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the unconcern of habitual innocence, and waited for it to be passed. He was very much taken

aback when the customs officer asked if he would please step into an inner room, there was a

little difficulty. They would not detain him a moment. If he would just step inside and sit down,

it would only be for a moment ...

Winter, protesting volubly, was pushed into the inner room. He sat down, fuming, on one

of the hard chairs and was preparing a neat speech for the customs official’s superior officer,

when he heard the key turned in the lock.

Hambledon reached home rather late for lunch that day to find Fräulein Rademeyer rather

fidgety.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, “to have kept you waiting. You should have started without me.”

“I would rather wait, I detest eating alone.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I was busy, the time passed before I was aware of it.”

“You are always so busy these days, even in the evenings. Can’t you take a little time off

sometimes?”

Hambledon sighed inaudibly. The old lady was very dear to him, but as the years passed

she became more feeble in body but not in spirit, and the increasing limitation of activity was

most irritating to her. Besides, it was true, he did leave her alone a great deal.

“I’ll take a whole day off early next week,” he said. “We’ll pick a fine day, drive out

somewhere and have lunch. You are quite right, it’s an age since I had any time to myself.”

“That will be very pleasant,” said Ludmilla. “I cannot think it is good for you to work so

hard and come so late to your meals. It is nearly two o’clock.”

“I’m sorry,” said Hambledon again, glancing at the clock. It was later than he had

thought, in five minutes’ time the Cologne train would stop at Aachen for the usual hunt through

travellers’ baggage to see if they were taking more money out of Germany than was permitted by

the regulations. Suppose that funny little man Winter had changed his mind and broken his

journey somewhere. Suppose Ginsberg had had one of his gastric attacks and been unable to do

his job. It might sound a simple matter to undo the lining of a suit-case, slip some papers inside,

and do it up again so that it did not appear to have been tampered with, but it took an expert to do

it properly. Ginsberg had been apprenticed to a firm of luggage makers, what a find! It was only

necessary to tell him that he was concealing secret orders for transmission to German agents

abroad for him to take an artist’s pleasure in the work. Now the ham-handed Schultz—

“Klaus dear, would it be too much trouble to talk to me when you do come in? I have had

no one but the servants to speak to all the morning.”

“I am a complete pig, Aunt Ludmilla. I am a mannerless baboon. If it wasn’t for certain

physiological objections, I would say I was a cow, too. I have had a difficult case to deal with

this morning with both sides lying themselves purple in the face, and I was still trying to make

up my mind which of them was lying the worst. But that’s no excuse for being rude to you. Tell

me, what are you going to do this afternoon?”

“I am going to a recital of some of Chopin’s Nocturnes and Preludes, and two Beethoven

sonatas, by a famous foreign pianist who has never been in Berlin before. I wish you could come

with me.”

“You don’t really. You remember too well what happened last time you tried to educate

my taste in music. I snored.”

“You were overtired, dear. It was unkind of me to insist on your going.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it, but you know what the Frau Doktor Gericke said.”

“The Frau Doktor Gericke is an evil-minded old cat,” said Ludmilla energetically. “As

though you were ever the worse for drink! I told her that if that sort of thing was customary in

her household, it wasn’t in mine, and that if she fed her men-folk properly she wouldn’t have so

much trouble with that wild Leonhard of hers. Of course, I didn’t know that their cook had

cracked his head with a rolling-pin the evening before or I wouldn’t have said it, but—”

Hambledon roared with laughter. “You didn’t tell me that! Where did this exchange of

courtesies take place?”

“At Christine’s flat. I went there to coffee by invitation, but Alexia Gericke simply

walked in. Christine didn’t like it, but, of course, she couldn’t do anything.”

“Then what happened?”

“Oh, Christine started talking at the top of her voice about the reclamation of sand-dunes

by planting some sort of grass. You know, her father was an expert at that sort of thing and used

to lecture about it. He couldn’t read his own writing so Christine had to copy out his notes for

him when she was a girl, she’s never forgotten them. You wouldn’t, you know. So whenever

conversations take an awkward turn Christine talks about sand-dunes till it’s blown over.”

“Frau Christine is a dear.”

“She always was. Which reminds me of something quite different. Klaus dear, don’t be

annoyed, will you? But I cannot abide that horrid old man creeping about the house. Must we

have him?”

“Reck? I am so sorry. He is a clever man really, you know. He has had a sad history and

I’m sorry for him. Besides, he is useful to me.”

“If you really need him, Klaus, there’s no more to be said. Only he does look so

disreputable, and I’m not at all sure that he is always sober.”

“I’ll see that he gets some new clothes and smartens himself up.”

“His hair wants cutting, too.”

“It shall be cut. As for not being sober, if he ever shows anything of that in your

presence, out he goes. I would, however, rather keep him under my eye if I can. He will go to the

dogs if I turn him out and I don’t want that on my conscience.”

“You are too kind-hearted, Klaus. I will try and be sorry for him too and then I shan’t

dislike him so much. If I were to knit him some socks, do you think—”

“You darling! He doesn’t deserve that. Heavens, look at the time, I must go. Mind you

enjoy your highbrow entertainment. Who are you going to hear?”

“I can’t pronounce his queer name, but here’s a programme. It has his photograph on it,

look.”

Hambledon took the programme carelessly, glanced at the photograph, and then looked

intently. Dixon Ogilvie’s name was beneath it, but that was unnecessary for Tommy Hambledon,

once Modern Languages master at Chappell’s School. The photograph showed a man in the early

thirties, but there was little change from the other picture which rose to Hambledon’s mind of a

tall, skinny, untidy boy to whom music took the place occupied in the hearts of other boys by

toffee, food and cricket, a boy who wouldn’t learn French and couldn’t learn German—perhaps

the guards at the prisoners’ camp at Thielenbruck had been more successful teachers.

“A nice face, isn’t it?” said Fräulein Rademeyer, who was wandering about the room

collecting tickets, gloves, two pairs of spectacles and a purse, and did not notice Hambledon’s

expression. “I should think he’s a nice young man, wouldn’t you?”

Still no reply, so she looked at him, crossed the room quickly and laid her hand on his

arm.

“What is it, my dear? Do you think you remember that face?”

“Perhaps,” said Hambledon, rousing himself. “It’s rather unlikely, isn’t it? A chance

resemblance, probably.”

“He might be a friend, or some relation,” she said.

“But he’s English,” said Hambledon, looking at her curiously. “That would mean I was

English, too, and that’s impossible.”

“I suppose it is,” she said slowly.

“Would you mind very much, if I turned out to be English after all? You’d hate it,

wouldn’t you?”

“No, why? The war’s over long ago, Klaus dear, and you and I have been happy together

for a long time.”

“I’m glad you think like that,” he said. “I shan’t be so afraid now of—of getting my

memory back.”

She laughed and patted his arm. “You don’t know much about women, do you, Klaus?

Besides, the English are quite respectable people. Won’t you come with me and see him for

yourself?”

“No,” he said, “no. I do very well as I am, and besides, I have business to attend to this

afternoon.”

“Very well, dear. And don’t worry, your memory will come back someday, I am sure of

it. How tiresome it will be, learning to call you by a new name.”

“You never shall—”

“Good gracious, look at the time. Tell Franz to call a cab, will you, while I put—I shall

be late—they won’t let me in till the interval—”

She scurried out of the room while Hambledon shouted to Franz to call up a taxi, and

himself walked back to his office. He pushed the thought of Dixon Ogilvie out of his mind for

the present and returned to the subject of Henry Winter. By this time the little man should have

been released, have passed the Belgian customs, and should now be sitting in the slow local to

Brussels, having lost the boat-train. No doubt he was horribly cross, probably he was bouncing

gently on the seat and emitting a faint sizzling sound. Never mind, they also serve—

“So I lost the boat-train to Ostende,” said Winter to his wife, “and had to take a slow

local to Brussels. I caught a fast train from there but, of course, the boat had gone, so I had to

stay the night. I went to the Excelsior Hotel, too expensive for me normally, but as it’s the off-

season I knew the charge would be reasonable, and to tell you the truth, my dear, I’d been so

worried and upset that I thought I deserved a little extra luxury.”

“Did you have an amusing time there, Henry?”

“No, m’dear. Very dull.”

Henry Winter had walked into the Excelsior on the previous evening shortly before

dinner and asked, in his Britannic French, for a room for one night.

“M’sieu’ is alone?” asked the reception clerk.

“Completely alone,” said Winter.

He was still seething with a sense of injustice in spite of the floods of apology which had

been poured on him at Aachen. His detention was a mistake, the locked door was a mistake, it

was to keep people out, not him in, his being shown in there at all was a mistake and the official

responsible should be reprimanded—degraded—dismissed the service. But Winter was not

appeased. However, the reception which is accorded to hotel visitors in the off-season began to

soothe him, and the excellent dinner, with a wine he’d never heard of before but which was

recommended personally by the wine waiter, completed the cure. When he had finished the

cheese and biscuits—and the half-bottle—he felt at peace with the world. After all, annoying

contretemps must sometimes happen to every habitual traveller, the seasoned hands, like himself,

look upon such things philosophically as all in a day’s work. He was a little ashamed of having

been so flustered by it, the traditional British phlegm, he felt, must have unaccountably failed

him for some reason. A touch of liver, possibly. He rose from the table, pulled down his

waistcoat, and strolled into the lounge.

Since the stock of foreigners of any sort was a trifle low in Winter’s estimation at the

time, he counted himself lucky to find another Englishman among the few guests present. The

two men foregathered to discuss Hitler and play billiards till Henry Winter went up to bed.

The lift was one of those which starts each journey with an aggrieved howl, and Winter

guessed rather than heard that the boy asked him which floor. “Third,” he answered, winding his

watch on the way up to save time because he was sleepy. The lift stopped, Winter got out and

walked along to his room.

He opened the door quietly, switched on the light, and noticed at once that his very

ordinary brown suit-case on the luggage-stand inside the door had been closed again although he

had left it open. He slid the catches and threw back the lid.

There came from the other side of the room an angry wail of feminine outrage and Winter

jumped round to see with horror a woman standing beside the bed in the alcove, a woman,

moreover, in an advanced stage of disarray. For a second he gaped at her, speechless with

astonishment, then, “My good woman!” he gasped, in English, and fled the room, slamming the

door behind him.

He hurried back to the lift, rang for it, and demanded to be taken to the manager instantly.

“
Instamment
,
sans
delay,” but the manager was not there and had to be sought. Henry Winter

marched angrily about the room trying to summon adequate French to express his sentiments. If

only they spoke German he could have been so fluent ...

The manager arrived. “Monsieur desire?”

“There is,” said Winter carefully, “a woman in my room. I do not want her.”

“Impossible,” said the startled manager.

“I thought,” said Winter, after one or two false shots at the past tense of a notoriously

irregular verb, “I thought this was a respectable hotel.”

The manager said that it was truly an establishment but of the most decorous, but Winter

merely snorted, saying that the woman must be taken away at once, “
eprise
” was the word he

used, which defeated the manager yet further. “
Je demande qu’elle sera eprise
.”

The manager called upon his Maker and added that there must be some mistake, to which