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wall in Paris and say, “And that was the bullet that nearly got me.” My first visit to Paris, he thought, just ten days before the Germans left. He looked around his elegant and peaceful room; and he shook his head slowly.
    He rose to find another cigarette. There should be a couple, at least, left in the pack in his raincoat pocket. As his hand touched the coat, he had his first suspicion. He pulled the coat off its hanger, and the suspicion was a fact. It wasn’t his.
    There was no identification mark, not even the usual label at the back of the collar. He dug his hand into the deep pockets to find some scrap of information, but there were only two folded sheets of blank airmail paper, as if someone had meant to write a letter and never got around to it. And that was all.
    He looked at the coat again—same colour and same shape, but many raincoats were. Only the texture of the fabric was different. Hell and damnation, he thought, this takes care of my morning. I’ll have to start telephoning around. Where do I begin? He stared angrily at the coat, at his shattered plans. One of those efficient prize packages who shuttled luggage in and out of this hotel must have mixed up—no, possibly not. It could have happened back at the airport, with that other efficient prize package of a porter. And Fenner’s attention hadbeen wandering; first with the man who had collapsed; second, with Ballard’s unexpected appearance; third, with Ballard’s constant stream of questions; fourth, with talk of Sandra.
    He cursed himself for an idiot, sighed wearily and telephoned the baggage porter downstairs.
    Had any guest returned a wrongly delivered raincoat this morning? No one had.
    Would the porter check and find out? The raincoat would have to belong to someone who had arrived or departed around half-past nine.
    The porter could tell him that right away. There had been several early departures this morning before eight o’clock, and some arrivals around ten o’clock. Only four people had had their luggage moved between nine-fifteen and nine-forty-five. One was Monsieur Fenner, the other three were ladies. He would investigate further if necessary.
    “No need, thank you,” Fenner said. He was sure in his own mind, now, that the coat had been picked up by mistake at the airport. He had put it down, after jamming the book back into its pocket—yes, that was the last time he had touched it.
    The scene at the airport came back to him. The man next to him had had a raincoat, hadn’t he? Yes, coming back from that abortive expedition for water, he had seen the man collapse and the coat fall with him... There had been a coat thrown over his legs when they tucked him on the stretcher. So that’s how it happened...
    He had better start calling Orly. He would probably have to use French, so he must get his story brief and clear. It would be better still to be able to use the man’s name: that simplified all explanations. There must be some identification on theraincoat; people did not travel around without identification. Fenner searched the edge of the sleeves and the pockets. No label, no inked name on any part of their lining. But this time, as he thrust the blank folds of airmail paper back into its pocket, roughly, annoyance growing at every defeat, his knuckles felt something. There was a slight thickness between the pocket’s loose lining and the heavier lining of the coat itself. A very slight thickness, of cloth possibly, from some hidden felt or seam. He pulled his hand out quickly, with exasperation at his own time-wasting. His impatience had added to the delay: a thread, loose in the pocket’s lining, was snagged around the stem of his wrist watch. He tried to free his watch, but it was well caught. He tried to snap the thread, but it was strong, of nylon possibly: he would end by pulling off the stem of his watch. Cut it loose? Easier, in his annoyance, to try to break the thread at its other end in the pocket. It