Curtain Of Fear Part 8

While she talked she continued to undress herself. Nicholas had been telling the truth when he said he had never taken a girl away for the weekend; neither had he ever seen one undress in a bedroom. His few fleeting affairs had been confined to necking parties in front parlours with the lights out, tremulous embraces on the way home from dances, and one afternoon he always looked back on with pleasure that he had spent with a girl in a haystack. By the time Fedora had got down to her elastic belt and begun to peel off her stockings, he felt himself going hot all over, and exclaimed: "Look here! I think I'll go into the bedroom, and you can whisper the rest to me later."

She gave him a look of contempt. "Don't worry. I've neither the time nor the inclination to seduce you. And I had no intention of stripping in front of you, anyhow."

"Well," he muttered uneasily, "you're not far off it."

"Oh, shut up, you wretched prude!" she snapped at him. "You must have seen hundreds of girls on beaches with much less on than I have; and time is precious. We've got to go to this reception because there is no plausible excuse for the Chef to send a bowl of salad, or something of that kind, up to us; and even if he did they couldn't get us out if the bomb exploded up here."

"The bomb!" he exclaimed in horror.

"Yes, but you needn't get the wind up. We never kill the Coms without a very special reason, because their reprisals are too drastic. This will be a combined smoke and tear-gas bomb. The Chef showed me the place where you will be expected to stand for the reception. We are to get down a little early and take our places while the preparations for lunch in the next room are still going on. A waiter will come in carrying a bowl of something, and as he pa.s.ses behind you the bomb will go off. Whether you are temporarily blinded or not, you must stagger about and then collapse as if you had had a heart attack. By then there may be a score or more people in the room, but the smoke and the gas will cause confusion. Before anyone is sufficiently recovered to take an unwelcome interest in what is going on you are to be picked up and carried out to an ambulance that will have been waiting round the corner. Our friends here will tell the Coms afterwards that it just 'happened' to be pa.s.sing along the street; so they hailed it, but they don't know where it came from or where it went. As your ever-loving Comrade-companion I shall naturally go with you in it. The ambulance, of course, will be manned by Legionnaires, and with luck they will whisk us away to a place where the Coms will never find us."

Nicholas nodded. "The plan sounds daring enough to have a good chance of success, but everything will depend on the timing. I only hope your friend the Chef is a good organiser."

"You needn't worry about that." She gave him a grim little smile. "If he wasn't he wouldn't have stayed the pace as long as he has. In this game anyone who leaves loose ends untied soon finds them round his own neck. Now you had better leave me; unless you want to be properly shocked."

He gave a sudden grin. "Since you called me a prude, it would serve you right if I came back when you've got the rest of your things off."

"No! Please don't." She at once became serious. "But I like you better for having one back at me and showing you are at least a little human."

When he reached the bedroom he sat down on the edge of the bed and anxiously thought over the ordeal that lay before them. He felt that if he had to be in the reception room only for some five to ten minutes, he ought to be able to cope with any of Bilto's old acquaintances or scientists who were among the first arrivals, but he was still much perturbed about Bilto's woman. Habit of mind still made him very loath to accept Fedora's statement that the Communist leaders were entirely unprincipled, and if she was wrong it seemed highly probable that his official host would bring the lady with him. In that case the balloon would go up before the party had even started.

For a good ten minutes he cudgelled his wits for some way of dealing with such a situation, but in vain, and he was still fruitlessly going round and round the problem like a squirrel in a cage when Fedora, again half-dressed and carrying her frock over her arm, came hurrying in. Sitting down at the dressing-table, she beckoned him over to her and said in a whisper: "I've got to do something about my hair, and we've so little time left that you must help me. I keep it long because I'm rather vain about it, but it makes me d.a.m.nably conspicuous. There's always the chance that something may go wrong outside and we'll have to take to our heels. If that happens I don't want my silvery locks to be spottable from half a mile away, so I'm going to do them up in half-a-dozen plaits and stuff them under a beret. You do the back and I'll do the sides."

It was a novel employment for Nicholas, and in other circ.u.mstances he would have been amused at playing barber to a pretty woman. As it was he worked away as quickly as he could plaiting up her fine silky hair, and tying the ends with some pieces of blue ribbon that she had snipped off from a clean nightdress. When they had finished the plaits, she coiled them into a coronet on the top of her head and secured them rather precariously with half-a-dozen safety-pins. Then, turning her head from side to side, she smiled at her reflection in the mirror and whispered: "There! How do you like me now?"

Nicholas never had a chance to answer. At that instant without knock or warning, the bedroom door was thrust open and Kmoch walked in. For a moment he stood surveying them with his sad brown spaniel eyes, then he said: "I have ordered the lunch to be put back for half-an-hour. You are to return with me to Headquarters. Comrade Frek wishes to put to you a few more questions."

CHAPTER X.

IN THE NET.

Nicholas' first reaction was not fear, but indignation. Fedora had known that it would be a race against time to get her hair rearranged before they were summoned to the reception, so she had not bothered to unpack her dressing-gown before sitting down to the job, and she was still in her undies. To Nicholas their actual relations.h.i.+p in no way invalidated the fact that events had placed upon him some of the responsibilities of a husband, and his strong sense of decency had been outraged. Turning on Kmoch, he demanded angrily: "How dare you come barging in like this? It is disgraceful that you should show so little respect for people's privacy."

Kmoch gave him a faintly surprised look. "Only people who have something to hide desire privacy, so it is against the principles of the State to permit it. The police have access at all times, everywhere; and unless the lunch is to be further postponed we must hurry. That is why I came up to fetch you myself. Please, Comrade Hoovsk, get your clothes on quickly."

Silently, Fedora slipped on her frock and adjusted her beret to cover the coronet of plaits. Then they went downstairs and followed Kmoch out to his car.

On the short drive Nicholas hardly knew whether to be pleased or sorry about this unexpected intervention, which had temporarily saved him from the ordeal of having to face the beginning of the reception. He was hoping now that some new factor might have arisen which would enable him to manoeuvre Frek into a discussion that could be sufficiently prolonged to result in the function being put off altogether; but the fact that Frek wished to put further questions to him so urgently was extremely disquieting.

At the police headquarters they were taken up in the lift to the top floor, and shown into Frek's long wide-windowed room. Without getting up from his desk, he waved them to chairs and, drawing his black caterpillar eyebrows down into a frown, said to Nicholas: "An hour ago a cable came in from London. When it had been deciphered and handed to me, I was much disturbed by its contents. Comrade Vank reports that in an endeavour to prevent him sending you here you pretended to be your cousin. Explain, please?"

"That's right." Nicholas rose to the occasion with an apparent confidence that he was far from feeling. "I told you of the importance I attached to putting off my departure for twenty-four hours, and how he refused to listen to me. When he threatened to use force I felt fully ent.i.tled to get out of being sent, if I could, by a trick; so I tried to make him believe that I wasn't the man he thought I was."

Frek nodded his broad head. "I see. But surely that was a stupid thing to do when Comrade Hoovsk was at hand to prove conclusively that you were."

"I suppose it was; but she wasn't in the room at the time and it was the only line worth trying that I could think of on the spur of the moment."

"Comrade Vank further reports that you then attacked him, and did your utmost to escape by means of violence."

"Well, what about it? Wouldn't you have done the same if you decided that to remain in England for a day longer was in the best interests of the Party?"

For a moment Frek appeared to ponder this, then he said heavily, "Once you had stated your case, Comrade Vank was the best judge of that. His report fully justifies his having used force, and sent you here as 'a parcel'."

"There I disagree," Nicholas replied firmly. "But no doubt he considered that to do so was his duty, and since you seem to feel that way too, I withdraw the complaint I made against him. The whole thing was most unfortunate, but it is all over now and here I am in Prague; so it doesn't seem to me that there is much point in our arguing the matter further."

"I am not so sure." The black eyes bored into Nicholas'. "There is another pa.s.sage in Comrade Vank's cable which I regard as most disquieting. He says that when, in face of Comrade Hoovsk's positive identification, you admitted that you were Professor Bilto Novk, you then declared that you had changed your mind about coming to Prague, and that if he sent you against your will you would not co-operate with us."

"That is not true. What I said was that as I had left all my notes behind at the Hotel Russell I should not be much use here without them."

"To say that was to split straws. The loss of your notes could have proved only a temporary set-back. Your princ.i.p.al value lies in your abilities as a nuclear-scientist of the first rank and the information concerning capitalist-imperialist experiments in that field that you carry in your head."

Nicholas shrugged. "That may be true; but it was all part of the same business. I was putting up any line that occurred to me, that might have induced Comrade Vank to let me remain for another day in London."

"You definitely maintain that the postponement for which you wished was only temporary, and that your intention to place your knowledge at the disposal of the Socialist Soviet Republics has never wavered?"

"I do."

"Then you are ready and willing to set my mind at rest by giving me a sample of that knowledge?"

"Certainly." Nicholas covered his uneasiness with a smile, while praying that he would be able to fake up enough scientific jargon temporarily to fool this gimlet-eyed, but probably not very educated, police chief. A question followed instantly: "Tell me the gross weight of the Dr. Penney bomb that was exploded by the British off Montebello Island?"

To attempt evasion would have been fatal; in fact the only hope of averting suspicion lay in a quick, direct answer. Nicholas had nothing to go on other than the statement made in the press at the time, that the bomb was a comparatively small one; so he gambled on that and replied: "A little over nine hundredweight."

Frek's round pasty face showed no emotion, but suddenly he shot out, "It was heavier-very much heavier. We had a report from a man who had excellent opportunities for observation."

There was no other course open to Nicholas now but a determined bluff. With a contemptuous gesture he exclaimed, "How could anyone judge weight merely by observation! The construction of fission bombs is entirely different to that of the H.E. variety. The old types were packed solid with explosives, whereas the interior of the new ones is mainly hollow to allow for the plunger mechanism."

"Our source would make allowances for that."

"Perhaps. But would he have done for the new alloy the British are using in the manufacture of these bombs to improve their weight-distance ratio? That has been kept a very close secret."

"His grading is very high. I cannot believe that he would be so far out in the estimate he gave us."

Again Nicholas shrugged. "If you prefer to accept the guess of a secret agent to the statement of a scientist who a.s.sisted in designing the bomb, you must do so. But what object could I possibly have in attempting to deceive you?"

"I don't know." Frek continued to stare at him. "If you are, in time we shall find out. We always do. But at the moment I am not satisfied." For over half a minute he said nothing, then he went on: "I may be wrong-quite wrong; but I cannot afford to take any chances. I will speak frankly to you. The situation here is not altogether as we should like to see it. As a Czech yourself, you will know what a stubborn race we Czechs are. It has proved very difficult to convince a great part of our better-educated citizens that they should give up thinking for themselves and allow the Government to think for them. In quite a different way the rural populations of Moravia, Slovakia and Ruthenia have proved equally non co-operative. It can, of course, be only a matter of time before all sections of the population recognise the benefits of living under a People's Government, but that time has not yet come. The country is riddled with anti-social movements, and one of my major tasks is to prevent them from receiving any encouragement."

Again he paused for a moment, before continuing: "It would be contrary to established policy to inform the capitalist-imperialists governments of your arrival here by a public announcement, so from the beginning we had to deny ourselves any prospect of a broadcast by you to the Czechoslovakian nation; but we had hoped to make use of the considerable kudos that your return brings to the Party, through a small but influential circle. The gathering which is now a.s.sembling at the Engelsv Dm consists not only of old Comrades and physicists, but also the senior faculty of the University and numerous other leaders of thought in our communal life. The majority of them are undoubtedly heart and soul behind the People's Government, but others-well, I regard their loyalty as at least questionable. The sort of greeting speech we expected you to make-one in which you would have affirmed your relief and joy at having escaped from the slavery imposed upon you by the capitalist-warmonger English-might have done considerable good with these waverers; but even a hint that you had not come here willingly, given in private conversation to one of them, would far outweigh any good your speech would do. In no time the grapevine would have spread it all over Prague, and it would provide fresh ammunition for the people's enemies."

"Your doubts of me are entirely unjustified," Nicholas protested. "But since you have them, why don't you call off this lunch?"

"That is what I intend to do. I was explaining only why it is that I cannot afford to take any chances. I felt I owed you that because I still hope that we shall find you to be entirely loyal to us, and I should not like you to think later that I am taking this step without good reasons."

Leaning forward, Frek pressed down the little lever on his intercom and said in to it. "Telephone the Engelsv Dm. Tell them that the guests are to be given drinks and light refreshments, but there will be no lunch. Professor Novk was taken ill on his journey here and is not yet sufficiently recovered to attend. It is hoped that he will soon be fully recovered, and that a lunch to welcome him will be given in a few days' time."

Nicholas had been so dreading the possibility of something going wrong at the reception that he had deliberately made his bid to get out of it, and he was now greatly relieved. He reasoned that if Fedora's desperadoes were capable of undertaking such an elaborate escape plan as the bomb plot, they would easily be able to arrange a less spectacular and less dangerous method of getting her and himself out of the hotel that night. But he was counting his chickens before they were hatched. Frek turned to him and said: "In these new circ.u.mstances, Professor, I shall be glad if you and Comrade Hoovsk will be my guests at lunch to-day here. In the meantime I will issue instructions for a few of the men whom you were to meet at the Engelsv Dm to report here at three o'clock. They will be our leading men in your own field of research. After lunch you shall have a short discussion with them, and that will remove from our minds any doubt at all about your willingness to give us your complete collaboration."

Nicholas only just prevented himself from giving a gasp of dismay. It was as though he had been hit hard in the pit of the stomach. The saliva ran hot in his mouth, and he felt the palms of his hands becoming moist. He knew that within five minutes of such a meeting he must be revealed as a fake; and as he was to be detained there until the Czech scientists arrived to question him, there seemed no possible means of escaping it. Desperately he sought a way, but all he could think of was to blurt out: "I'm afraid that's no good. As I've told you, I left my notes behind."

"You will not need any notes," replied Frek smoothly. "All I have in mind is that you should meet the men with whom you will be working in future, and exchange with them ideas on a few general principles."

"It's no good, I tell you," Nicholas' voice was slightly hoa.r.s.e. "It would not be at all satisfactory. I must have time to prepare a proper paper, then read it to them and answer their questions afterwards."

Frek's black eyebrows drew together. "Am I to understand that you refuse to hold any preliminary discussion with our scientists?"

"Yes. For the time being, anyway. All nuclear projects are of great complexity. It is certain that they have been working on totally different lines from myself. Without being taken stage by stage they would not understand...."

"It is you, Professor, who do not understand."

"In what way?"

"You evidently do not understand the alternative that your refusal to meet these Comrades will force me to adopt. I shall have to detain you here-or rather in another place, which you may not find very comfortable."

Less than twenty-four hours earlier Nicholas would hotly have denounced as a dirty capitalist lie any suggestion that a high official of the Czech People's Government would use menaces in an attempt to extract information from a scientist unwilling to give it; but the morning's events had played such havoc with his preconceived idea that he now hardly knew what to believe; so Frek's threat did not take him entirely by surprise, and he stammered, "You ... you mean you will send me to prison?"

"Yes. You have now made it quite clear to me that Comrade Vank was right in his fears that you had changed your mind. I still hope we may find that change to be only a very temporary one. Should you maintain your refusal to meet our scientists, you will go to prison and remain there until you have proved your willingness to give them all the information and a.s.sistance of which you are capable."

"You can't make a scientist give of his best unless he is treated decently and his heart's in his work," declared Nicholas truculently, in a forlorn hope that by a display of defiance he might yet gain a respite. "To send me to prison is the one certain way of making me dig my toes in and refuse to talk."

"About that I don't agree. We have considerable experience in dealing with stubborn people." Frek took a sheaf of papers from a drawer in his desk, and began to go through them as he went on quietly, "I will give you a few minutes to make up your mind. You can either accept my invitation to lunch and to discuss atomic matters with our experts afterwards, or I will send you downstairs to await conveyance to quarters very different from those you have been allotted at the Engelsv Dm."

Nicholas stood up and walked over to the side of the long room that formed one huge window. It was a lovely May morning, and the spires and domes of Prague glittered in the suns.h.i.+ne; but he stared out at them with unseeing eyes. He knew that he was really up against it, and it did not take him long to decide that only one course now lay open to him. He must do as he had wanted to do from the beginning-tell the truth about himself.

For a moment he wondered how his doing so would affect Fedora, but it did not seem that whatever he said now could make much difference as far as she was concerned. If he allowed himself to be exposed by the Czech scientists she would be involved in his exposure, and presumably in no worse case than if he antic.i.p.ated matters by a voluntary confession now.

The memory of the way in which he had allowed her to involve him filled him with rage at his own stupidity. If only he had followed his own instincts in the first place he might have got a sympathetic hearing, whereas now it was a foregone conclusion that Frek would have put him in prison-anyhow for a time. But that was the whole crux of the matter.

If he went to prison as Nicholas there would be no point in keeping him there for very long. At the very worst it seemed unlikely that they would give him more than two or three months for having entered the country under false pretences. On the other hand, if he let them put him in, still believing him to be Bilto, they might keep him there indefinitely. He would certainly never be able to buy his freedom on Frek's terms, and the longer he left it before he declared himself to be Nicholas, the greater would be his difficulty in persuading anyone to believe him.

The more he thought about it the more obvious it became to him that sooner or later he would have to come clean, as the only possible way of getting out of this ghastly tangle; and that the sooner he took the plunge the better his chances would be of escaping a prolonged spell of detention. Having no further doubts on the matter, he turned about, walked over to Frek's desk and said in a firm voice: "Comrade Frek, I have an admission to make to you. I also wish to apologise for having caused you a certain amount of unnecessary trouble. However, I should first like to a.s.sure you that although I am not actually a member of the Communist Party, I have spent most of my life working in close sympathy with its aims. It was here in Prague as a youngster that I first embraced the cause of the workers, and it has been my inspiration ever since. I am a regular contributor to the princ.i.p.al British Left Wing periodicals; I am a member of the Friends of the Russian People and of all the major a.s.sociations working for the preservation of peace. I know that I have acted wrongly and foolishly; but the fact is that I am not really guilty of anything worse than playing a stupid practical joke, and I feel that on account of my past labours in spreading the doctrines of Karl Marx I am ent.i.tled to ask you to take a lenient view of the matter."

As he paused for breath Frek asked with a puzzled frown, "What the devil are you talking about?"

Nicholas stared down into the round, moon-like face. "I was on the point of making a solemn declaration, that while I was doing my utmost to prevent Comrade Vank from sending me here I told him the truth. I am not Bilto but his cousin, Nicholas Novk."

Frek's voice came in a snarl. "You didn't fool Vank and you can't fool me! Is it likely that we should be taken in by such a barefaced lie?"

"It is the truth," Nicholas protested.

"It is a lie!" Frek banged on the desk with his clenched fist. "It is a lie, and an absurdly childish one. You have been identified by the woman who Vank informs me has slept with you on and off for months, and is still your mistress; so about your ident.i.ty there can be no shadow of doubt."

Nicholas turned and shot a quick glance at Fedora. During the whole interview he had not dared to look at her for fear that Frek might jump to some conclusion from their expressions as their eyes met. She was now sitting with her legs crossed, staring down at the floor. Her face showed no emotion and she appeared to be perfectly relaxed, but one little thing revealed the strain she was under. Her hands were clasped in her lap, and clasped so tightly that the knuckles showed white."

"You will gain nothing by looking at her," Frek snapped. "Her identification of you was positive. Should she go back on it now I should take that only as evidence that she is in love with you. I should not believe her."

"I think we can leave her out of this," Nicholas retorted. He had no obligation whatever to champion Fedora-far from it-but ordinary decency impelled him to do his best for her, and he had thought of a line which he hoped might save her with himself from prosecution on any charge worse than having committed a misdemeanour. Quickly he went on: "These are the facts. Bilto did need another night in London to advise a valuable Comrade on the story he had better tell if he found himself implicated. But my cousin foresaw that Comrade Vank might not agree to his postponing his journey, so he asked me to do the explaining for him. When I joined Comrade Hoovsk in the car she knew perfectly well that I was not Bilto, but I made her have us driven off and explained to her. Then I was suddenly seized with a silly notion. I have so often been mistaken for Bilto that I thought it would be rather fun to see how far I could carry the deception."

"This whole story is a tissue of lies," Frek interrupted grimly.

"It is not," Nicholas insisted. "As a boy, I loved Prague, so I thought it would be intensely interesting to visit it again and see for myself the great improvement in the workers' status that has taken place here. Counting on my resemblance to Bilto to get me past Comrade Vank, I persuaded Comrade Hoovsk to let me try out an impersonation of my cousin. We intended no harm, because we believed that Bilto would be following me to Prague to-day, and that when he arrived we would both have a good laugh with people here about my having fooled everyone. Then when I came face to face with Comrade Vank, I realised that what I was doing was both liable to be misunderstood and dishonourable. I tried to back out by confessing that I was Nicholas. Comrade Hoovsk was not in the room at that time. When she was called in she had no idea that I had abandoned our little plot to get me a free trip to Prague, so of course she swore that I was Bilto. After that no one would listen to me. I tried to get away, but I was overpowered and sent here as 'a parcel'. It had not been intended that Comrade Hoovsk should travel with Bilto; but Comrade Vanek sent her to look after me. When we woke up side by side in the aircraft early this morning, we talked over the awkward situation in which my silly prank had landed us. Then I'm afraid we both became irresponsible again. We could not help seeing the funny side of it. I mean, that even against my will my impersonation had actually got me to Czechoslovakia. So we decided to see just how long I could manage to keep it up after landing. From start to finish the whole of this business has been nothing more than a series of misunderstandings arising out of my original impulse to play a joke on Comrade Vank and get sent to Prague without paying for a ticket."

As an explanation made up on the spur of the moment it was not a bad one; but it did not get past Frek. Without hesitation he picked on its weak spot, and sneered: "I do not believe one word of this. Where the work of the Party is concerned its members have no sense of humour. To do so would be anti-social; so it is forbidden. Your a.s.sertion that Comrade Hoovsk consented to collaborate with you in a joke, which had as its object making a fool of the Comrade from whom she received her instructions, is enough to qualify you for an asylum. I am quite used to people lying to me. I do not mind it. But to expect me to believe that sort of lie is to insult me."

Nicholas saw then that in trying to extricate Fedora he had strained the plausibility of his explanation too far; but no story could hold water that did not somehow or other account for her identification of him as Bilto; so he felt that even had he been thinking only of his own interests, he could not have cooked up anything more likely of acceptance. All he could do now was to stick to his guns, and he cried angrily: "If you don't believe it I can't make you. But that's how it was; and neither you nor anyone else in the world will ever be able to alter the fact that I am Nicholas Novk."

"Your mulish persistence with these stupid lies makes no impression on me whatever," Frek bellowed back. "All you have succeeded in doing is to convince me that since you decided of your own free will to come to Prague something has happened to change your outlook. Therefore, having got you here in order to exploit your brain, it will now be necessary for us to exert severe pressure on you."

"If I were Bilto, to do so would be to dishonour the People's Government that you represent," Nicholas stormed. "But I am not; so however long you may keep me in prison you will never succeed in extracting from me one single item of useful information."

Frek sighed. "Really, you tire me. All this is too absurd. Why not admit that you are Bilto, have lunch with me, and meet the Comrades with whom you will sooner or later find yourself compelled to collaborate? That would save you much unpleasantness and me some trouble."

"d.a.m.n it, can't you see that to do that would simply be a waste of time? I'm Nicholas, I tell you, and ... and ..." A sudden inspiration had come to him, and he ended triumphantly, "... what is more, I can prove it!"

"How do you propose to do that?" asked Frek sceptically.

"Quite simply. Apparently you are Lord and Master here. All you have to do is to send for my relatives. Some of them may have died since I last heard of them, but Bilto and I must have several mutual uncles and aunts and cousins still living here in Prague. At the time of my last visit I was only fourteen, but all the same they couldn't possibly mistake me for Bilto. If you really want the truth, send for them and you will get it."

For the first time Frek looked a little shaken, and his voice held just a trace of doubt. "You are again trying to make a fool of me. What you suggest could result only in a farce."

"It will prove that no amount of wishful thinking can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse," retorted Nicholas. "Or myself into my brilliant cousin the atomic-scientist. I challenge you to confront me with all the members of the Novk family that you can get together."

Frek shrugged his broad shoulders. "All right. It shall be as you wish. I will have these people hunted out and brought here this afternoon." Turning to Kmoch, he added, "Take them both downstairs and have them put in the cells until I send for them again."

Nicholas was already standing. Kmoch came to his feet like a jack-in-the-box, and Fedora stood up more slowly. Frek had apparently again become absorbed in his papers and did not give them another glance as they left the room.

Outside on the landing one of the pretty lift-girls turned her automatic smile on them as they stepped past her, swiftly closed the gates, and at a word from Kmoch pressed the lowest b.u.t.ton on the indicator. Taking advantage of the whirring noise as the lift shot down, Fedora said softly to Nicholas in English: "I'm afraid we're finished now you've thrown your hand in. There was always a chance that you might have bluffed your way through the meeting with the scientists; but once your relatives have identified you Frek will charge us with having conspired to enter the country in order to spy for the British."

CHAPTER XI.