‘Nothing, nothing, daughter. Just — well, I wanted you to know I’d help, any way I can.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ she said bleakly.

Fred had never been in the Coheeze office, and when he climbed to it, at ten the next morning, he felt uncomfortably that he had returned to his early days of canvassing. The unpainted, boxed-in stairs were littered with papers and muddy heelprints, they smelled of yellow soap, and they displayed the signs of an electric healer and of a philanthropist who sold loaded dice ‘for scientific purposes only’.

In his one glance about the Coheeze office, Fred rather liked it, reminded of the crazy tents, littered with fishing tackle and old shoes, in which he had camped as a boy. Gene and Sara were sitting on their tables, muttering anxiously.

‘Well, Gene, this is kind of hard luck.’

‘Eh? Oh, how d’you do, Mr. Cornplow. Hard luck is right. I get all the blame, but how could I guess?’

‘You might’ve known . . .’

‘I was following instructions absolutely. Now, I suppose, I won’t get a cent more money.’

‘You could hardly expect the Channing Praggs to come through when you’ve jumped on the source of all their cash . . .’

‘Praggs? PRAGGS? Oh! Them! We aren’t talking about the same thing, Mr. Cornplow.’

Sara said witheringly, ‘Of course not!’ while the young Fred felt like a calf in the scornful company of these, his elders. Gene condescended:

‘I don’t mind the Press roasting me, either. That’s my job, stirring them up. My trouble is with the C.P.’

‘Oh yes. The C.P.?’

‘Good heavens, Father!’ from Sara. ‘The Communist Party, of course.’

‘Oh, I see.’

Gene sighed, ‘I’ve just had a long wire from them this morning . . . I’m a good radical, but I never did understand why it is that the harder up a left-wing organization is, the more it sends out hundred-word night letters that could just as well go under a three-cent stamp . . . Happen to notice that in the last “P. & P.” I gave quite a boost to the Russian general, Kynok?’

‘Um-uhh.’

‘The real model for all American soldiers that might want to go revolutionary?’

‘Um-huh.’

‘Well the Party wires me that Comrade Kynok was secretly arrested in Moscow day before yesterday, as a spy for Japan, and tried last night, and of course he will be shot this morning. Kynok! That stood with Stalin’s arm about his shoulders while 175,000 children marched past them, saluting, a month ago! How could I know? Now, I suppose I’m a Jap spy and a Trotskyite, too!’

‘But big leader like that, Gene, prob’ly they’ll find him innocent.’

Gene turned on his smile, friendly, a little cynical.

‘Nope. They don’t waste time in Moscow. They don’t spend the State’s money inquiring whether somebody’s innocent unless they can prove he’s guilty. It’s a new system of justice! Good Lord, I sound like a counter-revolutionary! Sorry. Well, I’ve got to get to work writing a piece telling how I finally got on to Kynok, the dirty, treacherous rat! The enemies of the Proletarian State must be rooted out ruthlessly! Rat — root — rut’less, that’s my tune — my rune — oh hell!’