" No," said Brandon slowly, " I didn't go into the Secret Service. I hit on something that interested me far more. It struck me that what we call the Secret Service must be very limited in its scope. And I've found out since that I was right. I don't say that its work is not of enormous interest or that its methods of obtaining information are not marvellous. I'm sure they are. But the information it desires relates entirely to current events.
It is merely of the kind to interest the Departments concerned. The War Office wants to know what kind of guns are being manufactured in Paraguay or Poland, or what military preparations are being made in Soviet Russia simply with a view to future hostilities and the efficiency of our own military machine. The Home Office enquires about a certain person merely to judge whether he is fit to be let into the country. It is not the business of the Secret Service to enquire into the motives or hidden causes of the world's events.
It is not concerned with speculation ; only with concrete facts. It has never attempted to build up a consecutive theory by studying the origin of world movements, for the past doesn't exist for it; it wants to know what is happening now at the actual moment and what is consequently likely to happen in the next few weeks. And yet the past is the key not only to the present but the future 1 What can we know of what is happening in the world to-day unless we enquire into causes that have their roots not only in the past but in the remote past ?
" This is what I've set myself to study. I wanted to find out why things happen, to understand the causes of events that seem to us incomprehensible, to dis¬cover the secret springs that move men to action or the forces that bind them in inaction. I wanted to under-
THE DOUBLE LIFE OF JAMES BRANDON 45
stand the reason for the crises that periodically arise in the world—political, economic, or social—that seem to occur without any specific cause. I wanted above all to know who are the real rulers of the world pulling the strings from behind the scenes.
" You wonder what set me on this track ? Well, k was partly a fellow I met in Vienna, a man who had once been a Communist and mixed with all the ' Reds' in London and New York. He told me he went into it more out of a spirit of enquiry than from any settled convictions. He simply wanted to find out if there was anything in it, and came at last to the conclusion that Communism was not the real thing, that, in a word, there was something behind it all he could never discover. That was what set me thinking, and I determined to find out all I could about the origins of the movement that was convulsing the whole civilised world. So I began to read. During the years that followed on the war I travelled from city to city, reading in all the great libraries of Europe—in Paris, in Berlin, in Rome, in Prague—and at the same tune talking to everyone I met in restaurants, cafes, or railway trains. It's amazing how much information one can pick up in that way." " Good heavens, old man, do you talk all these languages ? " interposed Kavanagh.
" Oh, well, I was brought up in Germany, you see, so I could pass as a German quite easily. French I knew of course—had a French governess as a kid. But it meant mugging up a few others. Russian, Polish, Spanish, and so on. No brains required for that—thousands of waiters do it. After a while I took up painting again, which made an excellent excuse for moving from one place to another—sitting about at
Guess I will go back and play with myself in the Maze Raider!