Dupont’s sharp eyebrows were raised to the limit. Beneath them his round eyes stared with glazed impartiality at nothing in particular. His arms were folded. Alleyn waited.

“In effect,” Dupont said at last, “he sends his secretary to investigate. The secretary returns with Ricketts and there are a great many apologies. The manager assures me that there will be an exhaustive enquiry and appropriate dismissals.”

“What do you say to this?”

“Ah,” said Dupont, suddenly lowering his eyebrows and unfolding his arms. “That is more difficult.”

“Do I perhaps intervene? Having clasped my son to my bosom and taken him out with his mother to the car, thus giving the manager an opportunity to attempt bribery at a high level, do I not return and take it as matter of course that you consider this an admirable opportunity to pursue your search for the kidnappers?”

Dupont’s smile irradiated his face. “It is possible,” he said. “It is conceivable.”

“Finally, my dear Dupont, can we act along these lines or any other that suggest themselves without arousing the smallest suspicion that we are interested in anything but the recovery of the child?”

“The word of operation is indeed ‘act.’ From your performance on the telephone, Mr. Chief, I can have no misgivings about your own performance. And for myself”— here Dupont tapped his chest, touched his moustache and gave Alleyn an indescribably roguish glance —“I believe I shall do well enough.”

They stood up. Alleyn put his police bag inside a large suitcase. After looking at the chaos within Troy’s partly unpacked luggage, he decided on two cases. He also collected their overcoats and Ricky’s.

“Shall we about it?” he asked.

“En avant, alors!” said Dupont.

ii

Mr. Oberon looked down at the figure on the bed. “Quite peaceful,” he said. “Isn’t it strange?”

“The teeth,” Baradi pointed out, “make a great difference.”

“There is a certain amount of discolouration.”

“Hypostatic staining. The climate.”

“Then there is every reason,” Mr Oberon observed with satisfaction, “for an immediate funeral.”

“Certainly.”

“If they have in fact gone off to St. Céleste they cannot return until the day after tomorrow.”

“If, on the other hand, this new man at the Préfecture is intelligent, which Allen says is not the case, they may pick up some information.”

“Let us—” Mr. Oberon suggested as he absentmindedly rearranged the sprigged locknit nightgown which was pinned down by crossed hands to the rigid bosom —“let us suppose the worst. They recover the child,” he raised his hand. “Yes, yes, it is unlikely, but suppose it happens. They call to enquire. They ask to see her.”

The two men were silent for a time. “Very well,” Baradi said. “So they see her. She will not be a pretty sight, but they see her.”

Mr. Oberon was suddenly inspired. “There must be flowers,” he ejaculated. “Masses and masses of flowers. A nest. A coverlet all of flowers, smelling like incense. Tuberoses,” he cried softly clapping his hands together. “They will be entirely appropriate. I shall order them. Tuberoses! And orchids.”

iii

The eastern route followed the seaboard for three miles out of Roqueville and then turned slightly inland. At this point a country road branched off it to the left. Raoul took the road which mounted into the hills by a series of hairpin bends. They climbed out of soft coastal air and entered a region of mountain freshness. A light breeze passed like a hand through the olive groves and sent spirals of ruddy dust across the road. The seaboard with its fringe of meretricious architecture had dwindled into an incident, while the sea and sky and warm earth widely enlarged themselves.

The road, turning about the contour of the hills, was littered with rock and scarred by wheel tracks. Sometimes it became a ledge traversing the face of sheer cliffs, and in normal times Troy, who disliked heights, would have feared these passages. Now she dreaded them merely because they had to be taken slowly.

“How long,” she asked, “will it be, do you suppose?”

“Roqueville’s down there a little ahead of us. We’ll pass above it in a few minutes. I gather we now cast back into the mountains for about the same distance as we’ve travelled already and then work round to a junction with the main road to the factory. Sorry about these corners, darling,” Alleyn said as they edged round a bend that looked like a take-off into space. “Are you minding it very much?”

“Only because it’s slow. Raoul’s a good driver, isn’t he?”

“Very good indeed. Could you bear it if I told you about this job? I think perhaps I ought to, but it’ll be a bit dreary.”

“Yes,” Troy said. “I’d like that. The drearier the better because I’ll have to concentrate.”

“Well, you know it’s to do with the illicit drug trade, but I don’t suppose you know much about the trade itself. By and large it’s probably the worst thing apart from war that’s happened to human beings in modern times. Before the 1914 war the nation most troubled by the opium racket had begun to do something about it. There was a Shanghai conference and a Hague Convention. Both were cautious tentative shows. None of the nations came to them with a clean record and all the delegates were embarrassed by murky backgrounds in which production, manufacture and distribution involved the revenue both of states and highly placed individuals. Dost thou attend me?”

“Sir,” said Troy, “most heedfully.”

They exchanged the complacent glance of persons who recognize each other’s quotations.

“At the Hague Convention they did get round to making one or two conservative decisions but before they were ratified the war came along and the whole thing lapsed. After the peace the traffic was stepped up most murderously. It’s really impossible to exaggerate the scandal of those years. At the top end were nations getting a fat revenue out of the sale of opium and its derivatives. An investigator said at one stage that half Europe was being poisoned to bolster up the domestic policy of Bulgaria. The goings-on were fantastic. Charges d’affaires smuggled heroin in their diplomatic baggage. Drug barons built works all over Europe. Diacetylmorphine, which is heroin to you, was brewed on the Champs Élysées. Highly qualified chemists were offered princely salaries to work in drug factories and a great number of them fell for it. Many of the smartest and most fashionable people in European society lived on the trade: murderers, if the word has any meaning. At the other end of the stick were the street pedlars, at the foot of Nurse Cavell’s statue among other places, and the addicts. The addicts were killing themselves in studies, studios, dressing-rooms, brothels, boudoirs and garrets; young intellectuals and young misfits were ruining themselves by the score. Girls were kept going by their souteneurs with shots of the stuff. And so on. Thou attendest not.”

“Oh, good sir, I do.”

“I pray thee, mark me. At the Peace Conference this revolting baby was handed over to the League of Nations, who appointed an Advisory Committee who began the first determined assault on the thing. The international police came in, various bodies were set up and a bit of real progress was made. Only a bit.

Factories pulled down in Turkey were rebuilt in Bulgaria. Big centralized industries were busted only to reappear like crops of small ulcers in other places. But something was attempted and a certain amount was achieved by 1939.”

“Oh, dear! History at it again?”

“More or less. The difference lies in the fact that this time the preliminary work had been done and the machinery for investigation partly set up. But the Second World War did its stuff and everything lapsed. U.N.O. doesn’t start from scratch in the way that the League did. But it faces the old situation and it’s still up against the Big Boys. The police still catch the sprats at the customs counter and miss the mackerels in high places. The factories have again moved: from Bulgaria into post-war Italy and from post-war Italy, it appears, into the Paysdoux of Southern France. And the Big Boys have moved with them. Particularly Dr. Baradi and Mr. Oberon.”