Riptide (aka Bluffing Mr. Churchill) by John Lawton Page B

the bar, looking for all the world as though he could hold the posture all night if need be.
    ‘Not so much as a whizz or a bang for five days. ’Appen it’s over,’ he was saying.
    ‘More like Adolf’s saving it all up for a big one. I’ve heard say the next’ll be the biggest we’ve seen.’
    ‘Jack, you are a miserable sod, you always look on the black side. Try being an optimist. Like I said, ’appen it’s over.’
    Jack gave this a second’s thought, then slapped his hand on the bar. ‘Touch wood,’ he said, then he looked at Cal, as though waiting for his order. Stilton’s eyes
followed and found Cal.
    He was a big man, as tall as Cal himself, but sixty or more pounds the heavier, and every inch the London bobby. A nondescript, voluminous brown macintosh, a trilby hat perched on the bar next
to his pint, shiny boots – polished until they gleamed like ebony – and a plump, reddish, fiftyish face, framing bright brown eyes and a big, bushy, wild moustache – the only
un-neat thing about the man. Peeping from beneath the macintosh were the folds of a dark, striped suit – better by far than the work of the fifty-shilling tailor Reininger had sent him to
– knife-edge creases in the trousers, cuffs neatly resting upon the tops of his boots, not hovering at half-mast around the ankles like Cal’s.
    He straightened up. Stuck out a hand.
    ‘Stilton. Walter Stilton. You must be Mr Cormack.’
    Cal shook the hand. Tried once more to place the accent and couldn’t.
    ‘Do I look that much like an American?’ he asked.
    ‘You said it, lad, I didn’t. Now. What’s your poison?’
    ‘A pint,’ said Cal, hoping it was what was expected of him.
    ‘Pint o’ what?’ Stilton replied, piling on the confusion.
    ‘What do you have?’
    The barman answered. ‘Bitter, mild, stout . . .’
    Bitter sounded . . . well . . . bitter. Mild sounded pathetic. Had to be stout.
    ‘Fine,’ said Stilton. ‘Jack, bring ’em over. Mr Cormack an’ me’ll be in the snug.’
    The snug turned out to be a room the size of a closet, partitioned from the main bar by an elaborately etched glass door. He guessed that Stilton wanted privacy. The snug was empty, but then so
was the bar. Thursday evening was clearly not their rush hour.
    ‘I’ve not been told a lot, you understand. Just the basics. You’ll have to bring me up to date as best you can.’
    Cal stared at the poster on the wall above Stilton’s head. A caricature of Hitler, all cowlick and toothbrush moustache, had been worked into a repeated motif for wallpaper – little
Hitlers spiralling down the poster – and the caption ‘Walls have ears’. He’d seen posters much like this dotted all over London in the last few days: ‘Walls have
ears’ – ‘Careless talk costs lives’ – ‘Keep Mum She’s Not So Dumb’ – and no one seemed to pay a blind bit of notice.
    The barman set a pint of black stuff in front of him. Stilton put a few coppers on the table and waved Cal down when he reached for his wallet.
    ‘Cheers,’ said Stilton.
    Cal sipped at his pint. It tasted like mud. It was so thick you couldn’t see through it. He must have pulled a face.
    ‘Not to your taste, lad?’
    ‘No, no,’ Cal lied. ‘It justs takes a bit of getting used to. So many things do.’
    ‘Now – to business. About this Jerry we’re after. Colonel Ruthven-Greene got on the blower to . . .’
    ‘The blower?’
    ‘Telephone, lad. I left a message for him at Broadway. He called me back. Filled me in. Told me to lend you a hand.’
    Cal wondered again about the English. Reggie had ‘filled him in’. Over the telephone? A little Hitler caught his eye.
    ‘Scrambler, o’ course,’ Stilton added, as though he had read Cal’s mind. ‘He called me on a scrambler.’
    ‘Did he say where he was?’
    ‘Where he was?’
    ‘I’ve been calling him at the Savoy since Monday. I got through to him once. It’s Thursday now. We’ve lost the best part of four