The train pulled into Waterloo. We pushed Lex out onto the platform, and said goodby. Then we hid under the seats, feeling unnecessarily cowardly. It was wiser, however, to reach Sandorski’s friend Roland, if we could, without a chance of police or Hiart or Hiart’s agents intervening.

We stayed under the seats for about twenty minutes while the train was trundled out, and banged back and forth in the yards. It stopped at one or two unpromising places, where we were in a blaze of lights and suspended above South London on arches. We didn’t like the look of them, and remained. Then an army of cleaners swarmed over our train.

“Quick! Sleep!” Sandorski ordered.

He pulled the cork out of the rum, and dropped the bottle on the floor. We lay back snoring. A fearsome female, all dirt, muscles and overalls, poked us with the end of her broom.

” ‘Ere!” she exclaimed. “Look what ‘appened to the drop you were tykin’ ‘ome for muvver!”

“Where are we?” I murmured, with a stage hiccup.

“On the bleedin’ British Rylewyes,” she said. “And don’t think because you own ‘em, you can myke ‘em a bleedin’ ‘otel.”

We staggered to our feet, and I’m damned if Sandorski didn’t try to kiss her. That got him altogether too much good will, and if some kind of official hadn’t come along I doubt if anything would have saved him from a fate worse than death right there in the compartment. The official was sternly humorous. He was evidently quite accustomed to finding bits of rubbish like ourselves routed out by cleaners from late trains. He collected our tickets, escorted us firmly to a gate and left us free in London.

It was dark and cold and raining. Somewhere near Vauxhall Bridge we found a taxi, and told the driver to take us to Fulham Park Avenue and stop at the corner. He seemed to know what corner, so I left it at that. The empty, mournful streets were unending. I hoped the children were asleep. I knew Cecily wouldn’t be.

“Now look here, Colonel, my lad!” said Sandorski. “You leave it all to me. Not a word about Riemann! You’ve just been helping me. I picked you up on your shoot. Thought you were obviously a useful chap. We don’t know anything about the corpse in the car. Leave him out altogether. Tell the rest as it happened.”

No. 26 was an unassuming block of flats, three stories high. No lift. No porter. Just the place for quiet comings and goings with no questions asked. As we hesitated invitingly in front of the closed door, I thought I saw somebody in the wet and gleaming patch of darkness across the road flash a torch quickly towards the roof of No. 26. Sandorski waited, confident in his friend’s arrangements.

The front door opened quietly.

“Well, Peter?” whispered a voice. “Got here after all, by Jove!”

“Anyone come in?” Sandorski asked.

“Yes. He’s up there.”

“With parcel?”

“With parcel.”

“Then you won’t have anything to do till morning. Take us where we can talk.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said the voice. “It’s cold up there on the water tank.”

Two men came out of the house and closed the door behind them. We all walked away together. The chap next to Sandorski was slim and fair. In dark sweater and wind-breaker, with a disreputable hat, he looked much like my idea of an enterprising burglar. His walk and bearing, however, were free and casual. The man as my side–and very close to my side he was–had a conventional hat and overcoat. His face was heavy but intelligent–and, at the moment, remarkably expressionless. We walked to the police car, which was parked some distance away, in an embarrassing silence. When we got there, my companion asked me if I were Colonel Taine.

“Mr. Taine,” I corrected him.

“I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of murder of a person unknown–” and he gave me the details and the usual caution.

I don’t mind saying that his neutral, even kindly voice moved me to a sheer panic such as I’ve never felt in all my life.

“You can take down any damn thing you please in evidence against us,” interrupted Sandorski cheerfully. “Got a sharp pencil–ha?”

“Peter,” the other man said to him with the utmost seriousness, “you do understand that if you have broken the law I can’t help you, don’t you?”

“Haven’t even hit a policeman,” Sandorski replied. “Get on with it! Where can we talk?”

“Why not my flat–if you’ve no objection, Inspector?”

I think that perhaps this friend of Sandorski’s–and now of mine–would prefer me not to give his name and address. So I will continue to call him Roland, and merely say that his flat was warm and welcome–especially when he had produced something to eat from the icebox. The policeman was Inspector Haldon of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.

Sandorski told our story. He said that he had come to England on information received, and left it at that. He had run into me when exploring the shoot, and I had agreed to help him. We had found the beacons and intercepted the plane, and we knew nothing at all about the body in the car. Then he told them of the international connections of the People’s Union, and that it was Robert Heyne-Hassingham and Hiart who had organized the illicit landing.

Roland was at first inclined to think that Sandorski was romanticizing. He said that nobody could be such a fool as to take the People’s Union seriously, not even its founder; and he was horrified at the suggestion that Hiart, who was almost a colleague of his, could be implicated.

He appealed to Inspector Haldon, who grinned in answer.

“I must admit, sir,” he said, “that Colonel Hiart–well, it has been suggested that he was rather too thick with some of his opposite numbers abroad. We keep an open mind, of course, but–”

”Good God, Haldon!” Roland exclaimed, really shocked. “Do you watch me too?”

“Fatherly, sir, fatherly,” said the inspector. “Now General, I understand that you telephoned Mr. Roland last night to wire Flat 9 for sound in order that you could prove your innocence and Mr. Taine’s. What are we going to hear?”

“You are going to hear that courier speak to Heyne-Hassingham, and I hope you’re going to hear him hand over the documents.”

Then Sandorski told him what the documents were.

“Now you see why we ran for it–ha? If Hiart had got his hands on that briefcase, it soon would have gone up in smoke, wouldn’t it? And if the police had it first, he’d have sworn the papers were forged by a mad Pole. Crazy general. Brains removed for experiment in prison camp. Lands planes. Burns cars. And the passenger, so that he can’t talk–ha? I’d have had a hard time proving it wasn’t so. I may have, still. I’m not sure Heyne-Hassingham will come. He might send Hiart.”

“He won’t do that,” said Roland. “Hiart’s in hospital.”

“Pink shot him?”

“Good Lord, Peter, this is England! He fractured his skull when his car tipped over.”

“Now this is all very well, sir,” said the inspector genially. “But what we want to know is if General Sandorski can throw any light at all on that burned body.”

“I? Didn’t know a thing about it till the cops called on Taine.”

“Or you, Mr. Taine?”

“No,” I said, “no … no.”

“Would it surprise you to know that the man had been dead some weeks before he was burned?”

“It would delight me,” said Sandorski. “Here’s my passport! You can see I wasn’t in England.”

“And Mr. Taine?”

“It’s only a week since I met the general,” I replied, as if that fixed it.

Well of course it did. My life was an open book. Haldon must have been wholly content that I had no conceivable motive to go around murdering strangers until Sandorski turned up.

“By the way,” the inspector asked, “what did you do with Mr. Bear’s limousine? We’d better get hold of that before there is any trouble about it.”

“Left it at Salisbury.”

“Then youdidcome by train?”

“Sure we did,” said Sandorski. “Why not? Give your chaps a lecture any time you like, Inspector. Hints and Tips on Train Control.”