Heil Harris!

for my special customers. It takes more than a psychologist and a chaplain to make a soldier.”
    The room, Emma discovered, was really a kind of torture chamber, with equipment that passed out of common usage long before the war. She was surprised to find the soldiers in the guardroom saluting cheerfully and watching her go downstairs with Hayburn as if there was no cause for secrecy. The military mind had always baffled her.
    “Can you trust those men?” she asked incredulously. “Of course. They’re only the rank and file. They have a respect for discipline instilled in them during their first weeks in the army. They regard this dungeon as a sick joke, against the weak.”
    There were thirty people waiting for them, and they were a modern star chamber. One of their number would be placed on trial when that one was found. Emma tried not to look at the rack and the brazier, the wires running from an electric socket to those fancy implements, the selection of whips and hose pipes. There were too many people looking at her and hoping that she would be found guilty.
    Because then they would be innocent.
    Emma sat timidly on the edge of a cramp-cage and waited for the proceedings to begin. The heavy iron door had been closed on them; they were all ready for the trial.
    Colonel Hayburn held up his hand for silence, although there hadn’t been much light conversation. “All right,” he rasped, “I expect you know what this is about. One of our men has been murdered, and we’re here to find out who did it. The police have been blundering about all day, and we’re the Werewolves, and we’re better at justice than the police.”
    As he spoke he walked slowly round the room, swishing a paddle cane here and cranking the rack there in a general attack on everyone’s nerves.
    “Freddie Flamborough was killed by someone in this room, because we’re the only ones who knew he was a Werewolf. And this was on his head when his body was found.” Hayburn held up a rubber mask of a Werewolf’s face, like the one Bertie had worn at the party.
    “Anyone could find out that he was a Werewolf,” said a man at the back, ‘ ‘if he really wanted to. I wouldn’t mind betting that the police have a file on us—”
    “Not the police,” snapped Hayburn. “The secret service is on to us, not the police. I had a visit last week from a man I know to be in Military Intelligence and he was asking about that fool Wilkes. He pretended that he just happens by chance to live near the scene of the accident, but somebody must have tipped him off. We have a security leak somewhere.”
    The man at the back was talking again. Name of Peter de’Ath. “If yon mean that man John Steed he does live near the scene of the accident.”
    “You seem to know an awful lot, Peter. Come out here.”
    Peter de’Ath shuffled out to the front of the star chamber. He was a young, balding man in a baggy brown suit. “I don’t know anything more than you. I was trying to use my wits. If things have been going wrong this last week, I asked myself, what positive conclusion can we draw?”
    Hayburn grinned. “And you answered yourself?”
    “Well.” He twitched a little and moved his feet. “I thought, purely off the top of my head, you understand, that since Wilkes died and the man Steed intruded briefly, the only new factor in the Werewolves is Mrs. Peel. She pushed her way into our organisation at exactly the moment—”
    “She was with me,” snapped Hayburn, “when Freddie got himself killed.”
    “If she is a government agent she will not be working alone.”
    Hayburn seemed to relish the opportunity of asking Emma what she had to say to that.
    “He’s quite right,” said Emma, “I am the newest member. But I found out about the organisation from a complete outsider, so that probably invalidates your entire theory. Cynthia Throgmorton told me about the Werewolves over a cup of hot cocoa.”
    Hayburn smiled proudly at her. “Has anybody else anything to say?” No. “All right, then I’ll tell you where I was with Mrs. Peel and three other men last night. I was raiding the communist party headquarters. And we found there a file on this organisation that proves that one of you is an infiltrator. In fact, to be honest with you, Mrs. Peel found the file and I saw her steal it before we went. But I was too drunk by the time we went home to read it.” He turned with another one of those dangerous smiles to Emma. “Perhaps you’ve had