“First, you need to know what might be called ‘the full picture,'” Holmes said, rapping his pipe out into the ash-tray and pulling out his pouch. “It would appear to have its beginnings a number of years ago, when my wife's family died on a road south of the city.”

Hammett scrabbled through the débris on the table and came up with a note-book and a pen, which he uncapped and shook into life. His cigarette dangled unnoticed from between the fingers of his left hand as he hunched over the note-book on his knee, listening. After a few minutes, however, his occasional notes stopped, and his back slowly straightened against the chair-back, until finally he put up a hand.

“Whoa,” he said. “Sounds to me like you're laying pretty much everything out in front of me.”

“More or less,” Holmes agreed mildly.

“Her father's job, the falling balcony in Egypt—”

“Aden,” Holmes corrected.

“Aden. Do you honestly think all that's got anything to do with what's going on here?”

“Do I think so? There is not sufficient evidence one way or the other. But the balcony was a recent and unexplained event, and the possibility of its being linked should not be ignored.”

“If you say so. But really, are you sure you want me to know all this?”

“If you do not know the past, how can you know what of the present is of importance?”

“I just mean—”

“You mean that, seeing as our initial meeting was adversarial, I ought not to trust you too wholeheartedly.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Mr Hammett, are you trustworthy?”

The thin man opened his mouth to answer, closed it again, and then began to chuckle. “There's no answer I can give to that—‘yes' would probably mean ‘no,' and ‘no' would mean I'm a complete boob, and ‘I don't know' means you'd be a damned fool to trust me with so much as a butter-knife.”

Holmes was smiling in response. “Precisely.”

“So what you're saying is, ‘It's my look-out, shut up and listen'?”

“Mr Hammett, you have a way with the American vernacular that bodes well for your future as a writer of popular fiction.”

“Okay, it is your look-out. So I'll shut up and listen.”

And he did, attentively, his dark eyes alive in that gaunt face. His occasional grunt and question told Holmes all he needed to know about the man's brains, and he told Hammett even more than he had originally intended. Very nearly everything.

It was late when they finished, or early. Hammett took out his package of Bull Durham again, glancing over his notes as his fingers sprinkled the tobacco and rolled the paper, every motion precise.

Eventually he nodded. “Yeah, I can see that you need another set of hands here.”

“And eyes. In the normal run of events, those would belong to Russell—to my wife. However, of late she has been . . . indisposed.”