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said ten bob. Here’s a quid for your time. And thanks for the information.”
    He proceeded in due course to Highcliffe station with his investigatory aplomb more shaken than it had been in a long time. He had had some experience of the mild nasal burr of the typical Hampshireman—Vic Cullen was a good example—but nothing had quite prepared him for the primordial accent he had just encountered.
    He approached the ticket clerk at the station in a distinctly wary frame of mind. The ticket clerk turned out to be a small, fastidiously moustached man of Indian or Pakistani origin. There was a conspicuous absence of other staff, and the little dark man radiated the air of being himself not only the ticket seller but also parcels porter, sweeper-up, lavoratory cleaner, and station-master—all of which indeed he was.
    He eyed Simon shrewdly.
    “Vhat can I do for you, Sir?’
    “I’m looking for information. Not quite the ordinary sort, though.”
    He told his story of the friend who had failed to turn up in London when expected. The stationmaster’s quick dark eyes never left Simon’s face.
    “Can you describe this—friend of yours?”
    “Middle aged, stocky build, short greyish hair. Speaks with an accent.”
    The man nodded.
    “He vas here. I remember him distinctly. This is an exceptionally quiet station for the most part, and I am far more than aweragely obserwant, though I say so myself. This man spoke vith, I should say, a French accent. Yes, I vould be practically certain that he was a Frenchman. He bought a single ticket to Vaterloo, and I saw him get on the train.”
    The quick dark eyes flicked over Simon’s tall, somewhat untidily dressed figure, and he continued:
    “You must understand ve don’t see many foreign passengers through this station. Ours are mostly from Birmingham or Manchester, or they are locals. This man vas different. But he had no bags, and he didn’t look like a tourist.”
    “You’d make a good court witness,” Simon observed.
    “Thank you,” said the little man. “But there’s one thing more.” He hesitated a moment. “I don’t think this Frenchman was really your friend as you told me—Mr Templar.”
    “Now wait a minute—”
    “No,” put in the station-man quickly, holding up a restraining hand. “Please don’t try to pull the vool ower my eyes any further. I have seen enough photographs of the notorious Simon Templar to be quite certain that you are indeed that adwenturous personage. Therefore it vould be quite pointless to persist in denying it or in maintaining your story of a friend who failed to turn up somevhere. You vere in the boat race. Putting together the ewidence, I vould wenture a hypothesis as follows.”
    The little man paused for breath, and Simon blinked in sheer disbelief as he continued with assured fluency.
    “You have conjectured, have you not, that there was something decidedly fishy about the explosion in which Mr Charles Tatenor and his French co-driver vere killed—or rather, in which both of them were apparently killed. Further, I surmise from your present somevhat wagabond appearance, and your presence at my station, that you have perhaps already accumulated some ewidence to support the hypothesis that the Frenchman escaped the explosion, having planned the entire episode beforehand, and leawing an unconscious or already dead man in the boat in his place. I suspect that you have been searching and have found something on the beach. There is sand on your shoes,” he concluded simply.
    Simon Templar swallowed hard.
    “What is your name?” he asked weakly.
    “John Matthew Thomas Bartholomew Chatterjee,” said the stationmaster promptly and proudly.
    “John Matthew,” Simon told him, “you have restored my faith in the power of human articulation. Tonight your name will be added to my regional directory of back-up brainpower. Whenever I need a second opinion or some help with a difficult bit of inferential reasoning, I’ll