Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes Page A

symptoms.
    “War?” asked Richard.
    “Well, perhaps that. What do you think?”
    Frances looked at the well-cut features opposite her, and the well-brushed fair hair. The jaw was determined; the slightly drawn eyebrows gave a certain intensity. You would hardly notice the colour of his eyes; it was as if the other features of his face overshadowed them. His skin was tanned—if it hadn’t been tanned it might have seemed pale, even sallow. He had gone on talking without waiting for Richard’s reply, and he talked well, with a fluency which showed he had either thought about his subject a lot or had already argued it carefully into a neat pattern. As he talked, he smiled a good deal, showing very white, even teeth; but in repose, his mouth looked firm, even tight-lipped. Frances watched him as she listened to the neatly tailored phrases. A very direct, a very controlled and a very impulsive young man.
    “But surely you never took Munich seriously?” he was asking Richard.
    And a rather disbelieving one, too, it seemed.
    Frances spoke.
    “We were still at the stage of taking anything seriously or at the least hoping we could take it seriously, as long as the magic word of peace could be spoken. Until this spring. The march into Prague ended that coma.”
    Van Cortlandt shook his head. “Well, we never thought that in America.”
    “You mean you think we have been playing a kind of game? That we shall go on playing it, as long as we can keep ourselves out of war?”
    “Well, if you put it so frankly, yes.”
    Frances leaned forward on her elbows. “Your President doesn’t think so. I hear you’ve been calling him a war-monger because he really knows what’s going on in Europe.”
    “Nice weather we’ve been having,” suggested Richard. “Warm, though.”
    The American went on: “But Britain’s policy for the last years…”
    “I know,” said Frances. “In America it is called Isolationism, freedom from foreign entanglements, unwillingness to die on foreign fields. We’ve been trying all that. It hasn’t worked. We admit it…we’ve come out of the ether…”
    “And you’re telling me that Britain is going to take off its nice clean coat and get its nose all blooded up in defending Poland? What would you get out of it anyway?”
    “A country fights for two main things, either for loot or for survival. We’ll fight along with our friends for survival. The Axis is after loot. If Poland, or any other country, is attacked, then it is the signal for any nation who doesn’t want to become a part of Germany to rouse itself. It may be the last chance.”
    Van Cortlandt smiled, comfortingly. “Don’t worry. I don’t think you’ll find your country at war. Your politicians will always see plenty of other chances.”
    “That’s my main point. The politicians won’t dare. The people are aroused now.”
    Van Cortlandt still looked unconvinced. “Well, that’s a new one on me. We have some pretty swell news-hounds, and they nearly all scent out more appeasement.”
    “Their sense of smell has led them to the wrong lamp post this time. They will look very funny there, when the trouble starts.”
    “I tried the weather,” said Richard, “and that wasn’t much good. I think we’d be better talking about something else, for neither of you is convincing each other in the slightest, and we’ll know soon enough which of you was nearer the truth. As Count Smorltork said to Mr. Pickwick, ‘The word poltic surprises by himself.’ Anyway, I have the unpleasant but increasing conviction that all of us who argue so much would be wiser if we learned to make aeroplanes or shoot a machine-gun. That’s only my academic point of view, of course. But that seems the only answer for certain people.”
    He nodded to a group of men in brown shirts at another table. “Now what about dinner?” he added.
    Van Cortlandt rose. “Sorry, I’ve got to see a man.”
    Richard rose too. “We are sorry too. We shall see