Janice said what she hadn’t meant to say. ‘Can you do it?’

There was a little pause before he answered her. ‘Not quite always, but I try. At first I could not. They were both gone, you see – my wife and my daughter. I had no one to keep up for. When you have someone else to support, it makes you very strong, but I had no one. There was a dreadful poison of hatred and revenge. I will not speak of it. I worked like a man in a fever, because I saw before me the way by which I could take a terrible vengeance. But now it is not like that. Even the other day, the last time I saw Sir George, there was something of this poison. It had been there so long, and though there were things that were driving it out, yet in the dark corners there was still some of that other darkness. It is very primitive, and we are not really civilised. If we are struck, we wish to strike back again. If we are injured, we do not care how much we hurt ourselves so long as we can hurt the one who has injured us.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Not at all civilised, you see – and foolish with the folly that is poisoning the world.’ His voice changed to a homely confidential note. ‘Do you know that there, in Sir George’s office, I had an outburst like a savage, and I enjoyed it? But afterwards I was very much ashamed – because that sort of thing, it is like getting drunk, only of course much worse, so I did well to be ashamed. But now there is a change. I do not know whether it is because I was ashamed, or because since my work is done I cannot hide any longer in dark corners. I must have light to see what it is that I am doing – I do not know. I only know that I do not wish for vengeance any more. I wish only to set at liberty those who have been made slaves, and to do this the prison doors must be broken. That is why I give my harschite to the government. When the prisons are all broken and men can live again, I shall be glad to feel that I have helped. I do not think you can help when you are poisoned with hate.’

She said with a soft rush of words, ‘I’m so glad you told me. I think you’re wonderful. But – oh, Mr Harsch, you’re not going away!’

He looked startled. ‘Why did you think of that?’

‘I don’t know – it sounded – like saying goodbye.’

She was to remember that, and to wish that she had not said it.

‘Perhaps it was, my dear – good-bye to my work.’

‘But not to us – you wouldn’t be going away from here? I wouldn’t stay without you.’

‘Not to help my good friend Madoc?’

She made a little face and shook her head.

‘Not to help me, if I stay on here to work with him?’

‘Are you going to do that?’ she said eagerly.

‘I don’t know. Here I am, at an end. Somewhere I have read that every end is a new beginning. At this moment I am at a corner. If there is a beginning on the other side of it, I cannot see what it is. Perhaps I shall stay here and work with Madoc.’ His smile became faintly ironical. ‘It will be restful to make the synthetic milk and the synthetic egg, the concentrate of beef – and perhaps without any hen or any cow. There have been times when I have envied Madoc – and how much pleasure it will give him to feel that he had converted me! He is a zealot, our good Madoc.’

Janice jumped up and said, ‘He’s a very cross, tiresome man.’

He laughed. ‘What – you have been in trouble?’

‘Oh, not more than usual. He called me dolt three times, and idiot twice and miserable atomy once – that’s a new one, and he was awfully pleased about it. You know, I used to wonder why he had a girl instead of a man, and why he picked me when there are lots of women with proper science degrees. I happen to know that Ethel Gardner applied for the job and didn’t get it. She was considered awfully good at college. She got a first, and I didn’t get anything because of having to come down and nurse my father. And I couldn’t make it out, but now I know. No man would have stood it for half a minute, and no qualified woman would either, but I’m a little bit of a thing and I haven’t any qualifications, so he thinks he can stamp on me. I wouldn’t stay a minute if you went.’

He patted her shoulder.

‘It is just a way of speaking – it has no meaning. He does not think those things.’

‘He says them.’ Janice tilted her chin. ‘And if I were five-foot-ten and looked like Britannia, he wouldn’t dare! And that’s why he picked me – just to have someone to squash. I really do only bear it because of the times you let me help you. If you go away-’

His hand dropped from her shoulder. Rather abruptly he went over to the farther window-seat and took up the table telephone which stood there. ‘I have not said that I am going away. And now I must ring up Sir George.’

CHAPTER THREE

SIR GEORGE RENDAL leaned forward.

‘Your part of the world, isn’t it?’

Major Garth Albany said, ‘Yes, sir – I used to spend my holidays there. My grandfather was the Rector. He’s dead now – he was pretty old then.’

Sir George nodded.

‘One of the daughters still lives in Bourne, doesn’t she? She’d be your aunt?’

‘Well, a kind of step. The old man got married three times, and two of them were widows. My Aunt Sophy isn’t really any relation, because she’s the first widow’s daughter by her first marriage. Her name’s Fell – Sophy Fell. My father was the youngest of the family-’ He broke off, laughed, and said, ‘I’m not awfully firm on the family history really, but I did spend my holidays at Bourne until my grandfather died.’

Sir George nodded again.

‘You’d know pretty well everyone in the village and round about.’

‘I used to. I expect there are a good many changes.’

‘How long is it since you were there?’

‘My grandfather died when I was twenty-two. I’m twenty-seven. I’ve been down two or three times to see Aunt Sophy – only once since the war.’

‘Villages don’t change very much,’ said Sir George. ‘The boys and girls will be off in the Services and the factories, but it’s the old people who are the village. They’ll remember you, and they’ll talk because they remember you. They won’t talk to a stranger.’

He sat back a little in his writing-chair and sent a very direct glance across the plain, solid table – a man in his fifties, smart and well set-up, with dark hair grey on the temples. He held a pencil between the second and third fingers of his right hand and set it twirling.

Garth Albany said quickly, ‘What do you want them to talk about?’

The direct glance dwelt on him. ‘Ever hear of a man called Michael Harsch?’

‘I don’t think so-’ Then, with a quick frown, ‘I don’t know – I seem to have seen the name somewhere-’

Sir George’s pencil twirled. ‘There’s going to be an inquest on him at Bourne tomorrow.’

‘Yes – I remember. I saw the name in the papers, but I didn’t connect it with Bourne. I’d have taken more notice if I had. Who was he?’

‘The inventor of harschite.’

‘Harschite – that’s why I didn’t connect him with Bourne. I didn’t know he was dead. There was a paragraph about this stuff harschite – about a fortnight ago. Yes, that was it – harschite – some sort of explosive.’

Sir George nodded. ‘If we’d any sense or logic we’d take the man who wrote that paragraph and the editor who passed it and shoot them out of hand. Here we’ve been going on like cats on hot bricks about the damned stuff, and out comes a footling penny-a-lining paragraph and gives the show away.’

‘It was pretty vague, sir – I can’t say I got much out of it.’

‘Because you didn’t know enough to put two and two together. But someone did, and so there’s an inquest on Michael Harsch. You see, we had been in touch with him for some time. He was a refugee – Austrian-Jewish extraction. I don’t know how much Jew, but enough to queer his pitch in Germany. He got away about five years ago. His wife and daughter weren’t so lucky. The daughter was sent to a concentration camp, where she died. The wife was turned out of her house in the middle of a winter’s night and never got over it. He got away with his brains and practically nothing else. I saw him because he had an introduction from old Baer. He talked to me about this stuff of his. He swore it would knock spots out of anything we’d got. Frankly, I thought it was a fairy tale, but I liked the man, and I wanted to oblige old Baer, so I told him to come back. That was four years ago. He used to come back once a year and report progress. I began to believe in the stuff. I went down, and he showed me what it could do. It was terrific. But there was a snag. The stuff was unstable – too easily affected by weather conditions – impossible to store or transport in any quantity. Then he turned up again. He said he had overcome the instability. He walked up and down this very room in a tremendous state of excitement, waving his arms and saying, “Harschite – that is what I have called it! It is my message that I send back to those who have let the devil loose to serve him, and it is such a message that he will hear it and go back to the hell where he belongs!” Then he calmed down a little and said, “There is only one more step – one small, small step – and I will take it any day now. It is the last experiment, and it will not fail. I am so sure of it that I can give you my word. In a week I shall ring you up and tell you that all is well – that the experiment has succeeded.” Well, he did ring me up to say just that. That was on the Tuesday. I was to go down the next day, but on Wednesday morning I was rung up to be told that Harsch was dead.’