Walking at a brisk pace, but out of step, across the lorry-scarred spaces of the old Krupp works here, Doctors Muffage and Spontoon look anything but conspiratorial. You take them immediately for what they seem: a tiny beachhead of London respectability here in benighted Cuxhaven—tourists in this semicivilized colony of sulfa shaken into the wells of blood, syrettes and tourniquets, junkie M.O.s and sadistic corpsmen, a colony they were spared for the Duration, thank heaven, Muffage’s brother being highly placed in a certain Ministry, Spontoon having been technically disqualified because of a strange hysterical stigma, shaped like the ace of spades and nearly the same color, which would appear on his left cheek at moments of high stress, accompanied by severe migraine. Only a few months ago they felt themselves as fully mobilized as any British civilian, and thus amenable to most Government requests. About the present mission, though, both now are deep in peacetime second thoughts. How quickly history passes these days.

“I can’t think why he asked us,” Muffage stroking his full Imperial (a gesture that manages only to look compulsive), speaking in a voice perhaps too melodious for a man of his mass, “he must know I haven’t done one of these since ’27.”

“I assisted at a few whilst I was interning,” Spontoon recalls. “That was during the great vogue they had at mental institutions, you know.”

“I can name you a few National Institutions where it’s still in vogue.” The medicos share a chuckle, full of that British Weltschmerz that looks so uncomfortable on the faces of the afflicted. “See here, then, Spontoon, you’d rather assist me, is that it?”

“Oh, either way you know. I mean it’s not as if there’ll be some chap with a book standing there, you know, writing it all down.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. Weren’t you listening? Didn’t you notice anything…”

“Enthusiastic.”

“Obsessional. I wonder if Pointsman isn’t losing his grip,” sounding here remarkably like James Mason: “L(h)oo-ssing(?) hiss khrip.”

They are looking at each other now, separate night scapes of Marston shelters and parked vehicles flowing darkly by together behind each face. The wind carries smells of brine, of beach, of petrol. A distant radio tuned to the General Forces Programme features Sandy MacPherson at the Organ.

“Oh, all of us…” Spontoon begins, but lets it lapse.

“Here we are.”

The bright office is hung with crimson-lipped, sausage-limbed Petty Girl pin-ups. A coffee mess hisses in the corner. There’s also a smell of rancid shoe-dubbing. A corporal sits with his feet on a desk, absorbed in an American Bugs Bunny comic book.

“Slothrop,” in answer to Muffage’s inquiry, “yes yes the Yank in the, the pig suit. Well, he’s in and out all the time. Completely dotty. What are you lot then, M.I. 6 or something?”

“Can’t discuss it,” raps Spontoon. Fancies himself a bit of a Nayland Smith, Spontoon does. “D’you know where we might find a General Wivern?”

“This time of night? Down at the alcohol dump, most likely. Follow the tracks, head for all the noise. If I weren’t on duty, I’d be there m’self.”