"My good sir," Mr Rennit said, "you can take it from me that I know all the beginnings. I've been in this line of business for thirty years. Thirty years. Every client thinks he's a unique case. He's nothing of the kind. He's just a repetition. All I need from you is the answer to certain questions. The rest we can manage without you. Now then -- when did you notice anything wrong, wife's coldness?"
"I'm not married," Rowe said.
Mr Rennit shot him a look of disgust; he felt guilty of a quibble. "Breach of promise, eh?" Mr Rennit asked. "Have you written any letters?"
"It's not breach of promise either."
"Blackmail?"
"No."
"Then why," Mr Rennit asked angrily, 'do you come to me?" He added his tag, "I'm a busy man," but never had anyone been so palpably unemployed. There were two trays on his desk marked In and Out, but the Out tray was empty and all the In tray held was a copy of Men Only. Rowe might perhaps have left if he had known any other address, and if it had not been for that sense of pity which is more promiscuous than lust. Mr Rennit was angry because he had not been given time to set his scene, and he could so obviously not afford his anger. There was a kind of starved nobility in the self-sacrifice of his rage.
"Doesn't a detective deal with anything but divorces and breaches of promise?"
Mr Rennit said, "This is a respectable business with a tradition. I'm not Sherlock Holmes. You don't expect to find a man in my position, do you, crawling about floors with a microscope looking for blood-stains?" He said stiffly, "If you are in any trouble of that kind, I advise you to go to the police."
"Listen," Rowe said, "be reasonable. You know you can do with a client just as much as I can do with you. I can pay, pay well. Be sensible and unlock that cupboard and let's have a drink on it together. These raids are bad for the nerves. One has to have a little something. . ."
The stiffness drained slowly out of Mr Rennit's attitude as he looked cautiously back at Rowe. He stroked his bald head and said, "Perhaps you're right. One gets rattled. I've never objected to stimulants as stimulants."
"Everybody needs them nowadays."
"It was bad last night at Purley. Not many bombs, but the waiting. Not that we haven't had our share, and land-mines. . ."
"The place where I live went last night."
"You don't say," Mr Rennit said without interest, opening the filing cabinet and reaching for the bottle. "Now last week. . . at Purley. . ." He was just like a man discussing his operations. "Not a hundred yards away. . ."
"We both deserve a drink," Rowe said.
Mr Rennit -- the ice broken -- suddenly became confiding. "I suppose I was a bit sharp. One does get rattled. War plays hell with a business like this." He explained. "The reconciliations -- you wouldn't believe human nature could be so contrary. And then, of course, the registrations have made it very difficult. People daren't go to hotels as they used to. And you can't prove anything from motor-cars."
"It must be difficult for you."
"It's a case of holding out," Mr Rennit said, "keeping our backs to the wall until peace comes. Then there'll be such a crop of divorces, breaches of promise. . ." He contemplated the situation with uncertain optimism over the bottle. "You'll excuse a tea-cup?" He said, "When peace comes an old-established business like this -- with connections -- will be a gold-mine." He added gloomily, "Or so I tell myself."
Listening Rowe thought, as he often did, that you couldn't take such an odd world seriously, and yet all the time, in fact, he took it with a mortal seriousness. The grand names stood permanently like statues in his mind: names like Justice and Retribution, though what they both boiled down to was simply Mr Rennit, hundreds and hundreds of Mr Rennits. But of course if you believed in God -- and the Devil -- the thing wasn't quite so comic. Because the Devil -- and God too -- had always used comic people, futile people, little suburban natures and the maimed and warped to serve his purposes. When God used them you talked emptily of Nobility and when the devil used them of Wickedness, but the material was only dull shabby human mediocrity in either case.
". . . new orders. But it will always be the same world, I hope," Mr Rennit was saying.
"Queer things do happen in it, all the same," Rowe said. "That's why I'm here."
"Ah yes," Mr Rennit said. "We'll just fill our cups and then to business. I'm sorry I have no soda-water. Now just tell me what's troubling you -- as if I was your best friend."
"Somebody tried to kill me. It doesn't sound important when so many of us are being killed every night -- but it made me angry at the time."
Mr Rennit looked at him imperturbably over the rim of his cup. "Did you say you were not married?"
"There's no woman in it. It all began," Rowe said, "with a cake." He described the fête to Mr Rennit, the anxiety of all the helpers to get the cake back, the stranger's visit. . . and then the bomb. "I wouldn't have thought twice about it," Rowe said, "if it hadn't been for the taste the tea had."
"Just imagination, probably."
"But I knew the taste. It was -- hyoscine," he admitted reluctantly.
"Was the man killed?"
"They took him to hospital, but when I called today he'd been fetched away. It was only concussion and his friends wanted him back."
"The hospital would have the name and address."
"They had a name and address, but the address -- I tried the London Directory -- simply didn't exist." He looked up across the desk at Mr Rennit expecting some sign of surprise -- even in an odd world it was an odd story, but Mr Rennit said calmly, "Of course there are a dozen explanations." He stuck his fingers into his waistcoat and considered. "For instance," he said, "it might have been a kind of confidence trick. They are always up to new dodges, those people. He might have offered to take the cake off you -- for a large sum. He'd have told you something valuable was hidden in it."
"Something hidden in it?"
"Plans of a Spanish treasure off the coast of Ireland. Something romantic. He'd have wanted you to give him a mark of confidence in return. Something substantial like twenty pounds while he went to the bank. Leaving you the cake, of course."
"It makes one wonder. . ."
"Oh, it would have worked out," Mr Rennit said. It was extraordinary, his ability to reduce everything to a commonplace level. Even air-raids were only things that occurred at Purley.
"Or take another possibility," Mr Rennit said. "If you are right about the tea. I don't believe it, mind. He might have introduced himself to you with robbery in mind. Perhaps he followed you from the fête. Did you flourish your money about?"
"I did give them a pound when they wanted the cake."
"A man," Mr Rennit said, with a note of relief, "who gives a pound for a cake is a man with money. Thieves don't carry drugs as a rule, but he sounds a neurotic type."
"But the cake?"
"Pure patter. He hadn't really come for the cake."