‘I see,’ said Alleyn. ‘The X Adjustment.’ Fabian grinned.

‘And he asked me if I’d like to have a look at his notes and drawings and so on. As a gunner I was, of course, interested. I satisfied myself there was something in it. I’d taken my electrical engineering degree before I joined up, and was rather keen on the magnetic fuse idea. I need go no further at the moment,’ said Douglas with another significant glance.

Alleyn thought, ‘He really is superb,’ and nodded solemnly.

‘Of course,’ Douglas continued, ‘Auntie Floss had to be told something. I mean, we wanted a room and certain facilities, and so on. She advanced us the cash for our gear. There’s no electrical supply this side of the plateau. We built a windmill and got a small dynamo. Later on she was going to have the house wired, but at the moment we’ve only got the juice in the workroom. She paid for all that. We began to spend more and more time on it. And later on, when we were ready to show something to somebody in the right quarter, she was damned useful. She’d talk anybody into anything, would Flossie, and she got hold of a certain authority at army headquarters and arranged for us to go up north and see him. He sent a report Home and things began to look up. We’ve now had a very encouraging answer from—however! I need not go into that.’

‘Quite,’ said Alleyn. Fabian suddenly offered him a cigar which he refused.

‘Well, as I say, she was very helpful in many, ways, but she did gimlet rather and she used to talk jolly indiscreetly at meal times.’

‘You should have heard her,’ said Fabian. ‘“Now, what do my two inventors think?” And then, you know, she’d pull an arch face and for all the world like one of the weird sisters in Macbeth, she’d lay her rather choppy finger on her lips and say, “But we mustn’t be indiscreet, must we?” ’

Alleyn glanced up at the picture. The spare, wiry woman stared down at him with the blank inscrutability of all Academy portraits. He was visited by a strange notion. If the painted finger should be raised to those lips, that seemed to be strained with such difficulty over projecting teeth! If she could give him a secret signal: ‘Speak now. Ask this question. Be silent here, they are approaching a matter of importance.’

‘That’s how she carried on,’ Douglas agreed. ‘It was damned difficult, and of course everybody in the house knew we were doing something hush-hush. Fabian always said, “What of it? We keep our stuff locked up and even if we didn’t, nobody could understand it.” But I didn’t like the way Flossie talked. Later on, her attitude changed.’