And on he went.

“Just tell me what you want, I said to de Gaulle, and I’ll see that Churchill falls in with it. So far as he can, of course, so far as he can! Our own army, that was the trouble. I remember one of our very high commanders. I won’t mention his name. ‘Any more from you,’ I said, ‘and I’ll send a signal straight to the Cabinet.’”

“And did you?” Cunobel asked.

“God bless my soul, yes! I was always sending signals direct to the Cabinet. I remember a major of the Deuxieme Bureau, when I was in Paris after the war, warning me that they had copies of all of them.”

“Broke your cipher, you mean?”

The admiral choked, and did his best to pretend that a truffle had gone the wrong way.

“Good Lord, no I My little secretary had been pinching the en clair drafts from the wastepaper basket. ‘Never mind!’ I said to the major. ‘There’s nothing I tell my government that I am not prepared to tell yours.’ A pity that I hadn’t more influence on policy! I could have made us just a band of brothers.”

When Lady Pamellor had swum delicately off and hidden herself beneath the rocks of the drawing room, Sir Thomas pressed cigars upon us and one of the finest brandies I have ever tasted. I can well imagine the French putting out a legend that they found him useful.

“I hear you’ve been in a spot of trouble, Dennim,” he said.

I instantly joined the odd thousand Europeans who must have thought it wise to impress Sir Thomas with their sincerity.

“Trouble?” I asked, puzzled. “No.”

“Bomb, eh?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Shall we say I read it in the paper?” replied the general with heavy diplomacy.

Cunobel was magnificent.

“Damned Cypriots!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t leave that kind of thing to the army when I was a boy! Sent a cruiser, gave ‘em a party and showed ‘em over the gun turrets!”

“Cypriots?” Sir Thomas asked. “They didn’t tell me you had been in Cyprus.”

“I’ve been in a lot of places, my dear general,” I said mysteriously. “Now which particular they are you referring to?”

He was a little taken aback. He had evidently thought this was going to be a straightforward job where the renowned Pamellor frankness would be effective.

“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you,” he said. “I’ve been directly approached by French police. They want to know if you can give any description at all of the man who sent the bomb.”

“No, I can’t,” I answered. “And, anyway, Scotland Yard knows all I know. But how did the Surete find out that I was staying somewhere near you?”

“I don’t know. I suppose Scotland Yard told them that much but wouldn’t tell them any more. Hidebound! I could recommend them half a dozen first-rate fellows who would improve liaison with the Surete out of recognition. But there it is! They are up against British mistrust all the time! So what more natural than to appeal to me? Our good friend Pamellor, somebody says, hides himself in his little gentilhommiere at a few kilometers from Chipping Marton. Lui, il fera notre affaire!”

“I do wish I could help a bit more,” I said heartily. “But, to tell you the honest truth, I am not even sure that the bomb which killed our postman was meant for me.

“I may pass that on, Dennim?”

“Of course. Was the inquiry from Paris?”

“From the very top. But it’s quite likely they were passing on an unofficial inquiry from one of the departments. We old comrades of the Resistance, we serve each other without questions.”

We retired to the drawing room for coffee, where the admiral discussed with Lady Pamellor some fussy problem of the Girl Guides and the grammar school, while I was lectured by Sir Thomas on the blindness of the Foreign Office. When at last we got away, Cunobel’s driving expressed his feelings. He roared down a mile of straight road, screeched round two corners and stopped.

“What do you make of it, Charles?”

I said that it seemed incredible but that I was sure the inquiry really had come to Sir Thomas from France.

“You don’t think Pongo is after you himself?”

“Not enough sense.”

“Or friend of Pongo?”

“That’s possible. Likely, even. I can imagine him poring over the map to see who he knows or ever has known within riding distance of Chipping Marton. But I don’t think he’d risk writing to Sir Thomas himself or calling on him. Not yet. And why should he when he can get some French official to do it for him?”

“But, damn it, the man we want is English!”

“If he is, he has some very influential friends in France.”

We sat there in the car trying to think it out, but got no further than the obvious fact that the tiger wanted to know whether I could or could not recognize him. That proved he had not the least suspicion that I had examined him at leisure; but he could not be sure how much I had seen from my perch in the alder. In fact the action on the edge of the badger fortress had been too quick and darkness too far advanced for me to make out anything more than a lump of darkness detaching itself in five quick strides.

The admiral drove on along the top of the Cotswolds while I sat beside him watching that soft sweep of windy country and wondering how and with what gentlemanly excuse the tiger proposed to spring. He was planning to walk straight up to me, perhaps with a cheerful good evening. But where? What lonely spot would allow him to play with his victim, kill and retreat unnoticed? Since few of my movements were regular or easily to be anticipated, how was he to ensure my unsuspecting presence on the ground he had reconnoitered and chosen? Telephone? False message? But I would suspect any and every appointment which might be with death.

What had been his movements since meeting Georgina and confirming that we were both likely to be at Chipping Marton for some time? He might have gone over to France and back several times. He might have been in the Wen Acre Plantation when the instinct of the hunted told me he was thinking of me and made me look again and again behind me.

France … the plantation … and then I saw it. The tails of the squirrels! I had noticed the darker red of the tails and accepted it as a mildly interesting sport of color in the native English breed. But they weren’t English. They were French squirrels. That was why neither Gillon nor I could find the drays. That accounted for his St. Francis act. Three bagged wild, and one from a pet dealer!

And how beautifully simple! The price of my death in Wen Acre Plantation was four red squirrels flown over from France and let loose in a perfectly natural home. A gamble, of course. I might not hear of them. I might pay little attention to them. But if I did, and made a point of watching them, what an opportunity! And he had lost it just because of the one slip of putting France into my head.

I kept this discovery to myself, for I was not yet sure what use I could make of it. I was far from the mood of friendlessness and distrust which had first led me to tackle the whole business alone, but there was no direct help which I could ask. To expose Georgina, the vicarage and Cunobel to anxiety and possible danger was unthinkable. Tying out the goat when the result mattered only to himself was allowable. Tying him out when he was a village pet was cruel.

There were other reasons why the plantation could not be put to use. I was up against the old problem in its clearest form. Picket the Wen Acre with police and we should have no more news of my persistent follower, however well their presence was hidden or disguised. Tempt him by leaving it wide open and I should be hit before I dared shoot. The right policy was to station a first-class shot able to arrest or wound in the second or two after the tiger had made his criminal intention plain. But, assuming the police believed every word of my story —and it was a big assumption —where would they find such a man, willing and able to work patiently day after day with me? Anyway that plan had already failed, even with Ian to help.