Suddenly he had a great moment of insight. Goldwasser had bought twelve brass screws in the IRONMONGERS to fix the OVERMANTEL!

A second flash of understanding followed almost immediately. Goldwasser had bought the three POPPADOMS for the MIDNIGHT LUNCH – one for himself, one for writing messages on, and one for the SEAHORSE!

It all tied up. A pattern was beginning to emerge. He was starting to make sense of what at first had appeared to be some of the most puzzling data to come his way in his whole career in intelligence.

He looked at the reports again, and at once another question struck him – a question which might just possibly be the key to the whole mystery. He pulled out his Amateur Wrestler and Judo World Diary, and noted in the space marked Memo:

‘Ask “Bissel” and “Jurgensen” who “Naismith.” ’

He put the diary back in his pocket, and tottered agedly out to find someone to play a game of bowls with.

22

Rowe had started his novel once again. Chapter I [he wrote]. No Particle Forgot.

There was a cry from the terrace. Shielding his eyes against the hard, almost tangible glare of the noonday Mediterranean sun, Rick looked up.

Rick Roe was tall. But his shoulders were broad, so that the first impression you got of him was that he was a man of average build standing some way off. Some might have called him handsome, but Rick did not think of himself as being so. His features were almost classically even, but the mouth had a certain humorous twist which made the statuesque proportions of the face seem gratefully human. The mouth, in fact, was interesting. The regular teeth stood out very white amid his deep tan, while the lips were firm but somehow sensuous, belying the almost ascetic nose. The eyes were blue – like aquamarines nestling among the jeweller’s crumpled chamois leather as he narrowed his gaze against the hard, almost tangible noonday glare. The eyebrows were russet thickets – slightly raised, as if surprised and perhaps a little scandalised to find themselves sitting on top of a pair of aquamarines. The hair was russet, too – cut en brosse, and there were fine russet hairs gleaming along the forearm raised to ward off the hard, almost tangible noonday glare.

He was wearing a faded blue shirt, which looked as if it had been splashed and soaked in salt water a great deal. The shirt was tucked into a pair of whitish canvas trousers, held up by a narrow leather belt. The buckle on the belt was simple – a plain loop of brass of the sort that could be seen fastening the belt that held up the stained trousers of a thousand sunburnt men lounging or strolling on the quays of any Mediterranean port.

But it was the shoes that held the attention. They were cheap espadrilles made of worn blue canvas. The laces had once been white, but were white no more, and the lace in the right shoe was a deeper shade of grey than its fellow in the left. The soles of the shoes were made of coiled rope, and one imagined, without quite knowing why, that they would have black stains of tar on the bottom of them.