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while flashing lights in the night were always people on their way to the cesspit at the bottom of the garden.
    Now that the mail is operating normally again, a horde of censors are busily slitting open letters to probe for hidden meaning among the trivia of family and business correspondence, and when in doubt they fall back on us. Unhappily many telephone conversations are being monitored, too, and the typed out ‘intercepts’ sent to us contain their fair share of absurdity. The prize example received so far was one solemnly headed ‘Illegal use of telescope’. This referred to a passage in an overheard conversation between two lovers in which the girl had said, ‘I can’t see you today because my husband will be here, but I’ll admire you, as ever, through love’s telescope.’ No. 3 District adds to these burdens by bombarding us with addenda for the Black Book, which serves as the rag-bag for everybody’s paranoia. In one case we had to make an entry for a suspect about which nothing is known but his possession of three teats on the left breast, while another was described as ‘having the face of a hypocrite’.
    All these things encourage the growth of disbelief, so that when a few days ago reports began to come in about mysterious knocking sounds coming from the depths of the earth, we were unimpressed. But when yesterday the Italian Pubblica Sicurezza Police – sceptics like ourselves – were on the phone to talk about the knockings, adding that they had even been heard by a senior policeman, notice had to be taken. The knockingshad been reported from a number of widely separated areas in the northern part of the city. It was the police’s theory, supported by much rumour and some credible evidence, that a picked squad of German SS had volunteered to remain behind after the German retreat from Naples, and that they had hidden in the catacombs, from which they might at any time make a surprise sortie. There was also a likelihood, if this were the case, that their plans had gone wrong, and that they had lost themselves in the darkness of a vast and only partially charted labyrinth, in which case the knocking could be explained as their attempt to draw attention to their predicament.
    Only a small part of the catacombs – the most extensive in Italy, and possibly the world – is accessible to visitors and the police had had some difficulty in finding an old map showing their full extent. There was no way of knowing how accurate this map remained after the damage of the earth tremors of the past and the subsidences they were certain to have caused. However, the map was studied in its relation to the location of the places where knocking sounds had been heard and, the general opinion being that the Germans were down there somewhere, a force numbering about fifty men was assembled, to include the Italian Police, the American Counter-Intelligence Corps and ourselves, to enter and explore the catacombs.
    Of the two networks of catacombs under Naples, the principal one, which concerned us, is entered from the back of the church of San Gennaro. These catacombs are believed to date from the first century, and consist of four galleries, excavated one below the other, each gallery having numerous ramifications and lateral passages. The two nethermost galleries having partially fallen in, they have not been accessible in modern times.
    It was decided to enter the catacombs shortly after dawn, and we arrived at the church in a dozen jeeps, lavishly equipped with gear of the kind used in cave-exploration, as well as all the usual weaponry. The monks in charge were already up and about, and showed us extreme hostility. One monk who planted himself, arms outstretched, at the entrance to the catacombs had to be removed by force, and then, whenwe went in, followed us, keeping up a resounding denunciation of our desecration of a holy place.
    The Americans had equipped