Free Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie Page A

holding out the carrot to get the donkey to come along and at the same time there is someone behind the donkey urging it on with a stick.'
    'You've got some extraordinary fancies.'
    'They're not only fancies, my dear boy. That's what people said about Hitler. Hitler and the Hitler Youth. But it was a long careful preparation. It was a war that was worked out in detail. It was a fifth column being planted in different countries all ready for the supermen. The supermen were to be the flower of the German nation. That's what they thought and believed in passionately. Somebody else is perhaps believing something like that now. It's a creed that they'll be willing to accept - if it's offered cleverly enough.'
    'Who are you talking about? Do you mean the Chinese or the Russians? What do you mean?'
    'I don't know. I haven't the faintest idea. But there's something somewhere, and it's running on the same lines. Pattern again, you see. Pattern! The Russians? Bogged down by Communism, I should think they're considered old-fashioned. The Chinese? I think they've lost their way. Too much Chairman Mao, perhaps. I don't know who these people are who are doing the planning. As I said before, it's why and where and when and who.'
    'Very interesting.'
    'It's so frightening, this same idea that always recurs. History repeating itself. The young hero, the golden superman that all must follow.' She paused, then said, 'Same idea, you know. The young Siegfried.'

Passenger to Frankfurt

Chapter 7
    ADVICE FROM GREAT-AUNT MATILDA
    Great-Aunt Matilda looked at him. She had a very sharp and shrewd eye. Stafford Nye had noticed that before. He noticed it particularly at this moment.
    'So you've heard that term before,' she said. 'I see.'
    'What does it mean?'
    'You don't know?' She raised her eyebrows.
    'Cross my heart and wish to die,' said Sir Stafford, in nursery language.
    'Yes, we always used to say that, didn't we,' said Lady Matilda. 'Do you really mean what you're saying?'
    'I don't know anything about it.'
    'But you'd heard the term before.'
    'Yes. Someone said it to me.'
    'Anyone important?'
    'It could be. I suppose it could be. What do you mean by “anyone important”?'
    'Well, you've been involved in various Government missions lately, haven't you? You've represented this poor, miserable country as best you could, which I shouldn't wonder wasn't rather better than many others could do, sitting round a table and talking. I don't know whether anything's come of all that.'
    'Probably not,' said Stafford Nye. 'After all, one isn't optimistic when one goes into these things.'
    'One does one's best,' said Lady Matilda correctively.
    'A very Christian principle. Nowadays if one does one's worst one often seems to get on a good deal better. What does all this mean, Aunt Matilda?'
    'I don't suppose I know,' said his aunt
    'Well, you very often do know things.'
    'Not exactly. I just pick up things here and there.'
    'Yes?'
    'I've got a few old friends left, you know. Friends who are in the know. Of course most of them are either practically stone deaf or half blind or a little bit gone in the top storey or unable to walk straight. But something still functions. Something, shall we say, up here.' She hit the top of her neatly arranged white head. 'There's a good deal of alarm and despondency about. More than usual. That's one of the things I've picked up.'
    'Isn't there always?'
    'Yes, yes, but this is a bit more than that. Active instead of passive, as you might say. For a long time, as I have noticed from the outside, and you, no doubt, from the inside, we have felt that things are in a mess. A rather bad mess. But now we've got to a point where we feel that perhaps something might have been done about the mess. There's an element of danger in it. Something is going on - something is brewing. Not just in one country. In quite a lot of countries. They've recruited a service of their own and the danger about that is that it's a service of young