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His hair was like a black plastic swimming cap. His suit was made of thin uncreasable blue steel and so was his smile.
    ‘Where’s the pain?’ he said. It was a joke. He smiled again to put me at my ease.
    ‘In my hand.’
    ‘Really? You really have a pain in your hand?’
    ‘Just when I put it in my pocket.’
    Pike looked at me carefully and remembered that there are some people who mistake a friendly word for an invitation to be familiar. ‘I’m sure you were the life and soul of the sergeants’ mess.’
    ‘Let’s not exchange war experiences,’ I said.
    ‘Let’s not,’ he agreed.
    On Pike’s desk there was a pen set, a large dog-eared desk-diary, a stethoscope, three prescriptionpads and a shiny brown ball about as big as a golf ball. He fingered the shiny sphere.
    I said, ‘We will be working together for a long time, so why don’t we decide to get along with each other?’
    ‘That’s a remarkably intelligent idea.’
    Pike and I loathed each other on sight, but he had the advantage of breeding and education, so he swallowed hard and went out of his way to be nice to me.
    ‘This package of…’ He waited for me to finish the sentence.
    ‘Eggs,’ I said. ‘Package of eggs.’
    ‘It may take a day or so to come through.’
    ‘That doesn’t tally with my instructions,’ I said.
    ‘Perhaps not,’ he said in a restrained way, ‘but there are complex reasons why the timing is unpredictable. The people involved are not the sort to whom one can give a direct order.’ He had the precise, accentless English that only a diligent foreigner can produce.
    ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and why not?’
    Pike smiled while keeping his lips pressed together. ‘We are professional men. Our livelihood depends upon a code of conduct; it’s essential that we do nothing unethical.’
    ‘Are discovered doing nothing unethical, you mean,’ I said.
    Pike did that tricky smile again. ‘Have it your way,’ he said.
    ‘I will,’ I said. ‘When will the package be ready?’
    ‘Not today certainly. There are some benches near the children’s sand-pit in St James’s Park. Meet me there at four forty-five P.M. on Saturday. Ask me if my paper has the stock-market prices and I’ll have a Financial Times. I’ll say, “You can read this for a few minutes.” If I’m carrying a copy of Life magazine don’t make contact: it will indicate danger.’ Pike fingered his yellow bow tie and nodded my dismissal.
    My God, I thought, what have these boys been smoking? They’re all doing it. I nodded as though these charades were a regular part of my working day and opened the door.
    Pike said, ‘…carry on with the tablets and come back and see me in about a week,’ for the benefit of a couple of old flower-pots who were sitting in the waiting-room. He needn’t have bothered because he was shouting at the top of his voice as I left, trying to get them to look up.
    In view of the razzle-dazzle these boys were going through it was reasonable to suppose they were having me followed, so I took a cab and waited till we got into a traffic jam, paid off the driver quickly and hailed a cab moving in the opposite direction. This tactic, well handled, can throw off the average tail if it’s using a private car. I was back in the office before lunch time.
    I reported to Dawlish. Dawlish had that timeless, ageless quality that British Civil Servants develop to spread confidence among the natives. His only interest in life, apart from the antiqueswhich littered the office and the department which he controlled, was the study and cultivation of garden weeds; perhaps they weren’t unrelated interests.
    Dawlish had sandwiches sent up from Wally’s delicatessen and asked me lots of questions about Pike and Harvey Newbegin. I thought Dawlish was taking it much too seriously, but he’s a cunning old devil; he’s apt to base his hunches upon information he hasn’t given me access to. When I said I’d told Harvey Newbegin that I only