"And you really believe," Miss Hilfe said, "that Canon Topling's friend. . ."
"Don't listen to her," Hilfe said. "Why not Canon Topling's friend? There's no longer a thing called a criminal class. We can tell you that. There were lots of people in Austria you'd have said couldn't. . . well, do the things we saw them do. Cultured people, pleasant people, people you had sat next to at dinner."
"Mr Rennit," Rowe said, "the head of the Orthotex Detective Agency, told me today that he'd never met a murderer. He said they were rare and not the best people."
"Why, they are dirt cheap," Hilfe said, "nowadays. I know myself at least six murderers. One was a cabinet minister, another was a heart specialist, the third a bank manager, an insurance agent. . ."
"Stop," Miss Hilfe said, "please stop."
"The difference," Hilfe said, "is that in these days it really pays to murder, and when a thing pays it becomes respectable. The rich abortionist becomes a gynaecologist and the rich thief a bank director. Your friend is out of date." He went on explaining gently, his very pale blue eyes unshocked and unshockable. "Your old-fashioned murderer killed from fear, from hate -- or even from love, Mr Rowe, very seldom for substantial profit. None of these reasons is quite -- respectable. But to murder for position -- that's different, because when you've gained the position nobody has a right to criticize the means. Nobody will refuse to meet you if the position's high enough. Think of how many of your statesmen have shaken hands with Hitler. But, of course, to murder for fear or from love, Canon Topling wouldn't do that. If he killed his wife he'd lose his preferment," and he smiled at Rowe with a blithe innocence of what he was saying.
When he came out of what wasn't called a prison, when His Majesty's pleasure had formally and quickly run its course, it had seemed to Rowe that he had emerged into quite a different world -- a secret world of assumed names, of knowing nobody, of avoiding faces, of men who leave a bar unobtrusively when other people enter. One lived where least questions were asked, in furnished rooms. It was the kind of world that people who attended garden fêtes, who went to Matins, who spent week-ends in the country and played bridge for low stakes and had an account at a good grocer's, knew nothing about. It wasn't exactly a criminal world, though eddying along its dim and muted corridors you might possibly rub shoulders with genteel forgers who had never actually been charged or the corrupter of a child. One attended cinemas at ten in the morning with other men in macintoshes who had somehow to pass the time away. One sat at home and read The Old Curiosity Shop all the evening. When he had first believed that someone intended to murder him, he had felt a sort of shocked indignation; the act of murder belonged to him like a personal characteristic, and not the inhabitants of the old peaceful places from which he was an exile, and of which Mrs Bellairs, the lady in the floppy hat and the clergyman called Sinclair were so obviously inhabitants. The one thing a murderer should be able to count himself safe from was murder -- by one of these.
But he was more shocked now at being told by a young man of great experience that there was no division between the worlds. The insect underneath the stone has a right to feel safe from the trampling superior boot.
Miss Hilfe told him, "You mustn't listen." She was watching him with what looked like sympathy. But that was impossible.
"Of course," Hilfe said easily, "I exaggerate. But all the same you have to be prepared in these days for criminals everywhere. They call it having ideals. They'll even talk about murder being the most merciful thing."
Rowe looked quickly up, but there was no personal meaning in the pale blue theoretical eyes. "You mean the Prussians? " Rowe asked.
"Yes, if you like, the Prussians. Or the Nazis. The Fascists. The Reds, the Whites
A telephone rang on Miss Hilfe's desk. She said, "It's Lady Dunwoody."
Hilfe, leaning quickly sideways, said, "We are so grateful for your offer, Lady Dunwoody. We can never have too many woollies. Yes, if you wouldn't mind sending them to this office, or shall we collect? You'll send your chauffeur. Thank you. Good-bye." He said to Rowe, with a rather wry smile, "It's an odd way for someone of my age to fight a war, isn't it? Collecting woollies from charitable old dowagers. But it's useful, I'm allowed to do it, and it's something not to be interned. Only -- you do understand, don't you -- a story like yours excites me. It seems to give one an opportunity, well, to take a more violent line." He smiled at his sister and said with affection, "Of course she calls me a romantic."
But the odd thing was she called him nothing at all. It was almost as if she not only disapproved of him, but had disowned him, wouldn't co-operate in anything -- outside the woollies. She seemed to Rowe to lack her brother's charm and ease; the experience which had given him an amusing nihilistic abandon had left her brooding on some deeper, more unhappy level. He felt no longer sure that they were both without scars. Her brother had the ideas, but she felt them. When Rowe looked at her it was as if his own unhappiness recognized a friend and signalled, signalled, but got no reply.
"And now," Hilfe said, "what next?"
"Leave it alone." Miss Hilfe addressed herself directly to Rowe -- the reply when it did at last come was simply to say that communication was at an end.
"No, no," Hilfe said, "we can't do that. This is war."
"How do you know," Miss Hilfe said, still speaking only to Rowe, "that even if there is something behind it, it isn't just -- theft, drugs, things like that?"
"I don't know," Rowe said, "and I don't care. I'm angry, that's all."
"What is your theory, though?" Hilfe asked. "About the cake?"
"It might have contained a message, mightn't it?"
Both the Hilfes were silent for a moment as though that were an idea which had to be absorbed. Then Hilfe said, "I'll go with you to Mrs Bellairs."
"You can't leave the office, Will!," Miss Hilfe said. "I'll go with Mr Rowe. You have an appointment."
"Oh, only with Trench. You can handle Trench for me, Anna." He said with glee, "This is important. There may be trouble."
"We could take Mr Rowe's detective."
"And warn the lady? He sticks out a yard. No," Hilfe said, "we must very gently drop him. I'm used to dropping spies. It's a thing one has learned since 1933."
"But I don't know what you want to say to Mr Trench."
"Just stave him off. Say we'll settle at the beginning of the month. You'll forgive us talking business, Mr Rowe."
"Why not let Mr Rowe go alone?"
Perhaps, Rowe thought, she does after all believe there's something in it; perhaps she fears for her brother. She was saying, "You don't both of you want to make fools of yourselves, Willi."
Hilfe ignored his sister completely. He said to Rowe, "Just a moment while I write a note for Trench," and disappeared behind the screen.
When they left the office together it was by another door; dropping Jones was as simple as that, for be had no reason to suppose that his employer would try to evade him. Hilfe called a taxi, and as they drove down the street, Rowe was able to see how the shabby figure kept his vigil, lighting yet another cigarette with his eyes obliquely on the great ornate entrance, like a faithful hound who will stay interminably outside his master's door. Rowe said, "I wish we had let him know."