The narrator discovers Dalby meeting Jay and is taken to see him

The Unnamed narrator’s discovery of Dalby meeting Jay converts a suspicion about departmental betrayal into a visible fact, then carries the Unnamed narrator from surveillance into Jay’s guarded London home. A night spent watching through glass reveals the unlikely alliance; an ambush, a mistaken assumption about Murray, and a carefully staged reception at Jay’s house complicate what that alliance means. By the time Jay discusses selling people over a lobster in his kitchen, the Unnamed narrator has reached the subject the meeting seemed to foreshadow: the brainwashing facility at Wood Green.

The meeting at Dalby’s house

The approach is deliberate and quiet. The Unnamed narrator arrives without lights, parks, and crosses the garden in darkness, taking care not to make noise on the gravel. Gaps in the curtains throw strips of light over the flower beds. From close to the window of the room where the Unnamed narrator had previously spoken with Dalby, the scene inside appears almost like a picture on a screen: Dalby stands near the glass, pouring a drink, while Murray sits on the sofa and listens. A third person, initially outside the Unnamed narrator’s view, crosses to the drinks cabinet.

When the third person comes into view, the Unnamed narrator recognizes K.K., whose face has been fixed in memory through repeated screenings. K.K.’s presence is already a shock, but it is eclipsed when Jay enters the room. Jay has been elusive, known to few in the department, yet the Unnamed narrator recalls having encountered him in several settings, including the street and theatre clubs. Now Jay is talking with Dalby, the head of the department, in Dalby’s own house. The discovery overturns Dalby’s earlier assurance that he and the Unnamed narrator were moving from opposite ends toward the same conclusion: the two men the Unnamed narrator had previously seen together from the Terrazza Restaurant window were, as suspected, Jay and Dalby.

The scene is presented through the Unnamed narrator’s stunned, watching perspective. Jay’s appearance seems to make the already alarming presence of K.K. momentarily recede. The narrator compares the shock to seeing respected public figures exposed in an impossible disguise, and describes remaining petrified while the conversation continues beyond the window. The dramatic turn is not simply that Jay has been found; it is that he is found in conversation with Dalby, making their connection immediate and difficult to explain away.

The garden ambush and Murray’s identity

Waterman has followed the Unnamed narrator along the path. In the darkness after the bright room, a hand smelling of toilet soap clamps over the narrator’s mouth, and something sharp penetrates the back of the narrator’s jacket. The narrator holds still. A voice identifies the attacker as Murray and addresses him formally, a manner that recalls Dalby’s formal address to Raven during Raven’s abduction near the Syrian border. The narrator remembers Dalby apologizing to Raven before injecting him, and wonders whether the same formality accompanies an attempt to kill.

The Unnamed narrator tries to take control by invoking the Treason Act and claiming that Dalby and the people in the house are liable under it. The narrator says that five provost platoons are waiting in Haslemere and orders Murray to act only on the narrator’s instructions. The threat is a bluff: the narrator is inventing authority and trying to persuade Murray that Dalby has betrayed the country. Instead of accepting the claim, Murray discloses that his name is Harriman and that he is a lieutenant-colonel in Special Field Intelligence. He says that it is the Unnamed narrator who must temporarily obey his orders and urges the narrator to leave, warning that removing Dalby is not the whole problem.

Waterman strikes Harriman with a spanner before the conversation can continue. The Unnamed narrator understands that escape is now the priority. Waterman asks repeatedly whether he acted correctly; the narrator praises him, though without much enthusiasm, and the two drag Harriman’s unconscious body into taller flowers. Their shared action binds Waterman to the narrator through complicity, but does not resolve the danger. Within ten minutes, a large car emerges from the house. Its headlights pass over Harriman’s concealed body; Dalby goes back inside, and the Rolls-Royce turns toward London. The narrator and Waterman see the car only because they know to look for it.

Followed to Jay’s London home

The Unnamed narrator and Waterman follow Jay’s Rolls-Royce through Cromwell Road and turn off near Brompton Oratory. Jay stops outside a large converted house and enters. The two follow to the entrance, where they inspect the names and bell pushes. A tall, bespectacled man opens the door with a key and tells them they may as well come in. The invitation is not a friendly welcome: two more men are behind them, all carrying Italian 9mm Mod 34 Beretta pistols. One reports into the house that there are two visitors and that one may be a policeman.

Jay has been prepared for them. His men have followed the pair and discussed them over car-to-car radio-phones. From inside, Jay directs that they be put through a detector before being brought in. The Unnamed narrator realizes that the pursuit has been obvious to Jay’s people and that the pair have been outmanoeuvred. In the entrance hall, black mirrors, fresh flowers, and cut-glass chandeliers frame the search. A small buzzing sound accompanies the removal of the narrator’s gun by Maurice, who keeps clear of his colleague’s line of fire. The two are then taken upstairs.

The luxurious interior sharpens the contrast between Jay’s polished surroundings and the armed control governing access to him. The living room has cream long-pile carpeting, white walls, large abstract paintings, black-leather chairs, and a massive hi-fi and television. The television repeats an advertisement for Trill while Jay’s voice comes from an adjoining room. Waterman, visibly uncomfortable in the expensive surroundings, twists his nicotine-stained moustache and eventually leaves. The Unnamed narrator remains, with access to Jay but no weapon and no assurance of safety.

Jay’s account of his business

Rather than receive the Unnamed narrator in a conventional office, Jay is found in a kitchen, wearing a white cook’s apron and holding a three-pound lobster. Copper, stainless steel, knives, and elaborate equipment fill the brightly lit room. Jay pours champagne and turns the encounter into a conversation conducted alongside the preparation of dinner. The Unnamed narrator has expected something more theatrical or sinister, but Jay is cooking; the ordinary domestic activity sits uneasily beside the armed entry and the detention upstairs.

Jay describes different trades through the goods they sell, then turns the comparison on the Unnamed narrator: the narrator sells loyalty, while Jay sells people. When challenged with a comparison to Eichmann, Jay rejects the joke and offers Eichelhauer, his German name. He characterizes his work as arranging for talented men to exchange employment of their own free will. The explanation presents recruitment as voluntary exchange, but its language also makes human beings the commodity at the centre of Jay’s business. The Unnamed narrator, who has just been disarmed and brought into Jay’s guarded house, has reason to hear that formulation as more than an abstract account of employment.

A telephone call interrupts Jay as he bastes the lobster. He gives instructions, identifies himself as Maximilian, and speaks warmly to Henry; after listening, he presses the scramble button and returns to cooking. The call supplies another glimpse of Jay’s networked business, although the Unnamed narrator does not establish what the exchange concerns. Once Jay resumes basting, the narrator takes the initiative and asks whether the conversation is leading toward the head-shrinking factory at Wood Green, identifying it as the place from which the narrator escaped. The event thus ends not with an explanation of Jay’s connection to the facility, but with that question put directly to him: the meeting with Dalby has brought the Unnamed narrator face to face with Jay, and the next subject is the machinery of brainwashing.