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useful American spy.”
    “You know who I am?” I said.
    “Sure,” he said. He took out his billfold, showed me a United States War Department identification card that said he was Major Frank Wirtanen, unit unspecified. “And that’s who I am. I’m asking you to be an American intelligence agent, Mr. Campbell.”
    “Oh Christ,” I said. I said it with anger and fatalism. I slumped down. When I straightened up again, I said, “Ridiculous. No—hell, no.”
    “Well—” he said, “I’m not too let-down, actually, because today isn’t when you give me your final answer anyway.”
    “If you imagine that I’m going home to think it over,” I said, “you’re mistaken. When I go home, it will be to have a fine meal with my beautiful wife, to listen to music, to make love to my wife, and to sleeplike a log. I’m not a soldier, not a political man. I’m an artist. If war comes, I won’t do anything to help it along. If war comes, it’ll find me still working at my peaceful trade.”
    He shook his head. “I wish you all the luck in the world, Mr. Campbell,” he said, “but this war isn’t going to let anybody stay in a peaceful trade. And I’m sorry to say it,” he said, “but the worse this Nazi thing gets, the less you’re gonna sleep like a log at night.”
    “We’ll see,” I said tautly.
    “That’s right—we’ll see,” he said. “That’s why I said you wouldn’t give me your final answer today. You’ll live your final answer. If you decide to go ahead with it, you’ll go ahead with it strictly on your own, working your way up with the Nazis as high as you can go.”
    “Charming,” I said.
    “Well—it has this much charm to it—” he said, “you’d be an authentic hero, about a hundred times braver than any ordinary man.”
    A ramrod Wehrmacht general and a fat, briefcase-carrying German civilian passed in front of us, talking with suppressed excitement.
    “Howdy do,” Major Wirtanen said to them amiably.
    They snorted in contempt, walked on.
    “You’ll be volunteering right at the start of a warto be a dead man. Even if you live through the war without being caught, you’ll find your reputation gone—and probably very little to live for,” he said.
    “You make it sound very attractive,” I said.
    “I think there’s a chance I’ve made it attractive to
you,”
he said. “I saw the play you’ve got running now, and I’ve read the one you’re going to open.”
    “Oh?” I said. “And what did you learn from those?”
    He smiled. “That you admire pure hearts and heroes,” he said. “That you love good and hate evil,” he said, “and that you believe in romance.”
    He didn’t mention the best reason for expecting me to go on and be a spy. The best reason was that I was a ham. As a spy of the sort he described, I would have an opportunity for some pretty grand acting. I would fool everyone with my brilliant interpretation of a Nazi, inside and out.
    And I
did
fool everybody. I began to strut like Hitler’s right-hand man, and nobody saw the honest me I hid so deep inside.
    Can I prove I was an American spy? My unbroken, lily-white neck is Exhibit A, and it’s the only exhibit I have. Those whose duty it is to find me guilty or innocent of crimes against humanity are welcome to examine it in detail.
    The Government of the United States neitherconfirms nor denies that I was an agent of theirs. That’s a little something, anyway, that they don’t deny the possibility.
    They twitch away that tid-bit, however, by denying that a Frank Wirtanen ever served that Government in any branch. Nobody believes in him but me. So I will hereinafter speak of him often as “My Blue Fairy Godmother.”
    One of the many things my Blue Fairy Godmother told me was the sign and countersign that would identify me to my contact and my contact to me, if war should come.
    The sign was: “Make new friends.”
    The countersign was: “But keep the old.”
    My lawyer here, the learned