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learned his work on the streets, never gave him work of this kind. He interfered as a consequence very little with van der Valk. This job now – the CMP file – he would have had a fit if he had known the things his nominal subordinate was thinking up, but the innocent had not noticed that his brains were being picked.
    â€œWell now,” he was saying, “you know that I have a lot of friends who are doctors. I looked up your man pretty carefully. Very brilliant student, came from a good family. There was a grandfather on the mother’s side who was Governor General of the East Indies. People of standing. I agree, of course, that those days are gone, but it stillcounts, you know – you’d be surprised, van der Valk, but then you know nothing about this class of person. His wife’s family carries a lot of weight too. An uncle of hers was Queen’s Commissioner for one of the eastern provinces; now it’s slipped my mind exactly which. It’ll come back to me.
    â€œHer father was only a canton magistrate, but there is a brother, a Substitute Officer of Justice, been transferred recently to Utrecht – getting near the top, my lad,” with admiration. “And there is a cousin, an Advocate to the Court of Appeal – most distinguished family. I would say that it was that marriage more than the man himself that made him. His reputation’s sound, of course, but there’s something, from what I hear – he’s clever enough but lacking fibre, if you understand me. He’s brilliant, yes, but a thought lightweight, a scrap too unorthodox, dabbles a bit in chimerical theories. I’d almost go as far as to say that he’s never been quite altogether accepted by the very top members of the profession.”
    Kan was well launched on just the sort of thing that pleased him: his famous accurate précis – it could not be called thumbnail – of the character and attainments of someone in public life.
    â€œThere’s been a certain amount of comment on the marriage, too, I hear. She’s a splendid woman, thoroughly intelligent, broad intellectual interests, knowing what is expected of her position. Naturally, one makes a remark like this guardedly, but it has been said that people felt she’d rather thrown herself away. A man of remarkable promise, who hadn’t quite fulfilled the hopes people had of him.”
    â€œThanks very much,” said van der Valk, poker-faced, busily drawing tiny imps of malice with vicious little horns and curly spiky tails in the margin of his scribbling pad. “Big help.”
    â€œYou don’t need the warning, of course,” went on Kan generously, “but bear in mind, won’t you, that people would be very slow to accept an idea of his being in any way dubious, don’t you know. Even if it were only for her sake. He himself, I rather think, hasn’t all that many friends; I mean close friends. Bit stand-offish, bit prickly, not really all that good a mixer and of course that’s soimportant.” He brooded, while van der Valk thought that if there were a modern version of Samuel Smiles’
Self-Help,
or a
Guide for the Rising Young Executive,
they could get Kan to write the Foreword to the Dutch Edition.
    â€œBut I wouldn’t want to give you an unbalanced picture: he has a very wealthy and important circle of patients, and there’s no doubt at all of his success or his talent. Just that he doesn’t quite belong, you know, in the milieu where it really counts. Still, of course, you remember the sort of experience we had in that disgraceful affair we had of the one who was picked up that time for drunk driving. They all close the ranks – you’d never get one of them to come into court and say it outright.”
    â€œMore or less like Janus,” said van der Valk naughtily.
    â€œGood heavens, man, there’s no comparison.”
    â€œCan’t see much