“On the contrary. It was just the break I’ve been waiting for.”

“Did you share this with Boswell?” I asked.

“Of course not. We’re not interested in the manuscript; we’re interested in the man who stole it.”

“And who’s that?”

“I can’t tell you his name but I can write it.”

He took out a felt tip and wrote “Acheron Hades” on a notepad and held it up for me to read.

“Look familiar?”

“Very familiar. There can’t be many people who haven’t heard about him.”

“I know. But you’ve met him, haven’t you?”

“Certainly,” I replied. “He was one of the lecturers when I studied English at Swindon in ’68. None of us were surprised when he switched to a career of crime. He was something of a lech. He made one of the students pregnant.”

“Braeburn; yes, we know about her. What about you?”

“He never made me pregnant, but he had a good try.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“No; I didn’t figure sleeping with lecturers was really where I wanted to be. The attention was flattering, I suppose, dinner and stuff. He was brilliant—but a moral vacuum. I remember once he was arrested for armed robbery while giving a spirited lecture on John Webster’s The White Devil. He was released without charge on that occasion, but the Braeburn thing was enough to have him dismissed.”

“He asked you to go with him yet you turned him down.”

“Your information is good, Mr. Tamworth.”

Tamworth scribbled a note on his pad. He looked up at me again.

“But the important thing is: You know what he looks like?”

“Of course,” I replied, “but you’re wasting your time. He died in Venezuela in ’82.”

“No; he just made us think he had. We exhumed the grave the following year. It wasn’t him at all. He feigned death so well that he fooled the doctors; they buried a weighted coffin. He has powers that are slightly baffling. That’s why we can’t say his name. I call it Rule Number One.”

“His name? Why not?”

“Because he can hear his own name—even whispered—over a thousand-yard radius, perhaps more. He uses it to sense our presence.”

“And why do you suppose he stole Chuzzlewit?”

Tamworth reached into his case and pulled out a file. It was marked “Most Secret—SpecOps-5 clearance only.” The slot in the front, usually reserved for a mugshot, was empty.

“We don’t have a picture of him,” said Tamworth as I opened the file. “He doesn’t resolve on film or video and has never been in custody long enough to be sketched. Remember the cameras at Gad’s Hill?”

“Yes?”

“They didn’t pick anyone up. I went through the tapes very carefully. The camera angle changed every five seconds yet there would be no way anyone could dodge all of them during the time they were in the building. Do you see what I mean?”

I nodded slowly and flicked through the pages of Acheron’s file. Tamworth continued:

“I’ve been after him for five years. He has seven outstanding warrants for murder in England, eighteen in America. Extortion, theft and kidnapping. He’s cold, calculating and quite ruthless. Thirty-six of his forty-two known victims were either SpecOps or police officers.”