Ashenden

It was not till the beginning of September that Ashenden, a writer by profession, who had been abroad at the outbreak of the war, managed to get back to England. He chanced soon after his arrival to go to a party and was there introduced to a middle-aged Colonel whose name he did not catch. He had some talk with him. As he was about to leave this officer came up to him and asked:

“I say, I wonder if you’d mind coming to see me. I’d rather like to have a chat with you.”

“Certainly,” said Ashenden. “Whenever you like.”

“What about tomorrow at eleven?”

“All right.”

“I’ll just write down my address. Have you a card on you?”

He would have sworn that he had not been asleep five minutes when he was dragged back to wakefulness by a knocking at the door. He listened for a moment.

“Who is it?”

“It’s the maid. Open. I have something to say to you.”

Cursing, Ashenden turned on his light, ran a hand through his thinning and rumpled hair (for like Julius Caesar he disliked exposing an unbecoming baldness) and unlocked and opened the door. Outside it stood a tousled Swiss maid. She wore no apron and looked as though she had thrown on her clothes in a hurry.

“The old English lady, the governess of the Egyptian princesses, is dying and she wants to see you.”

“Me?” said Ashenden. “It’s impossible. I don’t know her. She was all right this evening.”

He was confused and spoke his thoughts as they came to him.

“She asks for you. The doctor says, will you come? She cannot last much longer.”

“It must be a mistake. She can’t want me.”

“She said your name and the number of your room. She says: quick, quick.”

“Do you like macaroni?” said R.

“What do you mean by macaroni?” answered Ashenden. “It is like asking me if I like poetry. I like Keats and Wordsworth and Verlaine and Goethe. When you say macaroni, do you mean spaghetti, tagliatelle, rigatoni, vermicelli, fettucini, tufoli, farfalle, or just macaroni?”

“Macaroni,” replied R., a man of few words.

“I like all simple things, boiled eggs, oysters and caviar, truite au bleu, grilled salmon, roast lamb (the saddle by preference), cold grouse, treacle tart and rice pudding. But of all simple things the only one I can eat day in and day out, not only without disgust but with the eagerness of an appetite unimpaired by excess, is macaroni.”

“I am glad of that because I want you to go down to Italy.”

“He is the most dangerous conspirator in or out of India. He’s done more harm than all the rest of them put together. You know that there’s a gang of these Indians in Berlin; well, he’s the brains of it. If he could be got out of the way I could afford to ignore the others; he’s the only one who has any guts. I’ve been trying to catch him for a year, I thought there wasn’t a hope; but now at last I’ve got a chance, and by God, I’m going to take it.”

“And what’ll you do then?”

R. chuckled grimly.

“Shoot him and shoot him damn quick.”

Ashenden did not answer. R. walked once or twice across the small room and then, again with his back to the fire, faced Ashenden. His thin mouth was twisted by a sarcastic smile.

“Did you notice at the end of that report I gave you, it said he wasn’t known to have anything to do with women? Well, that was true, but it isn’t any longer. The damned fool has fallen in love.”