“I seemed on land, and you”—he nodded to his wife—“out in the city, a waif swimming in a friendless sea. Here were people ready to defend my beliefs. Here were people who upheld my traditions. That profound loneliness, which is the tragedy of an agent’s life, for a brief space was no longer mine.”
47 had dropped his chin in his hands, and was looking into the fire. He threw up his head.
“My ‘cousin’ came back. He was standing in the doorway before I heard him. He lifted his eyebrows, and I slid off my packing case, and we passed down the passage into another room with a cheerful fire and people at work. This room was crowded with papers and typewriters, and though the people there sat in glum silence and went on with their work, nevertheless it seemed the best room I had ever been in.
“The fire was burning up, and in a box to the right was a mongrel bitch with a litter of blind pups. They were never still, and tugged at her all the time, rolling over with warmth and pleasure. A man sat on a stool gazing at the coals, and now and then he would put his hand among those rolling things, and the bitch would lick it. I envied that family.
“Another man smoked on the edge of a table, and a third man, a man who worked so furiously that he never raised his head, was standing with his back to a window, leaning over a high desk overwhelmed with papers. On a sheet he had an endless list of names, down which he was running a finger. With another hand he opened a directory and looked up addresses, and constantly he referred to the stack of papers.
“This great round-up was bringing in a mass of information, and each new bit of news opened up fresh avenues. I soon gathered from this man’s exclamations that he was going through the latest batch of information, and arranging fresh raids.
“He mentioned some name or other. ‘I am going to get the blighter to-night, I think,’ he said. All the while we were there he continued to run his finger up and down the pages and give instructions; and one could visualise the lower end of the Castle yard and the great gates through which we had come near which lorries, shaking with armed men, waited to be loosed in torrents down the streets.
“My ‘cousin’ went to something, which was half a desk and half a table, and opening it with an effort, for there was a great weight of books and papers on top, he pulled out an automatic pistol somewhat the worse for wear, took it to pieces, put it together again, loaded it, and fumbling among debris at the bottom of the desk, he rescued a spare magazine and a handful of nickel bullets. All these things were presently handed over to me.”
His wife interrupted him. “Don’t tell me what you have brought back is no good?”
“No; it’s tip-top,” answered 47, hastily. “It wants a good clean, that’s all. I’ll fix it up to-morrow. Anyhow, I stuck it into a pocket, and we went back to the Central for my ‘cousin’s’ guns, for he was going to look up his wife in her flat. The one which was as long as his arm he thrust into a tremendous pocket, and a second he kept in another pocket, with his hand on it. So we sallied forth, and I have no doubt on the way passed many a citizen of one persuasion or the other prepared for eventualities like ourselves.