Free The Intercom Conspiracy by Eric Ambler Page B

pack it.
    He was of average height and thick-set with a very straight back. I put him in the middle fifties. A rather heavy face; I don’t mean flabby – there was nothing flabby about him; he looked as hard as nails – but big-boned, with prominent jaw muscles. ‘Craggy’ is probably the word. The eyes behind the acetate-rimmed bifocals were blue, the short, wiry hair was grey, thecomplexion a faded summer tan; and on his wide, thin-lipped mouth there rested a regretful little smile. The smile, I soon found, was permanent and the regret it seemed to express illusory.
    As he sat down in the chair I had cleared, Nicole brought in the subscription form. I handed him a ballpoint pen. He studied the form for a moment, then began to fill it in, in block letters as requested.
    I could read the name he gave upside down. It was Werner Siepen. The address was a
Postfach
number in Hamburg. The separate spaces provided for business address and occupation he left blank. His signature was illegible.
    Not Arnold Bloch, then, but he could conceivably be one of the West German clients for whom Bloch was acting. There was nothing unusual about his omitting to give his occupation. Few of our subscribers – the commonest exceptions were politicians, clergymen and, for some mysterious reason, dentists – chose or bothered to fill that line in. But I was, for obvious reasons, specially curious about this one. I tried to get him to open up a bit.
    ‘The yearly subscription rate for Germany is eighty marks,’ I said. ‘No doubt you would prefer to pay by cheque. Most of our subscribers do.’
    He shrugged. ‘Cash would be simpler, I think –’ he reached for his wallet – ‘and Swiss francs simpler still.’ His French was quite good.
    ‘As you please. I will have the German rate converted and a receipt made out.’ I pressed the buzzer for Nicole and offered him a cigarette.
    He refused the cigarette with a graceful twitch of the hundred-franc note he had produced and then placed the note on top of the subscription form. While I was giving Nicole the necessary instructions he took a Dutch panatella from his pocket and lit that. He seemed to be in no hurry. That was fine with me.
    ‘It is not often,’ I said, ‘that we have the opportunity of meeting our subscribers face to face. Many write to us, of course, but …
    ‘Of course. But
Intercom
is a far-flung enterprise, not a parish magazine.’ He had suddenly started to speak English. It wasstrongly accented, but the intonation was English-English, not North American.
    ‘Nevertheless –’ I went into English too –‘we are always interested in our correspondents’ views and suggestions. They are often of great value to us. I take it, sir, that you are in Geneva on business.’
    He nodded vaguely. ‘Yes, business.’ He was peering over my shoulder at the bookshelves now.
    ‘Would you mind telling me how you came to hear about
Intercom
?’
    I had his wandering attention again. ‘Not at all, Mr Carter. I have a friend who subscribes.’ His smile sweetened. ‘However, since I was careless enough to lose one issue that he gave me to read he has become an unwilling lender. So, you gain a subscriber.’
    ‘And you retain a friend. I see.’ I made a mental note to check on other subscribers in the Hamburg area. ‘Of course, we have always known that many copies of
Intercom
are read by more than one person,’ I said. ‘We are glad that they are. We have never been interested in big circulation figures. Influence, in our case, is measured in terms of quality, not quantity.’
    It sounded phony to me even as I said it. I might have been an advertisement-space salesman from some new shiny-paper magazine venture trying to gouge a little action out of Rolls-Royce. I saw his eyebrows go up.
    ‘But we like to know these things,’ I added lamely.
    ‘And understandably.’ His hands spread out over my desk in a kind of benediction. ‘You are performing an invaluable public