The day passed quickly. Time drags only when one is thinking fast, and all my mental processes were slowed down. I was lying by the ventilator when night fell and Quive-Smith wished me a cheerful good evening.

‘Everything has gone splendidly,’ he said. ‘Splendidly! We’ll have you out of there in an hour. Free to go home, free to live on that lovely estate of yours, free to do anything you like. I’m very glad, my dear fellow, I have a great respect for you, you know.’

I replied that I doubted his respect, that I knew him to be a good party man.

‘I am,’ he agreed. ‘But I can admire such an individualist as you. What I respect in you is that you have no need of any law but your own. You’re prepared to rule, or to be suppressed, but you won’t obey. You are able to deal with your own conscience.’

‘I am not. But I see what you mean,’ I said.

‘You must be! A man in your position to commit what you described in the subsequent proceedings as a sporting stalk! And then calmly pitching a spy on the live rail at Aldwych!’

I kept silence. I didn’t know where this was leading. I hated the philosophy he was ascribing to me; it was a travesty of the truth.

‘I’m not blaming you in the least for defending yourself,’ he went on. ‘The man was worthless, and got in your way. What other result could there have been? I should be disappointed—really, I mean it—to find a lot of sloppy scruples in such an anarchial aristocrat as you.’

‘That’s your morality rather than mine,’ I answered.

‘My dear fellow!’ he protested. ‘There’s all the difference in the world! It’s the mass that we are out to discipline and educate. If an individual interferes, certainly we crush him; but for the sake of the mass—of the State, shall I say? You, you don’t give a damn for the State. You obey your own taste and your own laws.’

‘That’s true enough,’ I admitted. ‘But I have respect for the rights of other individuals.’

‘Of course. But none at all for the nation. Admit it now, my dear fellow, you could get along perfectly well without any State!’

‘Yes, damn you!’ I answered angrily—I hated his pseudo-Socratic cross-examination. ‘Without the shameless politicians who run this country or the incompetent idiots who would like to, or your blasted spotlight Caesars.’

‘There’s no point in being rude,’ he laughed. ‘Limelight has just the same effect on the emotional public as Westminster Abbey and a sovereign’s escort—and it’s a lot cheaper. But I’m glad you have grown out of these rather childish allegiances, because we shan’t have any difficulty in coming to terms.’

I asked him what his terms were. He pushed a paper down the ventilator with a stick. I collected it, also with a stick.

‘Just sign that, and you are free,’ he said. ‘There is only one serious restriction. You must undertake not to leave England. We leave you at complete liberty in your own country. But if you attempt to reach the Continent, this will begin all over again and we shall show no mercy. I think you’ll admit that, after what you did, it’s a reasonable condition.’

I asked him for a light. I wasn’t going to use up candles and oxygen. He poked his torch down the hole without hesitation. He knew by this time that he could force me to give it back.

The form they wished me to sign was lengthy but simple. It was a confession that on the -th August I had attempted to assassinate the great man, that I had undertaken this with the knowledge (they didn’t quite dare to write approval) of the British Government, and that I had been released without any punishment on condition that I remained in England. The document was signed by their chief of police, by witnesses, and by a London notary public attesting my signature, although it did not then exist. He was, to judge by his address, quite a reputable notary too.

It was a good torch, and I employed it for the next quarter of an hour in getting order into my excavations. Then I gave it him back together with his paper. There was no object in showing indignation.

‘I wouldn’t try to persuade you,’ he said, ‘if you had the usual bourgeois nationalism. A man of your type would rather be a martyr. But since you don’t believe in anything but yourself, why not sign?’

I told him that I cared for public opinion.

‘Public opinion? Well, we shouldn’t publish this document unless there was imminent danger of war and your government was acting its usual morality play. And from what I know of the English public’s temper in time of crisis, they would probably make you a popular hero.’

‘They possibly would,’ I answered. ‘But I don’t sign lies.’

‘Now, now, no heroics!’ he begged me, in his blasted patronizing manner. ‘You’re a good Englishman, and you know very well that truth is always relative. Sincerity is what matters.’

I blame myself for being drawn into argument with him, but what else could I do? I was glad to hear a cultured voice, even his, after so much solitary confinement. It was, in a sense, not unlike being stuck in the club with some bore whose opinions are very left or very right. You can’t do anything but listen to the man. You know he is wrong, but since you argue from the standpoint of individuals and he argues about a mythical mass, there is no common ground. And it’s utterly impossible to explain yourself.

I lay no stress on the great physical weariness and discomfort to which I was subject. They gave him an enormous advantage over me in intellectual power, but he had that in any case. He drove me gently from one untenable position to another. He might have been a kindly doctor investigating a moral delinquent.

‘I think,’ he said at last, ‘that it would make it a lot easier for both of us if you told me why you attempted assassination.’

‘I told your people long ago,’ I retorted impatiently. ‘I wanted to see whether it was possible, and his death would be no great loss to the world.’

‘You did then intend to shoot,’ he said, accepting my statement quite naturally. ‘I couldn’t really help you, you see, till you had admitted that.’

I perceived that I had given myself away to him and to myself. Of course I had intended to shoot.

Their methods of interrogation are devastating to the muddle-minded—ninety per cent of us, whatever class we belong to. It’s easy to make a man confess the lies he tells to himself; it’s far harder to make him confess the truth. And when by their technique the truth has been dragged from him, he is so plastic and demoralized that he will accept any interpretation the questioner chooses to put upon it. The process is equally immoral and effective whether used by psycho-analysts or secret police. They make us see our own motives, and in the horror of that exposure we are ready to confess to any enormity.

I had been through all this before, of course, but at the hands of much coarser and less intelligent examiners than Quive-Smith. Physical torture merely increased my obstinacy. I was so occupied in proving to myself that my spirit was superior to my body that the problem of whether my intelligence had not been hopelessly over-shadowed by my emotions did not arise.

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I intended to shoot.’

‘But why?’ he asked. ‘Surely political assassination settles nothing?’

‘It has settled a good deal in history,’ I said.

‘I see. A matter of high policy then?’

‘If you wish.’

‘Then you must have talked it over with someone?’

‘No. I went alone, on my own responsibility.’

‘For the sake of your country?’

‘Mine and others.’

‘Then even though your government knew nothing about you, you were acting in a sense on their behalf?’

‘I don’t admit that,’ I said, seeing where he was heading.

‘My dear fellow!’ he sighed. ‘Now, you say you don’t sign lies. Let me make your mind a little clearer, and you will see that I don’t want you to. You have a number of friends in the Foreign Office, haven’t you?’