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By Root 896 0

me, presumably, but I didn’t know what their orders were. If someone were to beat me up, it wouldn’t be much consolation to know that they were standing by taking notes. It was certainly better to stay in. The only problem was the ten o’clock telephone report. I had already noticed that the public telephones in the foyer were handled by an operator who put the calls through the hotel switchboard, so I would have to risk going out later. Unless, that is, I missed the ten o’clock call and left it until the morning at eight. The only trouble was that I would then have to explain to Tufan why I had done so, and I did not want to have to explain that I was afraid of anything that Fischer might do. My trousers were still damp where he had upset the drink over me, and I was still remembering how good it had felt to make him climb down and do what I wanted. I could not expect Tufan to realize how successfully I had handled Fischer if I had to start by admitting that I had been too nervous to leave the hotel afterwards.

All I could do was to minimize the risk. The nearest café I knew of was the one on the side street below my room. With so many lighted hotel windows above, the street would not be too dark for safety. The telephone would probably be on the bar, but with any luck the noise of the music would compensate for the lack of privacy. Anyway, it would have to do.

By the time I had finished dinner I was feeling so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open. I went back to the terrace and drank brandy until it was time for the call.

As I walked from the hotel entrance to the road I had to get out of the way of a taxi and was able to glance over my shoulder casually as if to make sure that it was safe to walk on. There was a man in a chauffeur’s cap about twenty yards behind me.

Because of the contours of the hill and the way the street twisted and turned, it took me longer than I had expected to get to the café. The man in the chauffeur’s cap stayed behind me. I listened carefully to his footsteps. If he had started to close in, I would have made a dash for the café; but he kept his distance, so I assumed that he was one of Tufan’s men. All the same it was not a very pleasant walk.

The telephone was on the wall behind the bar. There was no coin box and you had to ask the proprietor to get the number so that he knew what to charge you. He couldn’t speak anything but Turkish, so I wrote the number down and made signs. The noise of the music wasn’t as bad inside the place as it sounded from my room, but it was loud enough.

Tufan answered immediately and characteristically.

“You are late.”

“I’m sorry. You told me not to call through the hotel switchboard. I am in a café.”

“You went to the Hilton Hotel just after six. Why? Make your report.”

I told him what had happened. I had to repeat the descriptions of the man at the Hilton car park and of Fischer so that he could write them down. My report on the meeting with Fischer seemed to amuse him at first. I don’t know why. I had not expected any thanks, but I felt that I had earned at least a grunt of approval for my quick thinking. Instead, he made me repeat the conversation and then began harping on Fischer’s reference to a villa outside Istanbul and asking a lot of questions for which I had no answers. It was very irritating; although, of course, I didn’t say so. I just asked if he had any additional orders for me.

“No, but I have some information. Harper and the Lipp woman have reservations on an Olympic Airways plane from Athens tomorrow afternoon. It arrives at four. The earliest you will hear from him probably will be an hour after that.”

“Supposing he gives me the same orders as Fischer—to hand over the car with its papers—what do I do?”

“Ask for your wages and the letter you wrote.”

“Supposing he gives them to me.”

“Then you must give up the car, but forget to bring the carnet and the insurance papers. Or remind him of his promise that you could work for Miss Lipp. Be persistent. Use your intelligence. Imagine that he is an ordinary tourist whom you are trying