“Hitler does.”

“Hitler is an inspired man. But you and I are employees, remember… .”

After that first surge of interest, the number of clients assigned to Pirate tapered off some. At the moment he carries what he feels is a comfortable case load. But it’s not what he really wants. They will not understand, the gently bred maniacs of S.O.E. ah very good, Captain rattling sitreps, shuffling boots, echoes off of Government eyeglasses jolly good and why not do it actually for us sometime at the Club…

Pirate wants Their trust, the good-whisky-and-cured-Latakia scent of Their rough love. He wants understanding from his own lot, not these bookish sods and rationalized freaks here at Snoxall’s so dedicated to Science, so awfully tolerant that this (he regrets it with all his heart) may be the only place in the reach of war’s empire that he does feel less than a stranger… .

“It’s not at all clear,” Roger Mexico’s been saying, “what they have in mind, not at all, the Witchcraft Act’s more than 200 years old, it’s a relic of an entirely different age, another way of thinking. Suddenly here we are 1944 being hit with convictions right and left. Our Mr. Eventyr,” motioning at the medium who’s across the room chatting with young Gavin Trefoil, “could be fallen upon at any moment—pouring in the windows, hauling dangerous tough Eventyr away to the Scrubs on pretending-to-exercise-or-use-a-kind-of-conjuration-to-cause-the-spirits-of-deceased-persons-to-be-present-in-fact-at-the-place-where-he-then-was-and-that-those-spirits-were-communicating-with-living-persons-then-and-there-present my God what imbecile Fascist rot…”

“Careful, Mexico, you’re losing the old objectivity again—a man of science shouldn’t want to do that, should he. Hardly scientific, is it.”

“Ass. You’re on their side. Couldn’t you feel it tonight, coming in the door? It’s a great swamp of paranoia.”

“That’s my talent, all right,” Pirate as he speaks knowing it’s too abrupt, tries to file off the flash with: “I don’t know that I’m really up to the multiple sort of thing… .”

“Ah. Prentice.” Not an eyebrow or lip out of place. Tolerance. Ah.

“You ought to come down this time and have our Dr. Groast check it out on his EEG.”

“Oh, if I’m in town,” vaguely. There’s a security problem here. Loose talk sinks ships and he can’t be sure, even about Mexico. There are too many circles to the current operation, inner and outer. Distribution lists growing narrower as we move ring by ring toward the bull’s eye, Instructions To Destroy gradually encompassing every scrap, idle memo, typewriter ribbon.

His best guess is that Mexico only now and then supports the Firm’s latest mania, known as Operation Black Wing, in a statistical way—analyzing what foreign-morale data may come in, for instance—but someplace out at the fringes of the enterprise, as indeed Pirate finds himself here tonight, acting as go-between for Mexico and his own roommate Teddy Bloat.

He knows that Bloat goes somewhere and microfilms something, then transfers it, via Pirate, to young Mexico. And thence, he gathers, down to “The White Visitation,” which houses a catchall agency known as PISCES—Psychological Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender. Whose surrender is not made clear.