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'Frank—' and smiled and settled back to enjoy the call.
    'How about a rabbit or something?'
    'A what?' Feiffer asked Auden, 'Well?'
    'Well, how about a tortoise?'
    'You can't housetrain a tortoise.' He said to Auden, 'Go and collect the mail or something. Don't just stand around doing nothing.' Feiffer said to his wife, 'They stink. And they hibernate in winter and get insects.'
    Nicola Feiffer said, 'I'd like something.'
    'Why?'
    There was a silence at the end of the line. Nicola Feiffer glanced at the slim carriage clock. She glanced at the television programme that said television programmes didn't start for ages. She glanced at the four walls. She looked at her sludge. She counted the hours in two more weeks of pregnancy. She—She shouted down the line, ' What do you mean, "why ?"!'
    *
    Mr Leung put his bank statement to one side and took up his old fashioned nib pen. He made a series of cautious calculations and sighed. He shook his head. There was a briar pipe in a little ivory pipe holder and he took it up and considered its empty bowl.
    He put it in his mouth, took it out again, considered the bank statement and the calculations from another angle, moved his nib pen to the centre of his desk, put down his pipe again and took up the last envelope to slit it open.
    It seemed a little stiff and he had trouble starting the flap with the point of his knife.
    *
    Feiffer began opening the single letter Auden brought in from the front desk with one hand. It was addressed to Feiffer care of the Detectives Room and bore a Hong Bay postmark. He said sympathetically to Nicola, 'I know how you feel of course—'
    'You damnwell don't know how I feel!'
    He got his little finger under the flap and ripped open the letter.
    Nicola Feiffer demanded at the other end of the line, 'Well, do you? How could you?'
    *
    Mr Leung's paper knife slipped on the glue-dried flap and nicked him on the finger. That was all this particular Monday morning needed. He put the letter to one side and ripped open one of the circulars. It was for something he didn't need. He ripped open the second. It was a duplicate of the first. He threw the third into a wastepaper basket unopened.
    He went back to the first envelope and tried the paper knife on it for the second time.
    *
    The letter to Feiffer said:
    Leung. Political. 
    There was no signature.
    *
    There seemed to be some sort of very thin wire sticking out from the seam join of the envelope. It protruded about an eighth of an inch. Mr Leung glanced at it and wondered what it was connected to. 
    Mr Leung opened the letter.
    *
    Feiffer said irritably to the single sheet of notepaper, 'Another bloody nut—!'
    *
    The explosion tore everything apart. Mr Leung had the sensation of something lifting him upwards and back on a giant gust of red hot air, like a typhoon, and then there was a stinging sensation in his stomach and a chaos of papers being blown around the room. The papers went on blowing around the room for a long time, then they all fell back to the earth and were still.
    Mr Leung felt that he was watching the room from somewhere higher. It was strange. He saw the papers lying on the floor, charred, some of them burning, and his desk overturned and shattered as if someone had hit it with a mallet and he thought, "It must have been one of those pneumatic hammers." He saw two objects covered in cloth lying by the desk, one on top of the other and he thought, "I don't know what they are. They weren't in my shop." There was something soft, like mud, oozing down his pelvis. He looked down to see what it was.
    He saw what it was and then looked back to the two cloth covered objects by the desk. He realised what they were and looked back to his chest. The spike was embedded in his chest, pinning him to the rear wall. There seemed to be a gap somewhere on the wall between his pelvis and the floor.
    The black stuff seemed to go on oozing and oozing. He knew the two objects by the desk were his legs. He