‘Yes.’ It was a change to be himself and not Dexter.

‘You wouldn’t know me,’ the voice said unnecessarily, ‘but I was a friend of Harry Lime.’

It was a change too to hear anyone claim to be a friend of Harry’s. Martins’ heart warmed towards the stranger. He said, ‘I’d be glad to meet you.’

‘I’m just round the corner at the Old Vienna.’

‘Couldn’t you make it tomorrow? I’ve had a pretty awful day with one thing and another.’

‘Harry asked me to see that you were all right. I was with him when he died.’

‘I thought –’ Rollo Martins said and stopped. He had been going to say, ‘I thought he died instantaneously,’ but something suggested caution. He said instead, ‘You haven’t told me your name.’

‘Kurtz,’ the voice said. ‘I’d offer to come round to you, only, you know, Austrians aren’t allowed in Sacher’s.’

‘Perhaps we could meet at the Old Vienna in the morning.’

‘Certainly,’ the voice said, ‘if you are quite sure that you are all right till then?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Harry had it on his mind that you’d be penniless.’ Rollo Martins lay back on his bed with the receiver to his ear and thought: Come to Vienna to make money. This was the third stranger to stake him in less than five hours. He said cautiously, ‘Oh, I can carry on till I see you.’ There seemed no point in turning down a good offer till he knew what the offer was.

‘Shall we say eleven, then, at the Old Vienna in the Kärntnerstrasse? I’ll be in a brown suit and I’ll carry one of your books.’

‘That’s fine. How did you get hold of one?’

‘Harry gave it to me.’ The voice had enormous charm and reasonableness, but when Martins had said good night and rung off, he couldn’t help wondering how it was that if Harry had been so conscious before he died he had not had a cable sent to stop him. Hadn’t Callaghan too said that Lime died instantaneously – or without pain, was it? – or had he put the words into Callaghan’s mouth? It was then the idea first lodged firmly in Martins’ mind that there was something wrong about Lime’s death, something the police had been too stupid to discover. He tried to discover it himself with the help of two cigarettes, but he fell asleep without his dinner and with the mystery still unsolved. It had been a long day, but not quite long enough for that.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4