my boy, this is no time for petty loyalties when your country’s future is at stake.”

  “Well, sir, I’ve felt for some time that there’s been too much feminine influence in our department. Have you seen Colonel Plum’s secretary?”

  “Hokey-pokey, eh?”

  “You could call it that, sir.”

  “Enemy agent, eh?”

  “Oh, no, sir. Have a look at her.”

  The Director sent for Susie. When she had gone he said, “No, not an enemy agent.”

  “Certainly not, sir, but a frivolous, talkative girl. Colonel Plum’s intimacy…”

  “Yes, I quite understand. You
did perfectly right to tell me.”

  “What did he want, sending for me like that and just staring?” asked Susie.

  “I think I’ve arranged promotion for you.”

  “Ooh, you are sweet.”

  “I’m just moving into a new flat.”

  “Lucky you,” said Susie.

  “I wish you’d come and advise me about the decorations. I’m no good at that kind of thing.”

  “Oh no?” said Susie in a voice she had learned at the cinema. “And what would Colonel Plum say?”

  “Colonel Plum won’t have anything to say. You’re rising far above ADDIS.”

  “Ooh.”

  Next morning Susie received an official intimation that she was to move to the Director’s office.

  “Lucky you,” said Basil.

  She had admired all Ambrose’s decorations except the Brancusi sculpture. That had been put away, out of sight, in the box-room.

  At Brixton Gaol Mr. Rampole enjoyed many privileges that were not accorded to common criminals. There was a table in his cell and a tolerably comfortable chair. He was allowed, at his own expense, some additions to prison fare. He might smoke. The Times was delivered to him every morning and for the first time in his life he accumulated a small library. Mr. Bentley from time to time brought him papers for which his signature was required. In every way his life was much easier than it would have been in similar circumstances in any other country.

  But Mr. Rampole was not content. There was an obnoxious young man next to him who, when they met at exercise, said, “Heil Mosley,” and at night attempted to tap out messages of encouragement in morse. Moreover Mr. Rampole missed his club and his home at Hampstead. In spite of a multitude of indulgences he faced the summer without enthusiasm.

  In a soft, green valley where a stream ran through close-cropped, spongy pasture and the grass grew down below the stream’s edge and merged there with the water-weeds; where a road ran between grass verges and tumbled walls, and the grass merged into moss which spread upwards and over the tumbled stones of the walls, outwards over the pocked metalling and deep ruts of the road; where the ruins of a police barracks, built to command the road through the valley, burnt in the Troubles, had once been white, then black and now were one green with the grass and the moss and the water-weed; where the smoke of burned turf drifted down from the cabin chimneys and joined the mist that rose from the damp, green earth; where the prints of ass and pig, goose and calf and horse mingled indifferently with those of barefoot children; where the soft, resentful voices rose and fell in the smoky cabins merging with the music of the stream and the treading and shifting and munching of the beasts at pasture; where mist and smoke never lifted and the sun never fell direct, and evening came slowly in infinite gradations of shadow; where the priest came seldom because of the rough road and the long climb home to the head of the valley, and no one except the priest ever came from one month’s end to another, there stood an inn which was frequented in by-gone days by fishermen. Here in the summer nights when their sport was over they had sat long over their whisky and their pipes—professional gentlemen from Dublin and retired military men from England. No one fished the stream now and the few trout that remained were taken by ingenious and illicit means without respect for season or ownership. No one came to stay; sometimes a couple on a walking tour, once or twice a party of motorists, paused for supper, hesitated, discussed the matter and then regretfully pushed on to the next village. Here Ambrose came, perched on an outside-car, from the railway station over the hill six miles distant.