The Mandarin Cypher

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It was three in the morning when she phoned me and I went straight round there through the pelting rain and found North slumped in a chair looking like death.

'What happened?'

He didn't answer. I don't think he heard.

Connie said: 'Thank God you're here,' and got some brandy and put it into tumblers, shivering, only a thin dressing-gown round her shoulders, hair all over the place and her big eyes frightened. The rain hit the window-sills in sharp taps, like someone typing.

'It's okay now,' I told North, but he sat staring up at me with his face appalled, as if I'd told him Big Ben had just fallen over; but his pupils looked normal, he didn't look doped and he certainly wasn't drunk. Connie brought one of the tumblers for me, chipped round the rim, and I held it for him — 'Come on, slosh this lot down, you're ten drinks short.' But he wouldn't take it, didn't seem to catch on to anything I was saying.

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