Most Secret by Nevil Shute

to interrupt the currents of his thought, but he did not dare tooffend the man who had promised to secure him a commission as a British officer.
    The brigadier looked critically at what he had done. “The Air Ministry must have a print of this immediately …” He paused, running his eye over the unfinished details. “You make a beautiful drawing, Mr. Simon.”
    The designer smiled faintly. “Is it good enough,” he asked anxiously, “to get me a commission in the Royal Engineers?”
    The hard, china-blue eyes of the brigadier looked at him, noting the lean, intelligent face, the straight black hair, the quick, rather nervous movements of the artist hands. “I think it is,” he said. “I’ll get a paper going about that to-morrow, Mr. Simon.”
    “Thank you, sir.” He hesitated. “I really do know a good bit about coastal fortifications that might be useful to you.” He turned again to the drawing and became immersed in it; the officers watched him for a time and then left him to his work.
    He worked on far into the night. At about two in the morning he finished the third and last sheet of details, drew a border round the edge, and handed in the lot to the British major. Together they put them in an envelope and gave them to the despatch rider; then Charles was taken to a bedroom. In a quarter of an hour he was deeply asleep, exhausted and relieved of the burden of his work.
    They left him to sleep late. At about ten o’clock in the morning he awoke and lay for a few minutes staring round the darkened room, till he remembered where he was. Then he got up and went down to the mess, and managed to secure a cup of coffee. It embarrassed him to find that he had no money whatsoever, barring unnegotiable francs, as he discovered on asking for a packet of cigarettes. He went to find the major in his office.
    An hour later they had him in for another interview, the major and Brigadier McNeil. This time they wanted a complete account of everything that he had seen and done in France since he had made his parachute descent. He told them everything that he could remember.
    At the end the brigadier said thoughtfully: “Douarnenez seems to be in a queer state.”
    Charles said: “It is a town that is going mad.”
    The major said: “What do you mean by that?”
    The designer shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I don’t know that that’s the right word to use. But they don’t seemlike ordinary people there, at all. They don’t seem to think in the same way, even.” He paused, noticing that neither of the soldiers really understood what he was driving at. “I mean, like when that old man said you had to deal with lice with a blow-lamp.…” His voice tailed off into silence.
    The brigadier said: “Their minds seem to run on fire. The priest at the railway station, and your fisherman both talked of fire.”
    “And the little waxen image of the commandant,” said the major. “That had its feet melted away—by fire.”
    There was a little silence. The brigadier said: “Can you imagine anything behind this talk of fire?”
    Charles shook his head. “I think it’s simply hate,” he said. “Burning and scorching are the most painful, the most horrible things that they could do to Germans, so their minds are running in that way. And in the background of their minds that thought of fire, subconscious, colours everything they do or say. I tell you, sir, they aren’t like ordinary chaps.”
    The brigadier nodded. “That’s probably the truth of it. We’ll just have to leave it at that.”
    I do not know a great deal about the next three months of Charles Simon’s life. He was commissioned almost immediately into the Royal Engineers as a first lieutenant, and shortly afterwards he was promoted to captain. He worked for a time at Chatham upon coast-defence projects, but the next thing I really know about his movements is that he was sent down to Dartmouth, at the beginning of May.
    He had a job of work to