The Headmaster (short story)

The Headmaster is a short story by the British mystery and thriller writer Michael Gilbert about the counterspies Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens.

First published in the United Kingdom in the June, 1962, issue of Argosy, The Headmaster was later published in the United States in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and then collected in book form along with other stories about the same two protagonists as the sixth of eleven stories in Game without Rules.

The book is set in a contemporary, but undated London, and, unlike most of the other stories in this series, has Mr. Calder as the main character, with only brief appearances by Mr. Behrens and Rasselas, the Persian deerhound. It is written in Gilbert's usual spare style, but with even fewer overtones and descriptions of the characters than are found in most of his works; the plot itself, and its resolution, is also somewhat unlikely, so the story, compared to the others in the series, must be considered a fairly minor one. It does, however, have several examples of Gilbert's understated and astringent humor.

Plot

It begins with the stark statement that there now remained only two master spies at work in the country: "The Science Master was still at his shadowy work in the Midlands, and the Headmaster was in the London area." Mr. Calder, vague and ill-defined, is instructed by Mr. Fortescue, the director of JSSIC(E),the shadowy counter-espionage agency for which he has worked since 1958, to locate a missing fellow-agent and longtime friend of Calder's, a prominent London barrister named John Craven. Unlike the other Calder-Behrens stories, Mr. Fortesque is not shown within his usual abominably paneled office at the Westminster branch of the London and Home Counties Bank, of which he is the manager, nor are Fortesque, Calder, or Behrens fleshed out to the reader with any of the telling details that Gilbert generally provides.

Calder, a mute and nearly invisible Behrens, and Craven's sister rendezvous in the English countryside, along with Rasselas the deerhound, and begin the search for the missing solicitor. Gilbert's writing is often at its evocative best when dealing with the giant dog and "The Headmaster" is no exception.

At the end of a long day, the body of John Craven is found hidden behind a remote farmhouse and Calder later details to Fortesque, somewhat improbably, precisely how three men ambushed and killed Craven in a carefully designed trap.

Fortesque and Calder decide that Craven must have inadvertently and unknowingly come across a link that could have led him to the Headmaster, hence his execution. With no other leads to follow, Calder installs himself in Craven's legal chambers "overlooking the lawn of Middle Temple Gardens". Here he spends the next two weeks going through all of Craven's papers, appointments, and cases, trying to find anything that might point him in the direction of the Headmaster. Eventually he narrows his trail down to three men. According to Craven's head clerk, "Any one of them could have access to secret information. And all three are new acquaintances." What particularly piques Calder's interest is the discovery that all three of the men are members of the Hambone Club.

Three weeks later, having skillfully inveighled General Fairside into inviting him for dinner at the Hambone, Calder slips "into the special pocket of his coat an automatic pistol. It had—like its owner—a short, stout body," the only characteristic of Calder mentioned in the story. During the course of "an excellent dinner" Calder and Barlow, "the doyen of Hambone staff", agree on the excellence of the Corton from Burgundy that both men have had with their dinners. After dinner, Fairside and Calder settle themselves into the "large leather armchairs which make the coffee room of the Hambone one of the best sitting-out places in London, where they are eventually joined by the two other men who have attracted Calder's interest, Sir George Gould and Sir Frederick Lake.

The four men order drinks from Barlow and chat until two in the morning, although Calder has, through apparently inconsequential dialog, had a sudden epiphany.

The evening finally comes to an end and the four men leave the deserted club to make their way home with "the slamming of car doors." Calder, however, returns through the thick mist to the club and its unlocked front door. As he tiptoes through the inner hall he reflects that he is part of "a melodrama... In three acts. Act one, a deserted farmstead. Act two, a barrister's chambers. Act three, a London club."

A few minutes later, Calder says, aloud to the Headmaster, "It is interesting to reflect... that had Sir Frederick Lake indulged in one more reminiscence, you would have got away with all this."

The abrupt conclusion of the story, however, along with its brief explanation as to how Calder had determined the Headmaster's identity, seems somewhat contrived and in the nature of a deus ex machina being suddenly pulled from the author's hatful of tricks. Whether it is a satisfactory ending is up to the individual reader to judge.

Notes
    gollark: Almost certainly mostly environment, yes.
    gollark: It's easy to say that if you are just vaguely considering that, running it through the relatively unhurried processes of philosophizing™, that sort of thing. But probably less so if it's actually being turned over to emotion and such, because broadly speaking people reaaaallly don't want to die.
    gollark: Am I better at resisting peer pressure than other people: well, I'd *like* to think so, but so would probably everyone else ever.
    gollark: Anyway, I have, I think, reasonably strong "no genocide" ethics. But I don't know if, in a situation where everyone seemed implicitly/explicitly okay with helping with genocides, and where I feared that I would be punished if I either didn't help in some way or didn't appear supportive of helping, I would actually stick to this, since I don't think I've ever been in an environment with those sorts of pressures.
    gollark: Maybe I should try arbitrarily increasing the confusion via recursion.
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