Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

TRUST LITTLE AL 17 ‘“ Purely a routine precaution. The later he knew about it all, the less harm he could do if he did happen to be indiscreet.” ‘““T see. Nothing more to it than that?” The Colonel looked at him curiously. ‘‘ No,” he said. ‘‘ No. Should there have been?” . ““T’ve got a peculiar sort of brain-box,” said Alex. “ There were one or two things. The first was at Dover. You know that girl you put on to watch over my last hours in England—Gwen What’s-her-name? ” The Colonel smiled. ‘ Yes,” he said. ‘‘ Yes, I know her.”’ ‘Well, your little boy scout was very suspicious of her. Very suspicious indeed. More or less told me she was an enemy agent. And so she could have been. But zf he suspected her, why didn’t he just put the local police on to her? Why nearly miss the boat in an effort to telephone London? Especially as he told me himself he had some foolproof method of communicating with you from Austria. I mean to say, either something had to be done about Gwen quick, in which case get the local boys working; or else it was just something to be checked up on some time, in which case send a code message to your office. Nearly missing the boat telephoning London didn’t add up either way.”’ “No,” said the Colonel. ‘‘ No. What was your idea?” ‘“‘ First I thought he just wanted an excuse for a last minute talk to one of his girl-friends, but he doesn’t have girl-friends. So it could be that he was passing on something to someone who could use it.’ “Yes,” said the Colonel. “ Yes. Anything eet! “ ‘Well, the second day at Velden he got a long cable and retired to his room to read it. And burnt it as soon as he’d finished with it. Did any of your people send him a cable? ”’ “TI can find out,” said the Colonel. ‘‘ What next?” “Tf you find that they didn’t, my guess would be that it came from the people he took all that trouble to telephone from Dover. Perhaps they put him on to a contact at Klagenfurt. That would make sense of a good deal that happened afterwards. It’s none of my business, but if I were you I should have a thorough secur- ity check on that young man. I think he’s an enemy agent.”’ And the devil of it was, of course, that he was quite right. * “Fifty words,” came the voice of Michael Gilbert, “ fifty words about me?’ Our telephone crackled joyously. “< Pveawitife, four daughters, 0, 2, 4, and 6.” —‘ Years?” we queried—“‘Years,” he affirmed. “We believe in maintaining a steady flow of production—an old rectory in Kent, an office in Lincoln’s Inn, and a beautiful bowler hat !”’ comiclooks.comn) ’ bs . . . Fi iy } , Tere ~ / ri = ro