He walked rapidly away. He didn’t bother to see whether he was being followed, to check up on the shadow. But, passing by the end of a street, he happened to turn, and there just around the corner, pressed against a wall to escape notice, was a thick stocky figure. Martins stopped and stared. There was something familiar about that figure. Perhaps, he thought, I have grown unconsciously used to him during these last twenty-four hours; perhaps he is one of those who have so assiduously checked my movements. Martins stood there, twenty yards away, staring at the silent motionless figure in the dark street who stared back at him. A police spy, perhaps, or an agent of those other men, those men who had corrupted Harry first and then killed him – even possibly the third man?

It was not the face that was familiar, for he could not make out so much as the angle of the jaw; nor a movement, for the body was so still that he began to believe that the whole thing was an illusion caused by shadow. He called sharply, ‘Do you want anything?’ and there was no reply. He called again with the irascibility of drink, ‘Answer, can’t you,’ and an answer came, for a window curtain was drawn petulantly back by some sleeper he had awakened, and the light fell straight across the narrow street and lit up the features of Harry Lime.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

‘DO YOU BELIEVE in ghosts?’ Martins said to me.

‘Do you?’

‘I do now.’

‘I also believe that drunk men see things – sometimes rats, sometimes worse.’

He hadn’t come to me at once with his story – only the danger to Anna Schmidt tossed him back into my office, like something the sea had washed up, tousled, unshaven, haunted by an experience he couldn’t understand. He said, ‘If it had been just the face, I wouldn’t have worried. I’d been thinking about Harry, and I might easily have mistaken a stranger. The light was turned off again at once, you see. I only got one glimpse, and the man made off down the street – if he was a man. There was no turning for a long way, but I was so startled I gave him another thirty yards’ start. He came to one of those advertisement kiosks and for a moment moved out of sight. I ran after him. It only took me ten seconds to reach the kiosk, and he must have heard me running, but the strange thing was he never appeared again. I reached the kiosk. There wasn’t anybody there. The street was empty. He couldn’t have reached a doorway without my seeing him. He simply vanished.’

‘A natural thing for ghosts – or illusions.’

‘But I can’t believe I was as drunk as all that!’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I had to have another drink. My nerves were all in pieces.’