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image of Sir Dave into his head. Rats? Lizards? But they scuttered; they
didn’t plop. Scorpions? Well, you might get one falling off the terrace, but not a procession. Seagull roosting? Could be, but it must be pretty constipated. Plop!
    He got up very quietly and looked over the rail of the verandah at the dark masses of the unfamiliar garden. Again he heard the sound and saw dimly a little spurt of silver. So one of the small,
open places was a pool. Fish jumping for mosquitoes? But wrong noise. Fish splashed.
    He crossed the stretch of lawn below the house with a caution which seemed absurd when he was merely satisfying curiosity. Whatever the alarmists thought, he was sure there would be no attempt
to intimidate him while the field was still doubtful of his character and intentions. Still, it was always wiser to see without being seen.
    At the edge of the pool a small boy lay on his belly with a hand in the water, utterly absorbed. He quickly withdrew his hand, examined the fish he had caught and tossed it back. Mat crept on
till there was only a large fern between him and the boy’s heels. He tried to remember the Spanish for ‘tickling trout’ and came to the conclusion that he had never known. Not
that these were trout. They were some globular and decorative little fish. Fascinated, he continued to watch, then stepped accidentally on a loose stone and showed himself at once.
    ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter so long as you put them back.’
    The child jumped to his feet, standing still as a boy of bronze at the edge of the pool. Defiant, too, as any little animal which hadn’t a chance of escape and knew it. His hand clutched
the pocket of his dirty trousers.
    ‘It wouldn’t stay alive in your pocket,’ Mat said.
    But perhaps he was hungry. No, that wouldn’t do. The fish looked inedible; and any way he had been catching them and throwing them back.
    ‘Do you come here often?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Just to play with the fish?’
    ‘I was waiting,’ the boy replied indignantly, as if play were quite out of the question.
    ‘For whom?’
    ‘No one.’
    Odd! He looked as guilty as if he had just walked off with all the silver. Waiting for an accomplice, perhaps. Small boys were often used for unlawful entry.
    ‘Listen, little friend! Let me see what you have there!’
    The boy, too proud to be searched, pulled out a stick of toffee wrapped in grease-proof paper. Mat took it from him. Toffee be damned! It was a half pound stick of gelignite.
    He ran his hands over the two cotton garments and discovered nothing else but a box of matches. Inexplicable! Who the devil would send a child out with half a pound of explosives and
matches—in the same pocket, too? Answer: nobody. It was the little monkey’s own plan, own mischief.
    ‘Why are you carrying this about with you?’
    ‘Because I am a man.’
    ‘That can be seen,’ Mat replied courteously. ‘But what were you waiting for?’
    ‘I saw the fish on my way.’
    Very natural to be distracted by fish in a pool at seven or eight or whatever he was.
    ‘On your way to where?’
    ‘To you.’
    Desperation. Enmity. What stuff to find in this innocent, sharp voice! Nothing made sense. But, yes, it did! Thought a bomb was like a firework. He was going to light his stick and throw it.
    ‘You would just have burned yourself horribly. It wouldn’t have gone off.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I will show you. Then you can blow me up better next time.’
    ‘You are not calling for the police?’
    ‘There is no need for the police between
valientes. ’
    ‘That is what my father says.’
    ‘Who is your father?’
    ‘Rafael Garay.’
    The blackish leader of the boycott with whom he had shaken hands that very evening. The name had stuck in memory, for he had read it in reports at the London office and heard it again at the
Ministry. The man and his dead wife both seemed to be remarkable characters.
    ‘What’s he going to say about