It was three weeks later – to be exact, late in the afternoon on Monday, April 4th - that Colonel Verney received a visit from Squadron Leader Forsby. They were old friends as they had worked together during the war, and afterwards Forsby had been seconded to special Security duties. For the past two years he had been responsible for security at the Long Range Rocket Experimental Establishment, which was situated on a lonely stretch of coast down in Wales.
The Squadron Leader was a small, grey-haired man with a kindly face and a deceptively meek manner, for he could be extremely tough when the necessity arose. As he set down his brief case and took a chair, Verney said: ‘Glad to see you, Dick. What sort of trouble has brought you up to the great big wicked city?’
‘It’s a funny one, C.B.,’ the little man replied. ‘May be nothing in it, maybe a lot. One of my science babies has gone a bit queer.’
‘I thought they were all slightly nuts, anyhow.’
Forsby smiled. ‘They’re a special breed and live in a different world from us. Ethically many of them are quite irresponsible; but this is a bit out of series.’
‘Don’t tell me we’ve got another Nunn May or Fuchs on our hands!’
‘I hope not, but he just might be. His name is Otto Khune. He’s of German extraction but born American, in Chicago. In 1945 he married an English wife. She was a young Wren signals officer, and they met while she was doing a tour of duty at one of the Naval repair bases that we set up in the U.S. during the war. Evidently she didn’t fancy the idea of living in the States, as they both came to England in 1946, and he took British nationality. As he had already been working for the Yanks on Rocket projects, and was fully vouched for, he was given a job by the Ministry of Supply; but the marriage didn’t last. His wife divorced him in 1951. His speciality is fuels, and for the past eighteen months he has been top man in that line at the Station.’
‘What’s he been up to?’
‘Nothing. It is simply that his colleagues are worried about his mental state. They all have their own quarters, of course, but the unattached ones feed and spend a good part of their leisure hours in a mess. For some weeks past Khune’s behaviour there, particularly when it is getting late at night, has puzzled the others. They say that for short periods he talks and behaves as though he were an entirely different person. Did you happen to read that book The Three Faces of Eve?’
C.B. shook his head. ‘No, but I heard several people talk about it. I gather it was a report by two professional psychiatrists on an American woman who suffered from split personality.’
‘That’s right. I found it absolutely fascinating. Normally she was a prudish, dowdy little housewife with a shy, retiring nature, but at times she changed into a gay, bawdy-minded, come-hither girl, bought herself expensive clothes, made herself up fit to kill and went out to hit up the night spots. Then a third individuality emerged when she appeared to be a grave, sensible, responsible woman. And these changes in personality took place not once, but many times actually under the eyes of the men who were examining her; so one can hardly write the whole thing off as a hoax.’
‘No, schizophrenia is a mental state now fully accepted by the medical profession. If that’s the trouble with this chap Khune, I take it your worry is that while dominated by this new personality he may commit some breach of security?’
‘Exactly. When in his normal state we have every reason to believe him to be a patriotic naturalised Briton, but when he has these queer fits he appears to be anything but that. The sort of thing he says is that the only hope for the world is a new deal, starting with the elimination of all the old Imperialist and Capitalist governments; that the United States’ oil interests and big business are at the bottom of all the ills that are afflicting mankind, and that true freedom for the individual can only be achieved by complete equality for all.’
‘That sounds like the old Communist gags. Do you think he is being got at by the Russians?’
‘Maybe, but somehow I don’t think it’s that. His ideas seem to be more on the old anarchist lines – the complete abolition of all rule with everyone muddling along in little share-and-share alike communities. Anyhow, as he was away this weekend, I decided, on the off-chance that he is in communication with some no-goods and that I might find something that would throw light on the matter, to search his quarters.’ Forsby opened his brief-case and taking from it a typescript, added: ‘There was nothing of any interest among his correspondence, but in his desk I found a document in his writing, and this is a copy that I took of it.’
Verney put on his spectacles, spread out the paper and read:
I, Otto Helmuth Khune, am making this statement of my free will and while of sound mind in case anything should happen to me, or my sanity later be questioned.
I was born in Chicago on February 8th, 1918, of naturalised American parents who had immigrated from Germany in 1910. They had had six children before the birth of myself and my brother Lothar, we two being my mother’s third set of twins. Of the others, three died in infancy, or early childhood, and neither pair of twins was identical, whereas Lothar and I were.
We were the last children born to my parents and the three earlier ones who survived were all girls. One met her death in a fire in 1933, the two others married and live in Detroit and Philadelphia respectively. It is now nearly fifteen years since I have seen either of them and neither plays any part in the matter of which I am about to give an account. Both my parents are now dead.
When I state that Lothar and I are identical twins, I mean that literally. Our physical resemblance was so exact that even people who knew us intimately, at times mistook one of us for the other. Mentally, too, we were extraordinarily alike. We had the same tastes in food, recreations and clothes, and almost invariably shared our likes or dislikes of people. As we grew into our ’teens the latter trait began to show some divergence, but mentally we continued to be remarkably attuned.
Neither of us had any difficulty in reading the other’s thoughts and frequently we started to say the same thing at the same moment, so that the similarity of our minds became a joke among our acquaintances. The bond was still closer than that for, if one of us felt ill, the other invariably was, almost at once, subject to the same symptoms. This even extended to the demonstrably physical. On one occasion in a fight at school I had my eye blacked; Lothar felt the blow and soon after his eye also closed and coloured up. On another he fell and broke his ankle, upon which I suffered such acute pain in mine that I had to have the same treatment for such a mishap.
Another thing that we had in common was a highly developed psychic sense. It is said that the seventh child of a seventh child is often endowed in this way; and Lothar and I stood in this relation to my mother, who had been a seventh child. She, too, was psychic to some degree. To a limited extent she could see things in a crystal and tell fortunes by cards, and she had had several death warnings that proved true foreknowledge of the event. But her psychic faculties were not so highly developed as those of Lothar and myself.
We could assess people’s characters by the colour of the auras round their heads, which are invisible to the great majority of persons, but were perfectly visible to us. We had hunches about matters which would affect ourselves that invariably proved correct, and could often foretell good or ill fortune that would come to our friends.
We could ‘see’ things. Our first experience of this was when we were quite young, and was the spirit-form of a dog with which we used to play, without thinking there was anything strange about it, in our bedroom at night. Later we saw several ghosts, and for that reason neither of us would ever pass a cemetery after dark, although in due course we found out that ghosts are more generally pathetic than malignant.
These psychic faculties came to us quite naturally. When young we accepted them as normal and made no special effort to develop them, except in one particular; this was the ability to hypnotise. Both of us possessed it, but Lothar in a much greater degree than myself; perhaps because from the beginning he used to practise on me. To incite me to do ordinary things in this way was, of course, easy, because without any special effort he was able to convey to me his thoughts. But the test of his powers came when he willed me to do things that I was naturally averse to doing. Often he failed, but he was extraordinarily persistent and gradually he gained an ascendancy over me in all things except matters about which I felt particularly strongly.
Lothar and I were both clever and ambitious: We did well at school and later secured degrees with honours in maths and chemistry at the University of Chicago. Our father had been a young professor of mathematics at Leipzig before he decided to emigrate, and afterwards held a post as a senior examiner in the employ of the Chicago Schools Board. In our early days we owed a lot to his private tuition but in due course we entered fields which were beyond his sphere, and after we had taken our finals promising careers were open to both of us.
I secured a well-paid appointment with Weltwerk Schonheim Inc., the big industrial chemists, but Lothar, to most people’s surprise – as such posts are not well paid – accepted a junior professorship at the University. His reason for doing so was, however, no secret from me. Beyond all things he loved power; and whereas had he gone into industry he would, for some years at least, have had to knuckle under to his seniors, by becoming a professor he at once achieved a position in which he was able to dominate and mould the minds of a group of mostly intelligent young people.
In the mid-1930s, while still in our ‘teens, we had both become members of the Youth Corps of the Deutscher Bund, which was particularly strong in Chicago and was then rapidly expanding there, owing to the vigorous activities of a group of pro-Nazis. Lothar rapidly became prominent among them and by the time the war broke out in Europe, our age then being twenty-one, he was recognised as one of its leaders.
Naturally our sympathies were with Germany, but Lothar felt much more strongly on the matter than I did. He threw himself into a campaign aimed at giving Germany all the help that was possible; whereas my attitude was isolationist, and I maintained that as American citizens we ought to use such influence as we possessed to keep the United States strictly neutral.
In America the repercussions of Pearl Harbour were terrific. Isolationism disappeared overnight and almost to a man the people were behind the Government in its declaration of war on Japan. But in Chicago opinion was far from being so unanimous about the U.S. also entering the war against Germany. On this, for the first time in our lives, Lothar and I not only differed fundamentally, but quarrelled violently. I held that, although it might be distasteful to us, our duty lay in loyalty to the United States and, if need be, we must fight for the country in which we had been born and reared and under whose just laws we had been enabled to earn an honourable living. He held that blood counted for more than the accident of being born outside Germany, that in the triumph of the Nazi ideology lay the only cure for the decadence which infested the great democracies, and that it would be shameful to cling to our easy way of life instead of doing our utmost to help Hitler in his struggle. In short, the United States having declared war on Germany, he declared himself to be personally at war with the United States.
Of course, he was not such a fool as to say so openly, but he obtained exemption from continuing his lectures at the University on the excuse that he intended to join the U.S. Air Force, and shortly afterwards disappeared from Chicago.
The telepathic tie that united us kept me to some extent informed about him as, from time to time when I happened to think of him, I had visual images of his surroundings and people he was with. I felt certain that he had gone to South America and from there, via North Africa and Italy, succeeded in reaching Germany.
Then I saw him working on graphs and scientific data in one of many cubicles that formed a concrete warren underground. One night when I had just got off to sleep, I woke with a start to find myself actually with him. At least that is what it seemed like. He, or I, for I suddenly realised that my ego had got into his body, was lying flat on the ground in pitch darkness. But the darkness lasted only a second, then I was aware of a hideous din and blinding flashes momentarily lighting up the scene all round. I knew then that I was in the middle of an appalling air-raid and that he had been knocked out by blast. The flashes showed a flat countryside, broken only by some groups of hutments and several long mounds with concrete entrances. I was absolutely terrified, but I picked myself up, ran like a hare for the nearest bunker and threw myself inside. In my panic I tripped, went head over heels down the steep stairs and knocked myself out at the bottom.
When I came to I was back in bed in Chicago, feeling like death and with frightful bruises on my head and body. Next day I heard over the radio about the great air-raid on the German Research Works at Peenemünde, and I had no doubt at all that it was there that I had been. I can only imagine that in the instant Lothar passed out he sent a spiritual SOS to me, and that on finding his body empty I entered and saved it.
On another night during the final phase of the war, Lothar called me to him. By then, of course, I had long-since realised that he was one of the scientists working on Long Range Rockets, as at times I had had brief visions of him both at work and taking his pleasure with several different German girls who had jobs at the Establishment. Owing to his hypnotic powers, few women could resist him; but his mind was always too much occupied with serious matters for him to become a slave to that sort of thing, and it has no bearing on what followed.
I think it was again fear that had caused him to call for me, but there was nothing I could have done to help him on this occasion, for he was fully conscious and I remained only an invisible presence by his side, sharing his desperate anxiety. The Russians had just surrounded the Station and entered it, and he was terrified that they would shoot him. But they didn’t. They marched him off with a number of other scientists to a railway siding and they were all locked into cattle-trucks.
This experience had no more immediate effect on me than others when I had had mental pictures of Lothar in all sorts of situations, pleasant and unpleasant; but during the next few weeks I became unaccountably ill and suffered from bouts of acute depression. Normal grounds for depression I had none. On the contrary, I had every reason to be extremely happy as, only a few months earlier, I had married Dinah Charnwell, a lovely English girl with whom I was passionately in love, and I had no financial or other worries. The reason for my wretched state was undoubtedly my picking up Lothar’s vibrations while, half-starved and desperately uncertain about his future, he was being transported as a prisoner by slow stages into Russia.
By midsummer I began to recover. Subconsciously I was aware that he was receiving better treatment, and not long afterwards, in a dream in which we met, he told me that he had become completely reconciled to putting his knowledge and abilities at the service of the Soviet Union.
I should make it plain that during all this time neither I, my family, nor anyone else with whom we were acquainted had heard from Lothar direct, or through any other source. Yet, when I did meet him again, on his coming to London in 1950, he confirmed that all I had learned of his activities through our psychic tie-up was substantially correct, and I found that in a like manner he had followed the general outline of what had been happening to me.
Of that visit of his to London I will postpone writing for the time being, as I am too tired to write much more for the moment. In due course I will include an account of it in a further passage of this document, since I intend to continue it as a record of the mental disturbances with which I have recently become afflicted. I will confine myself now to stating that I feel certain that Lothar is again in England, and that for some sinister purpose of his own he is endeavouring to dominate my mentality. But I will not allow him to succeed. I will not.
‘Extraordinary story,’ C.B. commented as he laid the document down. ‘D’you think there’s any truth in it, or that he’s just got bats in the belfry?’
‘It’s true as far as I’ve been able to check up,’ replied Forsby. ‘I looked in at the Ministry of Supply before coming here and got them to show me the confidential report that was compiled on Khune when he applied to be taken on for the sort of hush-hush work he’s still doing. Most of it was from American sources. It confirms what he says of his family and early life in Chicago, and that he had an identical twin named Lothar. It also confirms that Lothar disappeared from Chicago early in 1942, and states that as he was known to be a rabid Nazi it was suspected that he had left the U.S. with the intention of joining the enemy. The close association of the twins up to that time led the F.B.I. to keep our man under careful observation for a while, but they satisfied themselves that he and his family had lost touch with Lothar; so he was written off as a security risk and O.K’d for employment in a Goverment Research Establishment. By the time our Ministry of Supply came into the picture he was married to an English girl, had taken British nationality, and the war with Germany was over; so, without hesitation, he was accepted for secret work.’
‘Then it’s on the cards that the rest of his story may be true. Telepathy has been scientifically proved beyond question, and it’s common knowledge that twins are apt to develop that faculty between themselves much more readily than other people.’
‘That’s so; but this business of one showing the physical marks of injuries received by the other takes a bit of believing.’
C.B. pulled thoughtfully on his thin-stemmed pipe. ‘I think one must admit that it is possible. Mental disturbances can certainly produce physical results. There have been plenty of cases in which neurotic young women have believed themselves pregnant and shown all the symptoms, until a doctor has been called in and examination shown that their swollen tummies contained nothing but a bubble of air. One can’t laugh off the religious fanatics, either. There are numerous well-authenticated accounts of nuns who from intense concentration on our Lord’s crucifixion have developed stigmata – actual wounds in the palms of their hands and on their insteps, similar to those suffered by Jesus when he was nailed to the cross.’
‘Yes, I hadn’t thought of that; and, of course, you are right. That certainly makes Khune’s story more plausible. Anyhow, we must play for safety by assuming that his brother is trying to get at him, and that makes him a security risk. How do you suggest that I should handle the matter?’
‘I don’t see that there is much we can do at the moment.’
Forsby smiled. ‘Neither do I. That’s why I came to you. The work he is doing is too important for me to persuade the Director to take him off it without a much more down-to-earth case than this.’
‘I wouldn’t advise that, anyway, for the moment. “Satan still finds evil work for idle hands”, etc. Much better to keep his mind occupied as much as possible. Naturally you’ll keep him under observation. If you think he is likely to give us real trouble you could use these dual personality fits of his as an excuse to have him vetted by the medicos, and get them to lay him off. But if he only continues to simmer, take no action except to try to get hold of the next chunk of this statement that he is writing. From it we might get a bit more data on this Nazi-cum-Bolshie twin of his, Lothar. He sounds a dangerous type, and if he really has come to England the odds are that he’s up to no good; so we must do our best to locate and keep an eye on him.’
‘Right-o!’ Forsby stood up. ‘I’ll be off now, then, C.B. I’ve made an early drinks date as well as a dinner date with old friends for this evening, as I so seldom get up from Wales.’
On the following afternoon Verney had a talk with Barney Sullivan. The latter had already put in three progress reports and C.B. had sent for him to discuss the latest. Together they went through it.
Provided as he had been by the office with Union cards and a suitable identity, Barney had met with no difficulty in attending a number of branch meetings, presenting himself in each case as having just moved into the district and wishing to make his number before actually taking a job; and the Communist Party ticket he carried had enabled him to get acquainted with several Union officials who were known Reds. Ample money to stand rounds of drinks to such gentry after the meetings, and his vital personality, were now leading them to treat this new Comrade from Ireland as one of themselves and to talk fairly freely about Party matters with him.
His principal discovery so far had been that the Communists were far from happy about the way their affairs were going. The savage suppression by the Russians of the Hungarian uprising had proved a serious blow to them and cost them several thousand members. During the many months that had since elapsed, although they had worked extremely hard, they had not yet succeeded in making up the loss. For this they, were able to take some consolation from the fact that they had engineered many unofficial strikes and that their plans for infiltrating into Union offices had gone better than might have been expected; but now, suddenly, this latter most important item on their programme had become subject to a serious threat.
For many years past the post of General Secretary to the great C.G.T. had been held by a Communist. In a month’s time he was due to stand for re-election and a vigorous labour leader named Tom Ruddy, who held strong anti-Communist views, had been nominated to stand against him. Ruddy was far from being a newcomer to labour politics of a nonentity. Although, in 1939 past his first youth, instead of remaining at home in protected employment he had wangled his way into the Army, become a sergeant-major and been decorated with the D.C.M. for knocking out one of Rommel’s tanks in Africa. After the war he had stood for Parliament, got in, and made quite a name for himself as a Socialist with plenty of sound common sense; then, on losing his seat in the 1951 election, he had resumed his work as a Union official and steadily mounted in the esteem of his more responsible colleagues. His war record guaranteed him the support of the greater part of the old soldiers in his union; he was a good speaker, had a bluff, forthright manner, and a sense of humour.
All this added up to make him such a popular figure that the Communists were beginning to fear that, in spite of all the secret machinations they might employ, by mid-May it was highly possible that he would have ousted their own man from the key post in the G.G.T. And their anxiety did not end there; for they were afraid that, if Ruddy proved victorious, it would have widespread repercussions throughout the whole Labour movement, leading to many other Communists losing future elections to their opponents.
Verney naturally knew of Tom Ruddy and the forthcoming election, but he was surprised and pleased to hear that Ruddy’s prospects seemed so good, and he urged Barney to keep his ears well open for any plot that might be brewing to sabotage Ruddy’s chances.
They spent the next half-hour going through a list of the Communists with whom Barney had got into touch at branches of other Unions. In some cases he had been able to pick up small items of information about their private lives which would be added to their dossiers; about others C.B. was able to pass on to him further particulars that might be helpful which had been brought in by the department’s network since Barney had started on his mission. Both of them knew that it was this careful collation of a mass of detail, rather than some spectacular break, that usually brought results in the long run.
When they had finished, the Colonel leant back and said: ‘I take it you haven’t tumbled on anything which might give us a line on poor Morden’s killers?’
‘Well…’ Barney hesitated. ‘Not exactly.’
‘Come young feller!’ For once C.B.’s voice held a suggestion of asperity. ‘That’s no reply. Yes or no?’
Barney pulled a face. ‘Sorry, Sir. I ought to have known better than to hedge with you. But it’s such an unlikely bet that I thought you might think I’d gone a bit goofy and was wasting my time.’
‘Nothing’s unlikely in this business. Let’s have it.’
‘Well, last week I thought I’d go down to Wimbledon and call on Mrs. Morden. I’ve never met her, but I intended to introduce myself as a member of the firm and say that I’d been sent along to enquire how she was bearing up, and if there was any way in which we could be of help to her. My idea was that now five weeks have elapsed since her husband’s death she might be sufficiently recovered from the shock not to mind talking about him, and she might say something about him that hadn’t seemed to her to have any bearing on the case, but would to me.’
Verney nodded. ‘Good idea. What came of it?’
‘She wasn’t there. I got it from her neighbours on the other side of the landing that nearly three weeks ago she shut up her flat and went off to Ireland without leaving an address.’
‘I see.’ To himself, C.B. was thinking, ‘So my warning about what she’d be up against didn’t shake her, and she’s probably putting her lovely head into some hornets’ nest by now. Anyhow, it’s some comfort that she’s taken my advice about going somewhere else to live and severed the ties by which she could be connected with Morden.’ Aloud, he added: ‘It was from her neighbours you picked up a lead, then?’
‘No. It so happened that, while I was still talking to the woman across the landing, the local parson put in an appearance. He had come to call on Mrs. M. for the same sort of reason that I had intended to give. Having drawn a blank we went downstairs together and I offered to give him a lift back to his vicarage in my car. Naturally, we discussed Morden’s tragically early death in general terms and it transpired that up to a few months ago he looked on Teddy as one of the ewe-lambs of his parish. Mrs. M. is an R.C. so he hardly knew her. That’s why he hadn’t called before; and he’d done so then only as a Christian act, to see if she was getting over things all right. But Teddy had been brought up as a staunch Protestant and, although he married out of his own Church, he had continued to attend it regularly and to act as a sidesman.’
Barney paused and ran a hand through his mop of short dark curls. ‘That is, up to a few months ago; but quite suddenly he stopped going. At first the padre thought he must be away on holiday, but he ran into him one evening, learnt that he had not been away and naturally enquired the reason for his back-sliding. Teddy seemed a bit embarrassed but was persuaded to come to the vicarage for a glass of sherry; then he came clean. Apparently he had become a Theosophist, and could no longer fully believe in the doctrines of the Church.’
Instantly Verney’s interest quickened, but he only said: ‘That certainly sounds rather queer in a well-balanced chap like Morden. Where do we go from there?’
‘The padre tried to argue him out of it; but Teddy wouldn’t budge. Apparently he had been attending a course of lectures and séances. He maintained that the things that took place there could not be faked, and he was convinced that the Theosophists held the true key to the after-life. As luck would have it, he mentioned the name of the woman who runs the circle at which these miracles are performed, and the padre remembered it. She is a Mrs. Wardeel.’
‘Have you managed to trace her?’
‘Yes, Sir. I got her address through the Society for Psychical Research. It is 204 Barkston Gardens. I gathered from the man I got her address from that Theosophists and Spiritualists don’t usually hold the same beliefs; but this Mrs. Wardeel seems to be running a cult of her own that combines the two, as at her meetings lectures on the theory of the thing are followed by actual demonstrations of being able to get into touch with the spirit world.’
‘And you intend to follow this up?’
‘I shall if you don’t think it a waste of time Sir. Actually I wrote off to Mrs. Wardeel at once and asked if I could attend one of her meetings. As I couldn’t provide any introduction, I thought she might prove a bit cagey about letting a stranger into these mysteries; so I took your tip about using my title to add a bit of snob value to my request. Anyhow, it worked. I had a typed letter back from her secretary saying that Mrs. Wardeel was always happy to spread enlightenment among people of sufficient education to be fitted to receive it, and that I should send a cheque for five guineas as the fee for a course of six lectures. I sent my cheque, and the first is tonight.’
‘Go, by all means,’ smiled C.B. ‘It might lead to something; one never can tell. I wonder, though,’ he added after a moment, ‘what the real explanation is about Morden. Did he really get bitten with this mumbo-jumbo, or did he deliberately desert his Church because he thought he was being watched and wanted to convince these people that he had fallen completely for the line they were selling him?’
Barney shook his curly head. ‘I fear that’s a thing that now we’ll never know.’
‘True enough, young feller. Anyway, don’t let them turn you into a spook addict.’
‘No fear of that, Sir,’ Barney grinned. ‘The odds are, though, that I’ll get no more than a good laugh over the fun and games by which a few small-time crooks make a living out of the bunch of loonies that I’ll find at this place tonight.’
When Barney had gone, Verney took from a drawer in his desk the photograph of Teddy Morden’s body. After staring at it for a moment, he thought to himself: ‘It ties up. The moment Mary Morden told me about these séances, I felt certain it tied up. She doesn’t stand much chance, poor kid; but, if Barney’s as astute as I believe him to be, we’ll get Morden’s murderers yet.’