Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [78]
The second young man laughed slightly.
‘We hope you’ll agree with us there.’
‘I’m not sure that I do. You’re talking in this room very freely.’
‘It’s your sitting-room.’
‘Yes, yes, it’s my flat and it’s my sitting-room. But what you are saying, and in fact what you might be going to say, might be unwise. That means both for you as well as me.’
‘Oh! I think I see what you’re driving at.’
‘You are offering me something. A way of life, a new career and you are suggesting a breaking of certain ties. You are suggesting a form of disloyalty.’
‘We’re not suggesting your becoming a defector to any other country, if that’s what you mean.’
‘No, no, this is not an invitation to Russia or an invitation to China or an invitation to other places mentioned in the past, but I think it is an invitation connected with some foreign interests.’ He went on: ‘I’ve recently come back from abroad. A very interesting journey. I have spent the last three weeks in South America. There is something I would like to tell you. I have been conscious since I returned to England that I have been followed.’
‘Followed? You don’t think you imagined it?’
‘No, I don’t think I’ve imagined it. Those are the sort of things I have learned to notice in the course of my career. I have been in some fairly far distant and–shall we say?–interesting parts of the world. You chose to call upon me to sound me as to a proposition. It might have been safer, though, if we had met elsewhere.’
He got up, opened the door into the bathroom and turned the tap.
‘From the films I used to see some years ago,’ he said, ‘if you wished to disguise your conversation when a room was bugged, you turned on taps. I have no doubt that I am somewhat old-fashioned and that there are better methods of dealing with these things now. But at any rate perhaps we could speak a little more clearly now, though even then I still think we should be careful. South America,’ he went on, ‘is a very interesting part of the world. The Federation of South American countries (Spanish Gold has been one name for it), comprising by now Cuba, the Argentine, Brazil, Peru, one or two others not quite settled and fixed but coming into being. Yes. Very interesting.’
‘And what are your views on the subject,’ the suspicious-looking Jim Brewster asked. ‘What have you got to say about things?’
‘I shall continue to be careful,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘You will have more dependence on me if I do not talk unadvisedly. But I think that can be done quite well after I turn off the bath water.’
‘Turn it off, Jim,’ said Cliff Bent.
Jim grinned suddenly and obeyed.
Stafford Nye opened a drawer at the table and took out a recorder.
‘Not a very practised player yet,’ he said.
He put it to his lips and started a tune. Jim Brewster came back, scowling.
‘What’s this? A bloody concert we’re going to put on?’
‘Shut up,’ said Cliff Bent. ‘You ignoramus, you don’t know anything about music.’
Stafford Nye smiled.
‘You share my pleasure in Wagnerian music, I see,’ he said. ‘I was at the Youth Festival this year and enjoyed the concerts there very much.’
Again he repeated the tune.
‘Not any tune I know,’ said Jim Brewster. ‘It might be the Internationale or the Red Flag or God Save the King or Yankee Doodle or the Star-Spangled Banner. What the devil is it?’
‘It’s a motif from an opera,’ said Ketelly. ‘And shut your mouth. We know all we want to know.’
‘The horn call of a young Hero,’ said Stafford Nye.
He brought his hand up in a quick gesture, the gesture from the past meaning ‘Heil Hitler’. He murmured very gently,
‘The new Siegfried.’
All three rose.
‘You’re quite right,’ said Clifford Bent. ‘We must all, I think, be very careful.’
He shook hands.
‘We are glad to know that you will be with us. One of the things this country will need in its future–its great future, I hope–will be a first-class Foreign Minister.’
They went out of the room. Stafford Nye watched them through the slightly open door go into the lift and descend.
He gave a curious smile, shut the door, glanced up at the clock on the wall and