Hilary himself stayed in the background, interviewing possible new recruits and setting them tests which some refused to undertake. He would then explain that he was a theatrical producer who had been testing their reactions (which was true enough in a way), and pay them off with ten-pound notes. The enterprise had the elements of theatrical childishness that he loved, and for three years now it had completely absorbed him.
On the afternoon of the unsuccessful attempt in Kensington Gardens the members of the group gathered in an extension of Mannering’s wine cellars that ran below the Thames near London Bridge. They entered by a door in an alley, which led to a passage and a storeroom. In the storeroom a perfectly camouflaged door led to a single large windowless room.
There were wine racks along two walls with dusty bottles in them. On the other walls were prints of Beatrix Potter characters — the cat Simpkin buying food for the tailor of Gloucester, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle the hedgehog in her kitchen, Pigling Bland on the way to market, and of course Peter Rabbit who was shown escaping from Farmer McGregor’s attempt to catch him with a sieve. The ceiling was low and the lighting came from lamps invisibly sunk into it, so that the effect was one of mysterious gloom. There was only one visible door, which was said to lead directly to the Thames.
“It’s romantic,” Klaus Dongen had said when he saw it. “And ridiculous.”
“And safe,” Hilary had replied.
There were ten of them besides Hilary, and he waited until they all arrived, refusing to listen when both Peter Rabbit and Simpkin tried to tell him what had happened. Hilary was now in his late thirties, a tall thin man with a sharp nose and a mouth perpetually turned down at the corners as though he had just tasted something bitter. He was older than the rest of them, and although his fluting voice had something absurd about it, he seemed in some indefinable way dangerous. His restlessness, his jerky movements, the sudden grimaces intended as laughs, all gave the impression that he was inhabited by some violent spirit which he was only just able to keep under control.
“Now that we are all here,” he said at last, “I should like a report on what happened. Peter, you were in charge of the operation.”
The thickset blond young man said, “It was a plant. They must have been on to it the whole time. It’s a bloody miracle we all got away.”
Hilary sighed gently. “That is hardly the way to present a report, Peter—”
“My name’s not Peter. I’m sick of playing kids’ games.” There was a murmur of agreement. “If you’d set this up properly—”
“Is that the way it goes? You’re blaming me, yet you are incapable even of presenting a report on what went wrong.”
“How can you present a report on a disaster?” He stared down at the table as though he were a discontented schoolboy, looking remarkably like Charlie Ramsden.
Hilary pinched out the end of a Russian cigarette, used a long narrow lighter, and puffed blue smoke. “Since you are unable or unwilling to present a report I must do so myself.”
“You weren’t there,” said the tramp who had been feeding pigeons.
“Really, Squirrel Nutkin? Would you like me to describe the man you hit when you got away?” The tramp looked at him unbelievingly. “I was on the seventh floor of a building almost opposite, watching through binoculars.”
“But not present,” somebody said.
“Not present, as you say. The directing mind should be separate from the executive hand. But let us examine the affair from the beginning. It was suggested by a foreign colleague that we should take the son of the Duke of Milchester and hold him for ransom. The sum asked would be a quarter of a million pounds, which the Duke could comfortably have paid by selling a couple of pictures. Now let me tell you the object of this — to use a piece of deplorable American slang — snatch. Why do we want the money? It is to give financial backing for a project to be undertaken from overseas by a very very famous person. Can you guess?”
“The Wolf.” The pretty girl who had sat on the bench with the blond young man breathed the words reverently. And reverence was in order. The Wolf was the most famous terrorist in the world, a man who killed with impersonal detachment, and had never been known to refuse a job if the fee was big enough.
“Well done, Pigwig.” Hilary smiled, but even his smile was acid. “But it is not wise to use that name. I shall call him Mr. McGregor, the ruler of all the little flopsy bunnies and squirrels and mice and pigs. And do you know Mr. McGregor’s target, his projected target?”
“One of the newspaper owners,” Squirrel Nutkin suggested.
“A politician? The Chancellor, the Prime Minister?” That was Pigwig.
Hilary shook his head. “Look higher.”
“You don’t mean—”
“Oh, but I do. Mr. McGregor will be aiming at, what shall I call it, the highest in the land.”
There was a gasp around the table. Again Hilary gave them his acid smile. Then the blond young man said, “But it all went wrong — we couldn’t even get the kidnaping right. Why should the Wolf think we can set up an almost impossible job when we’ve fallen down on this one?”
“The Wolf — Mr. McGregor — sets up his own jobs, as you call them. We should be his paymaster, nothing more. But, as you say, this exercise went wrong. We had not one but two dress rehearsals, and you knew exactly what the nanny looked like. So what happened?”
“The baby wasn’t the Duke’s. It was pitch-black.”
“That’s right. I looked into the pram, I saw it.” Pigwig nodded agreement.
“They knew what we were doing and substituted the black baby. And you can see what that means.” The thrust of his jaw, the jutting of his chin, were really very reminiscent of Charlie Ramsden.
Hilary rose, walked quickly and silently over to a cupboard above the wine racks, and opened it to reveal glasses, and, in a refrigerated section, several bottles of champagne. This was a ritual. When they assembled at the cellars there would always be champagne in the cupboard, and it was always Moet and Chandon of a good year. Pigwig, one of the group’s newer members, had thought of saying that she would prefer whiskey, but had decided against it.
The corks came out, the champagne was poured. Hilary raised his glass.
“I drink to Mr. McGregor. And to the success of his mission. When he comes.”
“But he won’t be coming now, will he? As you said, he only works for cash.” That was the man in the black jacket and striped trousers, an unnoticeable sandy fellow with a toothbrush mustache.
“Very true, Simpkin. But in the meantime we have a problem. The conclusion from what happened is simple and unmistakable.”
“Somebody grassed.” It was the only other woman round the table who spoke. She was in her late twenties, had a knife scar on her cheek, and a heavy ruthless face. It had been a touch of irony on Hilary’s part to name her after the genial hedgehog, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.
“Again I deplore the use of slang, but it expresses a truth. Traitor, Judas, grass — it does not matter what name we use. The fact is that one of us must have told the authorities. Or told somebody else who gave us away. Did any of you tell a friend, a lover, a wife, a husband?” Nobody spoke. “Just so. It is as I feared.”
“There’s one queer thing,” Simpkin said. “If the counterespionage boys were tipped off, why weren’t they all over the place, why let us get away? Isn’t it possible that it was a genuine change of plan, and we were just unlucky?”