“I see. Then I suppose you wouldn’t object to Vagas’ two thousand lire a month if I could give you a good enough reason for taking it?”
I hesitated. “Frankly, Zaleshoff, I don’t think there’s a good enough reason in existence. At this very moment I’m telling myself that I’m a damn fool to sit here listening to you when I might be catching up on some of the sleep I missed last night. But I’m curious. I can’t believe that you’re such a half-wit as to spend an hour putting me off Vagas’ offer so thoroughly if you really wanted me to accept it.”
“I wasn’t putting you off. I was giving you the facts.”
“The distinction is too much for me. I’m not quite crazy, you know. Do you suppose I want to share that poor devil Ferning’s fate?”
“I do not suppose anything of the sort. But there’s no reason why you should share his fate.”
“That’s precisely what I’ m thinking. You, I gather, have something up your sleeve.”
“No. I just want to put a situation to you.”
“Fire away.”
“Do you ever read newspapers?”
“As little as possible, these days. Why?”
“Have you ever heard of a little thing called the Rome-Berlin axis?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Have you ever looked at what it means on a map?”
“I can’t say I’ve bothered to.”
“You should. It’s interesting. A solid, strategic unit from the Frisian Islands in the North to the toe of Italy in the South. The toe is waiting to kick Great Britain in the pants. The head is there to gobble up what’s left. The Rome-Berlin axis is one of the most effective principles of European power-politics that has ever been stated. It gave Italy and Germany a free hand in Spain. It changed Austria from an independent state to a memory. It made England launch the most gigantic peace-time armament-making drive the world has ever seen. It cocked the biggest snook yet at the League of Nations idea. It deprived France of her little Entente allies. It’s frightened the rest of Europe so badly that it lives now in a permanent state of jitters. Even the United States have become uneasy. The world is slowly beginning to turn on the Rome-Berlin axis and already the strain is telling. Something’s got to snap, something’s going to snap; and if it’s not the Rome-Berlin axis, it’s going to be you and me. The statesmen of the so-called democracies, France and England, are busting themselves in their efforts to make it the axis that goes first. And they look like failing. Things are moving too quickly for them. They try to buy off Italy and fail. They try again. They can’t hit out for fear of hurting themselves. They’re out of their depths and they know it. They’re as mixed as my metaphors. They’re confused and confounded. And meanwhile we drift nearer and nearer to war. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are getting ready to go; and, Marlow, if those boys ride out again across Europe, you can say good-bye to all your dreams. It’ll be a war that’ll make the world safe for everything except mankind. A government will be formed with King Typhus at the head of a parliament of corpse-fed rats.”
He paused for a moment. “I dare say you’re wondering where all this is leading. I’ll tell you. It’s leading to a question-this question. If someone told you that by taking a certain course you could make a very, very small, but very, very positive, contribution towards putting a kink in that axis we’ve been talking about, what would you say?”
“I’d say that he had a bee in his bonnet.”
He grinned. “H’m, yes. You probably would say that. But supposing that he hadn’t got a bee in his bonnet, supposing he was talking good hard sense, and supposing he could prove it. What would you do then?”
I fidgeted. “I’m not very fond of these beautifully simple parables, Zaleshoff. Vagas has a weakness for them, too. Let’s get down to cases.”
“Just what I was going to do.” He put his hand in his pocket. “You wanted the dope; here’s the first bit. It’s the card from that file in my office, card number V. 18. Take a look at it.”
His hand came out with the card folded in two.
The picture of Vagas was obviously a photostat of a photograph taken some years before. There was more hair on top of the head and the sides were cropped. The skin of the face was tighter. He wore a high tubular stiff collar with a broad, flat tie. Below the photostat was pasted a square of typewritten paper.
Johann Luitpold Vagas (I read) born Dresden 1889. Heidelberg. Army 1909. 6th Bavarian Cavalry. Berlin 1913. War Ministry. 1917 Iron Cross and Star of Leopold. 1918 refugee to Belgrade. Yugo-Slav citizenship 1922. 1924 Yugo-Slav agent for Cator amp; Bliss Ltd. of London. Returned Germany 1933. Returned Belgrade 1934. Rome 1936. Milan 1937. See S. 22, J. 15, P. 207, C. 64, F. 326.
I looked up. “Well, what’s it all about?”
Zaleshoff frowned. “Does nothing there strike you?”
I read the card again. “Well, he appears to have been agent for a British steel firm.”
“Yes, he sold guns to the Yugo-Slav government; but that’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“He was a German officer. In nineteen-eighteen when the revolution broke out he skipped to Belgrade and later took up Yugo-Slav citizenship. But ”-he stabbed the air with his forefinger-“in nineteen-thirty-three he returned to Germany. Note the date-nineteen-thirty-three. What happened in nineteen-thirty-three in Germany?”
“Hitler came into power.”
“Precisely. Germany went Nazi, so he returned.”
“And left again the next year. What about it?”
“Just this. Vagas went to Germany a Yugo-Slav. He returned a German. From nineteen-thirty-four to nineteen-thirty-six Vagas was the principal German secret agent in Belgrade. It was a cinch for them. Here was a patriotic but expatriated German officer with a Yugo-Slav passport and well in with the Belgrade War Ministry by virtue of his position as an armament salesman. What more could you want? The German Secret Service have always been tightwads, and I dare say the fact that he was drawing a fat commission from Cator amp; Bliss and didn’t want anything except the honour of serving his country was an additional attraction. Besides, an unpaid agent is always a sounder bet than a guy who may pass on unreliable information to justify his wages.”
“Yes, I see. But if he was so keen on the honour of serving the Nazis, what’s he doing here now working for the Yugo-Slav Government?”
Zaleshoff lounged back luxuriously on the divan. “There now, that’s fine!” He smiled seraphically. “We’re getting right to the heart of the matter. What, indeed?” He leaned forward. “I’ll tell you. The answer is-’nothing.’ He’s not working for the Yugo-Slav Government. He’s working for the Nazis.”
“He told me…”
“There’s a good old-fashioned word for what he told you-‘boloney.’ Listen. On October the nineteenth, nineteen-thirty-six, the Italian Foreign Minister, Ciano, met the German Foreign Minister, von Neurath, in Munich. At that meeting the Rome-Berlin axis was forged. A fortnight later Mussolini hailed the Rome-Berlin axis publicly in a speech in the Piazza del Duomo just round the corner. The crowd sang ‘Deutschland uber alles’ and the Horst Wessel song at the top of their voices. The blackshirts and brownshirts whooped it up together. Italy and Germany swore eternal friendship.” He paused impressively. “A fortnight later Vagas packed his suitcases and moved into Italy.”
He sipped at his whisky. “Have you ever watched a cat and a dog lie down on the same floor, Marlow? Maybe they’ve been brought up together, maybe they’re used to one another, maybe they’ve got the same interest in a common owner. But they’re never entirely at their ease. The cat is always watchful, the dog self-conscious. They can never quite forget that there is such a thing as a cat-and-dog fight. There’s an undercurrent of mutual suspicion between them that they can never quite forget. So it was with the Nazis and the Fascisti. They’d come to an agreement over Austria. They’d agreed on parallel action in Spain. They’d agreed to boycott Geneva. They’d agreed to present a united front to the Western powers. But Johann Luitpold Vagas was sent into Italy. The dog was keeping one eye open, just in case.”