have no
orders to give you except to bid you go and steep yourself in a
particular kind of life. Your first duty is to get "atmosphere", as
your friend Peter used to say. Oh, I will tell you where to go and how
to behave. But I can't bid you do anything, only live idly with open
eyes and ears till you have got the "feel" of the situation.'

She stopped and laid a hand on my arm.

'It won't be easy. It would madden me, and it will be a far heavier
burden for a man like you. You have got to sink down deep into the life
of the half-baked, the people whom this war hasn't touched or has
touched in the wrong way, the people who split hairs all day and are
engrossed in what you and I would call selfish little fads. Yes. People
like my aunts and Launcelot, only for the most part in a different
social grade. You won't live in an old manor like this, but among
gimcrack little "arty" houses. You will hear everything you regard as
sacred laughed at and condemned, and every kind of nauseous folly
acclaimed, and you must hold your tongue and pretend to agree. You will
have nothing in the world to do except to let the life soak into you,
and, as I have said, keep your eyes and ears open.'

'But you must give me some clue as to what I should be looking for?'

'My orders are to give you none. Our chiefs--yours and mine--want you
to go where you are going without any kind of _parti pris_. Remember we
are still in the intelligence stage of the affair. The time hasn't yet
come for a plan of campaign, and still less for action.'

'Tell me one thing,' I said. 'Is it a really big thing we're after?'

'A--really--big--thing,' she said slowly and very gravely. 'You and I
and some hundred others are hunting the most dangerous man in all the
world. Till we succeed everything that Britain does is crippled. If we
fail or succeed too late the Allies may never win the victory which is
their right. I will tell you one thing to cheer you. It is in some sort
a race against time, so your purgatory won't endure too long.'

I was bound to obey, and she knew it, for she took my willingness for
granted.

From a little gold satchel she selected a tiny box, and opening it
extracted a thing like a purple wafer with a white St Andrew's Cross on
it.

'What kind of watch have you? Ah, a hunter. Paste that inside the lid.
Some day you may be called on to show it ... One other thing. Buy
tomorrow a copy of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ and get it by heart. You