“I do not quite understand,” said Frost, “why you had no one inside the College to see what staircase Studdock went to.”

“Because of your damned Emergency Commissioner,” said the Fairy. “We’re not allowed into colleges now, if you please. I said at the time that Feverstone was the wrong man. He’s trying to play on both sides. He’s for us against the town, but when it comes to us against the University he’s unreliable. Mark my words, Wither, you’ll have trouble with him yet.”

Frost looked at the Deputy Director.

“I am far from denying,” said Wither, “though without at all closing my mind to other possible explanations, that some of Lord Feverstone’s measures may have been injudicious. It would be inexpressibly painful to me to suppose that “

“Need we keep Major Hardcastle?” said Frost.

“Bless my soul!” said Wither. “How very right of you! I had almost forgotten, my dear lady, how tired you must be, and how very valuable your time is. We must try to save you for that particular kind of work in which you have shown yourself indispensable. You must not allow us to impose on your good nature. There is a lot of duller and more routine work which it is only reasonable that you should be spared.” He got up and held the door open for her.

“You don’t think,” said she, “that I ought to let the boys have just a little go at Studdock? I mean, it seems so absurd to have all this trouble about getting an address.”

And suddenly, as Wither stood with his hand on the door-handle, courtly, patient, and smiling, the whole expression faded out of his face. The pale lips, open wide enough to show his gums, the white curly head, the pouchy eyes, ceased to make up any single expression. Miss Hardcastle had the feeling that a mere mask of skin and flesh was staring at her. A moment later and she was gone.

“I wonder,” said Wither as he came back to his chair, “whether we are attaching too much importance to this Studdock woman.”

“We are acting on an order dated the 14th of October,” said Frost.

“Oh . . . I wasn’t questioning it,” said Wither with a gesture of deprecation.

“Allow me to remind you of the facts,” said Frost.

“The authorities had access to the woman’s mind for only a very short time. They inspected only one important dream-a dream, which revealed, though with some irrelevancies, an essential element in our programme. That warned us that if the woman fell into the hands of any ill-affected persons who knew how to exploit her faculty, she would constitute a grave danger.”

“Oh, to be sure, to be sure. I never intended to deny”

“That was the first point,” said Frost, interrupting him. “The second is that her mind became opaque to our authorities almost immediately afterwards. In the present state of our science we know only one cause for such occultations. They occur when the mind in question has placed itself, by some voluntary choice of its own: however vague, under the control of some hostile organism. The occultation, therefore, while cutting off our access to the dreams, also tells us that she has, in some mode or other, come under enemy influence. This is in itself a grave danger. But it also means that to find her would probably mean discovering the enemy’s headquarters. Miss Hardcastle is probably right in maintaining that torture would soon induce Studdock to give up his wife’s address. But as you pointed out, a round-up at their headquarters, an arrest, and the discovery of her husband here in the condition in which the torture would leave him, would produce psychological conditions in the woman which might destroy her faculty. We should thus frustrate one of the purposes for which we want to get her. That is the first objection. The second is, that an attack on enemy headquarters is very risky. They almost certainly have protection of a kind we are not prepared to cope with. And, finally, the man may not know his wife’s address. In that case . . .”

“Oh,” said Wither, “there is nothing I should more deeply deplore. Scientific examination (I cannot allow the word Torture in this context) in cases where the patient doesn’t know the answer is always a fatal mistake. As men of humanity we should neither of us . . . and then, if you go on, the patient naturally does not recover . . . and if you stop, even an experienced operator is haunted by the fear that perhaps he did know after all. It is in every way unsatisfactory.”

“There is, in fact, no way of implementing our instructions except by inducing Studdock to bring his wife here himself.”

“Or else,” said Wither, a little more dreamily than usual, “if it were possible, by inducing in him a much more radical allegiance to our side than he has yet shown. I am speaking, my dear friend, of a real change of heart.”

Frost slightly opened and extended his mouth, which was a very long one, so as to show his white teeth.

“That,” he said, “is a subdivision of the plan I was mentioning. I was saying that he must be induced to send for the woman himself. That, of course, can be done in two ways. Either by supplying him with some motive on the instinctive level, such as fear of us or desire for her; or else by conditioning him to identify himself so completely with the Cause that he will understand the real motive for securing her person and act on it.”

“Exactly . . . exactly,” said Wither. “Your expressions, as always, are a little different from those I would choose myself, but . . .”

“Where is Studdock at present?” said Frost.

“In one of the cells here-on the other side.”

“Under the impression he has been arrested by the ordinary police?”

“That I cannot answer for. I presume he would be. It does not, perhaps, make much difference.”

“And how are you proposing to act?”

“We had proposed to leave him to himself for several hours-to allow the psychological results of the arrest to mature. I have ventured . . . of course, with every regard for humanity . . . to reckon on the value of some slight physical discomforts-he will not have dined, you understand. They have instructions to empty his pockets. One would not wish the young man to relieve any nervous tension that may have arisen by smoking. One wishes the mind to be thrown entirely on its own resources.”

“Of course. And what next?”

“Well, I suppose some sort of examination. That is a point on which I should welcome your advice. I mean, as to whether I, personally, should appear in the first instance. I am inclined to think that the appearance of examination by the ordinary police should be maintained a little longer. Then at a later stage will come the discovery that he is still in our hands. He will probably misunderstand this discovery at first-for several minutes. It would be well to let him realise only gradually that this by no means frees him from the-er-embarrassments arising out of Hingest’s death. I take it that some fuller realisation of his inevitable solidarity with the Institute would then follow . . .”

“And then you mean to ask him again for his wife?”

“I shouldn’t do it at all like that,” said Wither. “If I might venture to say so, it is one of the disadvantages of that extreme simplicity and accuracy with which you habitually speak (much as we all admire it) that it leaves no room for fine shades. One had rather hoped for a spontaneous outburst of confidence on the part of the young man himself. Anything like a direct demand-”

“The weakness of the plan,” said Frost, “is that you are relying wholly on fear.”

“Fear,” repeated Wither as if he had not heard the word before. “I do not quite follow the connection of thought. I can hardly suppose you are following the opposite suggestion, once made, if I remember rightly, by Miss Hardcastle.”

“What was that?”

“Why,” said Wither, “if I understand her aright she thought of taking scientific measures to render the society of his wife more desirable in the young man’s eyes. Some of the chemical resources . . .”