It still struck him as a most peculiar name.

The entrance hall beyond the portico was a disappointment, dark and poky, painted in official spinach green and mustard yellow. Behind a small counter sat an old man with a blue uniform and sadly drooping moustaches, to whom he announced himself, 'I'm Mr Graham Trevose. I'd like to see Captain Pile, please.'

The old man looked at Graham Trevose wearily. For ten years he had sat behind that counter, hardly molested from morning to night, contemplating his pension. But now there were changes everywhere, he'd hardly time to get through his _Daily Mirror._ 'From Blackfriars Hospital, sir?' he asked.

Graham nodded.

'Have you an appointment?'

'For two o'clock.'

As the doorman turned to a small switchboard beside him Graham unbuttoned his fawn overcoat, felt for his gold case, and lit a cigarette. He noticed the hall led to a dim, narrow concrete corridor, stretching apparently to infinity. His eye fell on two doors with big brass keyholes and bolts but no handles. A terrible place to find yourself in, mad or sane. He shuddered.

Smithers Botham was a mental hospital, 'The Asylum' to the villagers, despite the term having been tactfully dropped about the time alienists mysteriously turned themselves into psychiatrists. It sprawled across the sunward slopes of the Downs south of London, which in that autumn of 1939 had lost to the safety of the countryside everything the nation held most precious-the schoolchildren, the expectant mothers, the contents of the National Gallery, the B.B.C., and the Admiralty.

The moment which had dominated British politics for five years-the arrival of the German Air Force to bomb the capital-seemed most regrettably at last about to occur. The Government confidently expected half a million air-raid casualties in the first week of the war, and something had to be done about patching them up. So the great London hospitals, too, rose stiffly from sites they had occupied for centuries, and shifted to the Home Counties in fleets of converted Green Line buses, doctors, nurses, students, instruments, beds, bed-pans, and all.