The Perilous Affair of the Upstairs Flat

by Marjorie James

Being twenty was not nearly as exciting as Jane St. Claire had hoped. She had gone through her childhood and youth secure in the belief that she was destined for great things, and it was only a matter of time before they were achieved. But now the pivotal birthday had passed, and Jane found to her dismay that nothing had changed at all.

Jane's father was a Commander in the Navy, who had spent the latter part of his career in intelligence work; during the Great War he had been involved in some operation so hush-hush that Jane still wasn't sure what it was. Two of her brothers had followed him into Naval service, but the third, Jeremy, had shocked the family by declaring he didn't like boats, and going into finance. As for herself, Jane had done well enough in school, but had yet to find an occupation to interest her. Not that such a thing was strictly necessary, but it would have been nice to get away from home and her mother's endless and misguided attempts at matchmaking. She had tried being a secretary in the City, but found the typing too tedious and the office air too close. Then there was the two weeks she spent as a tennis instructor at the club, and the unfortunate incident with Mr. Hudson. She had briefly considered taking a post as a governess, but had rejected the idea on the basis that she didn't particularly like children. In the end, Jane simply decided that, absent necessity, she was not suited for the working world. So she had given up and returned to the family estate in the country, where she devoted herself to riding and avoiding the attentions of the young Mr. Westbrook. And this was the state of affairs when her father had some unexpected visitors one January morning.

Jane typically had little interest in her father's friends; it wasn't until Rimbald came and told her she was wanted in the drawing room that she took any notice of them at all. One was a tall, square-built man with a moustache that practically screamed ‘retired general,' while the other was weedy and quick-moving with no suggestion of the military about him. His eyes were constantly searching the room, while his hands danced and twitched across his pant legs.

“Sit down m'dear, sit down,” said General Square . “We've been having a nice chat here with your father, gabbing about old times like a bunch of hens.”

“That's nice,” Jane replied, unsure of what it could have to do with her.

“He has done some wonderful things for his country, as I'm sure you know,” said Mr. Nervous.

Her father grumbled, “I was just doing my duty, the same as we all were. I don't know why you fellows insist on making such an all-fired ruckus about it.” His tone was belligerent, but Jane knew perfectly well how much he enjoyed that sort of thing. She wondered if perhaps she had been brought in just to be an audience for his praise. Was she finally going to learn what had happened? She perked up at the thought, but the conversation took a different direction.

“I understand you're just back from Switzerland ,” General Square said.

“Yes, just this Tuesday. I was on a skiing trip with some of my friends.”

“Speak good German, do you?”

“Well, yes, good enough. That is, I can carry on a conversation, and I got good marks in it in school, but I'm afraid my accent isn't all it could be.” Why did she feel like she was sitting an examination? It certainly couldn't matter to him what sort of marks she had gotten. It must be the effect of the other man, she thought. That sort of nerviness rubs off on you. As if in response to her thoughts, the man quit his examination of the mantelpiece and focused a surprisingly intense gaze on her face.

“You must think us strange, coming here and asking you these things, but I assure you there is a purpose to this.”

“Oh,” Jane said, and waited for enlightenment. When none was forthcoming, she said, “May I ask what that purpose is?”

There was a pause. “That is for your father to decide,” Mr. Nervous finally said, and returned his attention to the wallpaper.

Cmdr. St. Claire tapped his pipe on the table in a thoughtful way, then looked up and gave Jane an appraising stare. “All right,” he said at last. “You can tell her. Mind you, this doesn't mean I'm giving my permission. But let's hear what she has to say.”

Listening to her father, Jane wondered for a terrible moment if one of these gentlemen intended to propose marriage.

“You see, Miss St. Claire, we have a job that needs doing. It's not a dangerous job, not at all, but we need someone from outside our little community, and someone who we can trust entirely. And it would help,” General Square said, with a look at her father, “if that person were a girl.”

“In other words, me.” Jane still didn't entirely understand, but she was definitely interested.

“Someone like you, at any rate,” said Mr. Nervous. “Your father's record, of course, is something very much in your favor, as is your rather, er, adventuresome nature.”

“Father,” she said, “you haven't been telling them about Gdansk , have you?”

“Well, you have to admit, it makes for a good story.” He puffed seriously at his pipe, but his eyes were twinkling.

Jane shook her head in mock exasperation. “He always blows that all out of proportion. What sort of job is this, exactly?”

Mr. Nervous shifted uneasily in his chair. “It is…well, I guess you would call it counterintelligence. You may not be aware of this, Miss St. Claire, but Europe is not the calm and peaceful place we would all like to believe it to be. There are… undercurrents. Certain things have been happening lately that have us worried, and some of those things may have reached our shores.”

“Sorry about the vague language and all,” broke in General Square . “The thing is, we can't go around making definite pronouncements. Walls have ears and all.”

“Precisely,” said Mr. Nervous, “and that is exactly the problem. We think they've got a hold of some of ours, and we would like very much to know whom it is. We think we've found the contact on their side, a group of fellows who have set up shop in a seaside town in the South. But what we really want to know is who they're talking to.”

“And so you want someone to watch them. Someone they wouldn't be likely to suspect.” Jane finished for him.

“Precisely,” said General Square . “We don't think the leak is coming from very far up, but we can't take any chances. We need to get someone on the spot; someone we can be sure won't be recognized as part of our operation. So, what do you say, Miss St. Claire? Are you interested?”

Jane looked at her father. She was very interested, had never been more so in anything, but she knew perfectly well he would have the last word in the matter. He sat in his chair, chewing on his pipe and staring into the fire, while the assembled party watched with bated breath.

Finally, he spoke. “Your mother won't like it,” he said. “She won't like it at all.”

“She doesn't like having me hanging about the house either. She was just saying yesterday that I ought to find something to do with myself.” Jane knew perfectly well that this was in no way what her mother had in mind, and so did her father. His eyes twinkled back at her.

“That she did, my dear. Well now, what do you think of all this? It's likely to be a lot of very boring work, sitting in some room doing nothing for days on end. There's no guarantee we'll even get anything out of this,” he warned. “But if you want to do it, well, I won't stop you.”

“I do want to,” Jane said. “That is, I would like to do all I can to serve my country and do my duty and, well, things like that,” she finished lamely.

There were smiles all around, and Mr. Nervous even seemed to be suppressing a chuckle.

“Capital,” said General Square . “We'll be along with your orders presently; I expect we should be ready to go in about a month.”

With that, the gentlemen rose and made their goodbyes, leaving Jane to go to lunch in a curious state of nervous excitement.

As predicted, her mother was not pleased. She had a great deal to say about things that were and were not appropriate for young women to do and managed to imply that it was only out of gross inconsideration of her needs that the thing was being contemplated at all. In vain did Jane and her father argue for duty to king and country, for the value of her service, and even (in a moment of desperation on Jane's part) for the chance it could afford her to meet eligible young men. But it wasn't until she hit on the subject of her brothers that Jane was able to make any headway at all.

“Because, you see, if trouble does come, I would hate for Jon and Raymond to be put in even more danger. And, perhaps, if all goes well, we could ward off the trouble altogether.” This was a little disingenuous, as the gentlemen had not suggested that anything of the sort was possible. But, Jane reasoned, they hadn't said it wasn't.

It was a good approach. Mrs. St. Claire's greatest weakness was her children and, as proud as she was of her two sons in the Navy, ever since they had joined up her life had been one of constant worry. She continued to put up a token resistance for the next hour or so, but Jane knew the battle had been won.

Her orders came, as promised, by the end of February. She was to report to an office in London on Tuesday, bringing with her only the most basic of necessities. Jane was in her room trying to decide what these were, with her sister Elizabeth helping.

“Are you taking your claret-colored evening dress?” she asked.

“I don't think there'll be much need for it where I'm going,” Jane replied, as she tried to decide which of her bottles of scent were more appropriate for espionage. She settled on the lavender and moved on to stockings.

“What sorts of things will you need? Are you going to have a gun?”

Jane laughed. “If I do, I think I'll need to be a better shot than I am now. Ray wouldn't even let me go with them the last time they went out; he said I would only scare away the birds.”

“Oh, that's just Ray for you. He never thinks anyone can do anything, except him and father. I think it's something about him being the oldest.” At age fifteen, Elizabeth had reached the point where she felt she knew everything about everyone, and she was not shy about imparting her knowledge. “But just think,” she went on, “when I'm as old as he is now he'll be old , nearly fifty, and then I'll be able to do everything he can't.”

“That's your plan, is it? I like it. Would you pass me that petticoat?”

Elizabeth handed over the garment in question and looked at her sister with a pleading expression. “You will tell me all about it when it's over, won't you? And write me letters if you can?”

“Of course I will, Lizzie. At least, I'll tell you as much as they let me. Some things may have to be kept secret, if I find out anything at all.”

The younger girl sighed. “I guess that will have to do. It is so tiresome to always be left out of things. When I am grown up,” she said, picking up one of her sister's necklaces and trying it in her hair, “I am going to have lots of adventures and never tell anyone about them. And you'll all go mad with curiosity.” She cast aside the necklace and flung herself back on the bed. “It is going to be so dull with you gone. Mother will never throw a party with only me here, and Father's friends are as boring as anything . I wish something interesting would happen here.”

“Maybe it will. After all, who's to say that spies won't turn up right here in Breehampton? And you could ferret them out and expose them, all while I'm sitting in some dreary flat down by the coast, listening to foreigners argue about whose turn it is to make the dinner.”

Elisabeth was very much heartened by the suggestion, and spent the next hour considering all of the local residents as candidates for espionage, libeling some very honest patriots in the process.

The address to which Jane was directed turned out to be a nondescript block of flats in Kensington. She rang the bell and gave her name and, after a brief wait, was escorted to a flat on the second floor. Here she found Mr. Nervous waiting for her with a practical looking middle-aged woman. She was introduced as Mrs. Farrell and was evidently in the employ of the intelligence services. She took a long, appraising look at Jane, which encompassed her face, hair, figure and possibly, Jane fancied, her conscience. During this procedure, Jane stood straight and still and tried not to breathe too noticeably. Evidently satisfied, Mrs. Farrell stepped back and nodded.

“She'll do,” she said.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary weeks of Jane's young life. She was to have a gun, for her own protection, and she was expected to know how to shoot it. This was actually not such a difficulty for, despite her brother's lack of faith, Jane was in fact a passably good shot. Her hair was cut and bleached a harsh platinum blonde and new clothes were bought for her, all of a lower quality and less flattering (but more fashionable) cut than her own.

In the time left between the shopping and the shooting lessons, Jane was instructed in what would be required of her in the job she was to do. She would be posing as an artist, come to paint the scenery. This, they explained, would give her a presentable excuse for her presence, as well as a reason for sitting and staring at one place for an extended period of time. Through some complicated subterfuge, the flat over the shop where the suspected spies worked and lived had been secured for her use in what would appear to be a natural way. In the hours when she was present, Jane was to keep careful track of the movements of her neighbors, with particular attention paid to their visitors. That, however, was only her secondary task. Her first purpose was to look after the tapes.

The great advantage of having Jane come in as an outsider to the situation- that she would be unlikely to be recognized by any traitors who might come to the place- was also her disadvantage. For, while she was not known to the majority of those in the intelligence community, they were not known to her either, making it difficult for her to make on-the-spot evaluations of any visitors. This, combined with the fact that it would look extremely suspicious for her to move into the flat and never come out of it, was the reason for the tape recorder. It was very large, and would be hidden in a particularly ugly bureau (behind a false front). When the moving men brought her things up to the flat they would make a lot of noise, to disguise the sound of a hole being drilled through the floor, so that a listening device could be lowered to hear what was said in the rooms below. This would be connected to the recorders, two of them, so Jane could be away from the flat for nearly four hours without having to change the tapes. She was to save these tapes, stored in a hatbox in her closet, and once a week she would receive a visit from Mrs. Farrell, posing as a spinster aunt and carrying a capacious handbag.

All this, and much more, Jane was told in her first few days in London . There was a great deal to learn and remember; plans, contingency plans, signs and countersigns, and all of them had to be committed absolutely to memory, as she could have no written record on her when she reached the place. Jane had the unpleasant feeling of being back in school, cramming madly for exams and not at all sure she would pass. It was a rather disheartening experience. She had always thought of intelligence work as being, not exactly cavalier, but at least as something that went quickly, with more thought to results than consequences. Instead, they seemed to be determined there should be no danger to her at all!

It wasn't until she stepped off the train and smelled the salt air that Jane had her first qualm about what she was doing. Up until then she had been able to see it as an amusing diversion, something to add interest to her life and annoy her mother, but at that moment it became real. She was to have very little protection from this point on and, aside from her weekly meetings with Mrs. Farrell, she could only contact her friends in the direst of emergencies. Jane felt suddenly very small and alone.

The movers came as promised, and did their work. The precautions seemed to have been unnecessary, as the shop below was closed and dark.

Once the equipment and furniture were installed and the movers had taken their leave, Jane decided to go out and explore. Come summer she thought it would be a charming place, a picture-perfect seaside town, but for the time being it was weathering the winter months with shuttered windows and a glum lack of industry. On her tour she found a chemist's, two each of greengrocers and butchers, a bakery, and three tearooms and five pubs (the relatively large numbers of the latter two she thought could be accounted for by the demands of summer visitors). It was a small place and, even walking slowly, she could not make her excursion last more than an hour. Unwilling to return to her rooms just yet, she turned her steps to the seafront.

Jane had always liked the sea, with its power and its changeability. If she had been a boy, she thought she might have become a sailor, like her brothers. She was standing behind the wall at the edge of the beach, watching the waves come in, when she noticed something queer. The town was situated at the edge of a little bay, and there were a number of pleasure craft in the docks. Only one, a small white sailboat with a red stripe on the hull, was out on the water, and the way it was sailing suggested that whoever was guiding it was either a very bad sailor or a very foolish one. It was listing wildly, first one way, then the other, nearly capsizing more than once, but never quite going all the way over. Then, just as Jane was thinking she had better go and fetch the harbormaster, it suddenly righted itself and sailed quite calmly off to a jetty on the other side of the bay. Jane watched it dock, saw a white-clad figure stroll briskly away, and wondered what it all could have meant.

By the time Jane made it back to the flat, her neighbors had returned. The shop was still closed, but she could see light coming from the back windows and, on climbing the stairs, she smelled cabbage cooking. The odor was far from appetizing, but it did serve to remind her that it was near time for her own dinner. This was entirely left up to her, as hiring a cook had been deemed too risky. Therefore, she decided on soup. Given her abilities in the kitchen, Jane suspected she would be eating a lot of soup.

After supper, Jane prepared for her evening's work. First, she changed the tape on the first of the two recorders, stowing the finished one in the hatbox. She installed a new, blank tape in its place, checked the progress of the second, and then settled herself down with a lamp and a book. She chose a spot near enough to the window that she was able to see anyone who might come up the street, but at such an angle that they would be unlikely to see her. Then she waited.

Three uneventful hours later, Jane was beginning to understand what her father had meant about espionage being dull work. After another hour of nothing, she gave up and went to bed.

The next morning she awoke with higher hopes. It was foolish of her, she realized, to have expected to get results on her first day. In fact, her presence might have even been a deterrent, as they would be naturally suspicious of any new arrival in the neighborhood, even one as apparently innocuous as Jane.

The day was gray and cold but, as it was not actually raining, Jane took her easel and her palette out onto the small balcony and prepared to paint. Her first painting was to be of the street, looking down to the harbor, which conveniently happened to be the same direction from which anyone who might be coming from the train station would approach the building.

She had only just gotten herself settled in when the door opened below her. She craned her neck to see who would come out of it (excusable curiosity, she thought, for someone who had just moved in). It was a young man, with blonde hair and an unpleasant, hawkish countenance. He turned and said something back into the shop, then headed up the street, away from the harbor. She watched him for as long as she could, then he turned a corner and disappeared from sight. Frustrated, she turned her attention back to her painting. Jane kept faithfully to her post for the rest of the day, but no one went into or out of the shop below.

This was to become her routine for the next several days. She woke, breakfasted, and then took up her station on the balcony. I am probably the most dedicated person to ever have painted this street, she thought, and wondered what her neighbors must think of her. She did manage to get a better look at the two of them. One, a very large man who when viewed from above appeared to be perfectly circular, spoke in a surprisingly low voice at all times, so much so she worried the recorder might be unable to pick him up. The third man she did not see until she had been in place for nearly a week. He was much older than the other two, probably close to sixty, though it was hard to tell from her angle. He always wore a heavy, dark blue coat when she saw him, and he never left the shop without one of the other men accompanying him.

Jane had to admit she found it all rather frustrating. In fact, the only thing she had seen so far that was of any interest at all was the fellow in the sailboat. She had seen him again, twice in the same week. Both times he preformed his odd acrobatics, and both times he had returned safely to the far shore. That, she thought, was undeniably suspicious behavior.

She wrote up her observations and included them in the hatbox with the tapes. On Sunday afternoon, as arranged, Mrs. Farrell came to visit her, in the guise of her Aunt Sophie. Jane served tea and they spoke casually of imaginary relatives, never mentioning her mission, as the surveillance might easily work both ways. Still, Jane found it to be a tremendous relief. It was nice, she thought, to be reminded that she really was here for a reason and Mrs. Farrell, ordinary as she seemed, had a manner about her that suggested that she (Jane) was doing great things. As she left, she patted Jane on the arm and said, in the high, adenoidal voice that she had adopted for the role of Aunt Sophie, “Well dearie, I imagine it must be dull for you here, but I will say, I think you're doing lovely work and I am quite proud of you. I'll be by next week and see how you're getting along.” And somehow it felt like a commendation from the King.

It was on Thursday of the third week that the young man came to the shop. The morning had been particularly fine, and Jane was just returning from a walk by the seashore when she saw him. He was ahead of her on the other side of the street, looking with exaggerated interest at the displays in the shop windows, when he suddenly stopped, looked around, and crossed directly to the front door of her building. Jane waited for a minute, until he was well inside, then proceeded calmly back to her rooms.

She checked the recorder and confirmed that there was plenty of tape left, then sat down to write her description of the man before she could forget. Tall, she wrote, and thin, but otherwise generally unremarkable, with a narrow face and a weak chin. He had been wearing a brown suit, well-fitted but inexpensive-looking, and a dark green hat with something (a feather?) in the hatband.

Reading it over, Jane found her description to be severely inadequate. Here she was, trying to catch a traitor who was putting the nation's entire intelligence community at risk, and her best description of the only suspect was nearly useless. There was nothing in it to distinguish him from the thousands of other men in Great Britain with weak chins and uninspired dress sense. While she was pondering her discouragement, it occurred to Jane that she had neglected to bring in her washing from the day before. As it happened, the line was located in the building's microscopic back yard, conveniently close to the downstairs windows. In fact, if one were to happen to go down there now, one could hardly avoid looking into the shop, in a purely accidental and unintentional way, of course. Jane picked up her basket and headed for the door, then stopped and went back to the bedroom. She fished her gun out of the beside table and tucked it in the basket, under a pair of stockings. It never hurt to be prepared.

As she had hoped, the laundry was quite dry (it would have been difficult to explain if she had been caught taking wet things off the lines). Better still, her neighbors and their visitor had chosen to meet in the back room, where she had a clear view of him from behind the linens.

They were seated in the small kitchen where the awful, cabbagey smells came from almost every evening. There was no food on the table now, just four mismatched mugs and a scattering of spoons. They were talking, but Jane couldn't hear what was said and didn't dare go any closer to listen. She could only tell that the oldest of her neighbors seemed to be in control of the conversation, asking occasional, short questions of the guest and getting animated responses. As for the new arrival, Jane studied his face until she felt that she could draw it, then gathered her things and hurried back up to her flat.

By Sunday, Jane was bursting with eagerness to share her news. The man had stayed for almost three hours, and after he was gone the men downstairs had locked up the shop and gone out in a motor car, not to return until quite late at night. Jane had stayed up waiting, dying to replay the tape and find out what had been said in that meeting but not daring to disobey her orders. So it was with no small amount of excitement that she prepared for her visit from Mrs. Farrell, and Jane had to restrain herself from going every few minutes to check for her arrival.

Mrs. Farrell, of course, arrived just on time and, under cover of various niecely pleasantries, Jane handed over the tapes and her notes. Still talking, Mrs. Farrell examined them and Jane was pleased to see the way her eyebrows went up when she got to the good parts. The papers went into her bag as Jane poured the tea and they discussed the maladies of imaginary relatives.

The visit drew to a close and, as she was putting on her hat and gloves, Mrs. Farrell stopped in front of Jane and studied her closely.

“I think you are taking care of yourself very nicely,” she said in her Aunt Sophie voice. “But I hope you will remember to be careful. Things aren't safe for a young lady on her own. You should just keep to yourself and be sure to stay out of trouble.”

“Yes, Aunt Sophie,” Jane replied.

The older woman took her leave and Jane cleared up the tea things while she thought about what her warning had meant.

Monday was a quiet day for Jane, with nothing but the waterborne acrobatics of the mysterious sailboat to interest her. Now that she had been watching for a while, she had begun to see a pattern to these activities. There seemed to be four basic maneuvers that made up his repertoire, the slow turn, the sharp turn, dipping the sail and making a small circle. These appeared in various orders in each performance and Jane recorded them all, with hopes of someday breaking the code. But this was dull stuff now; after the excitement of the visitor Jane longed for a real thrill.

She didn't have to wait long. On Tuesday she received a parcel, addressed to Miss Julia Miller (Jane's assumed name for the job). It was marked with the return address of a hat maker's in London and proved to, in fact, contain a hat. It was red, with some cherries on the brim and a rather silly little veil. Also included was an invoice, stating that she (as Miss Miller) had ordered and paid for it (which she certainly hadn't) and nothing else. Jane stared at it for a while, wondering what it could mean. Then she roused herself and set about finding out.

There had been several protocols set for secret communications from her superiors, but this did not precisely match any of them. She examined the hat first, but found nothing in the way of secret compartments, or even meaningful stitching, so she turned her attention to the paper. Secret messages had been part of her curriculum, and she had a pretty good memory for the particulars. A code seemed to be out of the question so hidden writing was indicated. She held the paper up to the gas jet and was rewarded by the appearance of the neat handwriting of General Square .

Miss St. Claire (it read)

I would like to commend your exemplary work in this project to date. The name of the man you saw is Wharburton and he is, or was, one of our own. The tapes you made prove that he serves his country no longer. He is likely to be dangerous, and I urge you to take particular care when he is present.

The letter was unsigned, but marked with insignia of the service. Jane read it twice, then set it in the grate and burned it, as she had been instructed.

Wharburton (as she now knew him) paid her neighbors another visit that week. Mindful of the General's warning, as soon as he arrived Jane gathered up her sketchbook and pencils and left for an afternoon of drawing on the cliffs. By the time she returned he was gone, and the downstairs windows were dark. Once again she resisted the urge to replay the tape, but only barely. Sometimes, orders were very hard to follow.

That was the last of the excitement for a while. The next week and a half passed uneventfully, and Jane was beginning to wonder if perhaps her task might have reached its end when, late one night, voices from below awoke her. Creeping out of bed, Jane crouched down and put her ear to a crack in the floor. She couldn't make out the words being said, but it was clear there was an argument going on. She recognized the voices of her neighbors, with their foreign tones and inflections, but the other was unfamiliar to her, and sounded like an Englishman.

The fight was apparently short-lived, and the voices soon subsided to normal levels. After a while, she could hear them moving towards the door, and she made it to the window just in time to see two men come out. As they passed under the streetlamp, Jane got a clear look at their faces and saw that it was Wharburton and the youngest of her neighbors. They climbed into a two-seater and drove off, with Wharburton behind the wheel. A few minutes later, the other two men came out, got into another car and drove away in the opposite direction.

This was more than Jane's willpower could bear. It might be urgent, she reasoned. In fact, the men might just now be on their way to carry some mission, and it would be irresponsible of her not to even try to stop it. That decided, Jane stopped the tape and rewound it.

Unfamiliar with the equipment, Jane overshot the critical time and had to wait through several minutes of recorded silence before she was rewarded by the sound of a door opening and shutting. Voices murmured greetings in the distance, then grew closer and more distinct. She squeezed closer to the apparatus to listen.

“You come very late to visit,” said one voice, heavily accented.

“I've had a busy day. I'm sorry if I am inconveniencing you.” The speaker didn't sound as if he was sorry. Jane deduced that this was Wharburton, from the context and the English voice.

“What's this all about?” Another foreign voice, richer and more rounded than the first, joined the conversation. “I thought we were agreed we should only meet at our arranged times.”

“Your times, you mean,” Wharburton replied. “Look here, I have some questions to ask you, and what I want are some straight answers. And if you don't give them to me, then I am going to have to find them somewhere else.”

One of the other men started to reply, but what he might have said Jane could only imagine, because at that moment she shifted her position and, in doing so, brushed a lever with her shoulder. The machine let out a shriek and the tape started spinning at a furious rate, sending Jane into a panic. She grabbed madly at the controls, trying everything and anything to silence the beast. Finally, with a terrible grinding noise it came to a stop, trailing fragments of ribbon from the spools. Jane stared at it in horror. Here was surely one of the most important clues yet, and she, through her irresponsibility and disobedience, had destroyed it. She thought about what Mrs. Farrell would say, and the General, and her father, and the possibility was too terrible to contemplate.

Jane was gathering up the remains of the tape and resigning herself to a dull civilian life when she remembered Teresa. Of course! Of all Jane's school friends, Terry was by far the most industrious. While the rest of them had passed their time, and their classes, in the most dissipated possible way, she had applied herself to her studies and now, if Jane remembered rightly, she had some frightfully technical job in the radio. Surely, if anyone could fix this mess, it would be Terry.

The next day she took the train in to Hearnton. While there, she made a phone call from the callbox at the post office, then bought some stamps and posted two letters and a parcel.

In fact, Jane felt she had pulled it off pretty well. Terry had seemed unimpressed by her problem, and confident that she should be able to fix the tape up ‘as good as new' without any trouble. The only difficulty was that there was no way for it to be done by Sunday, when Mrs. Farrell was due for her weekly visit, and she would surely notice if a tape was missing. In the end, Jane decided to replace it with a blank one- after all, it was from the middle of the night- and claim later to have mixed the two up. At that time, she could restore the repaired original and no one would be the wiser. Having decided on a plan, Jane followed it to the letter. The blank tape was packed into the hatbox, and she only felt a twinge of guilt when Mrs. Farrell took it with the rest. After all, Jane reminded herself, it would only be another week, and then she would have it back, no damage done.

On Tuesday, someone broke into Jane's flat. She had been out for barely more than an hour, running a few trivial errands, and when she returned she knew immediately that something was amiss. Although not a tidy person, Jane was a creature of habit, and she liked to have things in their own particular place. The chairs by the window always sat at a ninety-degree angle to each other, with the little round table exactly in the middle. Now they were spread out wider, nearly parallel to the wall, with the table over to the left side. The curtains, which she never tied back because it just seemed like too much trouble to untie them again, were now held in place with neat bows. Passing into the bedroom, Jane saw that the intruder had been there as well. The bed was still made, but with much tighter corners than she could ever manage and the pillows had been switched, with the fat one on the left and the thin one on the right. Fearful, she hurried across the room and opened the wardrobe. To her relief, the hatbox was still there, with the tapes inside. Her gun remained as well, though the drawer it was in showed signs of intrusion. Jane put it in her lap as she sat down on the bed to think.

Clearly, whoever had been here had gone to some pains to disguise his presence. That let out a simple robbery, she thought, and besides, nothing seemed to be missing. So that meant someone had come in to her flat to search it. Immediately, Jane suspected her downstairs neighbors. Perhaps there was something she had done to arouse their suspicions, perhaps they where merely being cautious, but clearly, someone had wanted to make sure she was really what she seemed. The question was, how much had they found? The cabinet with the recorder in it was still locked, with no signs of tampering, and the tapes were still in their hiding place, but the intruder's suspicions were bound to have been aroused by the gun; something no respectable young woman could be expected to have in her dresser drawer. Was that enough to keep them from holding their meetings here, or even to put her in danger? Jane didn't know, and she thought she had better ask someone who would.

Of all the things Jane had been taught, she had paid particular attention to the procedures for various emergencies. Since she was not allowed to bring any written record with her, she had committed them all to memory, and even though she was sure of her knowledge, Jane thought carefully before she picked up the phone and dialed. A voice, young, male and bored, answered.

“Fuller's Fish,” he said.

“Hello,” said Jane. “I would like to order a half pound of cod, for delivery.” This (she hoped) was the code for a situation that was not critical, but required the input of someone from the main office.

“All right,” the voice replied. “We can have that for you at eleven tomorrow morning.” That meant ‘message received, expect a visitor tomorrow at nine.'

“Thank you very much,” Jane said, perhaps a trifle too sincerely for someone ordering fish.

Although she told herself she was unlikely to be in any danger- after all, if someone went to the trouble to disguise the fact they had been in the flat, they would hardly put that to waste by coming back and killing her- Jane passed a restless and worried night. Therefore, she was relieved the next morning to hear the footfalls on her stairs and the knock at her door. However, when she opened it she found waiting, not Mrs. Farrell, but the young man from the post office.

“This just come for you, miss,” he said, holding out a telegram in his grubby hand. Jane thanked him and gave him some coins so he would go away, then closed the door, tore the telegram open and read.

COME TO CLIFFTOP WALK TEN AM -AUNT SOPHIE

Jane looked at her watch. It was just twenty minutes after nine now, plenty of time to make it. She knew the place Mrs. Farrell meant, a path that ran along the cliffs above the bay. She put on her jacket and hat and, on a whim, picked up the binoculars she had brought with her from home. They might come in handy, she thought, to make sure they weren't being watched.

Though the day was clear, it was cold out on the cliffs, with a sharp breeze that whipped Jane's hair into her mouth. It was a good place for a meeting, isolated and open so that no one could expect to be overheard. It was also, for the moment at least, entirely unpopulated. Jane checked her watch. It was five minutes past the hour, but she decided it was too soon to worry. After all, Mrs. Farrell was coming all the way from London , and all manner of things might have happened to hold her up. While she waited, Jane wandered to the edge of the cliff and looked over. It was a sheer drop, well over a hundred feet, and she took an instinctive step back when she saw it. As she did, she looked up and caught her breath. Out on the bay she saw the familiar shape of her mysterious sailboat. She lifted the binoculars to her eyes and focused them on it. There was a single figure in the boat, dressed all in white and working hard at the sails. She turned to hurry away from the edge and out of sight and nearly ran into Mrs. Farrell.

“Oh,” said Jane, “goodness, you scared me.”

Mrs. Farrell smiled. “I see you didn't learn everything you were taught about being alert.”

Jane laughed sheepishly. “Well, there was so much to learn… But look!” She pointed out towards the bay. “That's the boat, the one I was telling you about. See how it's dipping and weaving?”

Mrs. Farrell looked, but without much apparent interest. “Very strange,” she agreed. “But is that what you called me out here for? I hoped you would have understood that code was for emergencies.”

“Oh, no. I mean, yes, I did understand. I called in because someone searched my flat yesterday. I don't know how much they found, but I'm sure they must suspect something.” Jane went on to describe how she had found the room, and where she thought the intruders had and hadn't been. Mrs. Farrell's reaction changed as she spoke, from a brief expression of surprise at her announcement, to a look of serious thought and finally, a return to her usual, businesslike demeanor.

She nodded. “You did the right thing by calling in; this changes the situation dramatically. We will need to get all of the sensitive materials out of the flat as soon as possible. Now, tell me, is there anything you are keeping somewhere special? Notes or tapes that are not in with the rest?”

“No,” said Jane, somewhat mystified, “everything is all right there.”

“Are you sure about that?” Mrs. Farrell asked, looking hard at her. “This is a complicated situation, Miss St. Claire, and it's no time for you to be playing your own hand. I'll ask you plainly now, where is the tape from last Thursday?”

Jane was about to tell her, when two things occurred to her and made her hold her tongue. The first was that Mrs. Farrell had, before her eyes, become an entirely different woman, angry and nervous, with a hard edge to her voice. And although she wouldn't have time to analyze it until later, the shock of that was enough to make Jane pause. And that gave her time to think of the second thing, which was that there was no way for Mrs. Farrell to know that tape was missing, unless she knew it wasn't supposed to be blank. “I don't know what you mean,” Jane said. “I gave you all the tapes.”

Mrs. Farrell stopped and fumbled with her handbag. When she looked up again there was a pistol in her hand. It looks just like mine, Jane thought insensibly, before the reality of the situation caught up with her.

“Now,” Mrs. Farrell said, in a new voice, “let's not have any more of this silliness.”

Jane stared at her in shock. She had been suspicious, yes, and uneasy, but the gun was a little more confirmation than she had really wanted. Right now, she needed time. “You're working with Mr. Wharburton? But why? And why would you let him keep coming there if you knew he was going to be caught? Unless…” Jane's eyes sprang open as the realization stuck. “Oh!”

Mrs. Farrell smiled, a grim, toothy grin. “You see, I knew you were a bright girl. Wharburton was never one of ours. He is just the convenient fool who will relieve us of all of this unfortunate attention.”

“But how? If he wasn't spying, how did the tapes show he was?”

“Don't bother yourself about that, dear, it doesn't concern you.”

But Jane ignored her and continued, thinking aloud. “You must have switched them somehow,” she said. “You made new tapes, and put his voice on them, with him saying things that made it sound like he was giving away secrets. That's why you need the other tape- if the General gets it then your game is up. No one but you could have switched them all.”

Mrs. Farrell was starting to get annoyed. “Yes, yes; that's very clever of you. Now; Where is that tape ?”

Jane knew afterwards that this had been the most terrifying moment of her life and, whatever came next, those were the words that echoed in her nightmares. But at the time she felt strangely calm. It was like she was watching everything from behind a pane of glass, coolly analyzing and sizing up the situation. If she had had time to think about it, she never would have done what she did, but in the moment it seemed perfectly obvious.

“I'm not going to tell you,” she said, in a conversational tone.

“I don't think you understand me, Miss St. Claire,” the woman replied. “I will shoot you.”

“I know you will,” Jane said. “You'll shoot me whether I tell you or not. And, seeing as how I'm going to die anyway, I don't see any reason for giving you what you want before I do.”

Mrs. Farrell took a step forward, forcing Jane back towards the edge of the cliff. “Now you listen to me, you vapid little whore,” she said. “I've got some friends down at the bottom of this hill who can do things to you that will make this little gun seem like a mercy. So, I'll ask you just one more time; tell me where you put that tape.”

Jane considered this for a second. Then she spoke.

“Go to hell,” she said, and in the same moment she swung the binoculars on their strap, aiming for the hand that held the gun.

It connected with a satisfying ‘crack' and Jane and Mrs. Farrell watched as the weapon spun away and landed at the edge of the cliff. Then, in concert, they both reacted and lunged to grab it. Jane, though younger and quicker, was further away, and Mrs. Farrell reached it first. But Jane was on her before she could pick it up, grabbing onto her hair and arms and struggling to keep her down. The older woman was surprisingly strong, and she had the advantage of leverage on her side, but Jane was fighting with the determination of pure terror.

Then, suddenly, Mrs. Farrell got her arms free, and at the same time kicked Jane off of her. She swung the gun around to fire, but lost her footing and the shot went wide. That moment was all Jane needed. From her crouching position she lunged forward, hitting the other woman just above the knees and sending her over backwards. They were close to the edge, closer than Jane had realized, and she watched with horror as the loose slate of the cliff gave way under Mrs. Farrell's frantic scrambling and sent her tumbling into the bay.

Jane sat back on her heels to catch her breath. Another time she might have cried, or gone into hysterics, but it was too soon to think about the horror of what she had done. Besides, she had other things to worry about. She remembered what Mrs. Farrell had said about her accomplices and looked around for some means of escape. Behind her, the cliff face was sheer and it dropped more than a hundred feet to the water below. In front of her, the only path led back to the car park, where they would be waiting, having heard the gunshot and expecting to see their colleague return. Soon, they would begin getting suspicious, and then they would come up here to find out. She had left her own gun back at the flat, where it would do her no good now, and her time was running short.

She looked along the cliff in both directions. On the seaward side it rose another twenty feet before peaking and running back to the mainland. If she crossed to that side she would be in clear view for anyone standing below. The other direction, back towards the town, looked more promising. There would be no chance of making it to town that way on foot, but the cliffs were lower and less steep; she might be able to get down and hide in the rocks by the water until they went away. It was worth a try, at least.

Jane turned and hurried down the coast. It was slow going, as there was no path here and her way was blocked by rocks and brambles. She had only gone about three hundred yards when she heard voices coming up the hill behind her. She pressed on, well aware that she was utterly exposed, but also that there was little she could do about it. Jane raced on and didn't look back again. She made it another fifty feet before they spotted her.

She knew it first by the angry shouting, second by the gunshots. The first one never reached her and the second went over her head and Jane was starting to think that she might have a chance when a brief, screaming pain in her right arm announced the arrival of the third bullet. She stumbled, nearly fell, but caught hold of a boulder with her left hand and was able to right herself. The rock offered some protection, but it would do her no good to hide here. They would find her, and then they would shoot her and throw her body off the cliffs and into the ocean. Inadvertently, Jane looked over and let her eyes follow the path she would take. It was a morbid thought, but the view gave her a last, desperate hope.

She had been traveling on a downhill slope, not a steep one, but enough that now she was only about seventy feet above the water. Still far too high for any rational person to attempt but, Jane reasoned, it was better to do it alive than dead.

A bullet chipped the top of her rock, and she could hear them coming closer. Her arm, which had gone numb in the wake of the initial shock, was hurting like nothing she had ever known, and Jane wasn't sure how much longer she would remain conscious. Clearly, it was now or never. She stood up and, fixing her eyes on the horizon, took three running steps to the edge of the cliff and leapt.

The fall took a surprisingly long time and the water, when she reached it, felt cold and as hard as pavement. She surfaced stunned and disoriented, unsure for a moment of where she was or how she had come to be there. Then memory returned with an unpleasant force, and she knew that she was no less likely to die here than on the cliff. Still, she fought. This was not how it was supposed to end, not like this. Not with what she knew, what she needed to tell; not for a foolish act of misplaced trust. And definitely not with platinum blonde hair. So she mustered what little strength she had left and tried to remember about the tides.

“I say, are you all right?” The face that peered down at her was round and pock-marked and by far the most beautiful thing Jane had ever seen. It was attached to a young man, who was, in turn, leaning out of a sailboat that had stopped not four feet away from her. The question was apparently rhetorical, for the next thing he did was to lean over, pick her up by the shoulders and haul her gracelessly into the boat. As she passed over the side, Jane noticed that it was painted with two red stripes and realized with the peculiar clarity of shock that this was her mystery sailor.

“Good heavens,” he said. “You're bleeding! What happened to you?”

“I was shot,” Jane heard herself say.

“Good heavens!” he said again, and Jane felt she had to agree.

Jane woke up in a cool white bed in a warm white room. A man's figure was silhouetted against the window, smoking a pipe.

“Hullo, Father,” Jane said. “How long have I been out?”

“Too damn long,” Cmdr. St. Claire replied, turning. “What happened?”

“It was Mrs. Farrell. It was her all along. She was using me to try and frame Wharburton. I hope-” A spasm of worry crossed her face. “I hope he hasn't been shot?”

Her father replied with a short bark of laughter. “Not to worry, my dear, he's none the worse for the wear. Your friend sent that tape back by the afternoon post and one of our men intercepted it. It explained quite a lot.”

Jane cringed. “I'm sorry about that. It was rather stupid of me, wasn't it?”

“Rather,” her father agreed. “Still, if you hadn't done that we might never have known the real story, and an innocent man would probably have been shot for treason. It seems he was trying to feather his cap by doing a bit of extra spying on the side. He thought the men were double agents, passing him the plans of the enemy. It'll probably do him some good- teach him something about trusting people in this business.”

Jane sighed. “I guess I learned my lesson too. She just seemed so nice, so normal. I never suspected her at all up until the last moment.”

He nodded. “She had us all fooled, that's for sure. Mrs. Farrell had been with the organization for years and no one ever had any suspicions. I'll have a few questions for her, if she ever falls into our hands. We picked the men up in Dover , but I suppose she's well out of the country by now.”

Jane shook her head and, when the lights stopped flashing in front of her eyes, resolved not to try that again. “No,” she said. “She fell off the cliff.”

“Really? How did that happen?”

“I pushed her.”

Her father took his pipe out of his mouth, started to say something, then put it back. “I see,” he said.

“Father?” Jane said.

“Yes?”

“The young man who pulled me out, what was he doing out there? I'd been watching him; he was behaving very strangely.”

That got her a chuckle in response. “Ah, him. Yes, we looked into him. Turns out he was courting a girl who lives on the hill above the town. Her father threw him out, so he was communicating with her through a code they had worked out with his sailboat. Rather ingenious, in fact.”

“Really? How funny.”

They rested in silence for a few minutes, Jane too tired to think of anything more to say and the Commander apparently lost in thought. Finally, he spoke again.

“Your mother isn't going to like this very much,” he said.