“May I sit here?”

She looked up, first without recognition, then with pleasure. Perhaps there was something in his forlorn appearance, in the diffidence of his appeal, which cleared him in Miss Bombaum’s mind. This was no fascist beast that stood before her, no reactionary cannibal.

“Surely,” she said. “The guy who invited me hasn’t shown up.”

A ghastly fear, cold in that torrid room, struck Scott-King, that he would have to pay for Miss Bombaum’s luncheon. She was eating a lobster, he noted, and drinking hock.

“When you’ve finished,” he said. “Afterwards, with coffee perhaps in the lounge.”

“I’ve a date in twenty minutes,” she said. “Sit down.”

He sat and at once, in answer to her casual enquiry, poured out the details of his predicament. He laid particular stress on his financial problems and, as pointedly as he could, ordered the humblest dish on the menu. “It’s a fallacy not to eat in hot weather,” said Miss Bombaum. “You need to keep your resistance up.”

When he had finished the recital she said, “Well, I reckon it shouldn’t be hard to fix you up. Go by the Underground.”

Blacker despair in Scott-King’s haunted face told Miss Bombaum that she had not made herself clear.

“You’ve surely heard of the Underground? It’s”—she quoted from one of her recent articles on the subject—“it’s an alternative map of Europe, like a tracing overlying all the established frontiers and routes of communication. It’s the new world taking shape below the surface of the old. It’s the new ultra-national citizenship.”

“Well I’m blessed.”

“Look, I can’t stop now. Be here this evening and I’ll take you to see the key man.”

That afternoon, his last, as it turned out, in Bellacita, Scott-King received his first caller. He had gone to his room to sleep through the heat of the day, when his telephone rang and a voice announced Dr. Antonic. He asked for him to be sent up.

The Croat entered and sat by his bed.

“So you have acquired the Neutralian custom of the siesta. I am too old. I cannot adapt myself to new customs. Everything in this country is as strange to me as when I first came here.

“I was at the Foreign Office this morning enquiring about my papers of naturalization and I heard by chance you were still here. So I came at once. I do not intrude? I thought you would have left by now. You have heard of our misfortunes? Poor Dr. Fe is disgraced. All his offices taken from him. More than this there is trouble with his accounts. He spent more, it appears, on the Bellorius celebrations than the Treasury authorized. Since he is out of office he has no access to the books and cannot adjust them. They say he will be prosecuted, perhaps sent to the islands.”

“And you, Dr. Antonic?”

“I am never fortunate. I relied on Dr. Fe for my naturalization. Whom shall I turn to now? My wife thought that perhaps you could do something for us in England to make us British subjects.”

“There is nothing I can do.”

“No, I suppose not. Nor in America?”

“Still less there.”

“So I told my wife. But she is a Czech and so more hopeful. We Croats do not hope. It would be a great honour if you would come and explain these things to her. She will not believe me when I say there is no hope. I promised I would bring you.”

So Scott-King dressed and was led through the heat to a new quarter on the edge of the town, to a block of flats.

“We came here because of the elevator. My wife was so weary of Neutralian stairs. But alas the elevator no longer works.”

They trudged to the top floor, to a single sitting room full of children, heavy with the smell of coffee and cigarette smoke.

“I am ashamed to receive you in a house without an elevator,” said Mme. Antonic in French; then turning to the children, she addressed them in another tongue. They bowed, curtsied, and left the room. Mme. Antonic prepared coffee and brought a plate of biscuits from the cupboard.

“I was sure you would come,” she said. “My husband is too timid. You will take us with you to America.”

“Dear madam, I have never been there.”

“To England then. We must leave this country. We are not at our ease here.”

“I am finding the utmost difficulty in getting to England myself.”

“We are respectable people. My husband is a diplomat. My father had his own factory at Budweis. Do you know Mr. Mackenzie?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“He was a very respectable Englishman. He would explain that we come of good people. He visited often to my father’s factory. If you will find Mr. Mackenzie he will help us.”

So the conversation wore on. “If we could only find Mr. Mackenzie,” Mme. Antonic repeated, “all our troubles would be at an end.” Presently the children returned.

“I will take them to the kitchen,” said Mme. Antonic, “and give them some jam. Then they will not be a nuisance.”

“You see,” said Dr. Antonic, as the door closed, “she is always hopeful. Now I do not hope. Do you think,” he asked, “that in Neutralia Western Culture might be born again? That this country has been preserved by Destiny from the horrors of war so that it can become a beacon of hope for the world?”

“No,” said Scott-King.

“Do you not?” asked Dr. Antonic anxiously. “Do you not? Neither do I.”

That evening Miss Bombaum and Scott-King took a cab to the suburbs and left it at a café where they met a man who had sat with Miss Bombaum in the Ritz on her first evening. No names were exchanged.

“Who’s this guy, Martha?”

“An English friend of mine I want you to help.”

“Going far?”

“England. Can he see the chief?”

“I’ll go ask. He’s on the level?”

“Surely.”

“Well, stick around while I ask.”

He went to telephone and returned saying, “The chief ’ll see him.

We can drop him off there, then have our talk.”

They took another cab and drove further from the city into a district of tanneries and slaughterhouses, recognizable by their smell in the hot darkness. Presently they stopped at a lightless villa.

“In there. Don’t ring. Just push the door.”

“Hope you have a good trip,” said Miss Bombaum.

Scott-King was not a reader of popular novels and so was unfamiliar with the phrase “It all happened so quickly that it was not until afterwards…” That, however, expressed his situation. The cab drove off as he was still stumbling up the garden path. He pushed the door, entered an empty and lightless hall, heard a voice from another room call “Come in,” went in, and found himself in a shabby office confronting a Neutralian in the uniform of a major of police.

The man addressed him in English. “You are Miss Bombaum’s friend? Sit down. Do not be alarmed by my uniform. Some of our clients are very much alarmed. A silly boy tried to shoot me last week when he saw me like this. He suspected a trap. You want to go to England, I think. That is very difficult. Now if you had said Mexico or Brazil or Switzerland it would be easier. You have reasons which make England preferable?”

“I have reasons.”

“Curious. I spent many years there and found it a place of few attractions. The women had no modesty, the food upset my stomach. I have a little party on their way to Sicily. That would not do instead?”

“I am afraid not.”

“Well, we must see what can be done. You have a passport? This is lucky. English passports come very dear just now. I hope Miss Bombaum explained to you that mine is not a charitable organization. We exist to make profits and our expenses are high. I am constantly bothered by people who come to me supposing I work for the love of it. I do love my work, but love is not enough. The young man I spoke of just now, who tried to shoot me—he is buried just outside under the wall—he thought this was a political organization. We help people irrespective of class, race, party, creed or colour—for cash in advance. It is true, when I first took over, there were certain amateur associations that had sprung up during the World War—escaping prisoners, communist agents, Zionists, spies and so on. I soon put them out of business. That is where my position in the police is a help. Now I can say I have a virtual monopoly. Our work increases every day. It is extraordinary how many people without the requisite facilities seem anxious to cross frontiers today. I also have a valued connection with the Neutralian government. Troublesome fellows whom they want to dispose of pass through my hands in large numbers. How much have you got?”