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happen tomorrow.
    If I have to, I will go on doing this till I am called home. He cannot burn down St. Paul’s so long as I am here to put out the incendiaries. “I have my duty,” Langby said in the crypt.
    And I have mine.
    October 21
—It’s been nearly two weeks since the blast and I just now realized we haven’t seen the cat since. He wasn’t in the mess in the crypt. Even after Langby and I were sure there was no one in there, we sifted through the stuff twice more. He could have been in the Choir, though.
    Old Bence-Jones says not to worry “He’s all right,” he said. “The jerries could bomb London right down to the ground and the cats would waltz out to greet them. You know why? They don’t love anybody. That’s what gets half of us killed. Old lady out in Stepney got killed the other night trying to save her cat. Bloody cat was in the Anderson.”
    “Then where is he?”
    “Someplace safe, you can bet on that. If he’s notaround St. Paul’s, it means we’re for it. That old saw about the rats deserting a sinking ship, that’s a mistake, that is. It’s cats, not rats.”
    October 25—
Langby’s tourist showed up again. He cannot still be looking for the Windmill Theatre. He had a newspaper under his arm again today and he asked for Langby, but Langby was across town with Allen, trying to get the asbestos firemen’s coats. I saw the name of the paper. It was
The Worker.
A Nazi newspaper?
    November 2
—I’ve been up on the roofs for a week straight, helping some incompetent workmen patch the hole the bomb made. They’re doing a terrible job. There’s still a great gap on one side a man could fall into, but they insist it’ll be all right because, after all, you wouldn’t fall clear through but only as far as the ceiling, and “the fall can’t kill you.” They don’t seem to understand it’s a perfect hiding place for an incendiary. And that is all Langby needs. He does not even have to set a fire to destroy St. Paul’s. All he needs to do is let one burn uncaught until it is too late.
    I could not get anywhere with the workmen. I went down into the church to complain to Matthews, and saw Langby and his tourist behind a pillar, close to one of the windows. Langby was holding a newspaper and talking to the man. When I came down from the library an hour later, they were still there. So is the gap. Matthews says we’ll put planks across it and hope for the best.
    November 5—
I have given up trying to retrieve. I am so far behind on my sleep I can’t even retrieve information on a newspaper whose name I already know. Double watches the permanent thing now. Our chars have abandoned us altogether (like the cat), so the crypt is quiet, but I cannot sleep.
    If I do manage to doze off, I dream. Yesterday I dreamed Kivrin was on the roofs, dressed like a saint. “What was the secret of your practicum?” I said. “What were you supposed to find out?”
    She wiped her nose with a handkerchief and said, “Two things. One, that silence and humility are the sacred burdens of the historian. Two”—she stopped and sneezed into the handkerchief—“don’t sleep in the tubes.”
    My only hope is to get hold of an artificial and induce a trance. That’s a problem. I’m positive it’s too early for chemical endorphins and probably hallucinogens. Alcohol is definitely available, but I need something more concentrated than ale, the only alcohol I know by name. I do not dare ask the watch. Langby is suspicious enough of me already. It’s back to the OED, to look up a word I don’t know.
    November 11
—The cat’s back. Langby was out with Allen again, still trying for the asbestos coats, so I thought it was safe to leave St. Paul’s. I went to the grocer’s for supplies, and hopefully an artificial. It was late, and the sirens sounded before I had even gotten to Cheapside, but the raids do not usually start until after dark. It took awhile to get all the groceries and to get up my courage