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'So he joined the Bureau?'

'Not right away. At first he wasn't interested. He went back to his university post the following term. It was during the Christmas vacation that he came to see if my offer was still open.'

'Did he say why he'd changed his mind?'

'He didn't need to.' Mallory took a Turkish cigarette from an ivory box and inserted it carefully into a jade holder, his one affectation. 'Paul Chavasse has everything a good agent needs. Flair, ingenuity, a superb intelligence plus common sense--and those two don't always go together. Added to these he has the willingness to kill, something most human beings hesitate over, even in a difficult situation.'

'So he decided he wanted a more active life?'

'Something like that. I think the Czechoslovakian affair had made him discover things about himself that he never knew before. That he liked taking a calculated risk and pitting his wits against the opposition. Teaching French and German in a red-brick university must have seemed pretty tame after that.'

'And this was what--ten years ago?'

Mallory nodded. 'I'll tell you one thing, Hammond. I'll be lucky to replace him.'

There was a discreet knock on the door and Jean Frazer came in with a large buff envelope which she placed on the desk. 'The medical reports on Paul Chavasse, Mr. Mallory. The Medical Room says they'll be sending him up in about fifteen minutes.'

Mallory looked down at the envelope and sighed. 'All right, I'll see him as soon as he arrives.' She turned to the door and he added softly: 'And, Miss Frazer. I don't want us to be disturbed--not on any account. Is that understood?'

She went out and Hammond got to his feet. 'Anything more I can do, sir?'

Mallory shook his head. 'This is my baby, Hammond. I'll see you in the morning.'

The door closed and a small trapped wind whistled softly around the room and died in a corner. Mallory looked down at the envelope, remembering many things and pulled himself up hard. That sort of sentimentality never did anyone any good. He put on his spectacles, took out the medical reports and started working through them.

Chavasse lay on his back on the operating table and stared up at his image multiplied again and again in the reflectors on the low ceiling. The bruise was already beginning to show beneath his breastbone, dark with blood, but he could feel no pain.

The very flesh on his body seemed to have shrunk, emphasising the ugly puckered scar of the old gunshot wound in his left shoulder, and the great angry weal of the knife scar that had gutted him like a herring from just above his hip to a point an inch or two below his left nipple.

Ten years. Ten hard, bloody years and this was all he had to show for it. He pushed himself up and as he swung his legs to the floor, the door opened and Dr. Lovatt came in, pipe clamped firmly between his teeth. He ran one hand through the untidy shock of white hair that fell across his forehead and grinned.

'How do you feel, Paul?'

'Terrible. My mouth's like a sandpit.'

Lovatt nodded. 'I gave you a quarter grain of morphine to kill the pain.'

'That's a little old fashioned, isn't it?'

'Still nothing like it as far as I'm concerned,' Lovatt said. 'I'm not going to change my ways just because some drug company sends me a flashy prospectus.'

He leaned forward to examine the knife scar, tracing its course gently with the end of a finger and Chavasse said calmly, 'What do you think?'

'Time, Paul. That's all it needs.'

Chavasse laughed harshly. 'Why pretend? It's taken the sap out of me and you know it. Have you finished the tests?'

'We have. You can get dressed.'

'And what's the verdict?'

'Mallory's got the reports now. He'll see you as soon as you're ready.'

'It's like that, is it?'

'A long rest, that's all you need, but he'll have all that in hand I'm sure.' He moved quickly to the door before Chavasse could reply. 'I'll probably see you again before you go.'

Chavasse dressed slowly, a slight frown on his face. The