Page 39 of N or M? (Tommy & Tuppence 3)

"And all the time," said Tuppence, "it was that milk and water creature we just thought of as Betty's mother."

"Hardly milk and water," said Mr Grant. "A very dangerous woman and a very clever actress. And, I'm sorry to say, English by birth."

Tuppence said:

"Then I've no pity or admiration for her - it wasn't even her country she was working for." She looked with fresh curiosity at Mr Grant. "You found what you wanted?"

Mr Grant nodded.

"It was all in that battered set of duplicate children's books."

"The ones that Betty said were nasty," Tuppence exclaimed.

"They were nasty," said Mr Grant drily. "Little Jack Horner contained very full details of our naval dispositions. Johnny Head in Air did the same for the Air Force. Military matters were appropriately embodied in 'There Was a Little Man and He Had a Little Gun.'"

"And Goosey, Goosey Gander?" asked Tuppence.

Mr Grant said:

"Treated with the appropriate reagent, that book contains, written in invisible ink, a full list of all prominent personages who are pledged to assist an invasion of this country. Amongst them were two Chief Constables, an Air Vice-Marshal, two Generals, the Head of an Armaments Works, a Cabinet Minister, many Police Superintendents, Commanders of Local Volunteer Defense Organizations, and various military and naval lesser fry, as well as members of our own Intelligence Force."

Tommy and Tuppence stared.

"Incredible!" said the former.

Grant shook his head.

"You do not know the force of the German propaganda. It appeals to something in man, some desire or lust for power. These people were ready to betray their country not for money, but in a kind of megalomaniacal pride in what they, they themselves, were going to achieve for that country. In every land it has been the same. It is the Cult of Lucifer - Lucifer, Son of the Morning. Pride and a desire for personal glory!"

He added:

"You can realize that, with such persons to issue contradictory orders and confuse operations, how the threatened invasion would have had every chance to succeed."

"And now?" said Tuppence.

Mr Grant smiled.

"And now," he said, "let them come! We'll be ready for them!"

Chapter 16

"Darling," said Deborah. "Do you know I almost thought the most terrible things about you?"

"Did you?" said Tuppence. "When?"

Her eyes rested affectionately on her daughter's dark head.

"That time when you sloped off to Scotland to join father and I thought you were with Aunt Gracie. I almost thought you were having an affair with someone."

"Oh, Deb, did you?"

"Not really, of course. Not at your age. And, of course, I know you and Carrot Top are devoted to each other. It was really an idiot called Tony Marsdon who put it into my head. Do you know, mother - I think I might tell you - he was found afterwards to be a Fifth Columnist. He always did talk rather oddly - how things would be just the same, perhaps better, if Hitler did win."

"Did you - er - like him at all?"

"Tony? Oh, no - he was always rather a bore. I must dance this."

She floated away in the arms of a fair-haired young man, smiling up at him sweetly. Tuppence followed their revolutions for a few minutes, then her eyes shifted to where a tall young man in Air Force uniform was dancing with a fair-haired slender girl.

"I do think. Tommy," said Tuppence, "that our children are rather nice."

"Here's Sheila," said Tommy.

He got up as Sheila Perenna came towards their table.

She was dressed in an emerald evening dress which showed up her dark beauty. It was a sullen beauty tonight and she greeted her host and hostess somewhat ungraciously.

"I've come, you see," she said, "as I promised. But I can't think why you wanted to ask me."

"Because we like you," said Tommy, smiling.

"Do you really?" said Sheila. "I can't think why. I've been perfectly foul to you both."

She paused and murmured:

"But I am grateful."

Tuppence said:

"We must find a nice partner to dance with you."

"I don't want to dance. I loathe dancing. I came just to see you two."

"You will like the partner we've asked to meet you," said Tuppence, smiling.

"I -" Sheila began. Then stopped - for Carl von Deinim was walking across the floor.

Sheila looked at him like one dazed. She muttered.

"You -"

"I, myself," said Carl.

There was something a little different about Carl von Deinim this evening. Sheila stared at him, a trifle perplexed. The colour had come up in her cheeks, turning them a deep glowing red.

She said a little breathlessly:

"I knew that you would be all right now - but I thought they would still keep you interned?"

Carl shook his head.

"There is no reason to intern me."

He went on.

"You have got to forgive me, Sheila, for deceiving you. I am not, you see, Carl von Deinim at all. I took his name for reasons of my own."

He looked questioningly at Tuppence, who said:

"Go ahead. Tell her."

"Carl von Deinim was my friend. I knew him in England some years ago. I renewed acquaintanceship with him in Germany just before the war. I was there then on special business for this country."

"You were in the Intelligence?" asked Sheila.

"Yes. When I was there, queer things began to happen. Once or twice I had some very near escapes. My plans were known when they should not have been known. I realized that there was something very wrong and that 'the rot,' to express it in their terms, had penetrated actually into the service in which I was. I had been let down by my own people. Carl and I had a certain superficial likeness (my Grandmother was a German), hence my suitability for work in Germany. Carl was not a Nazi. He was interested solely in his job - a job I myself had also practised - research chemistry. He decided, shortly before war broke out, to escape to England. His brothers had been sent to concentration camps. There would, he thought, be great difficulties in the way of his own escape, but in an almost miraculous fashion all these difficulties smoothed themselves out. The fact, when he mentioned it to me, made me somewhat suspicious. Why were the authorities making it so easy for von Deinim to leave Germany when his brothers and other relations were in concentration camps and he himself was suspected because of his anti-Nazi sympathies?

It seemed as though they wanted him in England for some reason. My own position was becoming increasingly precarious. Carl's lodgings were in the same house as mine and one day I found him, to my sorrow, lying dead on his bed. He had succumbed to depression and taken his own life, leaving a letter behind which I read and pocketed.

"I decided then to effect a substitution. I wanted to get out of Germany - and I wanted to know why Carl was being encouraged to do so. I dressed his body in my clothes and laid it on my bed. It was disfigured by the shot he had fired into his head. My landlady, I knew, was semi-blind.

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