The enemy are aware of his hideout.
5
TRIPP HAS GOT HIS LEGS UP ON THE STOVE, SOME SAUSAGE rolls in his pocket, and he is reading his favorite poet Newbolt aloud, in a kind of subhuman drone which is his method with poetry. “Play up, play up and play the game… the dons on the dais serene…” He is surprised by a knock at the door. He opens it and is still more surprised by the sight of his notional subagent, the cinema actress. Her car has broken down outside: can she have his help? Outside in the car two thugs crouch ready to knock Tripp on the head. A third-a tall stupid sentimental-looking German of immense physique-keeps watch at the end of the street. Tripp says he knows nothing about cars; now if it had been a sewing machine…
Mrs. Tripp is coming up the road. She has obviously lost her way. Tripp by this time is demonstrating the special points of the Singer sewing machine… Mrs. Tripp is cold and miserable. She leans against a fence and cries. A little further down the road the sentimental German watches her. He is torn between pity and duty. He edges nearer.
Mr. Tripp is talking about poetry to the cinema actress…
Mrs. Tripp weeps on the German’s shoulder and tells him how her husband is betraying her at this moment, but she can’t remember the number of the house…
The Germans in the car are getting very cold. They get out and begin to walk up and down… Tripp is reading Newbolt to the actress… “His captain’s hand on his shoulder smote… ” Mrs. Tripp and the German peer in at the window. He hasn’t realized that this treacherous husband has anything to do with him. Mrs. Tripp moans, “Take me away,” and he obeys at once-in his comrades’ car. Somebody-he is too sentimentally wrought up to care who-tries to stop him and he knocks him down. He deposits Mrs. Tripp at her own door.
Tripp is still reading poetry when there is another knock at the door. One German pulls in the other German who is still unconscious. There is a babble of German explanations. “He was trying to mend the car,” the actress explains, “and it ran away from him.”
“I’ll ring up the garage,” Tripp says. He goes in an alcove, where nobody has seen the telephone. They prepare to knock him out. “Wrong number,” he says furiously. “It’s the police.” When he puts down the receiver again they knock him out.
6
MR. TRIPP HAS NOT RETURNED HOME FOR SOME DAYS. COBB and Miss Jixon are worried. Mrs. Tripp is furious but finds consolation.
Tripp comes to himself inside the German Embassy. Enormous pressure is put on him to betray his organization, but he has no organization to betray. The threat forcibly resolves itself into this: either he will remain a prisoner in the Embassy until war starts, when he will be handed to the Gestapo as a spy, or he will send a message for them-containing false information carefully devised to discredit him-to London and then in due course he will be released. They show him films of concentration camps, they keep him from sleeping: he is shut up in a cell with the sentimental German, now disgraced, who wakes him whenever he tries to sleep and reproves him for betraying his wife.
The German Ambassador, in collaboration with the Military Attache, plans out the message for him to send. On one sheet the Military Attache notes the facts to be concealed: the date of invasion, number of divisions, etc. On the other they note the lies to be revealed. A breeze from the open window whips the papers around. The wrong notes (that is to say the true notes) are handed to Tripp to write in secret ink. Tripp gives way. To send one more message of false information seems a small price to pay.
To make all secure and ensure that no Tripp message will ever be believed again, the Germans instruct the Chief of Police to go to the British Ambassador and expose Tripp’s dealings with him-the invented messages which he used to show to the Germans before transmitting them. He gives the impression that Tripp knew that the Germans saw them.
Tripp is arrested by the police immediately after he leaves the German Embassy. He is escorted home where he is allowed to pack a bag. Mrs. Tripp is not there. Cobb shows him a decoded cable from London: “Dismiss Agent XY27 [his wife]. Intercepted correspondence to school friend shows she is carrying on intrigue with… of Agriculture and Fisheries Ministry instead of… of Foreign Ministry. Unreliable.”
Tripp says goodbye to his home, to Cobb and Miss Jixon, to his makeup box, presented to him by the Anglo-Latesthian Society, to his collected works of Gilbert and Sullivan. He empties his pockets of the false mustache, soft hats, spectacles. “These were the trouble,” he says sadly to Miss Jixon.
He is put on board a plane to England.
An official inquiry awaits him at HQ. His Ambassador’s report has been received, but opinion among his judges before he comes is divided. The trouble is that his reports have been welcomed by the Armed Forces. The whole Secret Service will look foolish if they have to recall hundreds of reports over the last two years-ones which have been acclaimed as “most valuable.” The head of the inquiry points out that it will discredit the whole Service. Any of their agents could have done the same. None of them will be believed in future.
A message arrives that Tripp is in the outer office, and the youngest member of the inquiry-a dapper, earnest FO type-goes out to see him. He whispers to him urgently, “Everything will be all right. Deny everything.”
“If only,” the chairman is saying, “he hadn’t sent that last message. All his other messages are matters of opinion. You remember the underground works at Leipzig. After all, they are underground-we can’t be sure he invented them. General Hays particularly liked that report. He said it was a model report. We’ve used it in our training courses. But this one-it gives a time and date for zero hour, and the source claimed-the German Military Attache himself-you can’t get round that. Such and such divisions will cross the frontiers at ten o’clock today. If we hadn’t been warned by the Ambassador we’d have had the whole Army, Navy and Air Force ringing us up to know who the devil had sent such nonsense. Come in, Tripp. Sit down. This is a very serious matter. You know the charges against you.”
“I admit everything.”
The dapper young man whispers excitedly, “No, no, I said deny.”
“You can’t possibly admit everything,” the chairman interrupts with equal excitement, “it’s for us to tell you what you admit and what you don’t admit. Of course this last message-” The telephone rings. He raises the receiver: “Yes, yes. Good God!”
He puts the receiver down and addresses the inquiry board. “The Germans crossed the Polish frontier this morning. Under the circumstances, gentlemen, I think we should congratulate Mr. Tripp on his last message from Latesthia. It is unfortunate that bungling in the British Embassy resulted in no use being made of it but those after all are the chances of the Service. We can say with confidence among ourselves that the Secret Service was informed of the date and time of war breaking out.”
Tripp is given the OBE. He is also appointed chief lecturer at the course for recruits to the Secret Service. We see him last as he comes forward to the blackboard, cue in hand, after being introduced to the recruits as “one of our oldest and soundest officers-the man who obtained advance news of the exact date and even the hour of the German attack-Richard Tripp will lecture on ‘How to Run a Station Abroad’”
1
MOST OF THEM TOLD THE TIME VERY ROUGHLY BY THEIR meals, which were unpunctual and irregular: they amused themselves with the most childish games all through the day, and when it was dark they fell asleep by tacit consent-not waiting for a particular hour of darkness for they had no means of telling the time exactly: in fact there were as many times as there were prisoners. When their imprisonment started they had three good watches among thirty-two men, and a second hand and unreliable-or so the watch owners claimed-alarm clock. The two wristwatches were the first to go: their I owners left the cell at seven o’clock one morning-or seven-ten the alarm clock said-and presently, some hours later, the watches reappeared on the wrists of two of the guards.