Agatha Christie: N or M

Tommy poured out another glass of sherry for his guest.

"Don't go yet," he said.

"Thank you." The other accepted the glass. He sipped it for a moment in silence. Then he said: "In a way, you know, your wife's being called away is a fortunate occurrence. It will save time."

Tommy stared.

"I don't understand."

Grant said deliberately:

"You see, Beresford, if you had come to see me at the Ministry, I was empowered to put a certain proposition before you."

The colour came slowly up in Tommy's freckled face. He said:

"You don't mean -"

Grant nodded.

"Easthampton suggested you," he said. "He told us you were the man for the job."

Tommy gave a deep sigh.

"Tell me," he said.

"This is strictly confidential, of course."

Tommy nodded.

"Not even your wife must know. You understand?"

"Very well - if you say so. But we worked together before."

"Yes, I know. But this proposition is solely for you."

"I see. All right."

"Ostensibly you will be offered work - as I said just now - office work - in a branch of the Ministry functioning in Scotland - in a prohibited area where your wife cannot accompany you. Actually you will be somewhere very different."

Tommy merely waited.

Grant said:

"You've read in the newspapers of the Fifth Column? You know, roughly at any rate, just what that term implies."

Tommy murmured:

"The enemy within."

"Exactly. This war, Beresford, started in an optimistic spirit. Oh, I don't mean the people who really knew - we've known all along what we were up against - the efficiency of the enemy, his aerial strength, his deadly determination, and the co-ordination of his well-planned war machine. I mean the people as a whole. The good-hearted, muddle-headed democratic fellow who believes what he wants to believe - that Germany will crack up, that she's on the verge of revolution, that her weapons of war are made of tin and that her men are so underfed that they'll fall down if they try to march - all that sort of stuff. Wishful thinking, as the saying goes.

"Well, the war didn't go that way. It started badly and it went on worse. The men were all right - the men on the battleships and in the planes and in the dug-outs. But there was mismanagement and unpreparedness - the defects, perhaps, of our qualities. We don't want war, haven't considered it seriously, weren't good at preparing for it.

"The worst of that is over. We've corrected our mistakes, we're slowly getting the right men in the right place. We're beginning to run the war as it should be run - and we can win the war - make no mistake about that - but only if we don't lose if first. And the danger of losing it comes, not from outside - not from the might of Germany's bombers, not from her seizure of neutral countries and fresh vantage points from which to attack - but from within. Our danger is the danger of Troy - the wooden horse within our walls. Call it the Fifth Column if you like. It is here, among us. Men and women, some of them highly placed, some of them obscure, but all believing genuinely in the Nazi aims and the Nazi creed and desiring to substitute that sternly efficient creed for the muddled easy-going liberty of our democratic institutions."

Grant leant forward. He said, still in that same pleasant unemotional voice:

"And we don't know who they are..."

Tommy said: "But surely -"

Grant said, with a touch of impatience:

"Oh, we can round up the small fry. That's easy enough. But it's the others. We know about them. We know that there are at least two highly placed in the Admiralty - that one must be a member of General G-'s staff - that there are three or more in the Air Force, and that two, at least, are members of the Intelligence, and have access to Cabinet secrets. We know that because it must be so from the way things have happened. The leakage - a leakage from the top - of information to the enemy, shows us that."

Tommy said helplessly, his pleasant face perplexed:

"But what good should I be to you? I don't know any of these people."

Grant nodded.

"Exactly. You don't know any of them - and they don't know you."

He paused to let it sink in and then went on.

"These people, these high up people, know most of our lot. Information can't be very well refused to them. I was at my wits' end. I went to Easthampton. He's out of it all now - a sick man - but his brain's the best I've ever known. He thought of you. Over twenty years since you worked for the Department. Name quite unconnected with it. Your face not known. What do you say - will you take it on?"

Tommy's face was almost split in two by the magnitude of his ecstatic grin.

"Take it on? You bet I'll take it on. Though I can't see how I can be of any use. I'm just a blasted amateur."

"My dear Beresford, amateur status is just what is needed. The professional is handicapped here. You'll take on in place of the best man we had or are likely to have."

Tommy looked a question. Grant nodded.

"Yes. Died in St. Bridget's Hospital last Tuesday. Run down by a lorry - only lived a few hours. Accident case - but it wasn't an accident."

Tommy said slowly: "I see."

Grant said quietly:

"And that's why we have reason to believe that Farquhar was on to something - that he was getting somewhere at last. By his death that wasn't an accident."

Tommy looked a question.

Grant went on:

"Unfortunately we know next to nothing of what he had discovered. Farquhar had been methodically following up one line after another. Most of them led nowhere."

Grant paused and then went on:

"Farquhar was unconscious until a few minutes before he died. Then he tried to say something. What he said was this: N or M. Song Susie."

"That," said Tommy, "doesn't seem very illuminating."

Grant smiled.

"A little more so than you might think. N or M, you see, is a term we have heard before. It refers to two of the most important and trusted German agents. We have come across their activities in other countries and we know just a little about them. It is their mission to organize a Fifth Column in foreign countries and to act as liaison officer between the country in question and Germany. N, we know, is a man. M is a woman. All we know about them is that these two are Hitler's most highly trusted agents and that in a code message we managed to decipher towards the beginning of the war there occurred this phrase - Suggest N or M for England. Full powers -"

"I see. And Farquhar -"

"As I see it, Farquhar must have got on the track of one or other of them. Unfortunately we don't know which. Song Susie sounds very cryptic - but Farquhar hadn't a high class French accent! There was a return ticket to Leahampton in his pocket which is suggestive. Leahampton is on the South coast - a budding Bournemouth or Torquay. Lots of private hotels and guest houses. Amongst them is one called Sans Souci -"

Tommy said again:

"Song Susie - Sans Souci - I see."

Grant said: "Do you?"

"The idea is," Tommy said, "that I should go there and - well - ferret round."

"That is the idea."

Tommy's smile broke out again.

"A bit vague, isn't it?" he asked. "I don't even know what I'm looking for."

"And I can't tell you. I don't know. It's up to you."

Tommy sighed. He squared his shoulders.

"I can have a shot at it. But I'm not a very brainy sort of chap."

"You did pretty well in the old days, so I've heard."

"Oh, that was pure luck," said Tommy hastily.

"Well, luck is rather what we need."

Tommy considered a minute or two. Then he said:

"About this place. Sans Souci -"

Grant shrugged his shoulders.

"May be all a mare's nest. I can't tell. Farquhar may have been thinking of 'Sister Susie's sewing shirts for soldiers.' It's all guesswork."