Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Collins, The Crime Club 1954
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Source ISBN: 9780008196363
Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780007422296
Version: 2017-04-11
To ANTHONY
who likes foreign travel as much as I do
Contents
The man behind the desk moved a heavy glass paperweight four inches to the right. His face was not so much thoughtful or abstracted as expressionless. He had the pale complexion that comes from living most of the day in artificial light. This man, you felt, was an indoor man. A man of desks and files. The fact that to reach his office you had to walk through long twisting underground corridors was somehow strangely appropriate. It would have been difficult to guess his age. He looked neither old nor young. His face was smooth and unwrinkled, and in his eyes was a great tiredness.
The other man in the room was older. He was dark with a small military moustache. There was about him an alert nervous energy. Even now, unable to sit still, he was pacing up and down, from time to time throwing off a remark in a jerky manner.
‘Reports!’ he said explosively. ‘Reports, reports and more reports, and none of them any damn’ good!’
The man at the desk looked down at the papers in front of him. On top was an official card headed, ‘Betterton, Thomas Charles.’ After the name was an interrogation mark. The man at the desk nodded thoughtfully. He said:
‘You’ve followed up these reports and none of them any good?’
The other shrugged his shoulders.
‘How can one tell?’ he asked.