Commander Haydock turned out to be a most genial1 host. He welcomedMr. Meadowes and Major Bletchley with enthusiasm, and insisted onshowing the former “all over my little place.”
Smugglers’ Rest had been originally a couple of coastguards’ cottagesstanding on the cliff overlooking the sea. There was a small cove2 below,but the access to it was perilous3, only to be attempted by adventurousboys.
Then the cottages had been bought by a London businessman who hadthrown them into one and attempted halfheartedly to make a garden. Hehad come down occasionally for short periods in summer.
After that, the cottages had remained empty for some years, being letwith a modicum4 of furniture to summer visitors.
“Then, some years ago,” explained Haydock, “it was sold to a man calledHahn. He was a German, and if you ask me, he was neither more or lessthan a spy.”
Tommy’s ears quickened.
“That’s interesting,” he said, putting down the glass from which he hadbeen sipping5 sherry.
“Damned thorough fellows they are,” said Haydock. “Getting ready eventhen for this show—at least that is my opinion. Look at the situation of thisplace. Perfect for signalling out to sea. Cove below where you could land amotorboat. Completely isolated6 owing to the contour of the cliff. Oh yes,don’t tell me that fellow Hahn wasn’t a German agent.”
Major Bletchley said:
“Of course he was.”
“What happened to him?” asked Tommy.
“Ah!” said Haydock. “Thereby hangs a tale. Hahn spent a lot of moneyon this place. He had a way cut down to the beach for one thing—concretesteps—expensive business. Then he had the whole of the house done over—bathrooms, every expensive gadget7 you can imagine. And who did heset to do all this? Not a local man. No, a firm from London, so it was said—but a lot of the men who came down were foreigners. Some of them didn’tspeak a word of English. Don’t you agree with me that that sounds ex-tremely fishy8?”
“A little odd, certainly,” agreed Tommy.
“I was in the neighbourhood myself at the time, living in a bungalow,and I got interested in what this fellow was up to. I used to hang about towatch the workmen. Now I’ll tell you this—they didn’t like it—they didn’tlike it at all. Once or twice they were quite threatening about it. Whyshould they be if everything was all square and aboveboard?”
Bletchley nodded agreement.
“You ought to have gone to the authorities,” he said.
“Just what I did do, my dear fellow. Made a positive nuisance of myselfpestering the police.”
He poured himself out another drink.
“And what did I get for my pains? Polite inattention. Blind and deaf,that’s what we were in this country. Another war with Germany was outof the question—there was peace in Europe—our relations with Germanywere excellent. Natural sympathy between us nowadays. I was regardedas an old fossil, a war maniac9, a diehard old sailor. What was the good ofpointing out to people that the Germans were building the finest Air Forcein Europe and not just to fly round and have picnics!”
Major Bletchley said explosively:
“Nobody believed it! Damned fools! ‘Peace in our time.’ ‘Appeasement.’
All a lot of blah!”
Haydock said, his face redder than usual with suppressed anger: “A war-monger, that’s what they called me. The sort of chap, they said, who wasan obstacle to peace. Peace! I knew what our Hun friends were at! Andmind this, they prepare things a long time beforehand. I was convincedthat Mr. Hahn was up to no good. I didn’t like his foreign workmen. Ididn’t like the way he was spending money on this place. I kept on badger-ing away at people.”
“Stout fellow,” said Bletchley appreciatively.
“And finally,” said the Commander, “I began to make an impression. Wehad a new Chief Constable10 down here—retired soldier. And he had thesense to listen to me. His fellows began to nose around. Sure enough,Hahn decamped. Just slipped out and disappeared one fine night. The po-lice went over this place with a search-warrant. In a safe which had beenbuilt-in in the dining room they found a wireless11 transmitter and somepretty damaging documents. Also a big store place under the garage forpetrol—great tanks. I can tell you I was cock-a-hoop over that. Fellows atthe club used to rag me about my German spy complex. They dried upafter that. Trouble with us in this country is that we’re so absurdly unsus-picious.”
“It’s a crime. Fools—that’s what we are—fools. Why don’t we intern12 allthese refugees?” Major Bletchley was well away.
“End of the story was I bought the place when it came into the market,”
continued the Commander, not to be sidetracked from his pet story.
“Come and have a look round, Meadowes?”
“Thanks, I’d like to.”
Commander Haydock was as full of zest13 as a boy as he did the honoursof the establishment. He threw open the big safe in the dining room toshow where the secret wireless had been found. Tommy was taken out tothe garage and was shown where the big petrol tanks had lain concealed,and finally, after a superficial glance at the two excellent bathrooms, thespecial lighting14, and the various kitchen “gadgets,” he was taken down thesteep concreted path to the little cove beneath, whilst Commander Hay-dock told him all over again how extremely useful the whole layout wouldbe to an enemy in wartime.
He was taken into the cave which gave the place its name, and Haydockpointed out enthusiastically how it could have been used.
Major Bletchley did not accompany the two men on their tour, but re-mained peacefully sipping his drink on the terrace. Tommy gathered thatthe Commander’s spy hunt with its successful issue was that good gentle-man’s principal topic of conversation, and that his friends had heard itmany times.
In fact, Major Bletchley said as much when they were walking down toSans Souci a little later.
“Good fellow, Haydock,” he said. “But he’s not content to let a good thingalone. We’ve heard all about that business again and again until we’re sickof it. He’s as proud of the whole bag of tricks up there as a cat of its kit-tens.”
The simile16 was not too far-fetched, and Tommy assented17 with a smile.
The conversation then turning to Major Bletchley’s own successful un-masking of a dishonest bearer in 1923, Tommy’s attention was free to pur-sue its own inward line of thought punctuated18 by sympathetic “Notreallys?”—“You don’t say so?” and “What an extraordinary business”
which was all Major Bletchley needed in the way of encouragement.
More than ever now Tommy felt that when the dying Farquhar hadmentioned Sans Souci he had been on the right track. Here, in this out ofthe world spot, preparations had been made a long time beforehand. Thearrival of the German Hahn and his extensive installation showed clearlyenough that this particular part of the coast had been selected for a rally-ing point, a focus of enemy activity.
That particular game had been defeated by the unexpected activity ofthe suspicious Commander Haydock. Round one had gone to Britain. Butsupposing that Smugglers’ Rest had been only the first outpost of a com-plicated scheme of attack? Smugglers’ Rest, that is to say, had representedsea communications. Its beach, inaccessible19 save for the path down fromabove, would lend itself admirably to the plan. But it was only a part ofthe whole.
Defeated on that part of the plan by Haydock, what had been the en-emy’s response? Might not he have fallen back upon the next best thing—that is to say, Sans Souci. The exposure of Hahn had come about fouryears ago. Tommy had an idea, from what Sheila Perenna had said, that itwas very soon after that that Mrs. Perenna had returned to England andbought Sans Souci. The next move in the game?
It would seem therefore that Leahampton was definitely an enemycentre—that there were already installations and affiliations20 in the neigh-bourhood.
His spirits rose. The depression engendered21 by the harmless and futileatmosphere of Sans Souci disappeared. Innocent as it seemed, that inno-cence was no more than skin deep. Behind that innocuous mask thingswere going on.
And the focus of it all, so far as Tommy could judge, was Mrs. Perenna.
The first thing to do was to know more about Mrs. Perenna, to penetratebehind her apparently22 simple routine of running her boarding establish-ment. Her correspondence, her acquaintances, her social or war-workingactivities—somewhere in all these must lie the essence of her real activit-ies. If Mrs. Perenna was the renowned23 woman agent—M—then it was shewho controlled the whole of the Fifth Column activities in this country.
Her identity would be known to few—only to those at the top. But commu-nications she must have with her chiefs of staff, and it was those commu-nications that he and Tuppence had got to tap.
At the right moment, as Tommy saw well enough, Smugglers’ Rest couldbe seized and held—by a few stalwarts operating from Sans Souci. Thatmoment was not yet, but it might be very near.
Once the German army was established in control of the channel portsin France and Belgium, they could concentrate on the invasion and sub-jugation of Britain, and things were certainly going very badly in Franceat the moment.
Britain’s Navy was all-powerful on the sea, so the attack must come byair and by internal treachery—and if the threads of internal treacherywere in Mrs. Perenna’s keeping there was no time to lose.
Major Bletchley’s words chimed in with his thoughts:
“I saw, you know, that there was no time to lose. I got hold of Abdul, mysyce—good fellow, Abdul—”
The story droned on.
Tommy was thinking:
“Why Leahampton? Any reason? It’s out of the mainstream—bit of abackwater. Conservative, old-fashioned. All those points make it desirable.
Is there anything else?”
There was a stretch of flat agricultural country behind it running in-land. A lot of pasture. Suitable, therefore, for the landing of troop-carryingairplanes or of parachute troops. But that was true of many other places.
There was also a big chemical works where, it might be noted24, Carl vonDeinim was employed.
Carl von Deinim. How did he fit in? Only too well. He was not, as Granthad pointed15 out, the real head. A cog, only, in the machine. Liable to suspi-cion and internment25 at any moment. But in the meantime he might haveaccomplished what had been his task. He had mentioned to Tuppence thathe was working on decontamination problems and on the immunising ofcertain gases. There were probabilities there—probabilities unpleasant tocontemplate.
Carl, Tommy decided26 (a little reluctantly), was in it. A pity, because herather liked the fellow. Well, he was working for his country—taking hislife in his hands. Tommy had respect for such an adversary—down him byall means—a firing party was the end, but you knew that when you tookon your job.
It was the people who betrayed their own land — from within — thatreally roused a slow vindictive27 passion in him. By God, he’d get them!
“— And that’s how I got them!” The Major wound up his story tri-umphantly. “Pretty smart bit of work, eh?”
Unblushingly Tommy said:
“Most ingenious thing I’ve heard in my life, Major.”
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
genial
|
|
| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
cove
|
|
| n.小海湾，小峡谷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
perilous
|
|
| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
modicum
|
|
| n.少量，一小份 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
sipping
|
|
| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
isolated
|
|
| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
gadget
|
|
| n.小巧的机械，精巧的装置，小玩意儿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
fishy
|
|
| adj. 值得怀疑的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
maniac
|
|
| n.精神癫狂的人；疯子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
constable
|
|
| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
wireless
|
|
| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
intern
|
|
| v.拘禁，软禁；n.实习生 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
zest
|
|
| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
lighting
|
|
| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
pointed
|
|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
simile
|
|
| n.直喻，明喻 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
assented
|
|
| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
punctuated
|
|
| v.（在文字中）加标点符号，加标点( punctuate的过去式和过去分词 )；不时打断某事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
inaccessible
|
|
| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
affiliations
|
|
| n.联系( affiliation的名词复数 )；附属机构；亲和性；接纳 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
engendered
|
|
| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
renowned
|
|
| adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
noted
|
|
| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
internment
|
|
| n.拘留 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
vindictive
|
|
| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |