“Why did
you resign?”
“What’s that sir?”
“Oh come along boy, why did you
resign?”
“From what sir?”
“Now my boy you know perfectly well
what I’m talking about, why did you resign?”
“I can’t tell you that sir.”
{The Headmaster and the pupil - Once Upon A time}
Yes, from
what did the pupil resign, the geography lesson? Certainly not from a maths
lesson, Number 6 was too good at figures for that. That’s what got him
recruited into the banking service of British Intelligence. British agents,
working in East
Germany,
Russia even, the favourite would be Czechoslovakia, anywhere behind the Iron Curtain.
Those British agents would need money in order to pay the members of the spy
ring they had organised, and for bribing officials. Someone had to act as
currier in order to take the money to wherever agents were working. That’s what
Aleck Leamas started out doing in the novel ‘The Spy Who Came In From The
Cold.’
But of course Number 2 must have been in a hurry to get the
ordeal over, because he certainly jumped the gun when he asked Number 6 why he
resigned. Because as a pupil who had just graduated from school he hadn’t done
anything with his life. But just to ask the question wasn’t good enough for
Number 2, he had to try and physically drive the question from Number 6. That
was quite a tussle between them on the floor. For Patrick McGoohan it was real,
he had completely lost it! As for Leo McKern, it was really a struggle for his
life! Just as well the Butler came along with that truncheon when he
did, otherwise…….well who knows what may have happened.
And yet even as a boy the Prisoner
still refuses to give the reason why he resigned, because he told the
Headmaster he couldn’t tell him that. But apparently it wasn’t secret and
confidential, nor was it top secret. However that’s the way it remained,
because Number 6 took the secret of his resignation to the grave with him!
Be seeing you
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