I determined to measure out the information I would give. I had nothing to go on but liking and disapproval of him. This gallant little eccentric seemed to have a disregard for human life that was two hundred years out of date. But it could have been worse. He might have had a wholly modern disregard.
“Age about forty,” I said. “Solid build and especially broad across the hips. Dressed in a windbreaker and tweed trousers. I can’t tell you much about his coloring.”
“Height?” he asked.
“Medium. About an inch taller than you.”
“That is tall,” he insisted severely. “Nose? Chin?”
“Nose, nothing in particular. Jaw, square.”
“Can I have a look at him?”
“No.”
“Dig him up,” he suggested.
“How should I know where he is?”
“Mention of a spade. Who grabbed it on the road?”
“You did. And Pink will swear to it in court if it suits him.”
“Colonel, my governess had a word for you.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I’ve a wife and family.”
“Right! Seen it a dozen times. Just love and kisses, and a man’s a bloody hero. Give him a couple of children, and he’s got to know what he’s fighting for. Now, you’re in this, but if I’m not wrong–and when I’m talking to a born soldier I’m never wrong–I don’t believe you know what you’re in or why.”
I didn’t reply. The general’s intuition or judgment of character was far too dangerous.
“Now, how am I going to put it?” he went on. “Ever read state trials? Russia and elsewhere?”
“I used to.”
“Don’t wonder you stopped! Think the evidence is all faked, ha? Well, it isn’t. Men who confess they are guilty are guilty. What of? There we have it! Guilty of muddle. And it doesn’t take any drugs or tortures to make them confess it. Of course they are muddled. Why? Because the bosses are muddled. There’s no firm creed. That’s the thing to remember. A creed is what the leader says it is, and no more.
“That makes it easy to muscle in on the racket. Just like Hitler and Mussolini. You have to start as a socialist–that’s all–and then you have to muddle. Tell the workingman that you’re going to avoid all the errors of communism and democracy, and that you’re just going to exercise a little benevolent dictatorship until things are running properly.
“And that, Colonel my lad, is what is going on. Party here, party there, all supporting each other all over Europe. Couriers, money, beautiful agreements on paper. It’s nothing but a new fascism.”
“You’re employed by your government?” I asked.
“Colonel, I would be shot on sight if I set foot in Poland.”
“Then revolution ought to suit you.”
“Well, it doesn’t. Revolution would be the end of Poland. We Poles are all patriots, even the communists. We play for time. We wait for destiny. We want stability. A group of Hitlers, all jumping up simultaneously, all promising peace and plenty, where would that get you or me, ha? I tell you, there’s one of ‘em ready in every country from the Urals to Ireland.”
“Who’s ours?” I asked skeptically. “Pink?”
“Pink? These men are near the top! All of them different kinds of socialist. I don’t know yet who yours is. Might be–” and he mentioned three ministers, each of whom, certainly, was so mystically sure of his own Tightness and benevolence that he would have qualified as a budding Hitler.
“Ever heard of Robert Heyne-Hassingham?” I asked.
He had; but the name meant little to him. He only knew, through his investigations into the neo-fascist cells abroad, that there was a corresponding underground in England, and that it carried on under cover of some respectable movement.
“Or of a Colonel Hiart?”
“Hiart? Head of your Intelligence Service in during the war. What’s he doing now? Brilliant fellow but crazy with nerves. Hated firearms because they went bang. Always seeing assassins under his bed, ha?”
“The sort of chap who might imagine General Sandorski when the general was on the other side of the Channel?”
“Colonel, I order you–-I beg you, tell me what you know.”
“I know something damned odd is going on over my shoot,” I replied. “And that’s all. Where are you staying?”
“The mental hospital,” he announced with a sly pride. “My doctor is there.”
All my original doubts came back.
“Of course,” I agreed. “They are right up to date.”
He leaped to his feet in a passion, and popped down again as flat on his face as if he had just been missed by a sniper.
“Chap up there,” he said.
I raised a cautious head and peered through the furze. There was indeed a chap up there, going for a leisurely country walk. I recognized him at once as the man who had watched Blossom’s gate and bridge.
“When I say my doctor,” Sandorski hissed, “I mean my doctor before the war. If I were mad, you bloody fool, would they have made me a general?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never studied the Polish campaign.”
That went right over his head. He was much too angry. When the walker had passed us and was safely out of earshot, he told me that his prewar doctor had joined the staff of the Dorset Mental Hospital with a bunch of other highly qualified refugees from Poland and Lithuania; till he learned English, he was acting only as a superior orderly, but he had a pleasant cottage in the grounds, and there was no reason in the world why he shouldn’t have a friend to stay with him.
Sandorski’s improvisation was brilliant, and he had every right to be proud of it. The mental hospital was a self-contained world, and neither police nor Heyne-Hassingham would ever bother about its guests. One just didn’t think of it as having any. Moreover, if some interested person noticed anything eccentric in Sandorski’s behavior and chose to watch him–as easily I might myself–his disappearance into those well-kept grounds would effectively stop further inquiries.
“Can I see you there?” I asked.
“Why not? Any time you like.”
“Be there between nine and ten tomorrow.”
And I told him that he mustn’t go near my house, which might be watched. I also warned him that he might be seen by someone who knew him.
“Colonel, my lad,” he replied superbly, “you are an infantryman. When the cavalry charges, it is always likely to be seen.”
Well, that was fine when he was all alone and deliberately provoking any sort of incident that would reveal the enemy. I suggested, however, that since his dash and tactics had been so successful, the cavalry, for the moment, had better go into reserve.
“And now do something for me,” I asked. “Telephone this number, and tell my wife that Mr. Taine won’t be back till after dark, and tell her that they tried oil on the ants who complained it was the wrong grade for summer.”
He was very suspicious. After all, I had explained nothing.
“Just a father’s ruse to prove his identity,” I assured him.
I showed him a route back to the loony bin, where he would be safe from observation till he was well away from Blossom’s farm. I myself went off in the opposite direction, for I was interested by the country walker. I saw him finish his stroll along the edge of the escarpment, and vanish into a little copse at the point where the slope curved round to the east. I hurried after, keeping well under the brow of the hill where he couldn’t see me, and reached a clump of rough stuff below and outside the copse.
He was, as I expected, just within the trees–an excellent position from which he could watch the road at the bottom of the valley and the green track along the top. Once or twice he raised his field glasses to examine traffic on the road. Apart from that slight movement he was so absorbed by duty that an incautious rabbit put its head out of a bramble bush within five yards of him.