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By Root 464 0

know, there are always secrets that are worth money. I’m not telling you anything exact because I don’t know anything exact. The trouble with me is that nobody really knows. We think we know everything because of what we’ve been through. Wars, turmoil, peace, new forms of government. We think we know it all, but do we? Do we know anything about germ warfare? Do we know everything about gases, about means of inducing pollution? The chemists have their secrets, the Navy, the Air Force–all sorts of things. And they’re not all in the present, some of them were in the past. Some of them were on the point of being developed but the development didn’t take place. There wasn’t time for it. But it was written down, it was committed to paper or committed to certain people, and those people had children and their children had children and maybe some of the things came down. Left in wills, left in documents, left with solicitors to be delivered at a certain time.

‘Some people don’t know what it is they’ve got hold of, some of them have just destroyed it as rubbish. But we’ve got to find out a little more than we do because things are happening all the time. In different countries, in different places, in wars, in Vietnam, in guerrilla wars, in Jordan, in Israel, even in the uninvolved countries. In Sweden and Switzerland–anywhere. There are these things and we want clues to them. And there’s some idea that some of the clues could be found in the past. Well, you can’t go back into the past, you can’t go to a doctor and say, “Hypnotize me and let me see what happened in 1914,” or in 1918 or earlier still perhaps. In 1890 perhaps. Something was being planned, something was never completely developed. Ideas. Just look far back. They were thinking of flying, you know, in the Middle Ages. They had some ideas about it. The ancient Egyptians, I believe, had certain ideas. They were never developed. But once the ideas passed on, once you come to the time when they get into the hands of someone who has the means and the kind of brain that can develop them, anything may happen–bad or good. We have a feeling lately that some of the things that have been invented–germ warfare, for example–are difficult to explain except through the process of some secret development, thought to be unimportant but it hasn’t been unimportant. Somebody in whose hands it’s got has made some adaptation of it which can produce very, very frightening results. Things that can change a character, can perhaps turn a good man into a fiend, and usually for the same reason. For money. Money and what money can buy, what money can get. The power that money can develop. Well, young Beresford, what do you say to all that?’

‘I think it’s a very frightening prospect,’ said Tommy.

‘That, yes. But do you think I’m talking nonsense? Do you think this is just an old man’s fantasies?’

‘No, sir,’ said Tommy. ‘I think you’re a man who knows things. You always have been a man who knew things.’

‘H’m. That’s why they wanted me, wasn’t it? They came here, complained about all the smoke, said it stifled them, but–well, you know there’s a time–a time when there was that Frankfurt ring business–well, we managed to stop that. We managed to stop it by getting at who was behind it. There’s a somebody, not just one somebody–several somebodies who are probably behind this. Perhaps we can know who they are, but even if not we can know perhaps what the things are.’

‘I see,’ said Tommy. ‘I can almost understand.’

‘Can you? Don’t you think this is all rather nonsense? Rather fantastic?’

‘I don’t think anything’s too fantastic to be true,’ said Tommy. ‘I’ve learnt that, at least, through a pretty long life. The most amazing things are true, things you couldn’t believe could be true. But what I have to make you understand is that I have no qualifications. I have no scientific knowledge. I have been concerned always with security.’

‘But,’ said Colonel Pikeaway, ‘you’re a man who has always been able to find out things. You. You–and the other one. Your wife. I tell you, she’s got a nose for things.