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'You've got to hand it to him,' nodded the winger. 'Unless, of course, he's just showing off.'

'All passengers' wishes must, providing they seem reasonable, be acceded to without question,' said Wriste primly. 'What can I get for you, sir?'

'Crustaceans, if you know what those are. No garnishings, but don't forget the red pepper. A painfully cold bottle of Sekt.'

'Right, sir. And the number of the cabin you have in mind, if you don't know it already, is fifty-eight. Gor-blimey,' said Wriste old-fashionedly, 'how the poor live.'

5

It was not possible to proceed to that cabin with any degree of furtiveness, even though the hour was very late and the corridor-lights had been dimmed. The snores along the corridor were so loud that Hillier found it hard to believe them genuine; soon doors might fly open and outrage be registered from under curlers and out of mouths with their dentures removed. As an earnest of this, Wriste suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor to say 'Good luck, sir' as though Hillier were going in to bat. And Master Walters, in endragoned Chinese brocade dressing-gown, was pacing like a prospective father, puffing a Black Russian in a Dunhill holder. Hillier, remembering that 'father' was a relevant word here, asked kindly if there was any news.

'News?' The face, for all the precocity, was very young and blubbered. 'What news would there be? As a man sows so shall he reap. Arteriosclerosis. He knew he was bringing it on.' There seemed to be a flavour of Miss Devi's callous philosophy in all this.

'One can't always be blamed for the state of one's arteries,' said Hillier. 'Some people are just lucky.'

'If he dies,' said Alan, 'what's going to happen to Clara and me?'

'Clara?'

'My sister. That other bitch can take care of herself, which is just what she's doing. My father wouldn't listen to reason. I told him not to re-marry. We were doing very nicely on our own, the three of us. And everything will go to her, everything. She hates us, I know she does. What will happen to us then?'

Snores answered. 'Modern medical science,' said Hillier lamely. 'It's amazing what they can do nowadays. He'll be right as rain in a day or two, you'll see.'

'What do you know about it?' said Alan. 'What do you know about anything? Spying up and down the corridor, as I can see, spy as you are. If he dies I'll get her. Or you can get her, being a spy. I'll pay you to get her.'

'This is a lot of nonsense,' said Hillier loudly. A voice from a cabin went shhhhhh. As he'd thought, there were people awake. 'We'll talk about this in the morning. But in the morning everything will be all right. The sun will shine – it will all be a bad dream, soon forgotten. Now get to bed.'

Alan looked at Hillier, who was naked under a bathrobe. 'That's two baths in half a day,' he said. Thank God, the boy still had some i

'Look,' said Hillier, 'let's get this absolutely clear. I'm not a spy. Have you got that? There are spies, and I've actually met one or two. But I'm not one of them. If you could spot me as a spy, I can't very well be a spy, can I? The whole point of being a spy is that you don't seem to be one. Have you got that now?'

'I bet you've got a gun.'



'I bet you've got one too. You seem to have everything else.'

The boy shook his head. 'Too young for a licence,' he said. 'That's my trouble – too young for everything. Too young to contest a will, for instance.'

'Too young to be up at this hour. Get to bed. Take a couple of sleeping-tablets. I bet you've got those too.'

"You don't seem,' said Alan, 'to be too bad of a bloke, really. Have you got children?'

'None. Nor a wife.'

'A lone wolf,' said Alan. 'The cat that walks alone. I only wish you'd be straight with me. I'd like to strip the disguise off and find out what you really are.'

Miss Devi again. 'Tomorrow,' said Hillier. 'Everything will seem different tomorrow. Which is your cabin?'

'That one there. Come in and have a nightcap.'

'Many thanks,' said Hillier. 'But I have some rather urgent business to attend to.' He writhed as with bowel pain.

'That's all the eating,' said Alan. 'I saw that and I heard about the rest of it. Don't trust that man,' he whispered. 'He's a foreigner. He can't kid me with his posh accent.' And then, in an officer-tone: 'AH right. Off you go.' And he returned to his cabin. Wriste had also gone. Hillier padded to Cabin No.58. As he had expected, the door was not locked. He knocked and at once entered. Again as he had expected, Miss Devi said: 'You're late.'

'Delayed,' gulped Hillier. Miss Devi was lying on her bunk, naked except for her silver nose-ring. 'Unavoidably.' She had loosened her hair and her body was framed in it as far as the knees. Her body was superb, brown as though cooked, with the faintest shimmer of a glaze upon it; the jet-black bush answered the magnificent hair like a cheeky parody; the breasts, though full, did not loll but sat firmly as though moulded out of some celestial rubber; the nipples had already started upright. She reached out her arms, golden swords, towards him. He kicked off his slippers and let his bathrobe fall to the floor. 'The light,' he gasped. 'I must put out the-'

'Leave it on. I want to see.'

Hillier engaged. 'Araikkul va,' she whispered. Tamil? A southern woman then, Dravidian not Aryan. She had been trained out of some manual, but it was not that coarse Kama Sutra. Was it the rare book called Pokam, whose title Hillier had always remembered for its facetious English co