“About forty pounds.”

“Show me.”

Scott-King handed him his book of travellers’ cheques.

“But there are seventy pounds here.”

“Yes, but my hotel bill…”

“There will be no time for that.”

“I am sorry,” said Scott-King firmly. “I could not possibly leave an hotel with my bill unpaid, especially in a foreign country. It may seem absurdly scrupulous to you but it is one of the things a Granchesterian simply cannot do.”

The Major was not a man to argue from first principles. He took men as they came and in his humane calling he dealt with many types.

“Well, I shan’t pay it,” he said. “Do you know anyone else in Bellacita?”

“No one.”

“Think.”

“There was a man called Smudge at our Embassy.”

“Smudge shall have your bill. These cheques want signing.”

Despite his high training Scott-King signed and the cheques were put away in the bureau drawer.

“My luggage?”

“We do not handle luggage. You will start this evening. I have a small party leaving for the coast. We have our main clearinghouse at Santa Maria. From there you will travel by steamer, perhaps not in the grand luxury, but what will you? No doubt as an Englishman you are a good sailor.”

He rang a bell on his desk and spoke to the answering secretary in rapid Neutralian.

“My man here will take charge of you and fit you out. You speak Neutralian? No? Perhaps it is as well. We do not encourage talk in my business, and I must warn you, the strictest discipline has to be observed. From now on you are under orders. Those who disobey never reach their destinations. Good-bye and a good journey.”

Some few hours later a large and antiquated saloon car was bumping towards the sea. In it sat in extreme discomfort seven men habited as Ursuline nuns. Scott-King was among them.

The little Mediterranean seaport of Santa Maria lay very near the heart of Europe. An Athenian colony had thrived there in the days of Pericles and built a shrine to Poseidon; Carthaginian slaves had built the breakwater and deepened the basin; Romans had brought fresh water from the mountain springs; Dominican friars had raised the great church which gave the place its present name; the Hapsburgs had laid out the elaborate little piazza; one of Napoleon’s marshals had made it his base and left a classical garden there. The footprints of all these gentler conquerors were still plain to see but Scott-King saw nothing as, at dawn, he bowled over the cobbles to the waterfront.

The Underground dispersal centre was a warehouse; three wide floors, unpartitioned, with boarded windows, joined by an iron staircase. There was one door near which the guardian had set her large brass bedstead. At most hours of the day she reclined there under a coverlet littered with various kinds of food, weapons, tobacco and a little bolster on which she sometimes made lace of an ecclesiastical pattern. She had the face of a tricoteuse of the Terror. “Welcome to Modern Europe,” she said as the seven Ursulines entered.

The place was crowded. In the six days which he spent there Scott-King identified most of the groups who messed together by languages. There was a detachment of Slovene royalists, a few Algerian nationals, the remnants of a Syrian anarchist association, ten patient Turkish prostitutes, four French Pétainist millionaires, a few Bulgarian terrorists, a half-dozen former Gestapo men, an Italian air-marshal and his suite, a Hungarian ballet, some Portuguese Trotskyites. The English-speaking group consisted chiefly of armed deserters from the American and British Armies of Liberation. They had huge sums of money distributed about the linings of their clothes, the reward of many months’ traffic round the docks of the central sea.

Such activity as there was took place in the hour before dawn. Then the officer in charge, husband, it seemed, of the guardian hag, would appear with lists and a handful of passports; a roll would be called and a party despatched. During the day the soldiers played poker—a fifty-dollar ante and a hundred-dollar raise. Sometimes in the hours of darkness there were newcomers. The total number at the clearing station remained fairly constant.

At last on the sixth day there was a commotion. It began at midday with a call from the chief of police. He came with sword and epaulettes and he talked intently and crossly in Neutralian with the custodian.

One of the Americans, who had picked up more languages during his time in the Old World than most diplomats, explained: “The guy with the fancy fixings says we got to get the hell out of here. Seems there’s a new officer going to raid this joint.”

When the officer had gone, the custodian and his wife debated the question. “The old girl says why don’t he hand us over and get rewarded. The guy says Hell, the most likely reward they’d get would be hanging. Seems there’s some stiffs planted round about.”

Presently a sea-captain appeared and talked Greek. All the Underground travellers sat stock-still listening, picking up a word here and there. “This guy’s got a ship can take us off.”

“Where?”

“Aw, some place. Seems they’re kinda more interested in finance than geography.”

A bargain was struck. The captain departed, and the Underground conductor explained to each language group in turn that there had been a slight dislocation of plan. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Just go quiet. Everything’s all right. We’ll look after you. You’ll all get where you want to in time. Just at the moment you got to move quick and quiet, that’s all.”

So, unprotesting, at nightfall, the strangely assorted party was hustled on board a schooner. Noah’s animals cannot have embarked with less sense of the object of their journey. The little ship was not built for such cargo. Down they went into a dark hold; hatches were battened down; the unmistakeable sound of moorings being cast off came to them in their timbered prison; an auxiliary Diesel engine started up; sails were hoisted; soon they were on the high seas in very nasty weather.

This is the story of a summer holiday; a light tale. It treats, at the worst, with solid discomfort and intellectual doubt. It would be inappropriate to speak here of those depths of the human spirit, the agony and despair, of the next few days of Scott-King’s life. To even the Comic Muse, the gadabout, the adventurous one of those heavenly sisters, to whom so little that is human comes amiss, who can mix in almost any company and find a welcome at almost every door—even to her there are forbidden places. Let us leave Scott-King then on the high seas and meet him again as, sadly changed, he comes at length into harbour. The hatches are off, the August sun seems cool and breathless, Mediterranean air fresh and spring-like as at length he climbs on deck. There are soldiers; there is barbed wire; there is a waiting lorry; there is a drive through a sandy landscape, more soldiers, more wire. All the time Scott-King is in a daze. He is first fully conscious in a tent, sitting stark naked while a man in khaki drill taps his knee with a ruler.

“I say, Doc, I know this man.” He looks up into a vaguely familiar face. “You are Mr. Scott-King, aren’t you? What on earth are you doing with this bunch, sir?”

“Lockwood! Good gracious, you used to be in my Greek set! Where am I?”

“No. 64 Jewish Illicit Immigrants’ Camp, Palestine.”

Granchester reassembled in the third week of September. On the first evening of term, Scott-King sat in the masters’ common room and half heard Griggs telling of his trip abroad. “It gives one a new angle to things, getting out of England for a bit. What did you do, Scottie?”

“Oh, nothing much. I met Lockwood. You remember him. Sad case, he was a sitter for the Balliol scholarship. Then he had to go into the army.”

“I thought he was still in it. How typical of old Scottie that all he has to tell us after eight weeks away is that he met a prize pupil! I shouldn’t be surprised to hear you did some work, too, you old blackleg.”