Or have they robbed any virgin,

by-passed itand brought some of the garrisons up to, and beyond, battalion strength." He grinned at Mallory. "You were lurking in your cave somewhere in the White Mountains at the time, but you'll remember how the Germans reacted?" "Violently?" Jensen nodded. "Exactly. Very violently indeed. The political importance of Turkey in this part of the world is impossible to over-estimateand she's always been a potential partner for either Axis or Allies. Most of these islands are only a few miles off the Turkish coast. The question of prestige, of restoring confidence in Germany, was urgent." "So?" "So they flung in everythingparatroopers, airborne troops, crack mountain brigades, hordes of StukasI'm told they stripped the Italian front of dive-bombers for these operations. Anyway, they flung everything inthe lot. In a few weeks we'd lost over ten thousand troops and every island we'd ever recapturedexcept Kheros." "And now it's the turn of Kheros?" "Yes." Jensen shook out a pair of cigarettes, sat silently until Mallory had lit them and sent the match spinning through the window towards the pale gleam of the Mediterranean lying north below the coast road. "Yes, Kheros is for the hammer. Nothing that we can do can save it. The Germans have absolute air superiority in the Aegean. . . ." "Butbut how can you be so sure that it's this week?" Jensen sighed. "Laddie, Greece is fairly hotching with Allied agents. We have over two hundred in the Athens-Piraeus area alone and" "Two hundred!" Mallory interrupted incredulously. "Did you say" "I did." Jensen grinned. "A mere bagatelle, I assure you, compared to the vast hordes of spies that circulate freely among our noble hosts in Cairo and Alexandria." He was suddenly serious again. "Anyway, our information is accurate. An armada of caiques will sail from the Piraeus on Thursday at dawn and island-hop across the Cyclades, holing up in the islands at night." He smiled. "An intriguing situation, don't you think? We daren't move in the Aegean in the daytime or we'd be bombed out of the water. The Germans don't dare move at night. Droves of our destroyers and M.T.B.s and gunboats move into the Aegean at dusk: the destroyers retire to the South before dawn, the small boats usually lie up in isolated islands creeks. But we olympus stylus verve digital camera can't stop them from getting across. They'll be there Saturday or Sundayand synchronise their landings with the first of the airborne troops: they've scores of Junkers 52s waiting just outside Athens. Kheros won't last a couple of days." No one could have listened to Jensen's carefully casual voice, his abnormal matter-of-factness and not have believed him. Mallory believed him. For almost a minute he stared down at the sheen of the sea, at the faery tracery of the stars shimmering across its darkly placid surface. Suddenly he swung around on Jensen. "But the Navy, sir! Evacuation! Surely the Navy" "The Navy," Jensen interrupted heavily, "is not keen. The Navy is sick and tired of the Eastern Med. and the Aegean, sick and tired of sticking out its long-suffering neck and having it regularly chopped offand all for sweet damn all. We've had two battleships wrecked, eight cruisers out of commissionfour of them sunk and over a dozen destroyers gone. . . . I couldn't even start to count the number of smaller vessels we've lost. And for what? I've told youfor sweet damn all! Just so's our High Command can play round-and-round- the-rugged-rocks and who's the-king-of-the-castle with their opposite numbers in Berlin. Great fun for all concernedexcept, of course, for the thousand or so sailors who've been drowned in the course of the game, the ten thousand or so Tommies and Anzacs and Indians who suffered and died on these same islandsand died without knowing why." Jensen's hands were white-knuckled on the wheel, his mouth tight-drawn and bitter. Mallory was surprised, shocked almost, by the vehemence, the depth of feeling; it was so completely out of character. . . . Or perhaps it was in character, perhaps Jensen knew a very great deal indeed about what went on on the inside. "Twelve hundred men, you said, sir?" Mallory asked quietly. "You said there were twelve hundred men on Kheros?" Jensen flickered a glance at him, looked away again. "Yes. Twelve hundred men." Jensen sighed. "You're right, laddie, of course, you're right. I'm just talking off the top of my head. Of course we can't leave them there. The Navy will do its damnedest. What's two or three more destroyerssorry, boy, sorry, there I go again. . . . Now listen, and listen carefully. "Taking 'em off will have to be a night operation. There isn't a ghost

For the sword outwears its sheath,

approached silently, neither legs nor arms breaking water, until he saw the vague shape of a man standing on the poop, just aft of the engine-room hatchway. He was immobile, staring out in the direction of the fortress and the upper town: Mallory slowly circled round the stern of the boat and came up behind him, on the other side. Carefully he removed his hat, took out the gun, caught the low gunwale with his left hand. At the range of seven feet he knew he couldn't possibly miss, but he couldn't shoot the man, not then. The guard-rails were token affairs only, eighteen inches high at the most, and the splash of the man falling into the water would almost certainly alert the guards at the harbour mouth emplacements. "If you move I will kill you!" Mallory said softly in German. The man stiffened. He had a carbine in his hand, Mallory saw. "Put the gun down. Don't turn round." Again the man obeyed, and Mallory was out of the water and on to the deck, in seconds, neither eye nor automatic straying from the man's back. He stepped softly forward, reversed the automatic, struck, caught the man before he could fall overboard and lowered him quietly to the deck. Three minutes later all the others were safely aboard. Mallory followed the limping Brown down to the engine-room, watched him as he switched on his hooded torch, looked around with a professional eye, looked at the big, gleaming, six-cylinder in line Diesel engine. "This," said Brown reverently, "is an engine. What a beauty! Operates on any number of cylinders you like. I know the type, sir." "I never doubted but you would. Can you start her up, Casey?" "Just a minute till I have a look round, sir." Brown had all the unhurried patience of the born engineer. Slowly, methodically, he played the spotlight round the immaculate interior of the engine-room, switched on the fuel and turned to Mallory. "A dual control job, sir. We can take her from up top." He carried out the same painstaking inspection in the wheel-house, while Mallory waited impatiently. The rain was easing off now, not much, but sufficiently to let him see the vague outlines of the harbour entrance. He wondered for the tenth time if the guards there had been alerted against the possibility of an attempted escape by boat. It seemed unlikelyfrom the racket Andrea was making, the Germans would think that escape was the last thing in their minds. ... He leaned forward, touched Brown on the shoulder. "Twenty past eleven, Casey," he murmured. "If these destroyers come through fuji f40fd digital camera reviews early we're apt to have a thousand tons of rock falling on our heads." "Ready now, sir," Brown announced. He gestured at the crowded dashboard beneath the screen. "Nothing to it really." "I'm glad you think so," Mallory murmured fervently. "Start her moving, will you? Just keep it slow and easy." Brown coughed apologetically. "We're still moored to the buoy. And it might be a good thing, sir, if we checked on the fixed guns, searchlights, signalling lamps, life-jackets and buoys. It's useful to know where these things are," he finished deprecatorily. Mallory laughed softly, clapped him on the shoulder. "You'd make a great diplomat, Chief. We'll do that" A landsman first and last, Mallory was none the less aware of the gulf that stretched between him and a man like Brown, made no bones about acknowledging it to himself. "Will you take her out, Casey?" "Right, sir. Would you ask Louki to come hereI think it's steep to both sides, but there may be snags or reefs. You never know." Three minutes later the launch was half-way to the harbour mouth, purring along softly on two cylinders, Mallory and Miller, still clad in German uniform, standing on the deck for'ard of the wheelhouse, Louki crouched low inside the wheelhouse itself. Suddenly, about sixty yards away, a signal lamp began to flash at them, its urgent clacking quite audible in the stillness of the night "Dan'l Boone Miller will now show how it's done," Miller muttered. He edged closer to the machine-gun on the starboard bow. "With my little gun. I shall . . ." He broke off sharply, his voice lost in the sudden clacking from the wheelhouse behind him, the staccato off-beat chattering of a signal shutter triggered by professional fingers. Brown had handed the wheel over to Louki, was morsing back to the harbour entrance, the cold rain lancing palely through the ifickering beams of the lamp. The enemy lamp had stopped but now began flashing again.. "My, they got a lot to say to each other," Miller said admiringly. "How long do the exchange of courtesies last, boss?" "I should say they are just about finished." Mallory moved back quickly to the wheelhouse. They were less than a hundred feet from the harbour entrance. Brown had confused the enemy, gained precious seconds, more time than Mallory had ever thought they could gain. But it couldn't last. He touched Brown on the arm. "Give her

It's good habit that makes a man.

It was Jackstraw who heard it firstit was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stovecurio collectors paid fancy prices for what they With a link a down and a down, imagined to be the dark ivory of fossilised elephant tusksrose and put his ear to the ventilation shaft, his eyes remote in the unseeing gaze of a man lost in listening. A couple of seconds were enough. "Aeroplane," he announced casually. "Aeroplane!" I propped myself up on an elbow and stared at him. "Jackstraw, you've been hitting the methylated spirits again." "Indeed, no, Dr Mason." The blue eyes, so incongruously at

Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour.

some hungry storm watchers more of those excellent sandwiches? Under ordinary circumstances, Killashandra would have had a tart rejoinder but catering would solve the more immediate problem. Just a moment. She splashed water on her face, smoothed back her hair, and regarded the blossoms about her neck. Strangely enough they were not dead, their petals were still fresh despite the creasing. Their fragrance scented her fingers as she opened the crushed flowers and spread them back into their original shapes. When she opened the door, Nahia and Hauness were making their way toward the catering area. They only want to talk weather, Nahia said with a smile. Well help you. The others did talk weather, but on the comunits to other islands, checking on storm damages and injuries, finding out what supplies would be required, and which island could best supply the needs. The three caterers served soup, a basic stew, and high-protein biscuits. In the company of Nahia and Hauness, the work was more pleasant than Killashandra would have believed. She had never met their likes before and realized that she probably never would again. The respite at the storms eye was all too brief, and soon the hurricane was more frightening in its renewed violence. Though it was a zephyr in comparison to Ballybran turbulence, Killashandra rated it a respectable storm, and slept through the rest of it. A touch on her shoulder woke her, a light touch that was then repeated and her shoulder held in a brief clasp. That was enough to bring Killashandra to full awareness and she looked up at Nahias perplexed expression. Killashandra smiled reassuringly, attempting to pass off the storm resonance still coursing through her body. As Lars was draped against her, she moved cautiously to a sitting position and took the steaming cup from Nahia with quiet thanks. Killashandra wondered how the man had been able to sleep with her body buzzing. Other storm watchers had disposed themselves for sleep about the room. Outside a hard rain was falling and a stout wind agitated the rain forest but the blow had become a shadow of its hurricane strength. We had orders to wake people as soon as the wind died to force five, Nahia said and extended a second hot cup to Killashandra for Lars. Has there been much damage? Many injuries? Sufficient. The hurricane was unseasonably early and caught some communities unprepared. Olav is preparing emergency schedules for us. Us? digital camera accessories photoshop Killashandra stared at Nahia in surprise. Surely youre not going to risk being seen and identified here? These are my own people, Carrigana. I am safest in the islands. Serenely confident, the beauty returned to the catering area. Lars had awakened during that brief interchange although he hadnt changed his position. His very blue eyes were watching her closely, no expression gave her a hint of his mood. Lazily he caressed her leg. Gradually his lips began to curve in a smile. What he might have said, what thoughts he held behind those keen eyes he did not share with her. Then he touched the garland she still wore, carefully unfolding a crushed petal. Will you be crew for me? We wont have much time together southbound. Tanny, Theach, and Erutown sail with us, and well be dropping off supplies here and there Of course Ill come, Killashandra said eagerly. She wouldnt miss the trip for the world. Only how would Lars take her deception? Would she lose him? Well, she didnt have to admit that she was the crystal singer they had incarcerated on the island! The winds out of the Back Harbor were brisk enough to be dangerous, but the well laden Pearl settled down to her task like the splendid craft she was. Erutown was the nonsailor among them and took to a bunk in the forward cabin until the motion sickness medication had taken effect. Theach had appropriated the small terminal, smiling with absentminded good humor at his shipmates, before he resumed his programming. Now that Tanny was on his way, he was as cheerful a companion as one could wish. Nor was he impatient with Killashandra as a crewmember. They had set sail once the winds had dropped to force three, one of the first of the larger sailing vessels to leave haven. Others were being loaded and crewed for their relief voyages. After the enforced idleness of the storm, it was good to be physically active. Killashandra didnt mind the wet weather nor the tussle with wind as she and Tanny made periodic checks of the deck cargo. Fresh water and food were unloaded at the first stop, and some emergency medical supplies. The Pearl had carefully motored past the debris floating in the small harbor: roofs, the sides of dwellings, innumerable polly trees, fruit bobbing about like so many bald heads. That sight had startled Killashandra and she had nearly exposed her ignorance of island phenomena to Tanny. The inhabitants had taken refuge on the one highland of the island, but they were already

While bishops have ought in their purse.

screen was active, showing a satellite picture of the growing storm swirling in from the south. Estimated times of arrival of the first heavy winds, high tide, the eye, and the counter winds were all listed in the upper left hand corner. Other cryptic information, displayed in a band across the top of the screen, did not mean much to her but evidently conveyed intelligence to the people in the bar. Including Lars. Lars, Olavs on line for you, called the tallest of the men behind the bar, and he jerked his head toward a side door. The fellow paused in his dispensations, and Killashandra was aware of his scrutiny as she followed Lars to the room indicated. However rustic the tavern looked from the outside, this room was crammed with sophisticated equipment, a good deal of it meteorological, though not as complex as instrumentation in the Weather Room of the Heptite Guild. And all of it printing out or displaying rapidly changing information. Lars? A young man turned from the scanner in front of him and, screwing his face in an anxious expression almost pounced on the new arrival What are you going to do Lars held up his hand, cutting off the rest of that sentence, and the young man noticed the garland. He threw an almost panic stricken look at Killashandra. Tanny, this is Carrigana. And theres nothing I can do with this storm blowing up. Lars was scrutinizing the duplicate vdr satellite picture as he spoke. The worst of it will pass due east. Dont worry about the things you cant change! He gave Tanny a clout on the shoulder but the worried expression did not entirely alter. Killashandra kept the silly social smile on her face as Tanny accorded her the briefest of nods. She had a very good idea what, or rather whom, they were discussing so obliquely. Her. Still trapped, they thought, on that chip of an island. Tannys my partner, Carrigana, and one of the best sailors on Angel, Lars added, though his attention was still claimed by the swirling cloud mass. What if the direction changes, Lars? Tanny refused to be reassured. You know what the southern blows are like He made an exaggerated gesture with both arms, nearly socking a passing islander, who ducked in time. Tanny, there is nothing we can do. Theres a great big polly on the island thats survived hurricanes and high tides since man took the archipelago. Well go have a look as soon as the blows gone. All right? Lars didnt wait for Tannys agreement, guiding Killashandra back into the main room. He paused at the counter, waiting his turn, digital cameras best prices and receiving a small handset. A light one will do me fine, Bart, he added and Bart set a small antigrav unit on the counter. Most of what I own is either on the Pearl or on its way back to me from the City. Grab a couple of those ration packs, will you, Carrigana, he added as they walked out on the broad verandah where additional emergency supplies were being passed out. Might not need them but its less for them to pack to the Ridge. As Lars turned her west, away from the settlement, she caught sight of Tanny, watching them, his expression still troubled. The wind was picking up and the water in the harbor agitated. Lars looked to his right, assessing the situation. Been in a bad one yet? he asked her, an amused and tolerant grin on his face. Oh, yes, Killashandra answered fervently. Not an experience I wish to repeat. How could Lars know how puny an Optherian hurricane would be in comparison to Passover Storms on Ballybran. Once again she wanted to discard her borrowed identity. There was so much she would like to share with Lars. Its waiting out the blow thats hard, Lars said, then grinned down at her. We wont be bored this time, though. My father said that Theach came with Hauness and Erutown. I wonder how they managed the travel permits? That caused him to chuckle. Well know how the revised master plan is working. Killashandra was very hard put to refrain from making any remarks but, of a certainty, waiting out this blow would be extremely interesting. She might not be getting on with the primary task of her visit to Optheria, but she was certainly gaining a lot of experience with dissidents. His place was on a knoll, above the harbor, in a grove of mature polly trees. It reflected an orderly person who preferred plain and restful colors. He produced several carisaks which had been neatly stored in a cupboard, and together they emptied the chest of his clothes, including several beautifully finished formal garments. He cleared his terminal of any stored information and when Killashandra asked if they shouldnt dismantle the screen, he shrugged. Federal issue. I must be one of the few islanders who use the thing. He grinned impiously. And then not to watch their broadcasts! They can never appreciate that islanders dont need vicarious experiences. He gestured toward the sea. Not with real live adventures! The pillows, hammocks, what kitchen utensils there were, the rugs, curtains, everything compacted into a

"I love him the better therefor."

again; it's a chance I have to take. But that little ledge, remote and just inaccessible, was fate's last refinement of cruelty, the salt in the wound of extinction, and he knew in his heart of hearts that it wasn't a chance at all, but just a suicidal gesture. And then Andrea had heaved the last of the fendersworn truck tyresout board, and was towering above him, grinning down hugely into his face: and suddenly Mallory wasn't so sure any more. "The ledge?" Andrea's vast, reassuring hand was on his shoulder. Mallory nodded, knees bent in readiness, feet braced on the plunging, slippery deck. "Jump for it," Andrea boomed. "Then keep your legs stiff." There was no time for any more. The caique was swinging in broadside to, teetering on the crest of a wave, as high up the cliff as she would ever be, and Mallory knew it was now or never. His hands swung back behind his body, his knees bent farther, and then, in one convulsive leap he had flung himself upwards, fingers scrabbling on the wet rock of the cliff, then hooking over the rim of the ledge. For an instant he hung there at the length of his arms, unable to move, wincing as he heard the foremast crash against the ledge and snap in two, then his fingers left the ledge without their own volition, and he was almost half-way over, propelled by one gigantic heave from below. He was not up yet. He was held only by the buckle of his belt, caught on the edge of the rock, a buckle now dragged up to his breastbone by the weight of his body. But he did not paw frantically for a handhold, or wriggle his body or flail his legs in the airand any of these actions would have sent him crashing down again. At last, and once again, he was a man utterly at home in his own element. The greatest rock climber of his time, men called him, and this was what he had been born for. Slowly, methodically, he felt the surface of the ledge, and almost at once he discovered a crack running back from the face. It would have been better had it been parallel to the faceand more than the width of a matchstick. But it was enough for Mallory. With infinite care he eased the hammer and a couple of spikes from his belt, worked a spike into the crack to obtain a minimal purchase, slid the other in some inches nearer, hooked his left wrist round the first, held the second spike with the fingers of the same hand and brought up the hammer in his free hand. Fifteen seconds later he was standing on the ledge. Working quickly and surely, memory card readers for digital cameras catlike in his balance on the slippery, shelving rock, he hammered a spike into the face of the cliff, securely and at a downward angle, about three feet above the ledge, dropped a clove hitch over the top and kicked the rest of the coil over the ledge. Then, and only then, he turned round and looked below him. Less than a minute had passed since the caique had struck, but already she was a broken-masted, splintered shambles, sides caving in and visibly disintegrating as he watched. Every seven or eight seconds a giant comber would pick her up and fling her bodily against the cliff, the heavy truck tyres taking up only a fraction of the impact that followed, the sickening, rending crash that reduced the gunwales to matchwood, holed and split the sides and cracked the oaken timber: and then she would roll clear, port side showing, the hungry sea pouring in through the torn and ruptured planking. Three men were standing by what was left of the wheelhouse. Three mensuddenly, he realised that Casey Brown was missing, realised, too, that the engine was still running, its clamour rising and falling then rising again, at irregular intervals. Brown was edging the caique backwards and forwards along the cliff, keeping her as nearly as humanly possible in the same position, for he knew their lives depended on Malloryand on himself. "The fool!" Mallory swore. "The crazy fool!" The caique surged back in a receding trough, steadied, then swept in against the cliff again, heeling over so wildly that the roof of the wheelhouse smashed and telescoped against the wall of the cliff. The impact was so fierce, the shock so sudden, that Stevens lost both hand-grip and footing and was catapulted into the rock face, upflung arms raised for protection. For a moment he hung there, as if pinned against the wall, then fell back into the sea, limbs and head relaxed, lifeless in his limp quiescence. He should have died then, drowned under the hammer-blows of the sea or crushed by the next battering-ram collision of caique and cliff. He should have died and he would have died but for the great arm that hooked down and plucked him out of the water like a limp and sodden rag doll and heaved him inboard a bare second before the next bludgeoning impact of the boat against the rock would have crushed the life out of him. "Come on, for God's sake!" Mallory shouted desperately. "Shell be gone in a minute! The ropeuse the rope!" He saw Andrea and

That soldiers starve or preach at Tyburn cross,

It was Jackstraw who heard it firstit was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stovecurio collectors paid fancy prices for what they That lawyers buy and purchase deadly hate, imagined to be the dark ivory of fossilised elephant tusksrose and put his ear to the ventilation shaft, his eyes remote in the unseeing gaze of a man lost in listening. A couple of seconds were enough. "Aeroplane," he announced casually. "Aeroplane!" I propped myself up on an elbow and stared at him. "Jackstraw, you've been hitting the methylated spirits again." "Indeed, no, Dr Mason." The blue eyes, so incongruously at

But Robin Hood hee took up his noble bow,

switched to a fresh line of thought. "You say they tried to kill you tonight. Is that not surprising? I would have thought that you and I would have been very safe, for a few days at least." I knew what he meant. Apart from Jackstraw and myself, there probably wasn't a handful of people in all Greenland who could start that damned Citroen, far less drive it, only Jackstraw could handle the dogs, and it was long odds indeed against any of the passengers knowing anything at all about astral or magnetic compass navigationthe latter very tricky indeed in these high latitudes. These special skills should have been guarantee enough of our immediate survival. "True enough," I agreed. "But I suspect they haven't given any thought to these things simply because they haven't realised the importance of them. We'll make it our business to point out that importance very plainly. Then we're both insured. Meantime, we'll have one last effort to clear this business up before we get started. It's not going to make us very popular, but we can't help that." I explained what I had in mind, and he nodded thoughtful agreement. After he had gone below, I waited a couple of minutes and then followed him. All nine of the passengers were sitting in the cabin noweight, rather, watching Marie LeGarde presiding over a soup panand I took a long, long look at all of them. It was the first time I had ever examined a group of my fellow-men with the object of trying to decide which among them were murderers, and found it a strange and unsettling experience. In the first place, every one of them looked to me like a potential or actual murdereror murderessbut even with that thought came the realisation that this was purely because I associated murder with abnormality, and in these wildly unlikely surroundings, clad in the layered bulkiness of these wildly unlikely clothes, every one of them seemed far removed from normality. But on a second and closer look, when one ignored the irrelevancies of surroundings and clothes, there remained only a group of shivering, feet-stamping, miserable and very ordinary people indeed. Or were they so ordinary? Zagero, for instance, was he ordinary? He had the build, the strength and, no doubt, also the speed and temperament for a top-ranking heavyweight, but he was the most unlikely looking boxer I had ever seen. It wasn't just that he was obviously a well-educated and cultured manthere had been such boxers before: it was chiefly because his face was absolutely unmarked, without even that almost invariable thickening of minolta dimage a1 digital camera skin above the eyes. Moreover, I had never heard of him, although that, admittedly, didn't go for much: as a doctor, I took a poor view of homo sapiens wreaking gratuitous physical and mental injury on homo sapiens, and took little interest in the sport. Or take his manager, Solly Levin, or, for that matter, the Rev. Joseph Small wood. Solly wasn't a New York boxing manager, he was a caricature of all I had ever heard or read about these Runyonesque characters, and he was just too good to be true: so, also, was the Rev. Small wood, who was so exactly the meek, mild, slightly nervous, slightly anaemic man of God that preachers are so frequently represented to beand almost invariably never are -that his movements, reactions, comments and opinions were predictable to the nth degree. But, against that, I had to set the fact that the killers were clever calculating men who would have carefully avoided assuming the guise of any character so patently cut from cardboard: on the other hand, they might have been astute enough to do just that. There was a question mark, too, about Corazzini. America specialised in producing shrewd, intelligent, tough business leaders and executives, and Corazzini was undoubtedly one such. But the toughness of the average business man was purely mental: Corazzini had physical toughness as well, a ruthlessness I felt he wouldn't hesitate to apply to matters lying far outside the immediate sphere of business. And then I realised, wryly, that I was prepared to suspect Corazzini for reasons diametrically opposed to those for which I was prepared to suspect Levin and the Rev. Smallwood: Corazzini didn't fit into any pattern, any prefabricated mental image of the American business man. Of the two remaining men, Theodore Mahler, the little Jew, and Senator Brewster, I would have taken the former any time as the more likely suspect. But when I asked myself why, I could adduce no more damaging reasons than that he was thin, dark, rather embittered looking and had told us absolutely nothing about himself: and if that weren't prejudice on my part, I couldn't guess what was. As for Senator Brewster, he was surely above suspicion: and then the startling thought struck me that if one wished to be above suspicion surely there were no better means of achieving that than by assuming the identity of someone who was above suspicion. How did I know he was Senator Brewster? A couple of forged papers,