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hands in his pockets. Virian waited for a faraway car, and damned the wheels that flashed in the sunlight for not turning more slowly. They passed, and he found his hands playing
noisily with the coins in one pocket and keys in the other. He waited for the shot. It didn’t come. He was furiously angry. What were they doing inside the hut? After all this trouble! Why
couldn’t they get on?
    Ten minutes went by with no movement on the road but the lumbering, swift shadow of a carrion crow impatient to return to his perch. Then Medlock’s hands came out with a gesture as if he
were flinging at the hut the contents of his pockets. An oldish man, instantly recognizable as a retired colonel or general, deprived – and no doubt uncomplainingly – of petrol, drove
round the corner in a dogcart with his two little granddaughters. He called in cheerful comradeship that it was a lovely day. Bitterly Virian put him down as a merciful and honorable man. He could
afford those virtues in the simpler wars that he had known.
    Again both ends of the road were clear for long minutes, and again there was no shot. Medlock came striding back from his corner, his face that of a sergeant-major who was about to tell his
paraded and incompetent squad exactly what he thought of it. Virian, too, hastened back to the car in fear lest his companion should hurl some blunt protest or, worse still, some unfeeling denial
of protest, into so delicate an occupation.
    “Man doesn’t know his job!” Medlock stormed.
    “Would you expect him to?” retorted Virian.
    The French major at the car turned on them, illogically angry as themselves. Some cutting irony at the expense of the English came beautifully shaped from his lips and died away as he became
conscious of the brutal absurdity of any blame.
    While they were staring at the hut, a melancholy procession came down the hill towards them – Dupont, Smith and the Frenchman, more sad than ever. Even Dupont looked disappointed. Very
likely, he was. The Free French detachment, the larger public among which he would, for a little while, be safe, had not turned up.
    Dupont was again left with Fayze’s tame tough, while the other four went aside.
    “Couldn’t Smith relay the signals to you?” Virian asked.
    “Yes,” the French civilian replied. “Yes.”
    “Well, then? Well then, for God’s sake?” the major demanded.
    “The hut is too small. I cannot get behind him. Perhaps he will not let me get behind him. And to draw the pistol before his eyes – no, I cannot do it.”
    “Well, we daren’t hang about here any longer,” said Virian. “Someone may get inquisitive, and start watching us. We had better drive off now and come back
later.”
    The party packed into the car, still unexpectedly six. Dupont conversed with polite, tacit sympathy, identifying himself with the unknown derangement of plans which all had suffered. He behaved
as if he were an embarrassing but useful prisoner – a double agent, for example, about to be sent off on some dangerous journey. He may even have persuaded himself that such a destiny was
possible.
    He addressed himself particularly to the French civilian, perhaps trying to allay his own suspicions. Dupont was a type to be successful, Virian decided, as minor businessman or major traitor,
for he had an insistent cunning. He talked and talked, closely watching with eyes that held a decent pretense of geniality the impact of his words. The failure in the hut was very understandable.
Dupont was tiresome; Dupont’s fat face was that of a crook; but it was impossible to treat him with anything but courtesy. To draw a gun before his face was a task as awkward as to get him
out of the office without giving him a small order.
    Smith had been pale and self-controlled when he returned from the hut. He now returned to his puzzling and casehardened temperament. He asked sharply where he was to go.
    Well, where? Just a drive. Out for a drive. A pleasant