“I think I might go and talk to Old Mack about it,” said John.

“Do. You couldn’t find a better fellow.”

Elizabeth had a fortnight’s leave. There were still three days to go when John went off to the village to consult Dr. Mackenzie. He found a grey-haired, genial bachelor in a consulting room that was more like a lawyer’s office than a physician’s, book-lined, dark, permeated by tobacco smoke.

Seated in the shabby leather armchair he developed in more precise language the story he had told in the golf club. Dr. Mackenzie listened without comment.

“It’s the first time I’ve run up against anything like this,” he concluded.

At length Dr. Mackenzie said: “You got pretty badly knocked about in the war, Mr. Verney?”

“My knee. It still gives me trouble.”

“Bad time in hospital?”

“Three months. A beastly place outside Rome.”

“There’s always a good deal of nervous shock in an injury of that kind. It often persists when the wound is healed.”

“Yes, but I don’t quite understand…”

“My dear Mr. Verney, your wife asked me to say nothing about it, but I think I must tell you that she has already been here to consult me on this matter.”

“About her sleep-walking? But she can’t…” then John stopped.

“My dear fellow, I quite understand. She thought you didn’t know. Twice lately you’ve been out of bed and she had to lead you back. She knows all about it.”

John could find nothing to say.

“It’s not the first time,” Dr. Mackenzie continued, “that I’ve been consulted by patients who have told me their symptoms and said they had come on behalf of friends or relations. Usually it’s girls who think they’re in the family-way. It’s an interesting feature of your case that you should want to ascribe the trouble to someone else, probably the decisive feature. I’ve given your wife the name of a man in London who I think will be able to help you. Meanwhile I can only advise plenty of exercise, light meals at night…”

John Verney limped back to Good Hope Fort in a state of consternation. Security had been compromised; the operation must be cancelled; initiative had been lost… all the phrases of the tactical school came to his mind, but he was still numb after this unexpected reverse. A vast and naked horror peeped at him and was thrust aside.

When he got back Elizabeth was laying the supper table. He stood on the balcony and stared at the gaping rails with eyes smarting with disappointment. It was dead calm that evening. The rising tide lapped and fell and mounted again silently among the rocks below. He stood gazing down, then he turned back into the room.

There was one large drink left in the whisky bottle. He poured it out and swallowed it. Elizabeth brought in the supper and they sat down. Gradually his mind grew a little calmer. They usually ate in silence. At last he said: “Elizabeth, why did you tell the doctor I had been walking in my sleep?”

She quietly put down the plate she had been holding and looked at him curiously. “Why?” she said gently. “Because I was worried, of course. I didn’t think you knew about it.”

“But have I been?”

“Oh yes, several times—in London and here. I didn’t think it mattered at first, but the night before last I found you on the balcony, quite near that dreadful hole in the rails. I was really frightened. But it’s going to be all right now. Dr. Mackenzie has given me the name…”

It was possible, thought John Verney; nothing was more likely. He had lived night and day for ten days thinking of that opening, of the sea and rock below, the ragged ironwork and the sharp edge of stone. He suddenly felt defeated, sick and stupid, as he had as he lay on the Italian hillside with his smashed knee. Then as now he had felt weariness even more than pain.

“Coffee, darling.”

Suddenly he roused himself. “No,” he almost shouted. “No, no, no.”

“Darling, what is the matter? Don’t get excited. Are you feeling ill? Lie down on the sofa near the window.”

He did as he was told. He felt so weary that he could barely move from his chair.

“Do you think coffee would keep you awake, love? You look quite fit to drop already. There, lie down.”

He lay down and, like the tide slowly mounting among the rocks below, sleep rose and spread in his mind. He nodded and woke with a start.

“Shall I open the window, darling, and give you some air?”

“Elizabeth,” he said, “I feel as if I have been drugged.” Like the rocks below the window—now awash, now emerging clear from falling water; now awash again, deeper; now barely visible, mere patches on the face of gently eddying foam—his brain was softly drowning. He roused himself, as children do in nightmare, still scared, still half asleep. “I can’t be drugged,” he said loudly, “I never touched the coffee.”

“Drugs in the coffee?” said Elizabeth gently, like a nurse soothing a fractious child. “Drugs in the coffee? What an absurd idea. That’s the kind of thing that only happens on the films, darling.”

He did not hear her. He was fast asleep, snoring stertorously by the open window.

The military organization into which Major Gordon drifted during the last stages of the war enjoyed several changes of name as its function became less secret. At first it was called “Force X”; then “Special Liaison Balkan Irregular Operations”; finally, “Joint Allied Mission to the Yugoslav Army of Liberation.” Its work was to send observing officers and wireless operators to Tito’s partisans.

Most of these appointments were dangerous and uncomfortable. The liaison parties parachuted into the forests and the mountains and lived like brigands. They were often hungry, always dirty, always on the alert, prepared to decamp at any move of the enemy’s. The post to which Major Gordon was sent was one of the safest and softest. Begoy was the headquarters of a partisan corps in Northern Croatia. It lay in a large area, ten miles by twenty, of what was called “Liberated Territory,” well clear of the essential lines of communication. The Germans were pulling out of Greece and Dalmatia and were concerned only with main roads and supply points. They made no attempt now to administer or patrol the hinterland. There was a field near Begoy where aircraft could land unmolested. They did so nearly every week in the summer of 1944 coming from Bari with partisan officials and modest supplies of equipment. In this area congregated a number of men and women who called themselves the Praesidium of the Federal Republic of Croatia. There was even a Minister of Fine Arts. The peasants worked their land undisturbed except by requisitions for the support of the politicians. Besides the British Military Mission, there was a villa full of invisible Russians, half a dozen R.A.F. men who managed the landing ground and an inexplicable Australian doctor who had parachuted into the country a year before with orders to instruct the partisans in field hygiene and had wandered about with them ever since rendering first aid. There were also one hundred and eight Jews.

Major Gordon met them on the third day of his residence. He had been given a small farmhouse half a mile outside the town and the services of an interpreter who had lived for some years in the United States and spoke English of a kind. This man, Bakic, was in the secret police. His duty was to keep Major Gordon under close attention and to report every evening at OZNA headquarters. Major Gordon’s predecessor had warned him of this man’s proclivities, but Major Gordon was sceptical for such things were beyond his experience. Three Slav widows were also attached to the household. They slept in a loft and acted as willing and tireless servants.

After breakfast on the third day Bakic announced to Major Gordon: “Dere’s de Jews outside.”