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he had understood. Nothing of the past had ever been talked about to anyone, never even mentioned except between themselves, and by the time of the marriage, which was almost twelve years after the birth of Katherine’s baby, with a world war between, none of their friends knew anything of the story; also, Katherine’s parents were dead by this time and she had never been back to her old home. Thus when Danvers-Marshall had been screened by the security people in the States, nothing had been known and Danvers-Marshall had never volunteered anything. Katherine admitted that he had given deliberately untruthful answers to certain questions and had falsified forms, but this had not been from wrong motives. He was anxious only that nothing should stand in the way of his work; and he was convinced that such a connection in a Communist country would ensure that he was turned down on security grounds.
    “He was probably dead right,” Shaw said grimly. “Especially in the States! He’d be considered wide open to persuasion. That’s precisely the kind of pressure the Communists love to exploit. Now—let’s have a little more about Spalinski.”
    She said, “I can tell you one thing, they could never have pinned Communistic leanings on Stefan—or on Neil, of course.”
    “If Spalinski wasn’t a Communist, why did he return to Poland?”
    She said quietly, “Because he loved his country and had never quite settled to English life. And also because he had been a pre-war officer in the Polish Army. He wanted to fight for Poland in the only way left to him once the war was over—underground.” She added, “When he was still in England, after the war, he became a member of the NTS. I believe he went back to Poland as an agent for them.”
    “ Did he indeed? That’s extremely useful to know!” Here was an avenue that could well yield up whatever it was Spalinski had been trying to tell him; Shaw knew precisely where he could find the British agents of the anti-Communist organization known as the NTS. The Popular
    Labour Alliance—which was the translation of the Russian name—was in fact a Russian set-up but it had many sympathizers and active supporters in the satellite countries. Its aim was consistently to organize anti-Communist forces with the object of fostering revolution by peaceful means. To this eventual end the NTS, as directed from its operational centre in Frankfurt, maintained representatives in all important seaports. These agents contacted seamen from Communist-bloc ships in order to disseminate literature and establish contacts with members inside the Communist countries. In addition the NTS organized frontier crossings into these countries and had even, from time to time, dropped parachutists inside the Communist borders. Perhaps this was how the Spalinskis had entered Poland in 1948—completely with forged papers, to start a new life. The Polish authorities could scarcely have been unaware of Spalinski’s connection with the NTS; as Spalinski, he could hardly have expected to remain alive for long once he had crossed the border. He would have been provided with a completely new identity, but Katherine Danvers-Marshall couldn’t be expected to know about that. . . .
    Shaw asked, “Have you any ideas as to what this threat Spalinski spoke of could be? In your personal relationship with your husband, can you find any clues, any pointers?”
    She was puzzled. “How do you mean, exactly, Commander?”
    Shaw frowned; it was a hard question to answer. Latymer had failed to convince him that a woman’s intuition could pierce the intricacies of a Communist plot in advance. He said off-handedly, “It just occurred to me that you might have noticed something off-beat . . . that’s all really.”
    “Men lurking around Florida with cloaks and daggers?” She laughed, cynically. “Doesn’t the British Defence Staff or whatever it is, know better than that, Commander?”
    “I apologize,” he told her,