The inspector hadn’t been doing too well lately, and he knew it. All that his posse of policemen had discovered in their last search of the moor had been a perfectly good thermos flask, a watch glass and a lady’s compact. The thermos remained untraced but was obviously unimportant anyway—very few murderers are the picnicking type. The watch glass belonged to Bansted and had come out of the case when he was on the moor looking for Una after the shot had been fired—he was able to prove that one. And the compact had Hilda’s initials inside it. She identified it immediately and said thank you. I was probably the only person who thought twice about it. But that may have been because I was the only person to have had my dream.
So far as suspicion went there were two of us who were not entirely in the clear—Dr. Mann and myself. In Dr. Mann’s case, it was rumour. The whole characteristic of rumour is that you can’t pin-point it. It is atmospheric rather. And I was conscious of the way it was closing in on Dr. Mann. The evidence admittedly was so negative as not to amount to evidence at all—simply that things had been entirely quiet while Dr. Mann was away, and then had broken out again at their most sensational almost immediately after his return. By now it was pretty general knowledge that Dr. Mann really had pinched the penicillin. And, in minds like Bansted’s and Rogers’s, theft is one of the really awful things, like travelling first with a third-class ticket or seeing if the other end can hear you before you finally push button A. It meant that he was a bounder and outsider, as well as a foreigner. And if there had been rape or arson, let alone attempted murder, anywhere in the neighbourhood it was clear that they would both of them have been ready to pin it on to him.
I, on the other hand, was the Inspector’s suspect. And he was keeping me all to himself. Admittedly the ice-cold eye was getting a bit chipped round the edges. But it could still focus. And I must have retold my version of the shooting at least a dozen times. What made it so peculiarly trying was that I made no attempt at improvements, and told the plain truth every time. It seemed safer that way. Safer, but more boring.
Dr. Mann had been telling the truth, too. He really was having an interview with the Old Man at the time when the shot had been fired.
But that was only part of the truth about Dr. Mann, and he wanted me to have the whole and nothing but. In consequence, he began turning up at all hours whenever he couldn’t sleep. It was like having an owl about the place. I used to lie there after lights out, thinking longingly of the dormital bottle and wondering whether at any moment the familiar scratch and flutter would indicate that another visit was impending.
This evening, for instance, he would keep trying to tell me how poor his people were.
“There is my mother, my grandmother and my sister,” he said. “There is only one room. That is not much, no?”
“It’s close quarters,” I agreed with him.
“And they can afford so little,” he went on. “One meal a day. That is all they have.”
“What time of day do they have it?” I asked.
I wasn’t meaning to be callous. I really wanted to know. But Dr. Mann merely shrugged his shoulders.
“For everyone in Germany it is bad,” he said. “People say that it is more bad for the old. I tell you that the old do not matter. For them it is nearly over. It is for the young ones that it is most bad of all.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” I agreed.
But by now Dr. Mann had tears in his eyes.
“What is to happen to my mother if my gifts to her are to cease? If I go to prison she will die.”
“You’re not there yet,” I reminded him.
But Dr. Mann shook his head.
“I have no hope,” he said. “I wish I were to be executed. Then I should not know what happens to my family.”
He was really crying by now. And I wished that he would stop. But when he resumed he was calmer. He was reaching that Weltpolitik stage that all Germans so easily slide into. And it can be pretty anaesthetising, except presumably to other Germans.
“To understand Germany,” he led up to it, “you must realise his position in the land mass of Europe. And his history. Also his imperial tradition. Likewise his birth-rate and his need for the colonies that he has lost.”
I didn’t say anything, and Dr. Mann continued like the voice of the old Bundesrat speaking.
“And in the nineteen-thirties,” he said, “Germany was a moral waste land. He had lost his soul. All women sold themselves. Perversion was everywhere. The revolution was waiting.”
“You mean the Nazi revolution?” I asked.
Dr. Mann jumped to his feet. He was trembling all over.
“Never,” he said. “Never. There were always two ways. The Nazi way that called up the dragon that is in the heart of every German. And the Communist way. The way of order and human reason. I chose the Communist Party. I joined a Betrtibs-Zelle and a Strassen-Zelle when I was nineteen. My family disowned me.”
“You don’t say.”
Somehow I had never imagined Dr. Mann in any role as active as that of a Communist. If he had been sent out at night to put up illegal posters, I felt pretty sure that he would have contrived to paste them on upside down. But, in any case, that meant that there were two of us for certain with a C.P. past and I wondered how much Wilton knew about that.
I was still wondering when Dr. Mann came up very close and started to whisper as though the N.K.V.D. and the Gestapo were both listening just outside the door.
“And there is another,” he said. “Why else should someone among us change his name and use a poste restante address for secret communications?”
“Could be shyness,” I suggested.
But Dr. Mann shook his head.
“He is not shy,” he answered. “He is proud. Very proud.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Dr. Smith.”
There was a pause.
“Have you told the Inspector?” I asked.
Dr. Mann shook his head.
“It would serve no purpose,” he said sadly. “I am no longer believed.”