Ishmaelia, that hitherto happy commonwealth, cannot conveniently be approached from any part of the world. It lies in the North-Easterly quarter of Africa, giving colour by its position and shape to the metaphor often used of it--'the Heart of the Dark Continent'. Desert, forest and swamp, frequented by furious nomads, protect its approaches from those more favoured regions which the statesmen of Berlin and Geneva have put to school under European masters. An inhospitable race of squireens cultivate the highlands and pass their days in the perfect leisure which those peoples alone enjoy who are untroubled by the speculative or artistic itch.

Various courageous Europeans in the seventies of the last century came to Ishmaelia, or near it, furnished with suitable equipment of cuckoo clocks, phonographs, opera hats, draft-treaties and flags of the nations which they had been obliged to leave. They came as missionaries, ambassadors, tradesmen, prospectors, natural scientists. None returned. They were eaten, every one of them; some raw, others stewed and seasoned--according to local usage and the calendar (for the better sort of Ishmaelites have been Christian for many centuries and will not publicly eat human flesh, uncooked, in Lent, without special and costly dispensation from their bishop). Punitive expeditions suffered more harm than they inflicted and in the nineties humane counsels prevailed. The European powers independently decided that they did not want that profitless piece of territory; that the one thing less desirable than seeing a neighbour established there, was the trouble of taking it themselves. Accordingly, by general consent, it was ruled off the maps and its immunity guaranteed. As there was no form of government common to the peoples thus segregated, nor tie of language, history, habit or belief, they were called a Republic. A committee of jurists, drawn from the Universities, composed a constitution, providing a bicameral legislature, proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote, an executive removable by the President on the recommendation of both houses, an independent judicature, religious liberty, secular education, habeas corpus, free trade, joint stock banking, chartered corporations, and numerous other agreeable features. A pious old darky named Mr Samuel Smiles Jackson from Alabama was put in as the first President; a choice whose wisdom seemed to be confirmed by history for, forty years later, a Mr Rathbone Jackson held his grandfather's office in succession to his father Pankhurst, while the chief posts of the state were held by Messrs Garnett Jackson, Mander Jackson, Huxley Jackson, his uncle and brothers, and by Mrs Athol (nee Jackson) his aunt. So strong was the love which the Republic bore the family that General Elections were known as 'Jackson Ngomas' wherever and whenever they were held. These, by the constitution, should have been quinquennial, but since it was found in practice that difficulty of communication rendered it impossible for the constituencies to vote simultaneously, the custom had grown up for the receiving officer and the Jackson candidate to visit in turn such parts of the Republic as were open to travel, and entertain the neighbouring chiefs to a six days banquet at their camp, after which the stupefied aborigines recorded their votes in the secret and solemn manner prescribed by the constitution.

It had been found expedient to merge the functions of national defence and inland revenue in an office then held in the capable hands of General Gollancz Jackson; his forces were in two main companies, the Ishmaelite Mule Tax-gathering Force and the Rifle Excisemen with a small Artillery Death Duties Corps for use against the heirs of powerful noblemen; it was their job to raise the funds whose enlightened expenditure did so much to enhance President Jackson's prestige among the rare foreign visitors to his capital. Towards the end of each financial year the General's flying columns would lumber out into the surrounding country on the heels of the fugitive population and return in time for budget day laden with the spoils of the less nimble; coffee and hides, silver coinage, slaves, livestock and firearms would be assembled and assessed in the Government warehouses; salaries would be paid, covering in kind deposited at the bank for the national overdraft, and donations made, in the presence of the diplomatic corps, to the Jackson Non-sectarian Co-educational Technical Schools and other humane institutions. On the foundation of the League of Nations, Ishmaelia became a member.

Under this liberal and progressive regime, the republic may be said, in some way, to have prospered. It is true that the capital city of Jacksonburg became unduly large, its alleys and cabins thronged with landless men of native and alien blood, while the country immediately surrounding it became depopulated, so that General Gollancz Jackson was obliged to start earlier and march further in search of the taxes; but on the main street there were agencies for many leading American and European firms; there was, moreover, a railway to the Red Sea coast, bringing a steady stream of manufactured imports which relieved the Ishmaelites of the need to practise their few clumsy crafts, while the adverse trade balance was rectified by an elastic system of bankruptcy law. In the remote provinces, beyond the reach of General Gollancz, the Ishmaelites followed their traditional callings of bandit, slave or gentlemen of leisure, happily ignorant of their connection with the town of which a few of them, perhaps, had vaguely and incredulously heard.

Occasional travelling politicians came to Jacksonburg, were entertained and conducted round the town, and returned with friendly reports. Big game hunters on safari from the neighbouring dominions sometimes strayed into the hinterland and, if they returned at all, dined out for years to come on the experience. Until a few months before William Boot's departure no one in Europe knew of the deep currents that were flowing in Ishmaelite politics; nor did many people know of them in Ishmaelia.

It began during Christmas week with a domestic row in the Jackson family. By Easter the city, so lately a model of internal amity, was threatened by civil war.

A Mr Smiles Soum was reputed to lead the Fascists. He was only one-quarter Jackson (being grandson in the female line of President Samuel Jackson), and three-quarters pure Ishmaelite. He was thus by right of cousinship, admitted to the public pay-roll, but he ranked low in the family and had been given a no more lucrative post than that of Assistant Director of Public Morals.

Quarrels among the ruling family were not unusual, particularly in the aftermath of weddings, funerals, and other occasions of corporate festivity, and were normally settled by a readjustment of public offices. It was common knowledge in the bazaars and drink-shops that Mr Smiles was not satisfied with his post at the Ministry of Public Morals, but it was a breach of precedent and, some thought, the portent of a new era in Ishmaelite politics, when he followed up his tiff by disappearing from Jacksonburg and issuing a manifesto, which, it was thought by those who knew him best, he could not conceivably have composed himself.

The White Shirt movement which he called into being had little in common with the best traditions of Ishmaelite politics. Briefly his thesis was this: the Jacksons were effete, tyrannical and alien, the Ishmaelites were a white race who, led by Smiles, must purge themselves of the Negro taint; the Jacksons had kept Ishmaelia out of the Great War and had thus deprived her of the fruits of victory; the Jacksons had committed Ishmaelia to the control of international Negro finance and secret subversive Negro Bolshevism, by joining the League of Nations; they were responsible for the various endemic and epidemic diseases that ravaged crops, livestock and human beings; all Ishmaelites who were suffering the consequences of imprudence or ill-fortune in their financial or matrimonial affairs were the victims of international Jacksonism; Smiles was their Leader.

The Jacksons rose above it. Life in Ishmaelia went on as before and the Armenian merchant in Main Street who had laid in a big consignment of white cotton shirtings found himself with the stuff on his hands. In Moscow, Harlem, Bloomsbury and Liberia, however, keener passions were aroused. In a hundred progressive weeklies and Left Study Circles the matter was taken up and the cause of the Jacksons restarted in ideological form.

Smiles represented international finance, the subjugation of the worker, sacerdotalism; Ishmaelia was black, the Jacksons were black, collective security and democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat were black. Most of this was unfamiliar stuff to the Jacksons but tangible advantages followed. A subscription list was opened in London and received support in chapels and universities; wide publicity was given to the receipt in Ishmaelia of three unused penny stamps addressed to the President by 'A little worker's daughter in Bedford Square'.

In the chief cities of Europe a crop of 'Patriot Consulates' sprang up devoted to counter-propaganda.

Newspapermen flocked to Jacksonburg. It was the wet season when business was usually at a standstill; everything boomed this year. At the end of August the rains would stop. Then, everybody outside Ishmaelia agreed, there would be a war. But, with the happy disposition of their race, the Ishmaelites settled down to exploit and enjoy their temporary good fortune.

****

The Hotel Liberty, Jacksonburg, was folded in the peace of Saturday afternoon, soon to be broken by the arrival of the weekly train from the coast but, at the moment, at four o'clock, serene and all-embracing. The wireless station was shut and the fifteen journalists were at rest. Mrs Earl Russell Jackson padded in stockinged feet across the bare boards of the lounge looking for a sizeable cigar-end, found one, screwed it into her pipe, and settled down in the office rocking-chair to read her bible. Outside--and, in one or two places, inside--the rain fell in torrents. It rang on the iron roof in a continuous, restful monotone; it swirled and gurgled in the channels it had cut in the terrace outside; it seeped under the front door in an opaque pool. Mrs Earl Russell Jackson puffed at her pipe, licked her thumb and turned a page of the good book. It was very pleasant when all those noisy white men were shut away in their rooms; quite like old times; they brought in good money these journalists--heavens what she was charging them!--but they were a great deal of trouble; brought in a nasty kind of customer too--Hindoos, Ishmaelites from up country, poor whites and near-whites from the town, police officers, the off-scourings of the commercial cafés and domino saloons, interpreters and informers and guides, not the kind of person Mrs Earl Russell Jackson liked to see about her hotel. What with washing and drinking and telephoning and driving about in the mud in taxi-cabs and developing films and cross-questioning her old and respectable patrons, there never seemed a moment's peace.

Even now they were not all idle; in their austere trade they had forfeited the arts of leisure.

Upstairs in his room Mr Wenlock Jakes was spending the afternoon at work on his forthcoming book Under the Ermine. It was to be a survey of the undercurrents of English political and social life. 'I shall never forget, [he typed], the evening of King Edward's abdication. I was dining at the Savoy Grill as the guest of Silas Shock of the New York Guardian. His guests were well chosen, six of the most influential men and women in England; men and women such as only exist in England, who are seldom in the news but who control the strings of the national pulse. On my left was Mrs Tiffin the wife of the famous publisher; on the other side was Prudence Blank, who has been described to me as "the Mary Selena Wilmark of Britain", opposite was John Titmuss whose desk at the News Chronicle holds more secrets of state than any ambassador's... big business was represented by John Nought, agent of the Credential Assurance Co.... I at once raised the question of the hour. Not one of that brilliant company expressed any opinion. There, in a nutshell, you have England, her greatness--and her littleness.'

Jakes was to be paid an advance of 20,000 dollars for this book.

In the next room were four furious Frenchmen. They were dressed as though for the cinema camera in breeches, open shirts, and brand-new chocolate-coloured riding boots cross-laced from bottom to top; each carried a bandolier of cartridges round his waist and a revolver-holster on his hip. Three were seated, the fourth strode before them, jingling his spurs as he turned and stamped on the bare boards. They were composing a memorandum of their wrongs.

We, the undersigned members of the French Press in Ishmaelia, they had written, protest categorically and in the most emphatic manner against the partiality shown against us by the Ishmaelite Press Bureau and at the discourteous lack of co-operation of our so-called colleagues...

In the next room, round a little table, sat Shumble, Whelper, Pigge and a gigantic, bemused Swede. Shumble and Whelper and Pigge were special correspondents; the Swede was resident correspondent to a syndicate of Scandinavian papers--and more; he was Swedish Vice-Consul, head surgeon at the Swedish Mission Hospital, and proprietor of the combined Tea, Bible and Chemist shop which was the centre of European life in Jacksonburg; a pre-crisis resident of high standing. All the journalists tried to make friends with him; all succeeded; but they found him disappointing as a news source.

These four were playing cards.

'I will go four no hearts,' said Erik Olafsen.

'You can't do that.'

'Why cannot I do that? I have no hearts.'

'But we explained just now...'

'Will you please be so kind and explain another time?'

They explained; the cards were thrown in and the patient Swede collected them in his enormous hand. Shumble began to deal.

'Where's Hitchcock today?' he asked.

'He's onto something. I tried his door. It was locked.'

'His shutters have been up all day.'

'I looked through the keyhole,' said Shumble. 'You bet he's onto something.'

'D'you think he's found the fascist headquarters?'

'Wouldn't put it past him. Whenever that man disappears you can be sure that a big story is going to break.'

'If you please what is Hitchcock?' asked the Swede.

****

Mr Pappenhacker of The Twopence was playing with a toy train--a relic of College at Winchester, with which he invariably travelled. In his youth he had delighted to address it in Latin Alcaics and to derive Greek names for each part of the mechanism. Now it acted as a sedative to his restless mind.

The Twopence did not encourage habits of expensive cabling. That day he had composed a long 'turnover' on Ishmaelite conditions and posted it in the confidence that, long before it arrived at London, conditions would be unrecognizable.

Six other journalists of six nationalities were spending their day of leisure in this hotel. Time lay heavily on them. The mail train was due sometime that evening to relieve their tedium.

Fifty yards distant in the annexe, secluded from the main block of the hotel by a waterlogged garden, lay Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock, fast asleep. The room was in half-darkness; door and windows were barred. On the table, beside his typewriter, stood a primus stove. There was a small heap of tins and bottles in the corner. On the walls hung the official, wildly deceptive map of Ishmaelia; a little flag in the centre of Jacksonburg marked Hitchcock's present position. He slept gently; his lips under the fine, white moustache curved in a barely perceptible smile of satisfaction. For reasons of his own he was in retirement.

And the granite sky wept.

****

In the rainy season it was impossible to say, within twelve hours or so, the time of the train's arrival. Today it had made a good journey. It was still light when the telephone rang in Mrs Jackson's office to tell her that it had left the last station and would soon be there. Instantly the Hotel Liberty came to life. The hall-boy donned his peaked cap and set out with Mrs Jackson to look for clients. Shumble, Whelper and Pigge left their game and put on their mackintoshes; the Frenchmen struggled into Spahi capes. The six other journalists emerged from their rooms and began shouting for taxis. Paleologue, Jakes's jackal, reported for duty and was despatched to observe arrivals. The greater, and more forbidding part of the population of Jacksonburg was assembled on the platform to greet William's arrival.

He and Corker had had a journey of constant annoyance. For three days they had been crawling up from the fierce heat of the coast into the bleak and sodden highlands. There were four first-class compartments on their train; one was reserved for a Swiss ticket collector. In the remaining three, in painful proximity, sat twenty-four Europeans, ten of whom were the advance party of the Excelsior Movie-Sound News of America. The others were journalists. They had lunched, dined and slept at the rest houses on the line. During the first day, when they were crossing the fiery coastal plain, there had been no ice; on the second night, in the bush, no mosquito nets; on the third night, in the mountains, no blankets. Only the little Swiss official enjoyed tolerable comfort. At every halt fellow employees brought him refreshment--frosted beer, steaming coffee, baskets of fruit; at the restaurants there were special dishes for him and rocking-chairs in which to digest them; there were bedrooms with fine brass bedsteads and warm hip-baths. When Corker and his friends discovered that he was only the ticket collector they felt very badly about this.

Some time during the second day's journey the luggage van came detached from the rest of the train. Its loss was discovered that evening when the passengers wanted their mosquito nets.

'Here's where that little beaver can be useful,' said Corker.

He and William went to ask his help. He sat in his rocking chair smoking a thin, mild cheroot, his hands folded over his firm little dome of stomach. They stood and told him of their troubles. He thanked them and said it was quite all right.

'Such things often happen. I always travel with all my possessions in the compartment with me.'

'I shall write to the Director of the Line about it,' said Corker.

'Yes that is the best thing to do. It is always possible that the van will be traced.'

'I've got some very valuable curios in my luggage.'

'Unfortunate. I am afraid it is less likely to be recovered.'

'D'you know who we are?'

'Yes,' said the Swiss, with a little shudder. 'Yes, I know.'

By the end of the journey Corker had come to hate this man. And his nettle-rash was on him again. He reached Jacksonburg in a bad humour.

Shumble, Whelper and Pigge knew Corker; they had loitered together of old on many a doorstep and forced an entry into many a stricken home. 'Thought you'd be on this train,' said Shumble. 'Your name's posted for collect facilities in the radio station. What sort of trip?'

'Lousy. How are things here?'

'Lousy. Who's with you?'

Corker told him, adding: 'Who's here already?'

Shumble told him.

'All the old bunch.'

'Yes, and there's a highbrow yid from The Twopence--but we don't count him.'

'No, no competition there.'

'The Twopence isn't what you would call a newspaper is it?... Still there's enough to make things busy and there's more coming. They seem to have gone crazy about this story at home. Jakes is urgenting eight hundred words a day.'

'Jakes here? Well there must be something in it.'

'Who's the important little chap with the beard?'--they looked towards the customs shed through which the Swiss was being obsequiously conducted.

'You'd think he was an ambassador,' said Corker bitterly.

The black porter of the Hotel Liberty interrupted them. Corker began to describe in detail his lost elephant. Shumble disappeared in the crowd.

'Too bad, too bad,' said the porter. 'Very bad men on railway.'

'But it was registered through.'

'Maybe he'll turn up.'

'Do things often get lost on your damned awful line?'

'Most always.'

All round them the journalists were complaining about their losses. '...Five miles of film,' said the leader of the Excelsior Movie-Sound News. 'How am I going to get that through the expenses department?'

'Very bad men on railway. They like film plenty--him make good fire.'

William alone was reconciled to the disaster; his cleft sticks were behind him; it was as though, on a warm day, he had suddenly shed an enormous, fur-lined motoring-coat.

****

So far as their profession allowed them time for such soft feelings, Corker and Pigge were friends.

'...It was large and very artistic,' said Corker, describing his elephant, 'just the kind of thing Madge likes.'

Pigge listened sympathetically. The bustle was over. William and Corker had secured a room together at the Liberty; their sparse hand-luggage was unpacked and Pigge had dropped in for a drink.

'What's the situation?' asked William, when Corker had exhausted his information--though not his resentment--about the shawls and cigarette boxes.

'Lousy,' said Pigge.

'I've been told to go to the front.'

'That's what we all want to do. But in the first place there isn't any front and in the second place we couldn't get to it if there was. You can't move outside the town without a permit and you can't get a permit.'

'Then what are you sending?' asked Corker.

'Colour stuff,' said Pigge, with great disgust. 'Preparations in the threatened capital, soldiers of fortune, mystery men, foreign influences, volunteers... there isn't any hard news. The fascist headquarters are up country somewhere in the mountains. No one knows where. They're going to attack when the rain stops in about ten days. You can't get a word out of the government. They won't admit there is a crisis.'

'What, not with Jakes and Hitchcock here?' said Corker in wonder. 'What's this President like anyway?'

'Lousy.'

'Where is Hitchcock, by the way?'

'That's what we all want to know.'

****

'Where's Hitchcock?' asked Jakes.

Paleologue shook his head sadly. He was finding Jakes a hard master. For over a week he had been on his pay-roll. It seemed a lifetime. But the pay was enormous and Paleologue was a good family man; he had two wives to support and countless queer-coloured children on whom he lavished his love. Until the arrival of the newspaper men--that decisive epoch in Ishmaelite social history--he had been dragoman and interpreter at the British Legation, on wages which--though supplemented from time to time by the sale to his master's colleagues of any waste-paper he could find lying around the Chancellery--barely sufficed for the necessaries of his household; occasionally he had been able to provide amusement for bachelor attachés; occasionally he sold objects of native art to the ladies of the compound. But it had been an exiguous living. Now he was getting fifty American dollars a week. It was a wage beyond the bounds of his wildest ambition... but Mr Jakes was very exacting and very peremptory.

'Who was on the train?'

'No one except the newspaper gentlemen and M Giraud.'

'Who's he?'

'He is in the Railway. He went down to the coast with his wife last week, to see her off to Europe.'

'Yes, yes, I remember. That was the "panic-stricken refugees" story. No one else?'

'No, Mr Jakes.'

'Well go find Hitchcock.'

'Yes, sir.'

Jakes turned his attention to his treatise. The dominant member of the new cabinet, he typed, was colourful Kingsley-Wood...

****

Nobody knew exactly at what time or through what channels word went round the Hotel Liberty that Shumble had got a story. William heard it from Corker who heard it from Pigge. Pigge had guessed it from something odd in Shumble's manner during dinner--something abstracted, something of high excitement painfully restrained. He confided in Whelper. 'He's been distinctly rummy ever since he came back from the station. Have you noticed it?'

'Yes,' said Whelper. 'It sticks out a mile. If you ask me he's got something under his hat.'

'Just what I thought,' said Pigge gloomily.

And before bedtime everyone in the hotel knew it.

The French were furious. They went in a body to their Legation. 'It is too much,' they said. 'Shumble is receiving secret information from the Government. Hitchcock of course is pro-British and now, at a moment like this, when as Chairman of the Foreign Press Association he should forward our protest officially to the proper quarter, he has disappeared.'

'Gentlemen,' said the Minister. 'Gentlemen. It is Saturday night. No Ishmaelite official will be available until noon on Monday.'

'The Press Bureau is draconic, arbitrary and venal; it is in the hands of a clique; we appeal for justice.'

'Certainly, without fail, on Monday afternoon'...

****

'We'll stay awake in shifts,' said Whelper, 'and listen. He may talk in his sleep.'

'I suppose you've searched his papers?'

'Useless. He never takes a note'...

****

Paleologue threw up his hands hopelessly.

'Have his boy bring you his message on the way to the wireless station.'

'Mr Shumble always take it himself.'

'Well go find out what it is. I'm busy'...

****

Shumble sat in the lounge radiating importance. Throughout the evening everyone in turn sat by his side, offered him whisky and casually reminded him of past acts of generosity. He kept his own counsel. Even the Swede got wind of what was going and left home to visit the hotel.

'Schombol,' he said, 'I think you have some good news, no?'

'Me?' said Shumble. 'Wish I had.'

'But forgive me please, everyone say you have some good news. Now I have to telegraph to my newspapers in Scandinavia. Will you please tell me what your news is?'

'I don't know anything, Erik.'

'What a pity. It is so long since I sent my paper any good news.'

And he mounted his motor cycle and drove sadly away into the rain.

****

At a banquet given in his honour Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock once modestly attributed his great success in life to the habit of 'getting up earlier than the other fellow'. But this was partly metaphorical, partly false and in any case wholly relative, for journalists are as a rule late risers. It was seldom that in England, in those night-refuges they called their homes, Shumble, Whelper, Pigge or Corker reached the bathroom before ten o'clock. Nor did they in Jacksonburg, for there was no bath in the Hotel Liberty; but they and their fellows had all been awake since dawn.

This was due to many causes--the racing heart, nausea, dry mouth and smarting eyes, the false hangover produced by the vacuous mountain air; to the same symptoms of genuine hangover for, with different emotions, they had been drinking deeply the evening before in the anxiety over Shumble's scoop; but more especially to the structural defects of the building. The rain came on sharp at sunrise and every bedroom had a leak somewhere in its iron ceiling. And with the rain and the drips came the rattle of Wenlock Jakes's typewriter, as he hammered away at another chapter of Under the Ermine. Soon the bleak passages resounded with cries of 'Boy!' 'Water!' 'Coffee!'

As early arrivals Shumble, Whelper and Pigge might, like the Frenchmen, have had separate rooms, but they preferred to live at close quarters and watch one another's movements. The cinema men had had little choice. There were two rooms left; the Contacts and Relations Pioneer Co-ordinating Director occupied one; the rest of the outfit had the other.

'Boy!' cried Corker, standing barefoot in a dry spot at the top of the stairs. 'Boy!'

'Boy!' cried Whelper.

'Boy!' cried the Frenchmen. 'It is formidable. The types attend to no one except the Americans and the English.'

'They have been bribed. I saw Shumble giving money to one of the boys yesterday.'

'We must protest.'

'I have protested.'

'We must protest again. We must demonstrate.'

'Boy! Boy! Boy!' shouted everyone in that hotel, but nobody came.

In the annexe, Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock slipped a raincoat over his pyjamas and crept like a cat into the bushes.

****

Presently Paleologue arrived to make his morning report to his master. He met Corker at the top of the stairs. 'You got to have boy for yourself in this country,' he said.

'Yes,' said Corker. 'It seems I ought.'

'I fix him. I find you very good boy from Adventist Mission, read, write, speak English, sing hymns, everything.'

'Sounds like hell to me.'

'Please?'

'Oh, all right, it doesn't matter. Send him along.'

In this way Paleologue was able to supply servants for all the newcomers. Later the passages were clustered with moon-faced mission-taught Ishmaelites. These boys had many responsibilities. They had to report their masters' doings, morning and evening, to the secret police; they had to steal copies of their masters' cables for Wenlock Jakes. The normal wage for domestic service was a dollar a week; the journalists paid five, but Paleologue pocketed the difference. In the meantime they formulated new and ingenious requests for cash in advance--for new clothes, funerals, weddings, fines, and entirely imaginary municipal taxes: whatever they exacted, Paleologue came to know about it and levied his share.

****

Inside the bedroom it was sunless, draughty and damp; all round there was rattling and shouting and tramping and the monotonous splash and patter and gurgle of rain. Corker's clothing lay scattered about the room. Corker sat on his bed stirring condensed milk into his tea. 'Time you were showing a leg, brother,' he said.

'Yes.'

'If you ask me we were all a bit tight last night.'

'Yes.'

'Feeling lousy?'

'Yes.'

'It'll soon pass off when you get on your feet. Are my things in your way?'

'Yes.'

Corker lit his pipe and a frightful stench filled the room. 'Don't think much of this tobacco,' he said. 'Home grown. I bought it off a nigger on the way up. Care to try some?'

'No, thanks,' said William and rose queasily from his bed.

While they dressed Corker spoke in a vein of unaccustomed pessimism. 'This isn't the kind of story I'm used to,' he said. 'We aren't getting anywhere. We've got to work out a routine, make contacts, dig up some news sources, jolly up the locals a bit. I don't feel settled.'

'Is that my toothbrush you're using?'

'Hope not. Has it got a white handle?'

'Yes.'

'Then I am. Silly mistake to make; mine's green... but, as I was saying, we've got to make friends in this town. Funny thing, I don't get that sense of popularity I expect.' He looked at himself searchingly in the single glass. 'Suffer much from dandruff?'

'Not particularly.'

'I do. They say it comes from acidity. It's a nuisance. Gets all over one's collar and one has to look smart in our job. Good appearance is half the battle.'

'D'you mind if I have my brushes?'

'Not a bit, brother, just finished with them... Between ourselves that's always been Shumble's trouble--bad appearance. But of course a journalist is welcome everywhere, even Shumble. That's what's so peculiar about this town. As a rule there is one thing you can always count on in our job--popularity. There are plenty of disadvantages I grant you, but you are liked and respected. Ring people up any hour of the day or night, butt into their houses uninvited, make them answer a string of damn-fool questions when they want to do something else--they like it. Always a smile and the best of everything for the gentlemen of the Press. But I don't feel it here. I damn well feel the exact opposite. I ask myself are we known, loved and trusted and the answer comes back "No, Corker, you are not."'

There was a knock on the door, barely audible above the general hubbub, and Pigge entered.

'Morning, chaps. Cable for Corker. It came last night. Sorry it's been opened. They gave it to me and I didn't notice the address.'

'Oh, no?' said Corker.

'Well, there's nothing in it. Shumble had that query yesterday.'

Corker read: INTERNATIONAL GENDARMERIE PROPOSED PREVENT CLASH TEST REACTIONS UNNATURAL. 'Crumbs they must be short of news in London. What's Gendarmerie?'

'A cissy word for cops,' said Pigge.

'Well it's a routine job. I suppose I must do something about it. Come round with me... We may make some contacts,' he added not very hopefully.

Mrs Earl Russell Jackson was in the lounge. 'Good morning, madam,' said Corker, 'and how are you today?'

'I aches,' said Mrs Jackson with simple dignity. 'I aches terrible all round the sit-upon. It's the damp.'

'The Press are anxious for your opinion upon a certain question, Mrs Jackson.'

'Aw, go ask somebody else. They be coming to mend that roof just as quick as they can and they can't come no quicker than that not for the Press nor nobody.'

'See what I mean, brother--not popular.' Then turning again to Mrs Jackson with his most elaborate manner he said, 'Mrs Jackson you misunderstand me. This is a matter of public importance. What do the women of Ishmaelia think of the proposal to introduce a force of international police?'

Mrs Jackson took the question badly. 'I will not stand for being called a woman in my own house,' she said. 'And I've never had the police here but once and that was when I called them myself for to take out a customer that went lunatic and hanged himself.' And she swept wrathfully away to her office and her rocking-chair.

'Staunchly anti-interventionist,' said Corker. 'Doyen of Jacksonburg hostesses pans police project as unwarrantable interference with sanctity of Ishmaelite home... but it's not the way I'm used to being treated.'

They went to the front door to call a taxi. Half a dozen were waiting in the courtyard; their drivers, completely enveloped in sodden blankets, dozed on the front seats. The hotel guard prodded one of them with the muzzle of his gun. The bundle stirred; a black face appeared, then a brilliant smile. The car lurched forward through the mud.

'The morning round,' said Corker. 'Where to first?'

'Why not the station to ask about the luggage?'

'Why not? Station,' he roared at the chauffeur. 'Understand--station? Puff-puff.'

'All right,' said the chauffeur, and drove off at break-neck speed through the rain.

'I don't believe this is the way,' said William.

They were bowling up the main street of Jacksonburg. A strip of tarmac ran down the middle; on either side were rough tracks for mules, men, cattle and camels; beyond these the irregular outline of the commercial quarter; a bank in shoddy concrete, a Greek provisions store in timber and tin, the Café de La Bourse, the Carnegie Library, the Ciné-Parlant, and numerous gutted sites, relics of an epidemic of arson some years back when an Insurance Company had imprudently set up shop in the city.

'I'm damn well sure it's not,' said Corker. 'Hi, you, Station, you black booby.'

The coon turned round in his seat and smiled. 'All right,' he said.

The car swerved off the motor road and bounced perilously among the caravans. The chauffeur turned back, shouted opprobriously at a camel driver and regained the tarmac.

Armenian liquor, Goanese tailoring, French stationery, Italian hardware, Swiss plumbing, Indian haberdashery, the statue of the first President Jackson, the statue of the second President Jackson, the American Welfare Centre, the latest and most successful innovation in Ishmaelite life--Popotakis's Ping-Pong Parlour--sped past in the rain. The mule trains plodded by, laden with rock salt and cartridges and paraffin for the villages of the interior.

'Kidnapped,' said Corker cheerfully. 'That's what's happened to us. What a story.'

But at last they came to a stop.

'This isn't the station, you baboon.'

'Yes, all right.'

They were at the Swedish Consulate, Surgery, Bible and Tea Shop. Erik Olafsen came out to greet them.

'Good morning. Please to come in.'

'We told this ape to drive us to the station.'

'Yes, it is a custom here. When they have a white man they do not understand, they always drive him to me. Then I can explain. But please to come in. We are just to start our Sunday hymn singing.'

'Sorry, brother. Have to wait till next Sunday. We've got work to do.'

'They say Schombol has some news.'

'Not really?'

'No, not really. I asked him... but you can do no work here on Sunday. Everything is close.'

So they found. They visited a dozen barred doors and returned disconsolately to luncheon. One native whom they questioned fled precipitately at the word 'police'. That was all they could learn about local reactions.

'We've got to give it up for the day,' said Corker. 'Reactions are easy anyway. I'll just say that the government will co-operate with the democracies of the world in any measures calculated to promote peace and justice, but are confident in their ability to maintain order without foreign intervention. This is going to be a day of rest for Corker.'

Shumble kept his story under his hat and furtively filed a long message--having waited for a moment when the wireless station was empty of his colleagues.

So the rain fell and the afternoon and evening were succeeded by another night and another morning.

****

William and Corker went to the Press Bureau. Dr Benito, the director, was away but his clerk entered their names in his ledger and gave them cards of identity. They were small orange documents, originally printed for the registration of prostitutes. The space for thumb-print was now filled with a passport photograph and at the head the word 'journalist' substituted in neat Ishmaelite characters.

'What sort of bloke is this Benito?' Corker asked.

'Creepy,' said Pigge.

****

They visited their Consulate, five miles out of town in the Legation compound. Here, too, they had to register and, in addition, buy a guinea stamp. The Vice-Consul was a young man with untidy ginger hair. When he took William's passport he stared and said, 'By God, you're Beastly.'

William said, 'Moke.'

These two had known each other at their private school. Corker was nonplussed.

'What the hell are you doing here?' said the Vice-Consul.

'I'm supposed to be a journalist.'

'God, how funny. Come to dinner?'

'Yes.'

'Tonight?'

'Yes.'

'Grand.'

Outside the door Corker said, 'He might have asked me too. Just the kind of contact I can do with.'

****

At lunch-time that day Shumble's story broke.

Telegrams in Jacksonburg were delivered irregularly and rather capriciously, for none of the messengers could read. The usual method was to wait until half a dozen had accumulated and then send a messenger to hawk them about the most probable places until they were claimed. On precisely such an errand a bowed old warrior arrived in the dining-room of the Liberty and offered William and Corker a handful of envelopes. 'Righto, old boy,' said Corker, 'I'll take charge of these.' He handed the man a tip, was kissed on the knee in return, and proceeded to glance through the bag. 'One for you, one for me, one for everyone in the bunch.'

William opened his. It read: BADLY LEFT DISGUISED SOVIET AMBASSADOR RUSH FOLLOW BEAST. 'Will you please translate?'

'Bad news, brother. Look at mine. ECHO SPLASHING SECRET ARRIVAL RED AGENT FLASH INTERVIEW UNNATURAL. Let's see some more.'

He opened six before he was caught. All dealt with the same topic. The Twopence said: KINDLY INVESTIGATE AUTHENTICITY ALLEGED SPECIAL SOVIET DELEGATION STOP. CABLE DEFERRED RATE. Jakes's was the fullest: LONDON ECHO REPORTS RUSSIAN ENVOY ARRIVED SATURDAY DISGUISED RAILWAY OFFICIAL STOP MOSCOW DENIES STOP DENY OR CONFIRM WITH DETAILS. Shumble's said: WORLD SCOOP CONGRATULATIONS CONTINUE ECHO.

'D'you see now?' said Corker.

'I think so.'

'It's that nasty bit of work with the beard. I knew he was going to give us trouble.'

'But he is a railway employee. I saw him in the ticket office today when I went to ask about my luggage.'

'Of course he is. But what good does that do us? Shumble's put the story across. Now we've got to find a red agent or boil.'

'Or explain the mistake.'

'Risky, old boy, and unprofessional. It's the kind of thing you can do once or twice in a real emergency but it doesn't pay. They don't like printing denials--naturally. Shakes public confidence in the Press. Besides it looks as if we weren't doing our job properly. It would be too easy if every time a chap got a scoop the rest of the bunch denied it. And I will hand it to Shumble, it was a pretty idea... the beard helped of course... might have thought of it myself if I hadn't been so angry about the luggage.'

Other journalists were now crowding round claiming their radiograms. Corker surrendered them reluctantly. He had not had time to open Pigge's. 'Here you are, brother,' he said. 'I've been guarding it for you. Some of these chaps might want to see inside.'

'You don't say,' said Pigge coldly. 'Well, they're welcome.'

It was like all the rest. BOLSHEVIST MISSION REPORTED OVERTAKEN CONTROL RUSH FACTS.

The hunt was up. No one had time for luncheon that day. They were combing the town for Russians.

Wenlock Jakes alone retained his composure. He ate in peace and then summoned Paleologue. 'We're killing this story,' he said. 'Go round to the Press Bureau and have Benito issue an official dementi before four o'clock. See it's posted in the hotel and in the wireless station. And put it about among the boys that the story's dead.'

He spoke gravely, for he hated to kill a good story.

So the word went round.

A notice was posted in French and English at all the chief European centres of the capital.

It is categorically denied that there is any Russian diplomatic representative accredited to the Republic of Ishmaelia. Nor is there any truth in the report, spread by subversive interests, that a Russian national of any description whatever arrived in Jacksonburg last Saturday. The train was occupied exclusively by representatives of the foreign Press and an employee of the Railway.   GABRIEL BENITO Minister of Foreign Affairs and Propaganda.

The Press acted in unison and Shumble's scoop died at birth. William sent his first Press message from Ishmaelia: ALL ROT ABOUT BOLSHEVIK HE IS ONLY TICKET COLLECTOR ASS CALLED SHUMBLE THOUGHT HIS BEARD FALSE BUT ITS PERFECTLY ALL RIGHT REALLY WILL CABLE AGAIN IF THERE IS ANY NEWS VERY WET HERE YOURS WILLIAM BOOT.--and went out to dinner with the British Vice-Consul.

****

Jack Bannister, known at the age of ten as 'Moke', inhabited a little villa in the Legation compound. He and William dined alone at a candle-lit table. Two silent boys in white gowns waited on them. Bannister's pet, but far from tame, cheetah purred beside the log fire. There were snipe, lately bagged by the first secretary. They drank some sherry, and some Burgundy and some port, and, to celebrate William's arrival, a good deal more port. Then they settled themselves in easy chairs and drank brandy. They talked about school and the birds and beasts of Ishmaelia. Bannister showed his collection of skins and eggs.

They talked about Ishmaelia. 'No one knows if it's got any minerals because no one's been to see. The map's a complete joke,' Bannister explained. 'The country has never been surveyed at all; half of it's unexplored. Why, look here--' he took down a map from his shelves and opened it. 'See this place, Laku. It's marked as a town of some five thousand inhabitants, fifty miles North of Jacksonburg. Well there never had been such a place. Laku is the Ishmaelite for "I don't know". When the boundary commission were trying to get through to the Soudan in 1898 they made a camp there and asked one of their boys the name of the hill, so as to record it in their log. He said "Laku", and they've copied it from map to map ever since. President Jackson likes the country to look important in the atlases so when this edition was printed he had Laku marked good and large. The French once appointed a Consul to Laku when they were getting active in this part of the world.'

Finally they touched on politics.

'I can't think why all you people are coming out here,' said Bannister plaintively. 'You've no idea how it adds to my work. The Minister doesn't like it either. The F.O. are worrying the life out of him.'

'But isn't there going to be a war?'

'Well we usually have a bit of scrapping after the rains. There's a lot of bad men in the hills. Gollancz usually shoots up a few when he goes out after the taxes.'

'Is that all?'

'Wish we knew. There's something rather odd going on. Our information is simply that Smiles had a row with the Jacksons round about Christmas time and took to the hills. That's what everyone does out here when he gets in wrong with the Jacksons. We thought no more about it. The next thing we hear is from Europe that half a dozen bogus consulates have been set up and that Smiles has declared a Nationalist Government. Well that doesn't make much sense. There never has been any Government in Ishmaelia outside Jacksonburg, and, as you see, everything is dead quiet here. But Smiles is certainly getting money from someone and arms too, I expect. What's more we aren't very happy about the President. Six months ago he was eating out of our hand. Now he's getting quite standoffish. There's a concession to a British Company to build the new coast road. It was all settled but for the signing last November. Now the Ministry of Works is jibbing and they say that the President is behind them. I can't say I like the look of things, and having all you journalists about doesn't make it any easier.'

'We've been busy all day with a lunatic report about a Russian agent who had come to take charge of the Government.'

'Oh,' said Bannister with sudden interest. 'They've got hold of that, have they? What was the story exactly?'

William told him.

'Yes they've got it pretty mixed.'

'D'you mean to say there's any truth in it?'

Bannister looked diplomatic for a minute and then said, 'Well I don't see any harm in your knowing. In fact from what the Minister said to me today I rather think he'd welcome a little publicity on the subject. There is a Russian here, name of Smerdyakev, a Jew straight from Moscow. He didn't come disguised as a ticket collector of course. He's been here some time--in fact he came up by the same train as Hitchcock and that American chap. But he's lying low, living with Benito. We don't quite know what he's up to; whatever it is, it doesn't suit H.M.G.'s book. If you want a really interesting story I should look into him.'

It was half an hour's drive, at this season, from the Legation quarter to the centre of the town. William sat in the taxi, lurching and jolting, in a state of high excitement. In the last few days he had caught something of the professional infection of Corker and his colleagues, had shared their consternation at Hitchcock's disappearance, had rejoiced quietly when Shumble's scoop was killed. Now he had something under his hat; a tip-off straight from headquarters, news of high international importance. His might be the agency which would avert or precipitate a world war; he saw his name figuring in future history books '... the Ishmaelite crisis of that year whose true significance was only realized and exposed through the resource of an English journalist, William Boot...' Slightly dizzy with this prospect, as with the wine he had drunk and the appalling rigours of the drive, he arrived at the Liberty to find the lights out in the lounge and all his colleagues in bed.

He woke Corker, with difficulty.

'For Christ's sake. You're tight. Go to bed, brother.'

'Wake up, I've got a story.'

At that electric word Corker roused himself and sat up in bed.

William told him, fully and proudly, all that he had learned at dinner. When he had finished, Corker lay back again among the crumpled pillows. 'I might have known,' he said bitterly.

'But don't you see? This really is news. And we've got the Legation behind us. The Minister wants it written up.'

Corker turned over on his side.

'That story's dead,' he remarked.

'But Shumble had it all wrong. Now we've got the truth. It may make a serious difference in Europe.'

Corker spoke again with finality. 'Now go to bed, there's a good chap. No one's going to print your story after the way it's been denied. Russian agents are off the menu, brother. It's a bad break for Shumble, I grant you. He got onto a good thing without knowing--and the false beard was a very pretty touch. His story was better than yours all round and we killed it. Do turn out the light.'

****

In his room in the annexe Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock covered his keyhole with stamp-paper and, circumspectly, turned on a little shaded lamp. He boiled some water and made himself a cup of cocoa; drank it; then he went to the map on the wall and took out his flag, considered for a minute, hovering uncertainly over the unsealed peaks and uncharted rivers of that dark terrain, finally decided, and pinned it firmly in the spot marked as the city of Laku. Then he extinguished his light and went happily back to bed.