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seemed to be feeling the effect of all four ailments simultaneously. There was more than the usual violence in his voice. His mounting rage contrasted strangely with the lassitude of the five other guards.
    The prisoners had to content themselves with an exchange of side-glances, as they marched in obedience to Falcone’s shouts through the stone cavern of a hall into the room where thin meals were doled out. Yet this was not the time for food. Usually at this hour of the afternoon those whose names had appeared on the day’s Letter list would be taken to the post office in the Administrative side of the building; those who were less fortunate would be marched to their rooms and locked into bare boredom to await their shift for the mess-hall. And now they had been gathered together, jammed up against the longtables and fixed benches in a room which had never been built to contain so many at once. This break with routine stirred the men for a moment, but the sudden undercurrent of excitement ebbed away as the solid door, which separated this room from the hall, was closed decisively. There was coughing, shuffling of feet as men tried to keep their balance in the crowd. There was Falcone’s vigilant eyes and sharp tongue calling “Attention!”
    From the courtyard at the back of the castle came the sound of grinding brakes. The trucks had arrived. But speculation was already dying. The boarded windows blotted out sight of a sky stretching to freedom. Under the naked bulbs, with their wavering electric light, the prisoners’ faces were still more haggard. The animation of the exercise yard had gone, and with it the moment’s forgetfulness. Here they remembered again.

2
    The men waited, outwardly patient (so much they had learned during their captivity) even if their thoughts were unprintable, and chalked up another petty annoyance on the Italian score. There weren’t any cases of open brutality at this camp. Not since the Swiss Representative had two of the worst bullies removed from the guard room. The rest of the gaolers weren’t so bad, considering how bad the deposed two had been; for the most part they were inoffensive creatures, with weak hearts and stout stomachs, determined to keep their jobs so pleasantly far from the battlefield, and not averse to stretching their own rations with a pilfered package or two. The prisoners had been quick to learn: a package, with a tin of meat or a slab of chocolate neatly filched out while it was being examined for contraband, meant a bribable gaoler. Not that judicious bribing meant real kindness. But it did mean a cigarette from the town, or some little item which the Camp Commissary didn’t haveon sale, even if the price charged by the obliging gaoler secured him a 600 per cent profit.
    * * *
    The minutes passed. The men were still held to attention. Then the uneasy silence was broken suddenly, and the men’s thoughts switched from their own grievances over to the dulled sound of heavy boots shuffling through the hall outside. Peter Lennox’s eyes left Falcone’s savage little face and turned towards the door. Its solid thickness depressed him still more. What’s going on? he wondered again. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. Any new developments in this camp meant complications in his escape. It was too near, he thought, it was too near... The nagging worry of today and yesterday suddenly sharpened into anger.
    “Hell!” Ferry said suddenly, and relaxed ostentatiously. That would mean another two weeks of “solitary” in a basement cell. Ferry had only recently completed such a turn. But his name had been on the Letter list this morning, and he hadn’t received any mail for over four months. “Hell!” he said again, and stared into Falcone’s bulging eyes.
    “And hell!” another voice said. Someone laughed, and the laughter increased. The Italian guards glanced uneasily at each other: here was another of these mad outbursts by the Inglesi. It began with