“You’ve been damn’ pleasant about it, Inspector. Hope you’re none the worse, Cass.”

Cass saluted. Solemnly and rather ridiculously they both shook hands with Alleyn and tramped off.

The street ran uphill towards the hotel. At the far end there was clean lightness of sky and, as Alleyn watched, it grew still lighter. Between the end of the street and the sky was the head of a faraway mountain. Its flowing margin was sharp against the dawn. Its base was drenched in a colder and more immaculate blue than Alleyn had ever before seen. And as Packer had told him, this mountain was crested white and the little cold wind that touched Alleyn’s face came from those remote slopes. Alleyn paused outside his hotel, still looking up the street to the mountain and wondering at the line traced by its margin against the sky. He thought: “It is like the outline of a lovely body. All beautiful edges are convex. Though the general sweep may be inward, to attain beauty, the line must be formed of outward curves.” Before he had completed this thought, the peak of the mountain was flooded with thin rose colour, too austere to be theatrical, but so vivid that its beauty was painful. He felt that kind of impatience and disquietude that sudden beauty brings. He could not stand and watch the flood of warmth flow down the flanks of the mountain nor the intolerable transfiguration of the sky. He rang the night bell and was admitted by the porter.

The clocks in the hotel, and the clocks outside in the town, all began to strike six as he got into bed, and when the last clock had struck, the vague rumour of innumerable cockcrows rang in his head. And as he fell asleep he heard the first chatter of waking birds.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Entr’acte

EXTRACT FROM A letter written by Chief Inspector Alleyn to Detective-Inspector Fox of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard:—