‘Has he been killing a girl again, and getting her money?’ I asked.
‘No, that’s not so easily done,’ said Linley. ‘He found poor Nancy Elth with her two hundred pounds, but he can’t find a girl with money every day.’
‘Then where did the thousand pounds come from?’ I asked.
‘The easiest money of all,’ said Linley.
‘Spying?’ I said.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘It’s the best paid of all the crooked jobs in the world. Especially at first: they’ll give almost anything to get a new man into their clutches, provided he’s likely to be of any use to them. And Steeger should be a lot of use. He’s a really skilful murderer, and should be a skilful spy.’
‘And where is he?’ I asked again.
‘We’ve found him all right,’ said Linley. ‘There never was any difficulty in finding Steeger. The difficulty always was in proving he’d done it. Aye there’s the rub, as Hamlet remarked.’
‘And what has he given away?’ I asked.
‘Nothing as yet,’ said Linley. ‘That’s why we want you to help watch him. A thousand pounds is good pay, and it must be for good information. And of course it has been paid by a German in this country, or a Quisling or some such cattle. But they’ve not been able to get it out of the country yet.’
‘How do you know?’ I asked.
‘Because there is only one thing that the Germans would pay on that scale for,’ said Linley, ‘and we know that they don’t know it yet.’
‘What’s the thing, might I ask?’ I said.
‘Where the second front is going to be,’ said Linley. ‘We think he has found it out somehow and the other spy has paid him for it out of his loose cash. But it’s worth a million if he can get it to Germany. And a hundred million would be pricing it low, but they’d probably pay him fifty thousand for it. Anyway we know they don’t know it, and the thousand pounds is a mere tip. But that’s what the tip would be for.’
‘How did he find it out?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know as much as all that,’ said Linley.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘And you want him watched so that he doesn’t get out of the country.’
‘Oh, he can’t do that,’ said Linley. ‘But we want to see that he doesn’t send the news.’
‘How will he try to do it?’ I asked.
‘By wireless, probably,’ he said.
‘How will he do that?’ I asked.
‘Well, we’ve located all the sending-sets,’ said Linley, ‘that have ever spoken since the war began; but there may still be some silent ones hidden, and waiting for a bit of very big news like this. And I think we’ve located all the carrier pigeons; though there might be one or two of them somewhere that we don’t know of; but it’s easier to hide a wireless set than a pigeon, because you don’t have to feed it.’
‘And you want me to watch him?’ I asked.
‘Only now and then,’ said Linley. ‘He’s in London, and we know more about all the houses here than you’d think. We aren’t really afraid of his working a sending-set anywhere in London, but we can’t answer for the open country, and he has to be watched when he moves.’
‘What about the other man,’ I asked, ‘the spy who pays him?’
‘He lies very low,’ said Linley, ‘and we haven’t spotted him. But that’s only because he lies so low, and if he went about and did odd jobs with a wireless sending-set, we should have spotted him long ago. For that reason we don’t think he’ll try to do this job, but will leave it to Steeger. After all, Steeger’s a pretty smart man, and it isn’t everybody that has committed two murders and is able to walk about at large in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland.’
‘I’d be glad to watch him,’ I said, ‘if you think I can do it.’
But I said it rather hesitatingly, because, though it was very nice of Mr Linley to offer me such a job, I had begun to see by then that it was a pretty important one, and, to tell you the truth, I am not quite the kind of man to be given a big job like that. Maybe I might have been if I’d been brought up to it, and given the chance of handling big jobs early, but I spent all my time pushing Numnumo, and was never given anything bigger, and somehow or other I seemed to grow down to the size of my job; or perhaps the job was only the size of me, and that’s why I was given it, and never given anything bigger. And now here was Mr Linley offering me a job that mightn’t look very big if I did it well, but, if I did it badly and let that man get out his news of where the second front was to be, why, it might cost the lives of thousands and thousands of men. That’s why I said ‘if you think I can do it’, and by the way I said it I sort of showed him I couldn’t: I thought it was only fair. But Linley said: ‘That’s all right, you’re just the man for it.’
‘Very glad to do my best,’ I said. ‘Do I go in uniform?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s just the point of it. We don’t want to give the idea that the British army is watching him. Or that anybody is. But somehow or other, though you look the perfect soldier in that kit, in plain clothes you might not give quite the impression we want to avoid.’
Of course I didn’t look the perfect soldier at all, even in uniform, nor I never will. It was nice of him to say it, but I saw his point.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’ll just go back a few years to the Numnumo days and I’ll hang about somewhere near him and I shan’t look very military.’
‘Well,’ said Linley, ‘I’ll let you know. We shan’t want you just yet. We have him watched all right. But, if he got anywhere near a wireless, we’d want someone extra to watch him. He’d have to be watched very close then. Five seconds might do it, and he might pretty well ruin Europe. That’s to say, any of it that’s not ruined already.’
All this, I may say, was at the end of June, in 1943, when all the plans for the invasion of Europe were ready, and the Germans were still guessing. And, while they guessed, they had to strengthen a line of two or three thousand miles. One word from Steeger, if he had got at the truth, would bring it down to a hundred miles, and save them a lot of trouble. That’s how things were when I parted from Linley that day just after midsummer, and a very nice lunch he gave me before we parted, at a big hotel, in his smart uniform and all, and me no more than a private. We didn’t talk any more about Steeger there, even when there was no one in hearing. He wouldn’t say a word about that sort of thing indoors. Well, I thanked him for all he had done for me, and for remembering me like that, and giving me such a fine lunch; and away I went on a bus back to my barracks. And only a week later I got a letter from Linley. It just said, ‘That job is all fixed up, and your C.O. has been written to.’ And I was sent for to the Orderly Room next morning and given a travelling warrant, and told to report at the War Office on the same day, for special duty, which would be told me when I got there. So off with me up to London and to the department of the War Office that I was ordered to go to, and there I was fitted with a suit of civilian clothes and given a ticket for a concert at the Albert Hall. What I had to do was to go to the seat whose number was on the ticket and sit there and take as much interest as I could in the music, and at the same time watch the man who would sit on my right. That’s all they told me while they were fitting me with my suit of clothes. And then Linley came in while they were brushing my hair, because they said it had too military a look; and Linley made everything clear to me. The concert he said was to be broadcast, and Steeger had chosen a seat right under the microphone, and that had been reported. They were still sure that he had got hold of the secret of the second front, and it was pretty certain that he would say something about it during the interval,