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Dupont less apprehensive. He could have little doubt what his own countrymen would do to him sooner or later, but he was also very well aware that, being good Frenchmen, they would have to
invent a show of legality – which would be difficult when they were guests in a country with a tender conscience. A formal handing-over meant, for a time, reprieve.
    M. Dupont sat on the back seat between Virian and the French major. Facing them, on one of the extra seats, was the sad, determined personage, looking determinedly out of the window. In front
were Medlock and the uncommunicative Smith. Dupont and Virian kept up a polite and desultory conversation.
    “Never been able to understand, I haven’t,” said Medlock, “how you could sit there chatting away. In French, too,” he added, as if an assassin’s proper
language should be English.
    “It was easier than sitting grim, and saying nothing,” Virian explained. “And Dupont helped. He was a very civilized creature. He didn’t like social embarrassment either.
Good Lord, if I hadn’t known his record, I should have put him down as just a bland, fat Frenchman! All for peace and decent living, he was. That was probably what made him take the Vichy
side – that and money.”
    They drove away over the sweep of the Wiltshire downs in the direction of Bath. It was a golden day of late autumn, with just enough wind to ripple the massed spearheads of dying grass and to
check the high hovering clouds from ever settling on the sun. M. Dupont, released from the discipline and scrubbing soap of a military prison, was enchanted, and lavished courteous praise upon the
English countryside. It reminded him, he said, of Picardy.
    Their destination was a disused mine-shaft with a tumble-down building above it. Colonel Fayze had given them the map reference, assuring them that Smith had visited the spot already and that
the building was unlocked. Two of the planks which covered and completely hid the mouth of the shaft had been loosened, said Fayze with an obscene wink, and could be lifted out. He had shown pride
– a legitimate pride from the point of view of his office chair – in the excellence of his arrangements. The disposal of Dupont on paper had had his personal attention.
    After an hour’s run, Smith stopped the car below the mine-shaft. Nothing was to be seen but an isolated hut of timber and corrugated iron, with a strong door from which the padlock had
recently been wrenched loose; no derrick or abandoned machinery revealed the purpose of the building and the dark emptiness beneath the floor. Fayze had well chosen his theater for the operation.
There was no need for any bumping through country lanes into a suspicious remoteness, or for scrambling on foot through dense woods with a reluctant victim. The hut was within fifty yards of a main
road. A carful of men could stop on the verge for a short while without arousing uneasiness in Dupont or other curious but less essentially interested travelers.
    The only disadvantage was the frequent passing of traffic on the road which ran, level and clear, for a hundred yards past the hut and a little below it. At one end of the straight was a blind
hill, and at the other a corner. To ensure privacy, both those points would have to be watched.
    Dupont was left in the car with Smith, while the four others got out for consultation at a decent distance.
    “If Medlock stays at the corner,” said Virian, “and I go to the top of the hill, we shall be able to signal to you when the road is empty.”
    The French major appeared suddenly forlorn, his face that of a man who had known all along that he was an unreasoning optimist.
    “I thought that you …” he began.
    “No,” Virian answered firmly. “My instructions are just to keep the ring. It was definitely understood that you …”
    “I could not myself … my honor as an officer …”
    “Naturally,
mon commandant,
” Virian replied, and looked questioningly at the