Читать книгу Seven Sins онлайн

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He drove on, and at the entrance to Broadcasting House the pretty brunette jumped out and fumbled in her bag.

"No charge, lady. Me flag's dahn. Also—it's a pleasure. A smile like yours is worth more than a bob."

And this highly unusual taximan moved away and took his stand in darkness outside the Temple of British radio, a darkness fitfully, and startlingly, dispersed whenever high, fleeting clouds unveiled the harvest moon.

Rather less than four hours later, an interesting conversation took place between two men in an office which, when not blacked-out, overlooked the Thames Embankment.

"Ye will have obsairved foreby," said the taller man, and his accent was impressive, "unless ye bought the evening paper as a pipe lighter, that there's a marked decrease o' crime in the West End of London."

He turned hazel eyes, which had an almost leonine quality, in the direction of a smaller man who leaned against a mantelpiece staring vacantly down into an empty grate.

The speaker, large framed, gaunt, his graying hair cropped at the sides of a square, mathematical forehead, and wearing a moustache so closely trimmed as to produce the effect of an unshaven upper lip, might have suggested to some the figure of a Covenanter born out of his generation.