On that day Garnet went to have luncheon at the Service club to which he belonged. He was sad and weary, having sat up half the night. He was overwhelmed with work, and felt that unless he relaxed for an hour and had a quiet meal instead of the glass of milk and sandwiches that he was accustomed to snatch at midday, he would become a casualty himself. That one of the first duties of a soldier was to take care of his own health was a maxim that he frequently impressed on others.
The large club dining-room was nearly full. In a corner he saw an old friend whom he had known in Penang. He was a Scotsman and now, so Garnet noticed, a Brigadier. He sank into the seat opposite, and the two old soldiers began to exchange grievances. Having disposed of the climate, they proceeded to condemn the long hours during which men were expected to work on this side of the world. Garnet explained that this was the first occasion for many months that he had been able to lunch at the club, and that he was only doing so today because he had felt on the verge of a breakdown.
‘I was up half the night with a poor fellow who died early this morning, and when I got to the hospital there were a series of operations, so that I haven’t even had time to certify his death.’
‘Do you have to nurse your patients as well as dose them?’ asked the Brigadier.
‘No, but this was a dear friend, who had been living in my flat, Willie Maryngton. Did you ever know him?’ Garnet mentioned his regiment.
‘I think I met him in India – a nice fellow – very sad.’
‘Yes indeed, and I suppose I shall have to make all the funeral arrangements.’
‘Can’t you leave that to his relations?’
‘The extraordinary thing is that he hasn’t got any. I’ve known him all my life. His father, who was killed in the last war, made my father his guardian. My father was killed, and Willie was brought up with us from the age of fourteen. He never had a single relation that he knew of.’
The Brigadier seemed interested and began to put questions.
‘You say he died this morning? And you have not certified his death? And he had neither kith nor kin?’
Garnet confirmed all these particulars, and the Brigadier went on to make enquiries about Willie’s activities during the war, about his age and rank, and ended by asking:
‘How many people have you informed of his death?’
‘I telephoned to my sister this morning. We were both very fond of him. The nursing sister and the charwoman, who looks after my flat, are of course aware. But why all these questions? It’s very kind of you to take so much interest, but I don’t quite understand.’
‘I am going to ask one more. Did he make a will? If so, where is it? Who benefits by it, and who is the executor?’
‘Yes, he made a will. I found it this morning. He left everything to his regimental benevolent fund, and appointed as his executors the firm of lawyers who have always acted for him.’
‘Osborne,’ said the Scotsman, solemnly, ‘do you believe in Providence?’
‘No,’ said Garnet.
‘Well, I do. I was brought up so to believe, and I have never lost my faith. Providence is a great mystery, and I have seen many proofs of it in my life. I am going to make three requests of you. First, that you will not sign that certificate to-day. Second, that you will not mention Maryngton’s death to another living soul. Third, that you will call on me at my office this afternoon.’
Garnet protested that he had no time to spare.
‘You will have the time you would have given to registering the death and making the funeral arrangements. You have known me for many years and you know that I do not use words lightly. I tell you that this is a matter of the very greatest importance.’
His Scottish r’s rolled impressively, and Garnet, although he felt that he was dreaming, agreed to do as he was asked. Five o’clock was the hour decided upon. The Brigadier drew a blank visiting-card from his pocket book, and wrote upon it. ‘That is the address,’ he said.
Garnet raised his eyebrows as he read it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I should have thought that that was the last place you would have chosen for your office.’
‘That,’ replied the Brigadier, ‘is precisely why I chose it.’
They parted, and a few minutes later the Brigadier was entering that ill-famed building outside which Willie had waited a few days before. He took a lift to the third floor, where he let himself into one of the two flats. A slovenly-looking man, sitting in the passage, sprang smartly to attention.
‘Fergusson,’ said the Brigadier, ‘a colonel, R.A.M.C., in uniform, will be calling at five o’clock. Show him straight in. I don’t wish to be disturbed while he is with me.’
‘Sir,’ replied Fergusson.
The Brigadier went into his office, a small room with a large writing-table, sat down and rang the bell. Felicity appeared.
‘I shall have a Colonel Osborne coming to see me about five,’ he said. ‘I don’t wish any telephone calls put through while he is here, unless it is a matter of great importance.’
‘Colonel Osborne?’ she repeated tentatively.
‘Colonel Garnet Osborne, R.A.M.C.’
‘He is my brother.’
‘Is that so, Miss Osborne? Is that so? Another remarkable coincidence. Do you believe in Providence, Miss Osborne?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.’
‘There are worse things to think about. Your brother is an old friend of mine. We were together in Malaya. Have you all the documents ready and in order for Operation Z?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have you not thought of any better name for it? Z is a daft sort of a name for an operation.’
‘I haven’t thought of another.’
‘Well, just go on thinking. Thank you.’
She left the room.
When Garnet arrived he was shown straight into the Brigadier, who greeted him with the question:
‘Did you know that your sister is my personal assistant?’
‘My sister Felicity?’ he asked in astonishment.
‘She is Miss Osborne to me, but she tells me you are her brother, and I have no reason to doubt her veracity.’
‘Well, well! This is a strange day in my life,’ said Garnet.
‘And you have not got to the end of it yet,’ replied the Brigadier. ‘Sit down.’
He then proceeded to confirm all the particulars concerning Willie with which Garnet had supplied him at luncheon. He had a paper in his hand on which he had recorded them. He went through them in order to be sure they were correct.
‘Thank you,’ he concluded when he came to the end of his questions. ‘You have given me some information – and now you are going to receive some in return.
‘The purpose of this department, in which you find yourself, Colonel Osborne, is to deceive the enemy. Our methods of deception are, at certain times, extremely elaborate. The more important the military operations under contemplation the more elaborate are our preparations to ensure, not so much that the enemy shall be ignorant of what we intend to do, but rather that he shall have good reason to believe that we intend to do something quite different. I need not impress upon you the importance of secrecy, but I would say to you, what I say to all those who work with me, that there is only one way to keep a secret. There are not two ways. That way is not to whisper it to a living soul – neither to the wife of your bosom nor to the man you trust most upon earth. I know you for a loyal, trustworthy and discreet soldier, but for a million pounds I would not tell you what I am about to tell you, if I did not need your help.
‘A military operation of immense magnitude is in course of preparation. That is a fact of which the enemy are probably aware. Its success must depend largely upon the enemy’s ignorance of when and where it will be launched. Every security precaution has been taken to prevent that knowledge from reaching him. Those security precautions are not, I repeat, the business of this department. It is not our business to stop him getting correct information. It is our business to provide him, through sources which will carry conviction of their reliability, with information that is false.
‘In a few days from now, Colonel Osborne, the dead body of a British officer will be washed ashore, on the coast of a neutral country, whose relations with the enemy are not quite so neutral as we might wish them to be. It will be found that he is carrying in a packet that is perfectly waterproof, which will be firmly strapped to his chest, under his jacket, documents of a highly confidential character – documents of such vital importance to the conduct of the war that no one will wonder that they should have been entrusted to a special mission and a special messenger. These documents, including a private letter from the Chief of the Imperial General Staff to the General Officer Commanding North Africa, although couched in the most, apparently, guarded language, will yet make perfectly plain to an intelligent reader exactly what the Allies are intending to do. You will appreciate the importance of such an operation; and you will also appreciate that its success or failure must depend entirely upon the convincing character of the evidence, that will prove the authenticity of these documents and will remove from the minds of those who are to study them any suspicion that a trick has been played upon them. The most important of all the links in that chain of evidence must be the dead body on which the documents are found.
‘Now, Osborne, you are a medical man, and you must have discovered in your student days, when you were in need of material to work upon, what I have discovered only lately, the extraordinary importance that people attach to what becomes of the dead bodies of their distant relations. People, who can ill afford it, will travel from the north of Scotland to the south of England to assure themselves that the mortal remains of a distant cousin have been decently committed to the earth. You can hardly imagine the difficulty I have experienced. The old profession of body-snatching has no longer any practitioners, or I would have employed one. I have now secured the services of a gentleman in your line of business, a civilian, and our hopes rest upon what a pauper lunatic asylum may produce. But there must be difficulties. You may have heard, Osborne, that death is the great leveller, but even after death has done his damnedest there is apt to remain a very considerable difference between a pauper lunatic deceased from natural causes and a British officer, in the prime of life, fit to be entrusted with a most important mission.’
‘I see what you are getting at,’ interrupted Garnet. ‘You want me to agree to poor Maryngton’s body being used for this purpose.’
‘Bide a while, bide a while,’ said the Brigadier, who had not completed his thesis. ‘You will appreciate the cosmic importance of this operation, upon which the lives of thousands of men must depend, and which may affect even the final issue of the war. This morning I was wrestling desperately with the problem of the pauper lunatic for whom an identity, a name, a background had to be created. Our enemies are extremely painstaking and thorough in their work. You may be quite certain that they have copies of the last published Army List, and I am sure that they have also, easily available, a complete register of all officers who have been killed since that publication, or whose names have appeared in the obituary columns. Their first action on being informed that the body of a dead British officer has been discovered will be to ascertain whether such a British officer was ever alive. If they fail to find the name of such an officer in the Army List their suspicions will be aroused, and those suspicions, once aroused, may easily lead them to the true solution of the mystery. We should be forced to give to our unknown one of those names that are shared by hundreds, and should have to hope that, in despair of satisfying themselves as to the identity of the particular Major Smith or Brown in question, they would abandon the enquiry. But – I say again – we are dealing with a nation whose thoroughness in small matters of detail is unequalled, and it is my belief that within a few days the chief of their intelligence service would be informed that no officer of the name in question has ever served in the British Army. From that moment all the information contained in the documents, about which I told you, would be treated as information of doubtful value and of secondary importance. The result might well be that the whole operation would fail completely.
‘While this grave problem is occupying my mind to-day, you sit yourself down before me and tell me of an officer who died this morning, whose death has not been registered, who has no relations, who was of an age and standing entirely suitable for such a mission and over the disposal of whose dead body you have control. Call it the long arm of coincidence, whatever that may mean, if you desire, but to me, Colonel Osborne,’ the Brigadier’s voice grew hoarse with emotion, ‘it is the hand of Providence stretched out to aid His people in their dire need, and I ask you to give me your help, as God has given me His, in the fulfilment of my task.’
He ceased and both sat silent. After a while Garnet said:
‘What you are asking me to do is very extraordinary, and although I perfectly understand the terrible urgency, you must allow me to reflect.’ He paused – and then continued: ‘In the first place I should be acting quite illegally. I have no more right to conceal Maryngton’s death than I have to dispose of his body.’
‘Silent leges inter tirma,’ replied the Brigadier. ‘I will give you my personal guarantee, written if you wish it, that will cover you from any legal consequences.’
They sat again in silence for two or three minutes. When Garnet next spoke it was to ask:
‘What should I actually have to do? And what am I going to say when Maryngton’s friends, many of whom must have known that he was living with me, ask me what has become of him?’
The Brigadier was obviously relieved. He felt now that the other’s mind was moving in the right direction.
‘What you have to do is to lay out by the side of Maryngton’s body tonight his uniform, omitting no detail of it. Don’t forget his cap or his belt, and above all make sure that the identity disc is there. Put on the table his watch, his cheque-book and any small personal possessions that he always carried. At 2 a.m. some friends of mine will call upon you. There may be two of them, there may be three. You will show them which is Maryngton’s room. Then you will go to bed and sleep soundly. You will, however, dream that Maryngton comes to you in the night and tells you that he is leaving England in the early morning. His mission is of a secret nature, and in case anything should go wrong he hands you his will, which you have already told me is in your possession. When you wake in the morning he will certainly have gone, and you will therefore believe your dream was a reality. It will probably be many days before you have to answer any enquiry. During those days you will repeat to yourself continually how he told you one night that he was leaving on a secret mission, how he gave you his will, and how he was gone on the following morning. You will come to believe this yourself, and it will be all that you know, all that you have to say to anyone who asks questions. One day you will read in the paper that Maryngton has died on active service. Then you will send his will to his lawyers; and that will be all.’
Again Garnet sat in silence for several minutes.
‘Does my sister know about this affair?’ he asked. ‘Miss Osborne is aware,’ said the Brigadier, ‘that an operation of this nature is in preparation.’
‘I would rather,’ said Garnet, ‘that she did not know that it was – that we were making use of – damn it, respect for the dead bodies of those we love is a very profound instinct in human nature. Willie Maryngton has been like a brother to us all our lives. I am sure it would distress her horribly.’
The Brigadier looked grave and answered:
‘You may be sure that I have already given very careful consideration to this part of the problem. Besides ourselves there are three other people, so far as we are aware, who know that Maryngton died of pneumonia this morning. I have decided that the best method of securing the discretion of the nurse and the servant is to say no more to them on the subject. To neither of them will the case present any peculiar or interesting feature. To impose secrecy upon them would merely stimulate their curiosity. If either of them reads the announcement of his death, which is unlikely, the fact that it is described as having taken place on active service will be accepted as part of the incomprehensible vocabulary of Whitehall.
‘Now your sister is another matter. I have the greatest confidence in her reliability, but I cannot expect even her to keep a secret if she doesn’t know it is a secret. She may have told someone of Maryngton’s death already. If not, she is almost sure to do so.’
‘She’s a strange girl,’ said Garnet; ‘she keeps her friends in separate compartments, isolated cells as it were. Since my brother was killed she and Willie had no mutual friends. I think it unlikely that she has told anybody. But I can make sure, which I promise to do. What is more, I can pretend to her that my conduct has not been strictly professional in allowing a friend to die in my own fiat without calling in a second opinion, and failing to inform the authorities within twenty-four hours. On that ground I can ask her not to mention the matter, and then we can safely count on her silence.’
‘I don’t like it, Osborne,’ said the Brigadier. ‘In affairs of this sort I like to have everything water-tight. The smallest leak may sink the ship – and what a ship it is! Think, man, the whole British Empire is on board!’
An ugly cloud of obstinacy crept into Garnet’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘The whole business is hateful to me, and I just can’t bear to bring my sister into it. Between ourselves, I once suspected that she was in love with Maryngton. I even hoped that they might marry. Can you imagine telling a girl what it is that you are intending to do with the dead body of a man who might have been her husband? It is a kind of sacrilege.’
The Brigadier looked into Garnet’s eyes, and he saw the obstinacy that lay there. He looked at his watch, and then he said,
‘I’ll not tell her. You have my word for it.’
Garnet sighed.
‘In that case I suppose I must consent,’ he said. ‘I can see no good reason for not doing so – except sentiment, or perhaps sentimentality – and I have never considered myself to be ruled by either. In any case, service must come first. You have given me my instructions. They are simple enough. They shall be carried out. Have you anything further to ask of me?’
‘Lay out the uniform,’ said the Brigadier, omitting no detail of it. Leave the small personal possessions on the table. Open the door when the bell rings. Dream as I told you, and believe that your dream is true.’
They shook hands and Garnet turned to go.
‘One more detail,’ said the Brigadier. ‘You have not by any chance got some spare major’s badges among your equipment?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Garnet.
‘Very well. My friends will provide them. I have been thinking that the rank of captain is just one too low for an officer charged with such a very important mission. He appears as a captain in the last pre-war Army List. If he had been employed on important work since then he would have become a major by now, so I intend to make him one. These small details can prove of vast importance in this sort of work.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Garnet, ‘that was the promotion he was so anxious to obtain. Poor Willie! It is a heartbreaking business.’
‘Ay,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Operation Heartbreak would not be a bad name for it.’
Felicity met Garnet in the passage. ‘Come into my room,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a cup of tea for you.’
‘It will be welcome,’ he answered. ‘I had a wretched night and I’ve been hard at it all day. Odd to find you here. You are, I must say, a very secretive girl.’
‘Now tell me all there is to tell about Willie. I felt that I couldn’t bear to hear more this morning, when you told me he was dead, so I rang off in an abrupt and what must have appeared a callous way. But I can bear it now. Go on.’
Garnet recounted the course of the short illness and explained that it was not uncommon for healthy men in middle-age to be carried off suddenly by a sharp attack of pneumonia.
‘But I do think,’ he went on, ‘that there was something else, another contributory cause as it were, in Willie’s case. I told you not long ago that I thought there was something wrong with him. In all illness, and especially in cases of this sort, the will of the patient plays a great part. There comes a moment when an effort is required. In this case that effort wasn’t made. I am afraid that one of the reasons why Willie died was that he did not greatly wish to live.’
‘Ah!’ Felicity gave a little cry, as though in sudden pain, but said no more.
After a pause Garnet went on to ask:
‘Do you happen to have mentioned his death to anyone you’ve seen today, Felicity?’
‘No,’ she answered. ‘I haven’t seen anyone, for one thing, and there isn’t anyone to whom I talk about Willie, for another.’
‘Well, I had rather that you kept it to yourself,’ he said, and went on to tell her the story he had invented about his alleged lapse from professional rectitude.
‘I promise not to breathe a word,’ she said, but she looked at him with curiosity, asking herself whether such conduct was really unprofessional and, if so, whether Garnet could have been guilty of it.
‘How about the funeral?’ she asked.
‘Oh, it seems there are some distant cousins in Yorkshire. The lawyers have communicated with them. They want him to be buried up there. It appears his forbears came from that part of the country. I couldn’t object.’
‘He always told me he hadn’t any cousins anywhere, but I’m glad they’ve been discovered. I hate funerals, and he would never have expected me to go to Yorkshire to attend one among people whom I don’t know.’
Hers was not an inquisitive nature, but it seemed strange to her that cousins who had remained unknown throughout his life should assert themselves within a few hours of his death.
Having finished his tea, Garnet rose to go.
‘Good-bye, dear old Garnet,’ she said. ‘Now that you have found out where I work you might come and see me sometimes. I can always give you tea.’
‘I should like to come,’ he replied. ‘I am very busy, but I feel lonely sometimes.’
‘I suppose everybody does.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
He went, and a few minutes later the bell summoned her to the Brigadier. She picked up her pad and pencil and went into his room.
‘I had an interesting conversation with your brother,’ he said. ‘Did he tell you about it?’
‘I told you that I met him in the Far East. We both know something about the pretty ways of the Japanese and we’ve been having a fine crack about them. Our Government will never resort to bacteriological warfare, you know, but I think it’s just the sort of trick the Japs might play on us. So I was thinking that we might get it whispered around that we had something up our sleeve in that line more terrible than anything they would imagine. That might make them think twice before they used it.’
‘It might, on the other hand, make them use it immediately so as to be sure of getting their blow in first.’
‘Ay, but I think they’ve held off poison gas so far because they suspect we’ve got a deadlier brew than they have. Your brother is very knowledgeable in the matter of oriental diseases.’
Felicity wondered why he was telling her all this. She had studied the Brigadier’s methods, and she had noticed that when he volunteered information it was usually with a motive, and that the information itself was usually incorrect. Was he trying to deceive her, or had he perhaps some more subtle purpose?
‘To change the subject,’ he went on, ‘to Operation Z, or Operation Heartbreak, as I’m thinking of calling it. I’ve received information from that doctor of whom I told you. He has to hand exactly what we were looking for. So the matter is now urgent. Time and tide – we depend on both of them, and neither will wait upon the other. There is not an hour to be lost. The Admiralty are standing by. They await only the pressure of a button to go ahead. And I am about to press that button. You have the wallet and the papers. I should like to have another look at them.’
As Felicity went to her room to fetch them it occurred to her that the news which had come to the Brigadier from the doctor could not have been received that afternoon by telephone, for she had had control of all the calls that reached him, and it was strange, if time were precious, that he should have wasted so much of it in discussing remote possibilities with Garnet, and should have attached so much importance to the conversation.
She returned with the carefully constructed waterproof wallet and a thin sheaf of papers. The Brigadier slipped on a pair of gloves before he touched them. She smiled.
‘You think, Miss Osborne, my precautions are a wee bit ridiculous. But it is always wiser to err on the side of prudence. I hope that in a few days these papers will be in the hands of a gentleman as prudent as I am, and better equipped. It may be that he will have them tested for finger-prints, and it may be that he has a photograph of my finger-prints on his writing-table. We are dealing with a very thorough people, Miss Osborne, a very thorough people.’
‘So this is the letter from the C.I.G.S.,’ he went on, carefully taking it out of the envelope. He read it slowly and chuckled. ‘He must have enjoyed putting in that joke about the Secretary of State. It just gives the hallmark of authenticity. He has made a very good job of it indeed.’
He laid the papers on the table in front of him, and remained silent for three or four minutes, apparently lost in thought.
‘A man setting out on a journey of this sort,’ he said at last, speaking very slowly, ‘would probably put into his wallet what was most precious and dear to him. A married man might put there the photographs of his wife and children. This is to be a single man.’ He paused again. ‘Do you think, Miss Osborne,’ he asked, ‘that you could draft a loveletter?’
‘I can try,’ she replied, impassively.
‘Do that,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile I must get on to the Admiralty and see the young men in our Operations Branch, who have a full night before them.’
She rose to go.
‘Make sure that there’s no “G.R.” in the corner of the paper you write on, nor “For the service of His Majesty’s Government” in the watermark.’
‘I will make sure,’ she said.
‘And there is one more thing.’ He hesitated. ‘You must try to make that letter the kind a man would think worth keeping.’
‘I will try,’ she said, and left the room.
The Brigadier continued to look at the door after she had shut it. He had the habit of observing people closely. Was he mistaken or had he detected a light of revelation in her eyes, a kind of exultation in her manner, the air of one who goes with confidence to the performance of a grateful task?
He had no time to waste on speculation. His evening was fully occupied. He first had a long interview with two young men, who were members of his staff but not regular attendants at the office. Then there were a number of telephone conversations with the Admiralty and with other government departments. When he looked at his watch he was surprised to see how late it was. He rang the bell and Felicity came in with a sheet of paper in her hand.
‘I am sorry I have detained you so long,’ he said – ‘all our preparations are now complete. Have you drafted the letter that I suggested?’
She handed him the paper she was carrying and said nothing. He put on his gloves before taking it and held it up to the light, examining it with a magnifying glass, and then, seemingly satisfied with his inspection, adjusted his spectacles and began to read:–
Darling, my darling, you are going away from me and I have never told you how much I love you. How sad, how heartbreaking it would be if you had never known. But this will tell you, and this you must take with you on your dark mission. It brings you my passionate and deathless love. Forgive me all the disappointment that I caused you. Remember now only the hours that I lay in your arms. I cannot have known how much I loved you until I knew that you must go away. I have been weak and wanton, as I warned you once that I should always be, but I have been in my own odd way, believe me, oh believe me, darling, I have been true. When we meet again you will understand everything and perhaps we shall be happy at last.
When he had finished reading it he did not look up.
‘This should be signed with a Christian name,’ he said.
‘Have you any suggestions?’ she asked. There was a faint note of bitterness in her voice.
‘An unusual one is likely to be more convincing than a common one. Your brother told me yours this afternoon. Have you any objection to making use of it? People show by the way they sign their own names that they are accustomed to doing so. Handwriting experts might be able to tell the difference.’
‘I will sign it “Felicity”,’ she said.
‘If the pen you have in your hand is the one with which you wrote the letter,’ he said, ‘you can sign it here,’ and he pointed to the chair on the other side of his table. She sat down and wrote and handed him back the letter. At the end of it she had written in her clear, bold hand “Felicity” and at the beginning “My Willie”.
The Brigadier made sure that the ink was dry and then he crumpled the letter between his two hands so that she thought he was going to throw it into the waste-paper basket. He smoothed it out again very carefully, saying as he did so: ‘This is a letter which a man would have read many times. It should bear signs of usage.’ Then, still looking down at the letter and still smoothing it, he said:
‘So you have guessed our secret. I gave your brother my word of honour that I would not tell you. I think I have kept my word.’
‘But why did he want me not to know?’ she asked.
‘He feared that it would cause you pain.’
‘He ought to have understood,’ she said, ‘that it is what Willie would have wished more than anything in all the world.’