I did what I should have done in the first place: I put through a trunk call to Torquay. But H.M. was not at the hotel, and had left no message. Then I rang up Evelyn. The wench, usually so full of the devil, was in nearly as low spirits as myself. She spoke in a small worried voice.
"Ken, it looks like trouble."
"It does."
"But Ken, are you going? I mean, the old man's done a tremendous lot for us, and I don't see how you can let him down if he asks you to go. Do you think it's-?"
She meant: "Do. you think it's Military Intelligence Department work?" H.M., who controls that network, requires a powerful stimulus to push his feet off the desk at the War Office and get him to move anywhere under his own steam. Since even the heavy labour of moving from his office to his home always produces an epic of inspired grousing, his presence in Torquay was important. All the same, I have no longer any official connection with his Department; and Evelyn, who once had a hand in it as well, had given in her resignation over a month before.
"So why me?" I said, "when he's got three dozen people with more brains ready to be called up, and particularly at a time like this? I should have to call off that dinner to-night for one thing, and that would put everybody's back up. Besides, I feel it in my bones some damned thing or other is bound to happen. Every time H.M. is ill-advised enough to stray out of his office, and drags me along with him, it always ends up in my being chased by the police."
"But are you going?"
"Wench, I've got to go. The last time, you remember, I mixed myself up in an affair where I had no business; and H.M. pulled me out… "
There was a pause, during which Evelyn appeared to be dreaming. Then the telephone emitted what seemed to be a faint chortle of pleasure. "I say, but didn't we have a grand time, though?" she crowed. "Look here, Ken: I'll tell you what: let me go along with you. Then, if we don't get back in time, we'll both be in the soup and we can get married at a registry office, which is what I want to do, anyway."
"NO! Your old man-"