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out of the window at the departing platform, as though worried whether he had missed his proper stop; he also consulted a small paper map of the Underground and then looked up at the map on the upper side of the carriage, as though comparing the two. Fox sat down with an air of relief.
    It was all standard practice. The routine had been laid down several months earlier when this p articular cell of the main Inno right Group had been founded - by Monkey, who had hand-picked the members from Innoright protest meetings, studying their record cards for suitable biographical details. In view of the nature of The Plan he wanted a special mixture of daring, practicality and imagination: plus true commitment to the cause that held them together. In theory, of course, any member of Innoright should possess such commitment. But in practice Monkey (a founder of Innoright to which he had privately devoted much of his City-made fortune) discovered that members differed radically in their particular angle of interest; this meant that they also differed radically in what they were prepared to do for Innoright.
    Members who were particularly horrified by vivisection for example could not easily be induced to lobby food shops, regarding them as very much secondary objects of attack so long as laboratory conditions remained iniquitous. Other members believed with equal passion that the animals used for scientific research were at least living in conditions over which some control was exerted by law, whereas the lives of battery hens But the six people Monkey had picked to be part of his team were all of them more persuaded by the general nature of Innoright's philosophy than by any particular part of it. The innocent should never suffer at the hands of the guilty, guilty in the first place because of their torture of the innocent. In that cause, Monkey's team, he was convinced, would do anything, anything that might be asked of them by Innoright, as represented by Monkey. It was an awe-inspiring thought. It was a good thought. Monkey liked being in control of things.
    Because Monkey was in control, it was Monkey who had laid down the necessity for a constantly changing meeting-place so that they could not afterwards be easily identified as knowing each other. To avoid suspicion.
    ' "Afterwards"?' asked Lamb, 'What do you mean by "afterwards"? I thought we were going to declare ourselves. That was the whole point.'
    'Finally, yes. But you don't imagine, my dear Miss Lamb, that there will be no hue and cry.' Monkey had a way of putting words in italics with his resonant voice. He looked round and raised an eyebrow. 'We want no eager landlady coming forward with information about our constant meetings, no one afterwards to connect the seven of us. After all, we are sufficiently disparate, are we not, for such a connection not to be immediately suspected.'
    They were certainly disparate, in Monkey's phrase. Although the second thing those members picked by Monkey had in common was a certain convenient flexibility of employment, if not actual lack of it, the reasons for this varying considerably with the members' different ages and classes.
    The cell had held its first rendezvous at the National Portrait Gallery, gathering on Monkey's instructions by a huge royal portrait (that appealed to his sense of humour). He chose the study of King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and the two young Princesses over a family breakfast table, hung at the head of a staircase, garishly coloured, impossible to miss. On Monkey's instructions also, at this first encounter they divided into plausible groups; that is to say, Lamb, who might have been Monkey's docile daughter, stood close by him; while Chicken and Pussy chatted animatedly to each other.
    'Look at Princess Margaret Rose! What a little poppet! To think that now her own children ...' The words flowed happily.
    Beagle, in baggy grey cotton trousers (in spite of the spring cold), loose whitish T-shirt, camouflage