The Secret Vanguard by Michael Innes Page A

repeating the same question patiently and at regular intervals, like the queer conjuration with which amateur radio transmitters flood the ether. The voice might be calling from Kamchatka or Tierra del Fuego; certainly it was very far away; a great effort would be needed to make any reply audible. ‘Yes,’ Sheila called with a strength that surprised her. ‘Fairly all right.’
    ‘ Sssh! ’
    The voice was not remote; it was somewhere close above her head. And all about was danger. ‘I’m all right,’ she said very quietly. ‘Who are you?’
    The owner of the voice made no immediate reply. Sheila had the dim impression that he was listening elsewhere. And when he did speak it was to ask another question of his own. ‘What are they trying to pull on you, anyway?’ There was a brief silence, for Sheila felt momentarily unable to collect herself for a reply. ‘They’re not trying’ – the voice was suddenly naively offhand – ‘to marry you to someone you don’t want?’
    This romantic suggestion from the darkness brought Sheila fully to her senses. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re just–’ And then she paused. She had dropped right out of the ordinary world into one which she guessed was full of treason. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ she said firmly. ‘Who are you, and what are you doing there?’
    ‘I’m Dick Evans, Rhodes scholar from Princeton, studying jurisprudence,’ said the voice collectedly. ‘But principally I’m going to write a book on Caravaggio. And for the rest – well, I’m tied up in an attic with a length of rope.’
    Sheila said nothing; her head felt very bad.
    ‘But never mind,’ said the voice of Evans. ‘I was a rabbit of a kid at a perfectly beastly school – the expensive kind.’
    This seemed both irrelevant and depressing. A young man who stalked Caravaggio after a rabbity career at a perfectly beastly school was hardly the type which present exigencies required. Rather dully, Sheila said, ‘Oh.’
    ‘The bigger boys used to tie up the smaller ones and then burn their toes. I didn’t mind that so much.’
    Sheila, who was now feeling slightly sick, said, ‘Didn’t you?’ in a particularly idiotic way.
    ‘But sometimes they tied them up and left them out on the roof all night. I hated that. You see, it was cold.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘So I taught myself how to cheat them. Just a matter of systematically exercising the right muscles. And I can do it still. So you see we’ll be meeting soon with any luck.’ Evans paused. ‘Are they spies?’
    ‘Yes. German spies.’
    ‘Of course,’ said the voice of Evans, ‘this had made me pretty mad. Still, all that is nothing to me. I’m in Europe for jurisprudence a little, but chiefly for Caravaggio. It’s nothing to me at all.’ He paused again. ‘My!’ he added reflectively. ‘Won’t it be swell when I bash in their faces for this?’
    This was much better. ‘I hope I’ll be there,’ said Sheila.
    ‘You sound a grand girl. You looked it, too. Have they left you any clothes?’
    Sheila made a startled exploration. ‘All of them,’ she said.
    Evans laughed softly. ‘By the end of that scrap I didn’t have more than my pants. And the Teutonic Peril hasn’t issued me anything since.’
    ‘A scrap? Did you–’
    ‘Quiet!’
    Somewhere a door creaked. Sheila lay still and tried to remember what this strange situation was all about. A strange and frightening situation…only she didn’t feel frightened. Sheila’s mind halted dubiously over this odd psychological fact. Perhaps it was symptomatic of a peculiarly precarious nervous state. Perhaps it was the bracing effect of a voice from the menacing darkness concluding that she was a grand girl… Drumtoul. She had got out at Drumtoul. Or rather at what the man she now called Dousterswivel had declared was Drumtoul. That was it. He had left the compartment some stops back and must have arranged by telephone for her reception. A simple matter – or a simple