On June 13, in King George’s Park, Wandsworth, some officers of the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police surrounded two men who had been sitting for over half an hour on a bench and were then on their way out to the park gates, and they told them that they were suspected of committing offences against the Official Secrets Act, and must come to the local police station. One of the pair was a young man of twenty-four, William Martin Marshall, a radio telegraphist in the service of the Foreign Office, and a native of Wandsworth. Through the bare preliminary reports and the blurred press photographs the fact stuck out that William Marshall was gangling and vulnerable, over six feet and still a child, the kind of child that climbs out of its perambulator and crawls onto the railway line. He made no reply to the police officers. The other man was a stocky, balding, impassive, middle-aged Russian named Pavel Kuznetsov, who gave them the not at all disarming answer, “It is up to you to prove your suspicions,”
