The Mask of Dimitrios

It was two o’clock in the morning when Latimer left the Impasse des Huits Anges and began to walk slowly in the direction of the Quai Voltaire.

His eyes smarted, his mouth was dry and he yawned repeatedly, but his brain was working with the feverish clarity induced by too much strong coffee; the sort of clarity which makes sense of nonsense. He would, he knew, have a sleepless night. The circles of thought would become wider and wider, and more ridiculous and more ridiculous until he got up and drank a glass of water. Then, he would listen for a time to the blood beating in his head and the process would begin again. It was better to stay out.

At the corner of the Boulevard St Germain there was a café open. He went inside and was served with a sandwich and a glass of beer by the bored mute behind the zinc. When he had finished the sandwich and smoked a cigarette, he looked at his watch. Twenty minutes past two: over three hours to daybreak. A taxi returned to the rank just outside the café. Latimer hesitated for an instant, then made up his mind. Throwing away his cigarette, he left some money on the zinc and walked out to the taxi.

He paid off the driver at the Trinité Metro and walked up the Rue Blanche. Yes, there was the Kasbah, still there and about halfway up the hill. He could see its flickering neon sign long before he reached it.

There was a businesslike air about the street. It was like an aisle in a trade exhibition except that, instead of a double line of stands, there was a double line of nightclubs and that, instead of salesmen who peered at the visitors from the depths of hired armchairs, there were unshaven commissionaires in brightly coloured but badly fitting uniforms and chasseurs in soiled dinner jackets who fell in step beside him and talked in swift, persuasive undertones as he walked by.

Outwardly, at any rate, the Kasbah had changed very little from the picture Mr Peters had drawn of it. The Negro commissionaire wore a striped djibbah and a tarboosh while the chasseur, an Anna-mite, wore a red fez with his dinner jacket. The fact that the Annamite had chosen to propitiate Brahma as well as Allah by sporting a Hindu caste mark in addition to the fez, was more than offset by the life-sized portrait of a Morrocan ouled nail painted on, and divided neatly into two by a pair of flush doors. Inside, however, time had wrought many changes. Mr Peters’ rugs and divans and amber lights had been replaced by tubular steel chairs and tables, a carpet with a vorticist pattern and indirect strip lighting. The tango band had gone too. In its place was an amplifier and loudspeaker which, when it was not reproducing French dance records, emitted a faint popping noise reminiscent of the sound of a distant motor-boat. There were about twenty persons there and seating accommodation for three or four times as many. The consommation was thirty francs. Latimer ordered a beer and asked if the patron were there. The waiter, an Italian, said that he would see and went away. Then, the loudspeaker stopped popping and four couples got up to dance.

Latimer wondered what Mr Peters would say to his Kasbah now. It was the reverse of ‘cosy’. He tried to imagine what it had been like in its heyday, with the divans and the rugs and the amber lights in position, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the South Americans playing a tango for women with knee-length skirts, waistlines on their hips and cloche hats on their shingled heads. Mr Peters had probably spent most of his time standing just inside the entrance by the vestiaire or sitting in the small room marked ‘Direction’ opposite it, listening to English and American voices, writing orders for more Meknes champagne and checking his partner’s accounts. Perhaps he had been in there on that night ten years ago when Giraud had brought Dimitrios to see him. Perhaps…

The patron approached. He was heavy and tall with a bald head and the blank expression of a man who is used to being disliked and is undismayed by hostility.

‘Oh yes. I wondered if you knew Monsieur Giraud. He was the patron here ten years ago.’

‘No, I do not know him. I have been here only two years. Why do you want to know?’

‘No, I do not know him,’ repeated the patron, and then, with a quick glance at Latimer’s beer: ‘Do you want to dance? You should wait. There will be plenty of pretty women here soon. It is early.’

The patron shrugged and walked away. Latimer drank some of his beer and gazed vacantly about him like a person who has strayed into a museum for shelter from the rain. He wished that he had gone to bed after all and felt annoyed with himself for coming. The visit had been a pitifully ingenuous attempt to destroy the feeling of unreality with which he had left Mr Peters, and it had served only to accentuate this feeling. He signalled to the waiter, paid for his beer and took a taxi back to his hotel.

He was tired, of course: that was the trouble. A student given twenty-four hours to read the six volumes of Comte’s Cours de Philosophie Positive and prepare to be examined on it could, he thought, have felt no more confused and helpless. There were so many new ideas for him to become accustomed to and so many old ones to forget, so many questions to ask and so many to answer. And brooding over the confusion there was the sinister proposition that Dimitrios, the murderer of Sholem and of Visser, Dimitrios the drug pedlar, the pimp, the thief, the spy, the white slaver, the bully, the financier, Dimitrios, whose only saving grace had seemed to be that he had allowed himself to be murdered, was alive and prosperous.

In his room, Latimer sat down by the window and gazed out across the black river to the lights which it reflected and the faint glow in the sky beyond the Louvre. His mind was haunted by the past, by the confession of Dhris, the Negro, and by the memories of Irana Preveza, by the tragedy of Bulić and by a tale of white crystals travelling west to Paris, bringing money to the fig-packer of Izmir. Three human beings had died horribly and countless others had lived horribly that Dimitrios might take his ease. If there were such a thing as Evil, then this man…

But it was useless to try to explain him in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were the elements of the new theology. Dimitrios was not evil. He was logical and consistent; as logical and consistent in the European jungle as the poison gas called Lewisite and the shattered bodies of children killed in the bombardment of an open town. The logic of Michelangelo’s David, Beethoven’s quartets and Einstein’s physics had been replaced by that of the Stock Exchange Year Book and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Yet, Latimer reflected, although you could not stop people buying and selling Lewisite, although you could do no more than ‘deplore’ a number of slaughtered children, there were in existence means of preventing one particular aspect of the principle of expediency from doing too much damage. Most international criminals were beyond the reach of man-made laws, but Dimitrios happened to be within reach of one law. He had committed at least two murders and had therefore broken the law as surely as if he had been starving and had stolen a loaf of bread.

It was easy enough, however, to say that he was within reach of the Law: it was not as easy to see how the Law was to be informed of the fact. As Mr Peters had so carefully pointed out, he, Latimer, had no information to give the police. But was that an altogether true picture of the situation? He had some information. He knew that Dimitrios was alive and that he was a director of the Eurasian Credit Trust, that he knew a French Countess who had had a house off the Avenue Hoche and that he or she had had an Hispana Suiza car, that both of them had been in St Anton that year for the winter sports and that he had chartered a Greek yacht in June, that he had a villa on the Estoril and that he was now the citizen of a South American republic. Surely, then, it must be possible to find the person with those particular attributes. Even if the names of the directors of the Eurasian Credit Trust were unobtainable, it ought to be possible to get the names of the men who had chartered Greek yachts in June, of the wealthy South Americans with villas on the Estoril and of the South American visitors to St Anton in February. If you could get those lists, all you would have to do would be to see which names (if there should be more than one) were common to the three.

But how did you get the lists? Besides, even if you could persuade the Turkish police to exhume Visser and then apply officially for all that information, what sort of proof would you have that the man you had concluded to be Dimitrios, was in fact, Dimitrios? And supposing that you could convince Colonel Haki of the truth, would he have enough evidence to justify the French extraditing a director of the powerful Eurasian Credit Trust? If it had taken twelve years to secure the acquittal of Dreyfus, it could take at least as many years to secure the conviction of Dimitrios.

It looked as if he were committed to Mr Peters’ blackmailing scheme. Lying in a comfortable bed with his eyes closed, he found the fact that in a few days’ time he would be, technically speaking, one of the worst sorts of criminals no more than odd. Yet, at the back of his mind there was a certain discomfort. When the reason for it dawned on him, he was mildly shocked. The simple truth was that he was feeling afraid of Dimitrios. Dimitrios was a dangerous man; more dangerous by far than he had been in Smyrna and Athens and Sofia, because he now had more to lose. Visser had blackmailed him and died. Now, he, Latimer, was going to blackmail him. Dimitrios had never hesitated to kill a man if he had deemed it necessary to do so, and, if he had deemed it necessary in the case of a man who threatened to expose him as a drug pedlar, would he hesitate in the case of two men who threatened to expose him as a murderer?

It was most important to see that, hesitation or no hesitation, he was not given the opportunity. Mr Peters had proposed the taking of elaborate precautions.

The first contact with Dimitrios was to be established by letter. Latimer had seen a draft of the letter and had found it gratifyingly similar in tone to a letter he himself had written for a blackmailer in one of his books. It began, with sinister cordiality, by trusting that, after all these years, Monsieur C.K. had not forgotten the writer and the pleasant and profitable times they had spent together, went on to say how pleasing it was to hear that he was so successful and hoped sincerely that he would be able to meet the writer who would be at the So-and-So Hotel at nine o’clock on the Thursday evening of that week. The writer concluded with an expression of his ‘plus sincere amitié’ and a significant little postscript to the effect that he had chanced to meet someone who had known their mutual friend Visser quite well, that this person was most anxious to meet Monsieur C. K. and that it would be so unfortunate if Monsieur C. K. could not arrange to keep the appointment on Thursday evening.

Dimitrios would receive that letter on the Thursday morning. At half past eight on the Thursday evening, ‘Mr Petersen’ and ‘Mr Smith’ would arrive at the hotel chosen for the interview and ‘Mr Petersen’ would take a room. There they would await the arrival of Dimitrios. When the situation had been explained, Dimitrios would be informed that he would receive instructions as to the payment of the million francs on the following morning and told to go. ‘Mr Petersen’ and ‘Mr Smith’ would then leave.

Precautions would now have to be taken to see that they were not followed and identified. Mr Peters had not specified what sort of precautions, but had given assurances that there would be no difficulties.

That same evening, a second letter would be posted to Dimitrios telling him to send a messenger with the million francs, in mille notes to a specified point on the road outside the cemetery of Neuilly at eleven o’clock on the Friday night. There would be a hired car waiting for him there with two men in it. The two men would have been recruited for the purpose by Mr Peters. Their business would be to pick up the messenger and drive along the Quai National in the direction of Suresnes until they were quite sure that they were not being followed and then to make for a point on the Avenue de la Reine near the Porte de St Cloud where ‘Mr Petersen’ and ‘Mr Smith’ would be waiting to receive the money. The two men would then drive the messenger back to Neuilly. The letter would specify that the messenger must be a woman.

Latimer had been puzzled by this last provision. Mr Peters had justified it by pointing out that if Dimitrios came himself there was just a chance that he might prove too clever for the men in the car and that ‘Mr Petersen’ and ‘Mr Smith’ would end up lying in the Avenue de la Reine with bullets in their backs. Descriptions were unreliable and the two men would have no certain means of knowing in the dark if a man presenting himself as the messenger were Dimitrios or not. They could make no such mistake about a woman.

Yes, Latimer reflected, it was absurd to imagine that there could be any danger from Dimitrios. The only thing he had to look forward to was the meeting with this curious man whose path he had stumbled across. It would be strange, after he had heard so much about him, to meet him face to face; strange to see the hand which had packed figs and driven the knife into Sholem’s throat, the eyes which Irana Preveza and Wladyslaw Grodek and Mr Peters had remembered so well. It would be as if a waxwork in the chamber of horrors had come to life.

For a time he stared at the narrow gap between the curtains. It was getting light. Very soon he fell asleep.

He was disturbed towards eleven by a telephone call from Mr Peters, who said that the letter to Dimitrios had been posted and asked if they could have dinner together ‘to discuss our plans for tomorrow’. Latimer was under the impression that their plans had already been discussed, but he agreed. The afternoon he spent alone at the Vincennes Zoo. The subsequent dinner was tedious. Little was said about their plans, and Latimer concluded that the invitation had been another of Mr Peters’ precautions. He was making sure that his collaborator, who now had no financial interest in the business, had not changed his mind about collaborating. Latimer spent two hours listening to an account of Mr Peters’ discovery of the works of Dr Frank Crane and a defence of his contention that Lame and Lovely and Just Human were the most important contributions to literature since Robert Elsmere.

On the pretext of having a headache, Latimer escaped soon after ten o’clock and went to bed. When he awoke the following morning he actually had a headache and concluded that the carafe burgundy which his host had recommended so warmly at dinner had been even cheaper than it had tasted. As his mind crept slowly back to consciousness he had, too, a feeling that something unpleasant had happened. Then he remembered. Of course! Dimitrios had by now received the first letter.

He sat up in bed to think about it and, after a moment or two, came to the profound conclusion that if it were easy enough to hate and despise blackmailing when one wrote and read about it, the act of blackmailing itself called for rather more moral hardi-hood, more firmness of purpose, than he, at any rate, possessed. It made no difference to remind oneself that Dimitrios was a criminal. Blackmail was blackmail, just as murder was murder. Macbeth would probably have hesitated at the last minute to kill a criminal Duncan just as much as he hesitated to kill the Duncan whose virtues pleaded like angels. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he, Latimer, had a Lady Macbeth in the person of Mr Peters. He decided to go out to breakfast.

The day seemed interminable. Mr Peters had said that he had arrangements to make in connection with the car and the men to drive in it, and that he would meet Latimer at a quarter to eight, after dinner. Latimer spent the morning walking aimlessly in the Bois and, in the afternoon, went to a cinema.

It was towards six o’clock and after he had left the cinema that he began to notice a slight breathless feeling in the region of the solar plexus. It was as if someone had dealt him a light blow there. He concluded that it was Mr Peters’ corrosive burgundy fighting a rearguard action and stopped in one of the cafés on the Champs Elysées for an infusion. But the feeling persisted, and he found himself becoming more and more conscious of it. Then, as his gaze rested for a moment on a party of four men and women talking excitedly and laughing over some joke, he realized what was the matter with him. He did not want to meet Mr Peters. He did not want to go on this blackmailing expedition. He did not want to face a man in whose mind the uppermost thought would be to kill him as quickly and quietly as possible. The trouble was not in his stomach. He had cold feet.

The realization annoyed him. Why should he be afraid? There was nothing to be afraid of. This man Dimitrios was a clever and dangerous criminal, but he was far from being superhuman. If a man like Peters could… but then Peters was used to this sort of thing. He, Latimer, was not. He ought to have gone to the police as soon as he had discovered that Dimitrios was alive and risked being thought a troublesome crank. He should have realized before that, with Mr Peters’ revelations, the whole affair had taken on a completely different complexion, that it was no longer one in which an amateur criminologist (and a fiction writer at that) should meddle. You could not deal with real murderers in this irresponsible fashion. His bargain with Mr Peters, for example: what would an English judge say to that? He could almost hear the words:

‘As for the actions of this man Latimer, he has given an explanation of them which you may find difficult to believe. He is, we have been told, an intelligent man, a scholar who has held responsible posts in universities in this country and written works of scholarship. He is, moreover, a successful author of a type of fiction which, even if it is properly regarded by the average man as no more than the pabulum of adolescent minds, has, at least, the virtue of accepting the proposition that it is the business of right-thinking men and women to assist the police, should the opportunity present itself, in preventing crime and in capturing criminals. If you accept Latimer’s explanation, you must conclude that he deliberately conspired with Peters to defeat the ends of justice and to act as an accessory before the fact of the crime of blackmail for the sole purpose of pursuing researches which he states had no other object than the satisfaction of his curiosity. You may ask yourselves if that would not have been the conduct of a mentally unbalanced child rather than that of an intelligent man. You must also weigh carefully the suggestion of the prosecution that Latimer did in fact share in the proceeds of this blackmailing scheme and that his explanation is no more than an effort to minimize his part in the affair.’

It was still too early for dinner. He left the café and walked in the direction of the Opera. In any case, he reflected, it was too late now to do anything. He was committed to helping Mr Peters. But was it too late? If he went to the police now, this minute, something could surely be done.

He stopped. This minute! There had been an agent sauntering along the street through which he had just come. He retraced his steps. Yes, there was the man, leaning against the wall, swinging his baton and talking to someone inside a doorway. Latimer hesitated again, then crossed the road and asked to be directed to the police Poste. It was three streets away, he was told. He set off again.

The entrance to the Poste was narrow and almost entirely concealed by a group of three agents deep in a conversation which they did not interrupt as they made way for him. Inside was an enamelled plate indicating that inquiries should be made on the first floor and pointing to a flight of stairs with a thin iron banister rail on one side and a wall with a long, greasy stain on it on the other. The place smelt strongly of camphor and faintly of excrement. From a room adjacent to the entrance hall came a murmur of voices and the clacking of a typewriter.

His resolution ebbing with every step, he went up the stairs to a room divided into two by a high wooden counter, the outer edges of which had been worn smooth and shiny by the palms of innumerable hands. Behind the counter a man in uniform was peering with the aid of a hand-mirror into the inside of his mouth.

Latimer paused. He had yet to make up his mind how he was going to begin. If he said: ‘I was going to blackmail a murderer tonight, but I have decided to hand him over to you instead,’ there was more than a chance that they would think him mad or drunk. In spite of the urgent need for immediate action, he would have to make some show of beginning at the beginning. ‘I was in Istanbul some weeks ago, and was told of a murder committed there in 1922. Quite by chance, I have found that the man who did it is here in Paris and is being blackmailed.’ Something like that. The uniformed man caught a glimpse of him in the mirror and turned sharply round.

‘I have no carte d’identité. I am a temporary visitor. I entered France four days ago.’

The man stiffened. The frown of irritation left his face. Here was something that he understood and with which his long experience had enabled him to deal. He spoke with easy assurance.

He drew a deep breath. ‘You must understand, Monsieur, that your papers must always be in your pocket. It is the law. If you saw a street accident and were required as a witness, the agent would ask to see your papers before you were permitted to leave the scene of the accident. If you had not got them, he could, if he wished, arrest you. If you were in a boîte de nuit and the police entered to inspect papers, you would certainly be arrested if you carried none. It is the law, you understand? I shall have to take the necessary particulars. Give me your name and that of your hotel, please.’

Latimer did so. The man noted them down, picked up a telephone and asked for ‘Septième’. There was a pause, then he read out Latimer’s name and address and asked for confirmation that they were genuine. There was another pause, of a minute or two this time, before he began to nod his head and say: ‘Bien, bien.’ Then he listened for a moment, said: ‘Oui, c’est ca,’ and put the telephone back on its hook. He returned to Latimer.

‘It is in order,’ he said, ‘but you must present yourself with your passport at the Commissariat of the Seventh Arrondissement within twenty-four hours. As for this complaint of yours, you can make that at the same time. Please remember,’ he went on, tapping his pencil on the counter for emphasis, ‘that your passport must always be carried. It is obligatory to do so. You are English, and so nothing more need be made of the affair, but you must report to the Commissariat in your arrondissement, and in future always remember to carry your passport. Au ’voir, Monsieur.’ He nodded benevolently with an air of knowing his duty to be well done.

Latimer went out in a very bad temper. Officious ass! But the man was right, of course. It had been absurd of him to go into the place without his passport. Complaint, indeed! In a sense he had had a narrow escape. He might have had to tell his story to the man. He might well have been under arrest by now. As it was, he had not told his story and was still a potential blackmailer.

Yet the visit to the police Poste had eased his conscience considerably. He did not feel quite as irresponsible as he had felt before. He had made an effort to bring the police into the affair. It had been an abortive effort, but short of collecting his passport from the other side of Paris and starting all over again (and that, he decided comfortably, was out of the question) there was nothing more he could do. He was due to meet Mr Peters at a quarter to eight in a café on the Boulevard Hausmann. But by the time he had finished a very light dinner the curious feeling had returned again to his solar plexus and the two brandies which he had with his coffee were intended to do more than pass the time. It was a pity, he reflected as he went on to keep his appointment, that he could not accept even a small share of the million francs. The cost of satisfying his curiosity was proving, in terms of frayed nerves and an uneasy conscience, practically prohibitive.

Mr Peters arrived ten minutes late with a large, cheap-looking suitcase and the too-matter-of-fact air of a surgeon about to perform a difficult operation. He said, ‘Ah, Mr Latimer!’ and sitting down at the table, ordered a raspberry liqueur.

‘Is everything all right?’ Latimer felt that the question was a little theatrical, but he really wanted to know the answer to it.

‘So far, yes. Naturally, I have had no word from him because I gave no address. We shall see.’

‘Old newspapers. It is better to arrive at a hotel with a suitcase. I do not wish to have to fill up an affiche unless I am compelled to do so. I decided finally upon a hotel near to the Ledru-Rollin Metro. Very convenient.’

‘We shall go by taxi. But,’ added Mr Peters significantly, ‘we shall return by the Metro. You will see.’ His liqueur arrived. He poured it down his throat, shuddered, licked his lips and said that it was time to go.

The hotel chosen by Mr Peters for the meeting with Dimitrios was in a street just off the Avenue Ledru. It was small and dirty. A man in his shirtsleeves came out of a room marked ‘Bureau’, chewing a mouthful of food.

The man looked them both up and down. ‘It is a large room. Fifteen francs for one. Twenty francs for two. Service, twelve and a half per cent.’

The man took a key from a rack just inside the Bureau and, taking Mr Peters’ suitcase, led the way upstairs to a room on the second floor. Mr Peters looked inside it and nodded.

‘Yes, this will do. A friend of mine will call for me here soon. Ask him to come up, please.’

The man withdrew. Mr Peters sat on the bed and looked round approvingly. ‘Quite nice,’ he said, ‘and very cheap.’

It was a long, narrow room with an old hair carpet, an iron bedstead, a wardrobe, two bentwood chairs, a small table, a screen and an enamelled iron bidet. The carpet was red, but by the wash-basin was a threadbare patch, black and shiny with use. The wallpaper depicted a trellis supporting a creeping plant, a number of purple discs and some shapeless pink objects of a vaguely clinical character. The curtains were thick and blue and hung on brass rings.

Mr Peters looked at his watch. ‘Twenty-five minutes before he is due. We had better make ourselves comfortable. Would you like the bed?’

‘I think it will be best.’ Mr Peters drew his Lüger pistol from his breast pocket, examined it to see that it was loaded and then dropped it into the right-hand pocket of his overcoat.

Latimer watched these preparations in silence. He was now feeling quite sick. He said suddenly: ‘I don’t like this.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Mr Peters soothingly, ‘but we must take precautions. It is unlikely, I think, that they will be needed. You need have no fears.’

Latimer remembered an American gangster picture that he had once seen. ‘What is to prevent him from walking in here and shooting us both?’

Mr Peters smiled tolerantly. ‘Now, now! You must not let your imagination run away with you, Mr Latimer. Dimitrios would not do that. It would be too noisy and dangerous for him. Remember, the man downstairs will have seen him. Besides, that would not be his way.’

‘Dimitrios is a very cautious man. He thinks very carefully before he acts.’

‘Yes, but he does not yet know how much we know, and if anyone else knows what we know. He would have to discover those things. Leave everything to me, Mr Latimer. I understand Dimitrios.’

Latimer was about to point out that Visser had probably had the same idea, and then decided not to do so. He had another, more personal misgiving to air.

‘You said that when Dimitrios paid us the million francs that would be the last he heard of us. Has it occurred to you that he may not be content to let things rest in that way? When he finds that we don’t come back for more money he may decide to come after us.’

‘After Mr Smith and Mr Petersen? We would be difficult to find under those names, my dear Mr Latimer.’

‘But he knows your face already. He will see mine. He could recognize our faces, whatever we chose to call ourselves.’

‘My photograph has appeared once or twice in newspapers. It may do so again. Or supposing my publisher decided to spread my photograph over the wrapper of a book. Dimitrios might easily happen to see it. There have been stranger coincidences.’

Mr Peters pursed his lips. ‘I think you exaggerate, but –’ he shrugged ‘– since you feel nervous perhaps you had better keep your face hidden. Do you wear spectacles?’

‘Then put them on. Wear your hat, too, and turn up the collar of your coat. You might sit in the corner of the room where it is not so light. In front of the screen. It will blur the outlines of your face. There.’

Latimer obeyed. When he was in position, with his collar buttoned across his chin and his hat tilted forward over his eyes, Mr Peters surveyed him from the door and nodded.

‘It will do. I still think it unnecessary, but it will do. After making all these preparations we shall feel very foolish if he does not come.’

Latimer, who was feeling very foolish anyway, grunted. ‘Is there any likelihood of his not coming?’

‘Who knows?’ Mr Peters sat on the bed again. ‘A dozen things might happen to prevent him. He might not, for some reason, have received my letter. He may have left Paris yesterday. But, if he has received the letter, I think that he will come.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Eight forty-five. If he is coming, he will soon be here.’

They fell silent. Mr Peters began to trim his nails with a pair of pocket scissors.

Except for the clicking of the scissors and the sound of Mr Peters’ heavy breathing, the silence in the room was complete. To Latimer it seemed almost tangible; a dark grey fluid that oozed from the corners of the room. He began to hear the watch ticking on his wrist. He waited for what seemed an eternity before looking at it. When he did look it was ten minutes to nine. Another eternity. He tried to think of something to say to Mr Peters to pass the time. He tried counting the complete parallelograms in the pattern of the wallpaper between the wardrobe and the window. Now he thought he could hear Mr Peters’ watch ticking. The muffled sound of someone moving a chair and walking about in the room overhead seemed to intensify the silence. Four minutes to nine.

Then, so suddenly that the sound seemed as loud as a pistol shot, one of the stairs outside the door creaked.

Mr Peters stopped trimming his nails and, dropping the scissors on the bed, put his right hand in his overcoat pocket.

There was a pause. His heart beating painfully, Latimer gazed rigidly at the door. There was a soft knock.

Mr Peters stood up and, with his hand still in his pocket, went to the door and opened it.

Latimer saw him stare for a moment into the semidarkness of the landing and then stand back.

13

Rendezvous