Most Secret by Nevil Shute Page B

doctor, but they would not. And in the night, in prison, the little boy, he died. And three days later they shot the priest also, because he would not keep quiet.”
    In the bar, dim with cigarette smoke, the impact of this story left a silence. Somebody said: “Who told you that?”
    “It is true,” said Charles. “I tell you—cross my heart. I was there only a month after. I heard everything.”
    Another said curiously: “Are you French, sir?”
    Charles said: “I am a British subject. But I have worked in France for many, many years—oh, the hell of a time. I was at school at Shrewsbury. And I tell you chaps, if you think that things go easily there, over on the other side in Brittany, you are making the hell of a mistake. It is not Vichy, that.”
    They clustered round him. “Will you have a drink, sir?”
    “Did you say that you were over there in February?”
    He said: “Oh, thank you. Half a pint of beer.”
    “Did you mean, February of
this
year?”
    Charles, said: “My French tongue slipped away with me. What I said was true, you chaps, but we will now forget it. Excuse me, please.…”
    He stayed with them for half an hour, but resolutely refused to talk about the other side. He talked to them about the war in France, and about the French Army and the French Fleet, and enjoyed their evident pleasure in him as a mystery man. And then, feeling that he had drunk as much beer as he could carry satisfactorily, he left them and went out on to the quay.
    There was still an hour and a half before dark, in the long daylight hours of war-time England. He strolled on idly besidethe river, and presently turned to a step behind him. It was a lieutenant in the R.N.V.R., one of the officers who had listened to him in the bar.
    This was a tall young man, not more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old, with red hair and the pale skin that goes with it, and a strained, puckered look about his face.
    He said: “Look, sir. I want to have a word with you. I was in the pub just now, and I heard what you said about the other side. Do you mind if we have a chat some time?”
    There was an urgency in his manner that compelled attention. Charles said: “Right-oh. I do not think that I can talk very much myself, you understand. But if you wish to talk to me, I am entirely at your service.”
    They turned, and strolled along together. “I want to say first that I know what you said is true,” said the young man. “The Germans do that sort of thing. They do it for a policy, because they think it makes people afraid. And if we mean to win this war we must do horrible, beastly things to them. Torturing things, like they have done to us.”
    Charles glanced at the strained face of the young man beside him, interested. He had not heard that sort of talk since he had come from France.
    “So …” he said quietly.
    “There’s a thing going on down here,” the young man said in a low tone, “that one or two of us are trying to work up. But we’ve never been able to find anyone who could tell us what things are like on the other side. If we let you in on what we want to do, will you keep it under your hat?”
    “Of course. And I will give what help I can. But there are matters that I cannot talk about, you understand.”
    The naval officer hesitated. “Look,” he said. “It won’t take more than half an hour. I want you to come across the river with me and see a boat. Would you do that? And then we can talk over there, where it’s quiet.”
    They went down to the ferry close at hand. As they were crossing the young man said: “My name is Boden, sir—Oliver Boden. I’m in a trawler here.”

3
    O LIVER BODEN was the son of a wool-spinner in Bradford. George Boden, his father, was well known in the WestRiding as a very warm man and the firm that he founded in his youth, Boden and Chalmers, as a very warm firm. Henry Chalmers was, of course, the young man’s godfather.
    The two partners, in fact, exchanged the