The Tenth Man (2 page)

His active imagination, from which he has drawn the details of a large underground factory near Leipzig for the construction of a secret explosive, does on one occasion lead to a little trouble with the local police. From an independent source London learns that
B
.720 is being shadowed, and they send him an urgent warning, but the warning arrives too late.

At the end of a programme of Gilbert and Sullivan opera by the Anglo-Latesthian Society in which Tripp takes a leading part the Chief of Police, who is sitting in the front row, hands up a bouquet with a card attached and the request that he may have a drink with Tripp immediately in his dressing-room. There he tells Tripp that the German Embassy have complained of his activities. Tripp confesses to his deception.

The Chief of Police is amused and pleased that Tripp’s presence will keep out any serious agents, and he accepts the gift of a sewing machine for his wife. He will ensure that Tripp’s messages go safely out of the country—and to keep the German Embassy quiet, he
decides
, they can have a look at them on the way. London’s warning comes on the heels of the interview, and Tripp sends back a message announcing that he has appointed the Chief of Police himself as one of his agents, enclosing that officer’s first report on the chief political characters of Latesthia and requesting that as first payment and bonus the Chief, who he says is an ardent stamp collector, should receive a rare Triangular Cape, and when the stamp arrives of course he sticks it in his own album. This gives him an idea, and soon the Chief of the Secret Service is commenting to the
HQ
officer in charge of Tripp’s station, ‘What a lot of stamp collectors he has among his agents.’

‘It might be worse. Do you remember old Stott’s agents? They all wanted art photos from Paris.’

‘Stott’s at a loose end, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Send him over to take a look at Tripp’s station. He maybe able to give Tripp some advice. I always believe in letting two sound men get together.’

2

STOTT IS A
much older man than Tripp. He is bottle-nosed and mottled with a little round stomach and a roving eye. Tripp is naturally apprehensive of his visit and expects to be unmasked at any moment, but to his
relief
he finds that Stott is much more interested in the foods and wines of Latesthia, and in the night life, than in the details of Tripp’s organization. There are even fleeting moments when Tripp wonders whether it could possibly be that Stott also had run his station on notional lines, but such a thought of course can hardly be held for long.

The first evening together Stott remarks, ‘Now, the brothels, old man. You’ve got good contacts there, I suppose?’

Tripp has never been in a brothel in his life. He has to own that he has overlooked brothels.

‘Most important, old man. Every visiting businessman goes to the brothels. Got to have them covered.’

He has a night round the town with Stott and gets into trouble with his wife for returning at two in the morning. Stott moves on to Berlin, but he has sown seeds in Tripp’s mind. His notional agents in future follow a Stott line. London is asked to approve in rapid succession the madame of a high class ‘house’, a café singer, and, his most imaginative effort to date, a well-known Latesthian cinema actress who is described as Agent
B
.720’s (i.e. Tripp’s) mistress. Of course he has never spoken to her in his life, and he has no idea that she is in fact a German agent.

3

A SECOND CRISIS
—needing more delicate handling than Stott’s—blows up. The threat of European war is deepening and London considers that Tripp’s position in Latesthia is a key one. He must have a proper staff: Singer Sewing Machines are persuaded in the interests of the nation to build up their agency in Latesthia and they inform Tripp that they are sending out to him a secretary-typist and a clerk. Tripp is innocently delighted that his work for Singer has borne such fruit and that sewing machines are booming. He is less pleased, however, when the clerk and typist arrive and prove to be members of the Secret Service sent to assist him in handling his now complicated network of agents.

The clerk is a young man with a penetrating cockney accent and an enormous capacity for hero-worship—and heroine-worship. His devotion is equally aroused by what he considers the experience and daring of Tripp and by the legs and breasts of Tripp’s wife. His name is Cobb, and he has an annoying habit of asking questions. He says himself, ‘You don’t have to bother to explain things, Chief. Just let me dig in and ask questions, and I’ll get the hang of things for myself.’

The typist—Miss Jixon—is a withered spinster of forty-four who regards everyone and everything with suspicion. She believes that even the most innocent
labourer
is in the pay of the secret police, and she is shocked by the inadequacy of the security arrangements in the office. She insists on all blotting paper being locked in the safe and all typewriting ribbons being removed at night. This is highly inconvenient as no one is very good at fixing typewriter ribbons. Once she finds a used ribbon thrown in the waste-paper basket instead of being burnt in the incinerator and she begins to demonstrate the danger of the practice by deciphering the impress on the ribbon. All she can make out is ‘Red lips were ne’er so red nor eyes so pure’, which turns out to be a line of a sonnet written by Cobb—obviously with Mrs Tripp in mind.

‘He’s really rather sweet,’ Mrs Tripp says.

The chief problem that Tripp has to solve is how to disguise the fact that he has no sources for his reports. He finds this unexpectedly easy. He goes shopping and returns with envelopes that have been handed to him, he says, from under the counter: he makes a great show of testing perfectly innocent letters about sewing machines for secret inks: he takes Cobb for a round of the town and now and then in the restaurants points out his agents.

‘A very discreet man. You’ll see he won’t show the least flicker of recognition.’

The monthly payments to agents present a difficulty: Miss Jixon objects strongly to the payments being made by himself.

‘It’s irregular, insecure:
HQ
would never countenance it.’

By this time, for the sake of his assistants, he has drawn up an impressive chart of his sources: with the immediate head agents who control each gang. Miss Jixon insists that from now on he shall cut off his personal contacts with all but his head agents (of whom the cinema actress is one) and that he should meet them on every occasion in a different disguise.

Disguises become the bane of Tripp’s life. What makes it worse, of course, is that his wife knows nothing. Miss Jixon shows a horrible ingenuity: Tripp’s make-up box for the operatic productions of the Anglo-Latesthian Society is requisitioned. He finds himself being forced to slip out of back doors in red wigs and return by front doors in black wigs. She makes him carry at least two soft hats of varying colours in his overcoat pockets, so that he can change hats. Spectacles, horn-rimmed and steel-rimmed, bulge his breast pockets.

The strain tells. He becomes irritable and Mrs Tripp is reduced to tears. Cobb is torn between hero-worship and heroine-worship.

4

NEXT CRISIS: THE
enemy begins to take Tripp seriously. He becomes aware that he is followed everywhere—even to the Anglo-Latesthian musical
soirée
—‘an evening with Edward German and Vaughan Williams’. Miss Jixon’s security arrangements have been a little too good and the Germans are no longer able to keep an eye on the reports he sends.

She has objected to the use of the Chief of Police as transmitter and has evolved an elaborate method of sending secret ink messages on postage stamps. (There is a moment when Miss Jixon skirts shyly round the possibility of bird shit as a secret ink.) Unfortunately the ink never develops properly—single words will appear and disappear with disconcerting rapidity.

Tripp, in order to be able to fake his expenses sheet and show the expenditure of huge sums for entertainment, is forced to dine out at least three times a week. He hates restaurant meals—and in any case it would be fatal if one of his assistants saw him dining alone. He therefore rents a room in the suburbs and retires there for a quiet read (his favourite authors are Charles Lamb and Newbolt) or the writing of a bogus report, taking a little food out of the larder with him. (In his account book this appears as ‘Dinner for three (political sources) with wines, cigars, etc., £5.1os.od’.) This constant dining out had never been necessary in
the
old days before his assistants came, and Mrs Tripp resents it.

The domestic crisis reaches its culmination when on pay day Tripp has to pretend to visit the home of the cinema actress with pay for her sub-sources. Cobb keeps guard in the street outside and Tripp, wearing a false moustache, proceeds up to the actress’s flat, rings the bell and enquires for an imaginary person. He turns away from the closing door just as Mrs Tripp comes down from visiting a friend in the flat above. His excuse that he was trying to sell a sewing machine seems weak to Mrs Tripp in view of his false moustache.

Domestic harmony is further shattered when Cobb, anxious to make peace between his hero and his heroine, tells Mrs Tripp everything—or what he thinks is everything. ‘It’s for his country, Mrs Tripp,’ he says.

Mrs Tripp decides that she too will go in for patriotism. She begins to dine out too, and Tripp, not unduly disturbed, takes the opportunity of appointing her as agent with a notional lover in the Foreign Ministry.

‘That fellow Tripp,’ they say in London, ‘deserves a decoration. The Service comes even before his wife. Good show.’

His notional mistress and his wife’s notional lover are among his most interesting sources. Unfortunately, of course, his wife does not believe that
his
mistress is notional and her dinner companion, unlike the notional member of the Foreign Ministry, is a very real young man attached to Agriculture and Fisheries.

Mrs Tripp gets news of Tripp’s hide-out and decides to track him down. She is certain she will find him in the company of the actress and that he will not be engaged in work of national importance.

The enemy are aware of his hide-out.

5

TRIPP HAS GOT
his legs up on the stove, some sausage rolls in his pocket, and he is reading his favourite poet Newbolt aloud, in a kind of sub-human drone which is his method with poetry. ‘Play up, play up and play the game … the dons on the dais serene …’ He is surprised by a knock at the door. He opens it and is still more surprised by the sight of his notional sub-agent, the cinema actress. Her car has broken down outside: can she have his help? Outside in the car two thugs crouch ready to knock Tripp on the head. A third—a tall stupid sentimental-looking German of immense physique—keeps watch at the end of the street. Tripp says he knows nothing about cars: now if it had been a sewing machine …

Mrs Tripp is coming up the road. She has obviously lost her way. Tripp by this time is demonstrating the
special
points of the Singer sewing machine … Mrs Tripp is cold and miserable. She leans against a fence and cries. A little further down the road the sentimental German watches her. He is torn between pity and duty. He edges nearer.

Mr Tripp is talking about poetry to the cinema actress …

Mrs Tripp weeps on the German’s shoulder and tells him how her husband is betraying her at this moment, but she can’t remember the number of the house …

The Germans in the car are getting very cold. They get out and begin to walk up and down … Tripp is reading Newbolt to the actress … ‘His captain’s hand on his shoulder smote …’ Mrs Tripp and the German peer in at the window. He hasn’t realized that this treacherous husband has anything to do with him. Mrs Tripp moans, ‘Take me away,’ and he obeys at once—in his comrades’ car. Somebody—he is too sentimentally wrought up to care who—tries to stop him and he knocks him down. He deposits Mrs Tripp at her own door.

Tripp is still reading poetry when there is another knock at the door. One German pulls in the other German who is still unconscious. There is a babble of German explanations. ‘He was trying to mend the car,’ the actress explains, ‘and it ran away from him.’

‘I’ll ring up the garage,’ Tripp says. He goes in an alcove, where nobody has seen the telephone.

They prepare to knock him out. ‘Wrong number,’ he says furiously. ‘It’s the police.’

When he puts down the receiver again they knock him out.

6

MR TRIPP HAS
not returned home for some days. Cobb and Miss Jixon are worried. Mrs Tripp is furious but finds consolation.

Tripp comes to himself inside the German Embassy. Enormous pressure is put on him to betray his organization, but he has no organization to betray. The threat forcibly resolves itself into this: either he will remain a prisoner in the Embassy until war starts, when he will be handed to the Gestapo as a spy, or he will send a message for them—containing false information carefully devised to discredit him—to London and then in due course he will be released. They show him films of concentration camps, they keep him from sleeping: he is shut up in a cell with the sentimental German, now disgraced, who wakes him whenever he tries to sleep and reproves him for betraying his wife.

The German Ambassador, in collaboration with the Military Attaché, plans out the message for him to send. On one sheet the Military Attaché notes the facts to be concealed: the date of invasion; number of divisions etc. On the other they note the lies to be
revealed
. A breeze from the open window whips the papers around. The wrong notes (that is to say the true notes) are handed to Tripp to write in secret ink. Tripp gives way. To send one more message of false information seems a small price to pay.

To make all secure and ensure that no Tripp message will ever be believed again, the Germans instruct the Chief of Police to go to the British Ambassador and expose Tripp’s dealings with him—the invented messages which he used to show to the Germans before transmitting them. He gives the impression that Tripp knew that the Germans saw them.