Heil Harris!

madman or a politician who took the game seriously. This was Wiltshire. If he knew how to look he might see a badger searching for food in the hedgerow or a kingfisher swooping across the river. A thousand eyes might be staring at him, malevolent ferrets, suspicious moles, German secret service men re-living the triumph of 1934 when according to local legend they had killed a famous Nazi on this road.
    Steed paused by the roadside; nature might be wonderful but at times it could be inconvenient. He stepped over the ditch, went through the trees and selected a large oak. Carefully avoided a nest of toadstools. Whistled a patriotic air. Yes, that was better.
    Ernst Karsten had been a high-up member of the Nazi movement until June 30th, 1934. Then he had arrived in England, fleeing from the bloodbath that was ridding Hitler of his enemies. But a fortnight later Karsten was killed on his motor-cycle. The night of the long knives had caught up with him.
    The ferns crackled as Steed pushed his way back to the lane. His step on the springy gorse was utterly silent. And when he reached the verge he stopped. In the distance he could hear a motor-cycle approaching. Too fast, too noisily, ridden by a maniac who enjoyed the thrill of speed. Slow down, Steed murmured, you’ll kill yourself. He could see shadows further along the ditch, reduced suddenly to sinister silhouettes as the harsh headlamp reached out like an antenna and then swerved round on to the lane ahead.
    The shadows moved nervously. English types; in 1934 one didn’t get excited. One did the job and felt proud of being British. Reminds me, the first one was saying, of that Easter before I went to Eton. Miss Prism took me for a picnic on the downs and I met the pater. I’ll never forget that Easter. Pater scored a century for the village side against the blacksmith’s eleven.
    The motor-bike roared past and then screamed hideously at the sharp bend in the lane; there were sparks as metal scraped the macadam surface of the road, a scream of terror and the deafening crunch of dead metal. Then silence.
    When Steed reached the tangle of metal he found a front wheel still spinning aimlessly. But it was another ten minutes before he found the rider. There was blood dripping down the side of the tree, and the despatch rider was seven feet high with his spine wrapped round a drooping bough.
     
    The ambulance arrived nearly half an hour later and the police were only a few minutes before it. Steed waited nervously till they came. He felt almost responsible for the man’s death. He had been so preoccupied with the past, with the war and — Ernst Karsten, that it seemed as if he had involved the despatch rider in his fantasy. He wandered over to the shadowy figures by the hedge and found predictably they were cows. So why had the man on the motor-cycle been real? Steed went through his wallet and found that his name was Sergeant Alfred Wilkes. Based at Swindon. A member of the Werewolf organisation. There was a photograph in the flap of a sharply pretty girl who signed herself ‘Mary, for ever.’
    A mundane little tragedy. Steed sat on the fence by the curve in the road and looked out for the ambulance. Ernst Karsten had joined the national socialist party because he was a socialist. There had been a lot of them in the northern branch of the organisation. But when Hitler found it necessary to placate the industrialists he had had the socialists eliminated. Karsten should have fled to Russia.
     
    “Sergeant Wilkes was one of our best men, but he was bound to kill himself eventually. He would stand on the pillion at eighty miles an hour.” Colonel Hayburn was a bland man whom Steed had known briefly at Sandhurst. “We try to encourage these high-spirited lads here at Swindon. Nerve, and the spirit of adventure. The trouble with most kids we get today is that they look on the army as a secure job with a pension at the end of it. The thrill of battle is rare and the pride of manhood is meaningless to them.”
    Steed had heard the theory before and he hadn’t travelled twenty miles to hear it again. He muttered something about cold baths and waited for the man to reach the point.
    “Wilkes might have been going anywhere,” said the colonel, “or he might have been coming back. Why does it matter to you?”
    “I don’t know. Perhaps I’m squeamish about road accidents.” Steed accepted a cigar and wondered how to explain that he was merely being superstitious.