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voice, which bore the stamp of the Prussian Junker class. “
Ich verlange den meinem Rang gebührenden Respekt
.”
    None of the others understood what he said. I looked quickly round. There was no officer in sight. A crowd of men, mainly soldiers, were pressed round in a circle. “
Ich bedavere
,
es ist noch kein Offizier gekommen
,” I said. I had spent some months in our Berlin office and knew the language quite well. “So it’s an officer he’s wanting, is it?” said a Scots Guard with a sour, lined face. “Ye’ve got a nerve, laddie. Ye had no mercy on the women and children over the other side. Ye had no mercy on us on the beaches of Dunkirk. Yet as soon as you’re down, ye start squawking for an officer.”
    The sights those men had seen of the bombing and machine-gunning of terror-stricken refugees in Belgium and France had left their mark.
    The German did not flinch in the face of the hostile circle of men. He stood stiffly erect, his face set. He was a tall, well-built man of about thirty. He had well-groomed fair hair, and his most noticeable feature was a very square jaw which gave him a sullen look. He had a row of ribbons on his flying suit.
    He looked round the crowd of faces. “You’ve shot me down,” he said, speaking in German. “But it won’t be long now. Soon you will collapse like the cowardly French.”
    “You’ll never invade this country successfully,” I replied, also in German.
    He looked at me. I think he was too dazed with shock to realise what he was saying. “You English! You are so blind. It is all planned. The day is appointed. And on that day your fighter aerodromes will be taken from you and you will be left defenceless to face the courageous might of the
Luftwaffe
.”
    I suppose I must have looked at him rather foolishly. But it was so reminiscent of our conversation in the Naafi that evening. Through a gap in the encircling crowd I saw a big R.A.F. car slither to a standstill. The C.O. Thorby and several other men got out, including the ground defence officer. Quickly I said, “I don’t believe you. It’s not possible.”
    “Marshal Goering has a plan,” he said heatedly. “We shall succeed with England just as we have succeeded with the other plutocratic nations. You do not understand the cleverness of our leaders. Thorby and your other fighter stations will fall like that.” He clicked his fingers.
    “You can’t possibly know anything about Goering’s plans,” I said. “You talk like that because you are afraid.”
    “I am not afraid and I am not a liar.” Two angry spots of colour showed in his white cheeks. “You say I know nothing of the Marshal’s plans. I know that on Friday Thorby will be heavily attacked by our dive-bombers. You will not think me a liar on Friday. And when——” He stopped suddenly, and I thought I saw a look of surprise tinged with fear in his blue-grey eyes, though his face remained as wooden as ever.
    I turned to find Wing-Commander Winton just behind me. But it was not on the C.O. that the German pilot’s gaze was fixed, but upon Mr. Vayle, the station librarian. The man’s mouth seemed to shut like a clamp and he said no more. The last I saw of him was as he was marched away between two guards to the C.O.’s car. He seemed suddenly to have become dejected and weary, for he staggered along, his head bent and his every movement betraying a listlessness that I could hardly believe due solely to reaction.

CHAPTER THREE
OUT OF TOUCH
    A DETACHMENT of Guards had been detailed by Major Comyns, the ground defence officer, to keep people a hundred yards from the burning wreck. No attempt was made to put out the flames. The authorities feared that there might be unexploded bombs. The rest of our detachment moved to the nearest point from which they could watch the spectacle, which was the edge of the roadway that circled the landing field. The blaze seemed to fascinate them. Subconsciously, their reaction to it was the same as