“My sentiments exactly.” Ernest started the car and pulled away from the curb.

“Besides, I’m starving,” Cess said. “Turn right. I know a little place on Lampden Road that has—Where are you going? That’s the wrong way.”

“I know,” Ernest said, racing down Gloucester Road. “I just thought of something. If we hurry, we can make it to Croydon before the Call closes, and I can turn in my pieces.”

“Croydon?” Cess yelped. “That’s miles, and I’m starved!”

“There’s a good pub there. Excellent shepherd’s pie,” he said, even though he’d never set foot in the place. “And a very pretty barmaid.” And a phone booth down the street from the Call which I can call Atherton from while you’re in the pub.

“I thought you said the Call’s deadline was at four.”

“It is, but the editor’s sometimes there late, and if he hasn’t finished setting the type, I may be able to persuade him to put my articles in.”

He shot along Cromwell Road and turned onto the road south.

“What about Lady Bracknell?” Cess asked. “We were to report in.”

“We can do it from Croydon. After we eat. If we phone him now, he’ll tell us to come straight home, and then you’ll really be starving.”

“All right,” Cess said, “but if he loses his temper, you have to tell him this was your idea.”

“I will. Thanks. It’s important I not miss this deadline.”

Cess nodded, and then, after a minute, said, “Do you really think the German High Command reads the Croydon Fish and Chips Wrapper or whatever it is?”

“The Clarion Call,” he said. “I don’t know. But we don’t know that they’re listening to our wireless messages either, or taking aerial photos of our cardboard camps and rubber tanks. Or that Colonel von Sprecht actually bought our little charade. Or, even if he did, that he’ll tell the German High Command. Or that they’ll believe him.”

Cess nodded. “The poor devil might not even live long enough to make it to Berlin.” He sighed. “That’s the hell of doing this sort of thing. We never know whether anything we’ve done has had any effect at all.”

And perhaps we’re better off not knowing, Ernest thought, speeding through Fulham.

“Will we find out after the war, do you think?” Cess asked. “Whether it worked or not?”

“If it didn’t work, we won’t have to wait that long. We’ll know next month. If the entire German Army’s waiting for us in Normandy, then it didn’t.”

“True,” Cess said, and after a minute added, “History will sort it all out, I suppose. Will we make it into the history books, do you think? Von Sprecht and our encounter with that bull and all your letters to the editor of the Bumpkin Weekly Banner?”

If I can’t get through to Atherton, those letters to the editor had better, Ernest thought, driving into Croydon. He turned off the high street at the cinema so Cess wouldn’t spot the phone booth and drove past the Call’s office.