“You stay here,” he observed. “Personally I think you’ve had a bad dream, because William can’t possably know the combination of that safe. It’s as much as I can do to remember it myself.”
“It’s a Spy’s business to know everything, father.”
He gave me a peircing glance.
“He’s a Spy, is he?” he then said. “Well, I might have known that all this war preparation of yours would lead to Spies. It has turned more substantile intellects than yours.”
He then swiched on the hall lights from the top of the stairs and desended. I could but wait at the top, fearing at each moment a shot would ring out, as a Spy’s business is such as not to stop at Murder.
My father unlocked the safe and looked in it. Then he closed it again and disapeared into the back of the house. How agonising were the moments that ensued! He did not return, and at last, feeling that he had met a terrable Death, I went down.
I went through the fatal dining room to the pantrey and there found him not only alive, but putting on a plate some cold roast beef and two apples.
“I thought we’d have a bite to eat,” he said. “I need a little nourishment before getting back into that puddle to sleep.”
“Father!” I said. “How can you talk of food when knowing——”
“Get some salt and pepper,” he said, “and see if there is any mustard mixed. You’ve had a dream, Bab. That’s all. The Case is in the safe, and William is in his bed, and in about two minutes a cold repast is going to be in me.”