Blandly he said: "You tell me."

The glow from the stage seemed bright after the gloom and I took a good look at his face. It was a round face and almost featureless. Mud-brown eyes behind schoolboy-type hornrimmed spectacles with plain glass in them that didn't magnify even by a fraction but good at their job since they made one bold feature for the blank face. Hair brown. Nothing to go on. If I wanted to recognise this man again I would have to watch him walk. Unnecessary. Tomorrow I'd be in England, therefore to hell with him.

I said quietly (the applause was dying away): "It hasn't been tapped for long or I'd have caught the clicks."

He began talking rapidly and softly with his hands to his face to focus the sound of his voice on my ear alone.

"I was flown out from London this morning with orders to make contact in strict hush. I wasn't allowed to go to your hotel or meet you anywhere in public, so that local Control had a difficult task. Your phone was tapped at some time before noon in the hope that we could find out your programme for the day and somehow provide contact for me, and it was most fortunate that we heard you telephone for a box at the Neukomodietheater."

"Played into your hands, like a fool."

I was pleased to see his look of mild pain. I was acting the rebel. Tomorrow I was being let out of school so tonight I could cheek whom I chose, and he was handy. Also he was a stranger and might be a top kick of some kind very high in the echelon, out here in the field to chuck his weight about incognito. If so I could be saucy and get away with it until he identified himself. The show wasn't turning out so badly after all.