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said doubtfully. Her contrition was waning fast.
    'Jimmy Duclos was clever. The cleverest we had. And scientific. He's in the city mortuary.'
    Belinda looked at me oddly. 'You will put your neck under the block?'
    'On the block, dear,' Maggie said absently. 'And don't go on telling your new boss what he can and can't do.' But her heart wasn't in her words for the worry was in her eyes.
    'It's suicide,' Belinda persisted.
    'So? Crossing the streets in Amsterdam is suicide -- or looks like it. Tens of thousands of people do it every day.' I didn't tell them that I had reason to believe that my early demise did not head the list of the ungodly priorities, not because I wished to improve my heroic image, but because it would only lead to the making of more explanations which I did not at the moment wish to make.
    'You didn't bring us here for nothing,' Maggie said.
    That's so. But any toe-tramping is my job. You keep out of sight. Tonight, you're free. Also tomorrow, except that I want Belinda to take a walk with me tomorrow evening. After that, if you're both good girls, I'll take you to a naughty nightclub.'
    'I come all the way from Paris to go to a naughty nightclub?' Belinda was back at being amused again. 'Why?'
    'I'll tell you why. I'll tell you some things about nightclubs you don't know. I'll tell you why we're here. In fact,' I said expansively, 'I'll tell you everything.' By 'everything' I meant everything I thought they needed to know, not everything there was to tell: the differences were considerable. Belinda looked at me with anticipation. Maggie with a wearily affectionate scepticism, but then Maggie knew me. 'But first, some Scotch.'
    'We have no Scotch, Major.' Maggie had a very puritanical side to her at times.
    'Not even au fait with the basic principles of intelligence. You must learn to read the right books.' I nodded to Belinda. The phone. Get some. Even the managerial classes must relax occasionally.'
    Belinda stood up, smoothing down her dark dress and looking at me with a sort of puzzled disfavour. She said slowly: 'When you spoke about your friend in the mortuary I watched and you showed nothing. He's still there and now you are -- what is the word -- flippant. Relaxing, you say. How can you do this?'
    'Practice. And a siphon of soda.'

CHAPTER THREE
    It was classical night that night at the Hotel Rembrandt with the barrel-organ giving forth a rendition of an excerpt from Beethoven's Fifth that would have had the old composer down on his knees giving eternal thanks for his almost total deafness. Even at fifty yards, the distance from which I was prudently observing through the now gently drizzling rain, the effect was appalling: it was an extraordinary tribute to the tolerance of the people of Amsterdam, city of music-lovers and home of the world-famous Concertgebouw, that they didn't lure the elderly operator into a convenient tavern and, in his absence, trundle his organ into the nearest canal. The ancient was still rattling his can at the end of his stick, a purely reflex action for there was no one about that night, not even the doorman, who had either been driven inside by the rain or was a music-lover.
    I turned down the side-street by the bar entrance. There was no figure lurking about adjacent doorways or in the entrance to the bar itself, nor had I expected to find any. I made my way round to the alley and the fire-escape, climbed up to the roof, crossed it and located the stretch of coaming that directly overhung my own balcony.
    I peered over the edge. I could see nothing, but I could smell something. Cigarette smoke, but not emanating from a cigarette made by one of the more reputable tobacco companies, who don't include reefers among their marketable products. I leaned further out to almost the point of imbalance and then I could see things, not much, but enough: two pointed toe-caps and, for a moment, the arcing, glowing tip of a cigarette, obviously on the downswing of an arm.
    I withdrew