“Nor do I!” said her father, and his voice was sharper than Otto had heard it towards his daughter.
She stood up, with an abrupt and sudden movement. She turned and faced her father, looking up at him. Her hands were locked in front of her, their fingers twisting about each other. She said:
“I believe him when he says he’s . . . he’s converted. But can’t he see—can’t you see—that what he proposes to do isn’t the best thing for his . . . his new cause? It’s all muddled up with silly notions about his own pride and . . . and . . .”
“Loyalties,” Ingolls said, and then was silent again.
Clare said: “There’s only one thing he can do—must do! And that’s to get in touch, immediately, with Washington and tell them everything—all the names and plans and whereabouts of the whole horrible organization. That’s the only right way!”
Otto tried to look at her but could not. His legs ached almost unendurably, and he shifted his weight uneasily in his chair.
Ingolls said: “You don’t understand, Clare. You don’t understand at all.”
Clare blazed at him “Don’t talk like that—as if I were some idiotic child! Don’t you realize that what he’s proposing to do is first of all suicide for him and secondly absolutely useless to . . . to America? Can’t you see that? If he’s so torn between his new duty and his old loyalties perhaps he does want to kill himself—but not this way he suggests—it’s a mixture of Galahad and Quixote and . . . and Hitler! And it’s treachery to what he believes in now!”
Amazingly, incongruously, Ingolls suddenly laughed. “You’re a good advocate, my child, but you should have a better case!”
The laughter died from his face and voice as quickly and astonishingly as it had come, and Otto, who had looked at him in wonderment, saw him again and with fresh surprise as an old man.
But Clare had not finished. “Don’t let him, Daddy, don’t let him!” Her voice was rising now and there were tears in it. “He’ll do what you say if you’ll only make him! He wanted your advice! Tell him what’s right—not to mind about his personal little prides and feelings, but to tell everything, now, to people who can just . . . just stamp out this whole ‘secret army’ he keeps talking about and crush it out of existence and make America safe!”
She whirled in a flash of movement and for the first time faced Otto and looked at him and spoke to him. Her face was pale beneath the golden tan and drawn with the passion of belief and the desire to force his mind to the shape of hers. She spoke with a sort of quivering, hushed intensity which plucked cruelly at the strings of Otto’s heart. She said:
“Do you know what and when and where the next . . . atrocity is going to be? The next huge sabotage, like the Texas oil fire? Do you? You hinted, but I want it straight. Do you know?”
Otto said: “Yes. I know.” His tongue was stiff and the words came heavily. “But my plan—if I work right—my plan would be in time for that to be prevented. That is the reason that I must be well and ready in three weeks. I . . .”
But she would not let him go on. Her eyes blazed at him and she said: “Stop! Oh, stop!” and wheeled upon her father.
She said: “Did you hear that? Did you? He knows that some horror’s going to happen and that it would certainly be prevented if he told everything! And he also knows that if he carries out this fantastic ‘plan’ of his, it’s a hundred to one he’ll be . . . be killed and the horror will happen. . . .”
She stopped suddenly as her father put gentle hands upon her shoulders. Her body was shaking.
“Clare!” said Ingolls. “Clare, listen to me. You’re talking common sense, but this is an uncommon problem. You sound logical—but the basis of your logic’s not quite right. It’s too narrow, and not nearly deep enough!”
He stopped, looking down into his daughter’s face. He smiled at her and put a sudden arm around her and swept her to the chair beside Otto’s and set her down in it. He said:
“Here’s a man who’s been on the wrong side and wants to change over and join the decent men. Now, you’re saying the very first thing he should do is to betray his former fellow officers. You say they’re so evil and the decent men are so good, that even this course is not only justifiable but right.” He lowered his head to look closely at her face. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?”
She nodded. She was crumpled up in the big chair. She looked very small.
“But,” said her father, “there are some things you’ve forgotten. I won’t say you never knew them, because you’ve lived with me for a long time now. You’ve forgotten, first, that this man couldn’t betray fellow officers. And you’ve forgotten that, if he could, he wouldn’t be the sort of man we’d want on this side. There’s a word which nowadays seems to offend a great many people: they think it’s a purely fairy-tale quality connected only with Knights and Dragons and Women’s Virtue, but it’s a hell of a lot more than this; it summarizes the difference between the decent way and the other way. It’s the word honour. . . .”
Clare twisted her body uneasily. “But . . .” she began, and was cut short.
“Wait!” said Ingolls. “Now the Nazis, as a deliberate part of their policy, have thrown honour away: they make promise after promise in order to break their word at the most advantageous moment for themselves and their plans. The decent men, on the other hand, don’t do that and never will—so that individual men fighting for decency must have individual honour. Don’t you see that, Clare? Don’t you see that what he’s told us is the only thing he can do?”
Otto levered himself to his feet. Without his stick, he went to Ingolls on slow and clumsy but unwavering feet. He said:
“Thank you, sir,” and held out his hand.
Clare’s voice came from behind them. It was very low. She said:
“I . . . it was those people I was thinking about . . . those people who may be killed. . . .”
Ingolls turned towards her, but he laid a hand on Otto’s shoulder as he did so, and he smiled as he spoke.
“Don’t worry, Clare,” he said. “I don’t think he’ll let that happen. I think his grand, crazy scheme is going to work. I think he’s going to make it work, although it seems impossible.”
He dropped his hand from Otto’s shoulder and suddenly moved away. He paused behind his daughter’s chair and bent down and lightly kissed the gleaming dark hair. He said:
“I’ll be in the library. Have some letters to write,” and was gone.
Otto looked after him and was about to speak but did not. He looked at Clare, and saw that she was huddled in the big chair, her feet drawn up beneath her and her head averted from him. She was very still, and very small. He checked an instinctive movement towards her and stumped across to the other chair and picked up his stick and as softly as he could began to make his slow way through the shadows to the door.
He had almost reached it when there came a swift, murmuring rush of feet and she was beside him and a hand was laid upon his arm. She said:
“Nils!” and her voice was hushed and uneven, and she caught him by the shoulders and suddenly all of her body was pressed against his body and she slid an arm behind his head and pulled it down toward hers and he felt her mouth against his and there was the salt of tears upon his lips and she was gone.