The Prisoner

    Why should Number 6 hide blank sheets of paper in the Stoneboat? Why should Number 6 feel the need to do anything, especially to avenge Number 73’s death the way he did. After all it’s unlikely that he knew the woman. Mind you in his line of work it’s not beyond possibility, after all there had been Engadine, as well as ‘B.’ One a French socialite, the other clearly a spy.
   I wonder how Number 6 and Number 2 got on before the episode of ‘Hammer Into Anvil?’ There must have been a time when Number 2 of the previous episode relinquished the post, and the new Number 2 took over. Number 2 didn’t simply take up his position on the morning of ‘Hammer Into Anvil,’ he’d been questioning Number 73 for a start, perhaps he was the cause of her slashing her wrists in her first bid to commit suicide. Although that might simply be put down to the fact of her situation, having woken up one day in The Village.
   I like to think that fictionally speaking Number 2 was Thorpe. That sceptic who assisted the Colonel in checking certain details of their ex-colleague’s report. The feeling is that Thorpe didn’t reckon his ex-colleague very much. He might have put out certain feelers himself about The Village, if he and the Colonel didn’t already know about it before ZM73 gave them his report. He might have volunteered his services, they might have come seeking him. But either way, if Number 2 was Thorpe, The Village didn’t suit him. True, the character of Number 2 isn’t quite that of Thorpe. But the environment of The Village has the power to change most men, confined there without a friend in the world. It makes me wonder how Number 6 and Number 2 got on together when they first met {before Number 6 was taken forcibly to see Number 2} at least Number 6 would have had no doubts about Thorpe. That once again he had been betrayed by the people he once worked with. And that neither man had much regard for the other. More than that, Thorpe would have had Number 6 at his mercy. But on the other hand, perhaps it was the way as it was with Number 2 of the previous episode, that he and Number 2 had had nothing to do with each other, not until that particular episode!

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