Be Shot For Six Pence Read Online Free PDF

upstairs. (Standard technique number one, for lulling your quarry’s suspicions.) I felt that the least I could do was to pay his fare, and I did so.
    96 Sloane Square looked like all other small office blocks. There were the plates of a number of professional firms and a porter, in a hutch, reading the Continental Edition of the Daily Mail.
    “I want to see a Captain Forestier,” I said.
    “Which firm would that be, sir?”
    “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
    “Well, that makes it a bit difficult,” said the porter. “There’s five of ‘em – not counting the company that stores sports goods in the basement.”
    I looked at the board. From Kyle and Coppit, Chartered Surveyors on the ground floor to Theobald Whittlesea Belize and Partners on the fourth floor all seemed equally straightforward and equally blameless.
    “You wouldn’t be in the trade?” said the porter. “Carbons, paper, drawing pins and such.”
    “Certainly not,” I said. “And if I had been, I can tell you I shouldn’t be dithering round here. I should have said I wanted to see Mr. Kyle of Kyle and Coppit and walked straight on up.”
    “That’s right,” said the porter. “So you would. Bags of go, those chaps. But Captain Forestier – I’d help you if I could. What line’s he in?”
    “Well, I think it’s some sort of security.”
    “Security?”
    It meant nothing to him. I might just as well have said “Doorhandles.”
    I had a sudden inspiration. I looked out into the street. Sure enough the Sergeant Major was still there. He was gazing into a shop window (technique number two).
    “Which floor?” I shouted.
    He looked at me reproachfully, then raised his hand with four fingers and thumb extended.
    I went back. “Fifth floor, “I said.
    “Oh, them ,” said the porter. “They’re new. Haven’t even put a plate up yet. Some sort of Civil Servants. Security, you said?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Well!” He shook his head. “You take the lift to the fourth, then you got to walk.”
    “I expect I can manage one floor,” I said.
    I got out of the lift on to the fourth storey landing, which was close carpeted, and was presumably the joint property of Mr. Theobald, Mr. Whittlesea, the two Mr. Belizes and their partners. None of them were in evidence. On my left was a narrow flight of stairs, covered with new brown linoleum. I went up the stairs, and through a swing door which said “Enter.”
    At a table, thumbing severely through a Telephone Directory, was a very young lady with brown hair, a tip tilted nose and a mouth full of lovely, toothpaste advertisement teeth. The newspaper she had been reading before she heard me coming was inaccurately hidden behind her chair.
    “Yes?” she said, invitingly.
    “Yes, indeed,” I said. “I mean, I wanted to see Captain Forestier.”
    “Had you an appointment?”
    “Half-past ten. I’m afraid I’m a few minutes late.”
    She started off gaily towards one of the doors, then frowned, and came back and said, “I’m always forgetting things. I should have asked your name”.
    “I have no name,” I said severely. “Only a number.”
    Her great saucer eyes grew even larger. If she’d actually been a kitten that would have been the moment I would have picked her up and given her stomach a little tickle.
    “97259. And it won’t have escaped your notice that it’s a number divisible by 7. That means that I have killed a man with my bare hands.”
    A shade of doubt clouded her face. She walked away, as haughtily as a girl of her build can walk, and knocked at one of the doors. A crisp voice said, “Come in.” She went in; the door shut. Almost at once it opened again. She was furious. It made her look even more like a kitten.
    Before she could start I said, “He doesn’t know me. All right. Tell him it’s about an advertisement in The Times. Go on. Go on. He can’t bite you.”
    She looked doubtful, opened the door again, went in. More voices. Quite a lot of talk.