Free The Third Man by Graham Greene Page B

was then I began to believe him altogether. He said, "I still can't believe Cooler's concerned. I'd stake anything on his honesty. He's one of those Americans with a real sense of duty."
           "Yes," I said, "he told me about that when he phoned. He apologised for it. He said it was the worst of having been brought up to believe in citizenship. He said it made him feel a prig. To tell you the truth Cooler irritates me. Of course he doesn't know that I know about his tyre deals."
           "Is he in a racket, too, then?"
           "Not a very serious one. I daresay he's salted away twenty-five thousand dollars. But I'm not a good citizen. Let the Americans look after their own people."
           "I'm damned." He said thoughtfully, "Is that the kind of thing Harry was up to?"
           "No. It was not so harmless."
           He said, "You know this business—Koch's death has shaken me. Perhaps Harry did get mixed up in something pretty bad. Perhaps he was trying to clear out again, and that's why they murdered him."
           "Or perhaps," I said, "they wanted a bigger cut off the spoils. Thieves fall out."
           He took it this time without any anger at all. He said, "We won't agree about motives, but I think you check your facts pretty well. I'm sorry about the other day."
           "That's all right." There are times when one has to make a flash decision—this was one of them. I owed him something in return for the information he had given me. I said, "I'll show you enough of the facts in Lime's case for you to understand. But don't fly off the handle. It's going to be a shock."
           It couldn't help being a shock. The war and the peace (if you can call it peace) let loose a great number of rackets, but none more vile than this one. The black marketeers in food did at least supply food, and the same applied to all the other racketeers who provided articles in short supply at extravagant prices. But the penicillin racket was a different affair altogether. Penicillin in Austria was only supplied to the military hospitals: no civilian doctor, not even a civilian hospital, could obtain it by legal means. As the racket started, it was relatively harmless. Penicillin would be stolen and sold to Austrian doctors for very high sums—a phial would fetch anything up to?.70. You might say that this was a form of distribution—unfair distribution because it benefited only the rich patient, but the original distribution could hardly have a claim to greater fairness.
           This racket went on quite happily for a while. Occasionally someone was caught and punished, but the danger simply raised the price of penicillin. Then the racket began to get organised: the big men saw big money in it, and while the original thief got less for his spoils, he received instead a certain security. If anything happened to him he would be looked after. Human nature too has curious twisted reasons that the heart certainly knows nothing of. It eased the conscience of many small men to feel that they were working for an employer: they were almost as respectable soon in their own eyes as wage-earners: they were one of a group, and if there was guilt, the leaders bore the guilt. A racket works very like a totalitarian party.
           This, I have sometimes called stage two. Stage three was when the organisers decided that the profits were not large enough. Penicillin would not always be impossible to obtain legitimately: they wanted more money and quicker money while the going was good. They began to dilute the penicillin with coloured water, and in the case of penicillin dust, with sand. I keep a small museum in one drawer in my desk, and I showed Martins examples. He wasn't enjoying the talk, but he hadn't yet grasped the point. He said, "I suppose that makes the stuff useless."
           I said, "We wouldn't worry so much if that was all, but just consider. You can be immunised from the