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schoolboy hauled before the headmaster.
    ‘Good God, Prentis! How long have you had C9 – and how long have you been in this department? You realize I entrust you with these more important cases because you’re the senior assistant. You realize that, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Good. And you’ve made no headway?’
    I know what he wanted me to say. He wanted me to say that there was a connexion between X and Z. The obvious thing. But if I said this I knew what his retort would be: ‘So there’s a connexion between X and Z. Proof? Lurid imagination, Prentis, lurid imagination. No good in this job.’
    ‘Perhaps – if I had a little more information to work on?’
    (File E, for instance.)
    Quinn cupped his hands behind his head and made his leather chair swivel slightly from side to side. He seemed to be waiting for something. He is one of those men who maintains his authority even though he may be sitting, in a nonchalant posture, and you are standing, close by him, looking down at him. He looked at me steadily, the light from the window reflected in his glasses. Some of the grey hairs round the fringes of his scalp are really a pure white. The scalp itself gleams like pink wax. And then, as often happens when I’m face to face with Quinn, I found myself hurriedly, and for no apparent reason, revising my impression of him. No, not mad – whatever Quinn is, he isn’t mad. And I had this sudden urge to sayto him, in all sincerity: I don’t understand. Please tell me. You see, I don’t understand at all.
    ‘More information? Good heavens, limited information is why we’re here, Prentis. If we had all the information we wanted, we’d be gods, wouldn’t we?’
    We know very little about Quinn personally in our office. It’s generally believed he’s a divorcee or an old bachelor. For some reason, as he looked at me I felt quite sure he could not be a father.
    ‘Very well. I’ll take over C9. If you’ll bring me all you have …’ He took his hands from behind his head and gave a resigned snort. ‘And you’d better make your final draft of this.’ He took the folder containing the original report we had been discussing, closed it and pushed it towards me across the desk.
    ‘Oh – before you go –’
    And then it was that he became, in a single instant, amiable, confiding – and up came the subject of my promotion.
    So unexpected was this turn of events that my first response was disbelief. Why should he have chosen this moment to raise my hopes, after having humbled me and effectively slandered my competence? Why should he have thrown me off balance if not for some hidden, ulterior motive? As he spoke of ‘off the record’ and ‘strictly between you and me’ I had an odd idea. Supposing he clearly read my suspicions about the office ‘system’? Supposing I was being tested? Could my promotion to Quinn’s position be conditional upon my speaking up, like a responsible and dutiful under-officer, and voicing my suspicions? Or could it be that this mention of promotion had no real basis at all (I am still wondering this), that it was just another of his little games to confuse and harass me?
    When he tapped the file I had my chance. I could have said: ‘Sir, there’s something I feel I should …’ or: ‘Sir, I can’t help having noticed …’ But I didn’t. How was I to know that I wasn’t jumping to conclusions? And how was I to know that speaking up might not actually jeopardize my perfectly genuine promotion, and it was precisely for keeping quiet that it was being offered to me? Quinn was doubtless enjoying my dilemma.
    ‘I’m something of an old work-horse, Prentis,’ he said in a candid tone quite unlike him. ‘I’ve been sitting here for too long, stopping young blood from taking my place.’
    He smiled. Dimples appeared in his cheeks.
    I suppose what stopped me saying anything in the end was not my rather hasty speculations but simply the old, accustomed fact of Quinn’s