The Third Man Read Free

lovers who take that last look, who wait waving on platforms, instead of clearing quickly out, not looking back. Is it perhaps that they love themselves so much and want to keep themselves in the sight of others, even of the dead?
           I said, "My name's Calloway."
           "Martins," he said.
           "You were a friend of Lime?"
           "Yes." Most people in the last week would have hesitated before they admitted quite so much.
           "Been here long?"
           "I only came this afternoon from England. Harry had asked me to stay with him. I hadn't heard."
           "Bit of a shock?"
           "Look here," he said, "I badly want a drink, but I haven't any cash—except five pounds sterling. I'd be awfully grateful if you'd stand me one."
           It was my turn to say "Of course." I thought for a moment and told the driver the name of a small bar in the Kartnerstrasse. I didn't think he'd want to be seen for a while in a busy British bar full of transit officers and their wives. This bar—perhaps because it was exorbitant in its prices—seldom had more than one self-occupied couple in it at a time. The trouble was too that it really only had one drink—a sweet chocolate liqueur that the waiter improved at a price with cognac, but I got the impression that Martins had no objection to any drink so long as it cast a veil over the present, and the past. On the door was the usual notice saying the bar opened at 6 till 10, but one just pushed the door and walked through the front rooms. We had a whole small room to ourselves; the only couple were next door, and the waiter who knew me left us alone with some caviar sandwiches. It was lucky that we both knew that I had an expense account.
           Martins said over his second quick drink, "I'm sorry, but he was the best friend I ever had."
           I couldn't resist saying, knowing what I knew, and because I was anxious to vex him—one learns a lot that way, "That sounds like a cheap novelette."
           He said quickly, "I write cheap novelettes."
           I had learnt something anyway. Until he had had a third drink, I was under the impression that he wasn't an easy talker: but I felt fairly certain that he was one of those who turn unpleasant after their fourth glass.
           I said, "Tell me about yourself—and Lime."
           "Look here," he said, "I badly need another drink, but I can't keep on scrounging on a stranger. Could you change me a pound or two into Austrian money?"
           "Don't bother about that," I said and called the waiter. "You can treat me when I come to London on leave. You were going to tell me how you met Lime?"
           The glass of chocolate liqueur might have been a crystal the way he looked at it and turned it this way and that. He said, "It was a long time ago. I don't suppose anyone knows Harry the way I do," and I thought of the thick file of agents' reports in my office, each claiming the same thing. I believe in my agents: I've sifted them all very thoroughly.
           "How long?"
           "Twenty years—or a bit more. I met him my first term at school. I can see the place. I can see the notice-board and what was on it. I can hear the bell ringing. He was a year older and knew the ropes. He put me wise to a lot of things." He took a quick dab at his drink and then turned the crystal again as if to see more clearly what there was to see. He said, "It's funny. I can't remember meeting any woman quite as well."
           "Was he clever at school?"
           "Not the way they wanted him to be. But what things he did think up. He was a wonderful planner. I was far better at subjects Like History and English than Harry, but I was a hopeless mug when it came to carrying out his plans." He laughed: he was already beginning, with the help of drink and talk, to throw off the shock of the death. He said, "I was always the one who got