“What else could it be? I didn’t mind the joke, Wilf, only—like I said I went in to reception but they said you weren’t staying there. I said to myself you were visiting with someone and I went up to the first floor and knocked on doors and listened.”

“You must have been popular.”

“You could have helped. A joke is a joke like I say, but when they threw me out—an American, Wilf. That hurt.”

“Rick.”

“Huh?”

“When was this?”

He thought, frowning.

“Six—no, seven months ago.”

“The last time I saw you, Rick, was just over a year ago. You were walking down one side of the cloisters in that hotel in Evora. You were wearing a light grey suit and you were walking away so you didn’t see me. I had to leave at once.”

“I have never—”

“Quiet. If I say I am going to tell you the exact truth and swear by all that I believe in, heat, light and sound, intolerance, necessity—would you believe me?”

“Yes sir. Yes I would!”

“Rick. I say this with all the force and all the precision at my command. I have never been to Marrakesh!”

Pause.

His eyes popped! I mean by that, the white round the irises widened then as suddenly seemed to narrow. He let out a long breath and laid his two hands flat on the table. Deliberately he made of his eyes the normal ellipse or near-ellipse with the irises partly covered. He seemed not so much to deflate as to come down to his true size from some sustained effort to make himself imposing. He began to smile. He nodded and nodded.

“Of course. I see it all, Wilf. It was somebody else. I’d been thinking so much about you and the need for me to do your biography and Mr Halliday always on wanting it, and then after picking up clues here and there, to see someone just like you—”

“The hunter and the slain.”

“—and, hell, you got a beard, Wilf, and all those Ayrabs got beards—”

I was nodding in time to his nodding. Two porcelain mandarins. I smiled at him helpfully.

“I expect you were looking into the sun.”

“Why that coulda been it, Wilf. Yeah. South-west at that time, just after siesta, the sun right above the hotel, above—that man I saw laughing and waving a paper at me—”

“You see? Simple.”

“But right now I know where you are—”

“You don’t know where I am. Nobody knows.”

“Why surely, sir, there’s no need—but now we can keep in touch, and you, being what you are—”

“You don’t know who I am! Nobody knows who I am!”

“No, no. Of course not. OK, sir. Look we’d better—”

“Halliday now. He knows. No one else.”

“We’d better—”

“Say ‘Yap yap’.”

“I don’t get it. Are we playing a game?”

“That’s right, professor. Say ‘Yap yap’.”

“Yap yap.”

I let out my breath and sat back. I unfolded the document and read it through. It seemed solid enough but then I was struck by the thought that of course it should have been vetted by a solicitor. I was vexed to think of having wasted so much time and effort; but after all there were solicitors or lawyers in Zurich. I was a little cross with myself, however, and brooded.