No Refuge Could Save

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No Refuge Could Save is a short story by Isaac Asimov. It is the first of the Union Club Mysteries, a series of short stories about a character who tells various tall stories, mostly about his time in US intelligence.

[edit] Plot

He explains that during World War II he was involved in questioning a suspected German spy, and he performed a word association test on him. When he said "terror of flight", the suspect replied "gloom of the grave". This proved that he was a spy who had been trained up in Americanisms, since this was an allusion to a line in the third verse of The Star-Spangled Banner—no native-born American could possibly be familiar with the third verse of the national anthem - "except for me, and I know everything" adds the narrator.

This is basically tongue in cheek, but Asimov does mention the serious point that the third verse of the US national anthem is particularly war-mongering, and so was especially forgotten in the great peace-loving years of 1941-45.