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prosecuting counsel, through whom it passed, looked disappointed. I knew what was coming then.
     
    ‘And above this gentleman?’
     
    ‘Christopher Conrad Emmassin.’
     
    That was the end of me. Chris was a brilliant but irresponsible diplomat who ought to have been a soldier. Sitting at a desk - though it must have been a fascinating desk - exasperated him. After the war he simply disappeared without scandal, without excitement, and turned up again quite openly in Moscow. I only met him half a dozen times, and I have no reason to believe he was a communist then. It may have been close acquaintance with the negro worker and the Indian peon which upset him. He was watching Latin America through the eyes of a too liberal, too sentimental Englishman.
     
    Counsel for the Crown just looked at the magistrates and sat down. Myself, I hadn’t anywhere to look. By accident I met Sir Alexander’s eyes, and he must have seen the despair in mine. He shrugged his shoulders and slightly raised one white eyebrow. I suspect he meant that he was inclined to believe me, but that not even the Almighty could do anything for such a lunatic.
     
    I allowed myself a last glance at Dr Cornelia. To my astonishment she was anxious to catch my eye, and blazing with indignation which a slight gesture of her hand directed at the Court. By what feminine clairvoyance she had persuaded herself that I was innocent I cannot imagine. She may have felt instinctively that no communist would fall so far from earnestness as to interrupt his mission by the little courtesies I had offered her.
     
    The Court sent me for trial on a charge of entering to commit a felony, and it was suggested that further charges might be preferred. I do not think there was much doubt in anyone’s mind that the indictment would be High Treason by the time my case came on the Assizes. In my mind there was no doubt at all. I was only praying that I could reach Ecuador and remain there, like my father, for ever after.
     
    My case had taken up the whole of the afternoon. The pubs were now open and the court cleared very quickly. It was a warm, clear evening after rain. Thirst, regret and desperation combined to keep me keenly aware of my last moments of freedom and of any chance of prolonging them. It seemed a remote chance. I was handcuffed to a constable, and I had in attendance a plain-clothes detective. We remained in a sort of condemned cell below the dock until the magistrates and officials had gone, and then marched out through the empty courtroom.
     
    It was a friendly little court, so far as architecture was concerned; it had no private and underground door through which to hustle the unfortunate back to gaol. Everyone came and went by way of the spacious, stone-flagged, mediaeval hall. The public used an imposing flight of steps to the street. Prisoners and police used a narrower flight which led to a side courtyard where the Black Maria was parked.
     
    On and below the steps of this discreeter exit I could see the pack of press photographers; but they had to wait. A door opened on the opposite side of the hall, and a young man, whom I recognized as one of the reporters in court, beckoned excitedly from inside the room. There was a photographer with him. My detective whipped us through the door and shut it.
     
    I can usually recognize a bit of roguery when I smell it. That detective had struck me as a crook from the start. I don’t mean that he could be bribed. He was too unctuously smart to risk it. But he was the sort of careerist who would always be working at some scheme for getting himself noticed or rewarded by means which would make any decent policeman sick.
     
    ‘Son, we’ve got to make it snappy,’ the reporter said to me. ‘Here’s my card!’
     
    The Sunday paper which he represented was the one which specializes in sanctimonious filth. When its readers complain - in pitifully sincere and illiterate letters - the editor publishes their opinions