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The card had been tucked in amongst the Francs and Marks and Lira in the section of his pocketbook that Biggles had once christened 'the graveyard of European economic growth'; it had been tucked in there for eight months or so, getting increasingly dog-eared, coffee-stained and finger-grimed. He had absent-mindedly tucked it back away in there every time it fell out as he rootled for money for taxis and tips in foreign towns, and had somehow never quite got round to slinging it into the coal-scuttle when he was at home.
He had kept it tucked away, kept it on his person, seemingly just so it could slide out onto the polished steel of the bar and land neatly in front of him at this one particular moment: as he paid for this one particular drink in this one particular hotel. The writing on it - neat, black, uniform, silently affronted by the stains and smudges around it - was instantly recognisable.
His first feeling was one of annoyance - with himself, mostly, because he had kept the damn thing on him all this time, as if deliberately devising a novel way for Erich von Stalhein to dog his path in his moments of weakness. As if that coldly precise writing could conjure into existence all the Prussian arrogance of stiff suit, shining monocle, slender cigarette-holder, amongst the potted palms of the hotel lobby.
Surreptitiously, sheepishly, Algy glanced over his shoulder.
Then he smiled - his first smile since he'd started bickering with his cousin two hours before - and shook his head.
Don’t speak of the devil…
He turned the card over and about with one hand, as the fingers of the other tapped idly at his glass of Scotch. He could well imagine just how amused von Stalhein would be, to see his calling card doing its work so well.
It had been an oddly transparent ploy, he thought - handing over the card. Leaving the decision about when to call, whether to call, entirely in Algy's own hands, so that if Algy did follow it up - if he did take the card out in just such a mood of idle discontent as this - if he did find that house, knock on that door, see those private spaces of his life -
- which of course he wouldn’t, why would he -
- then it would have been his own decision. He would have taken those first steps for himself, and he wouldn’t be able to call them back again. No good casting suspicion on von Stalhein’s motives when the choice had been his.
Von Stalhein had probably smiled as he wrote the card: enjoyed offering him the exaggerated parody of choice.
It wasn’t entirely subtle. But perhaps von Stalhein had recognised that this wasn’t the time for subtlety. There could surely be no more 'accidental' meetings - they had been implausible enough from the start. Von Stalhein had set his bait, the hook of curiosity: now he would have to see if the fish bit. And Algy assumed that if he didn't seek out that house, knock on that door, then there would be no more meetings at all.
Which was precisely what Algy wanted, of course. For things to go on as they had been, without Erich von Stalhein sticking his nose in.
The choice was his to make. Von Stalhein had forced it on him. Unsubtle. Obvious.
Except -
- except Algy had the feeling that von Stalhein expected him to recognise the manipulation - expected him to scowl at it. He had drawn attention to it, after all: he had given Algy a card with the address neatly handwritten, when he’d had no chance to write it after their ‘accidental’ meeting. Why reveal so clearly that the gesture had been carefully calculated, unless he wanted Algy to recognise it?
Even, perhaps, to appreciate it?
It was a challenge, of a kind: baiting the hook, but not disguising it. Daring him to bite.
He finished his drink: signalled for another.
Which was all very well, of course. But it didn't explain why von Stalhein felt the need to play such a convoluted game to attract his attention in the first place.
He had assumed, at the start, that revenge against Biggles lay at the bottom of it all - that von Stalhein believed that the best way to harm his cousin was by harming him. But honestly - the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed. As von Stalhein had so politely pointed out, this wasn't the war, and it wasn't the wild west, and you couldn’t just go around bumping people off because their cousin got one over you ten years before.
So - what then? If he thought that Algy would furnish him with damaging information about Biggles, then he had another think coming; unless, of course, he’d find it especially damaging to know Biggles’ favourite brand of cigarette, or what style of whiskey he favoured. And if he’d intended to drive a wedge between them - well, Biggles had been doing his damnedest to drive Algy off for the best part of ten years, and it hadn't worked yet.
(Biggles was upstairs in their shared hotel room, chain-smoking and poring over a map of Tierra del Fuego or somewhere similarly unwelcoming; and Algy was sitting in the hotel bar, well into his second Scotch, grimly aware that he probably wasn't going to work up the nerve to go out and find a night-club by himself. That was what they had squabbled about: of all the stupid things. One of the stupid things, one of many. The sort of things that got on top of you when you’d been living in digs with someone for the best part of ten years, when neither of you slept well, when apparently you had very different expectations of what constituted an enjoyable evening. The lobby was full of girls with short hair and men in brightly-coloured spats, and they were all clearly going to far more exciting parties than he was.)
He took another long drink; held it in his mouth until it burned; turned the card over again. The swirl of possibilities eddied in the cigarette music and notes of the jazz piano, like shaking a kaleidoscope, the pieces melting, reforming, coming down in different pictures, each more absurd than the last.
Perhaps he was attempting to recruit Algy to a secret organisation of German sleeper agents, devoted to the resurgence of the Fatherland.
Perhaps he was planning to brain-wash him, and send him off to Geneva to assassinate the council of the League of Nations in Geneva.
He’d be bitterly disappointed if von Stalhein were just pining for the pleasures of his company, though. That would certainly be beneath the man. If von Stalhein weren’t nurturing at least three thicknesses of conspiracy, then what on earth was the point of the fellow?
Perhaps von Stalhein really was just in need of another pilot.
He was tying himself up in knots, that was the trouble: and probably that was all von Stalhein had wanted in the first place. Wanted him speculating, second-guessing, and it didn’t really matter if it was for some convoluted plot or just for his own inscrutable entertainment. But he couldn’t stop it: once that card had dropped onto the bartop in front of him, he’d found it impossible not to wonder.
The hot flare of annoyance at realising that was at least a comfortable thing: annoyance was straightforward, something to warm his hands against.
(Sometimes - very occasionally - he would wake up at about dawn to find Biggles sitting close by his bed, cigarette between his fingers, the air thick with smoke.
"Couldn't sleep?" he would croak, and Biggles would nod, without a word.
And he would go back to sleep, and when his alarm went off, the air would be clear and Biggles would be gone.)
But -
But the fact of the matter was, he was tired. Tired of London, of Mount Street, of Croydon and Cardington, of the Aero Club and the Lyric and the old familiar faces. Tired of broken nights, and snapped off remarks. Tired of walking on eggshells, and not keeping a bottle of whiskey in the place, and in the depths of the night it being forever 1918. Tired of sameness.
Biggles was upstairs still, with his maps and his smoke, not expecting him back. Not needing him back. Not wanting him back. Another stupid argument; another broken night.
He turned the oblong of card over in his fingers.
* * *
The address wasn't a house with high walls and dripping pines and probably turrets, as he had more than half expected. It was a smart, modern apartment block, one of many that marched off through this leafy suburb in stuccoed rows. His hot cheeks had been cooled by the softly drifting rain, his head soothed by the coolly spiced scent of lilac from hidden gardens. He stopped in the partial shelter of a plane tree in a dim and unfrequented cul-de-sac a stone's-throw from the door, and lit a cigarette. The scent of tobacco joined that of frying bacon, boiling cabbage, caraway seed, rich damp earth. Through an open window a gramophone was playing.
His cigarette was almost smoked through when the door of the apartment block opened, and a girl clattered down the stairs to the street. She moved quickly, with a sort of springy grace and economy of movement, and as she turned into the dead end where Algy was standing she cast a glance behind her towards an upstairs window, and a more lingering one ahead down the street. Then she perched on the step before a paint-peeling and long unused door, a dozen paces from where Algy stood, and began to unlace her shoes.
The street lamps weren't lit yet, and Algy cleared his throat self-consciously to alert her to his presence. She looked up, grip shifting on the shoe she had pulled from her shoulder bag, so that it lay more purposefully under her hand.
"I'm sorry, Fraülein," said Algy in German from a polite distance. "May I ask - do you know if Herr von Stalhein still lives in the block you just left?"
The wary grip on the shoe didn't alter; nor did the expression of suspicion on the angular face. "Are you a friend of his?"
"Not - exactly," said Algy, carefully.
"A business associate?"
"Something like that," said Algy, dropping the cigarette butt into the gutter so he could fish in his right pocket for the card. "He did give me his address, but that was a while ago."
The girl took the card from him, and angled it to the fading light. "Do you have a match?"
Algy fumbled for the book in his trouser pocket, struck one, and held it out to her. By its sputtering light he could see her more clearly - high cheekbones, wisps of dark honey hair escaping from beneath a grey knitted cloche, slightly sallow skin, as if she was just waiting for summer to turn her hair corn fair and her cheeks gold. She turned the card over twice, then handed it back. Algy shook out the light.
"Do you have cigarettes to go with the matches?" she asked.
Algy looked at her a little askance, but held out the pack all the same, and struck her a fresh match.
She inhaled lightly, held the smoke in her mouth for a second, then expelled it slowly. Then, cigarette in one hand, she slipped her feet out of her sensible black brogues, and wriggled her stockinged toes pleasurably. "Well, the hand-writing's his, so I suppose it's all right. Flat three, on the second floor. Frau Hoffnung will grumble at being made to turn out to let you in, but if you make enough noise she will deign to hear you eventually."
"I suppose I am a bit late for a visit," Algy hedged, looking up at the windows where lights were beginning to be lit against the evening. "Perhaps I should come back another time."
The girl cast him a covert look, as she slipped on one of a pair of silver high-heeled dancing sandals. "What line of business did you say you were in?"
"Oh - the same as Herr von Stalhein," said Algy. "Aviation."
She put on the second shoe, and lifted her foot up to admire the effect. "Well, he often has business colleagues of one kind or another around in the evenings - sometimes until very late. So I shouldn't imagine he'll mind." The brogues were stowed away, and a lipstick and powder compact brought out. "You're English, aren't you? I didn't know Erich had any business concerns in England."
"Is my accent that bad?"
"Frankly, yes," she answered candidly, squinting at her reflection in the compact mirror. "Would you mind holding up another match for me?"
"Do you often finish dressing for the evening in the street?" Algy asked drily as he obeyed.
"Quite often, yes. Are you from London?"
"I live in London, yes."
"I've always wanted to go to London. Though Berlin is a lot more fun than it used to be. And I wouldn't like to be away from Rudi for very long, he is such a fearful flirt." Her sentences were punctuated with pauses as she applied bright scarlet lipstick with precise, practised movements. Algy watched, half fascinated, half embarrassed by her absolute self-possession.
She blotted her lips on a handkerchief, applied a faint dusting of violet powder, and surveyed the results for an instant before snapping the compact closed.
"Thanks." She stood up, shaking out her dark skirts, and turned one foot to show off the gleam of shoe and stocking.
"Very Garbo," said Algy.
She smiled, slight and fleeting. "I'm running late. I do hope your business goes well."
Then she was gone, past lighted windows which turned the mesh of misty droplets on her woollen coat into a glitter of gold. Algy shook out his third match, dropped it into a puddle, and walked slowly towards the apartment block.
A few tugs at the bell were enough to summon the door-keeper from her basement, and the battered little card again worked its magic: he was directed to the stairs with little more than a suspicious glare. He climbed to the correct floor - the first, as he eventually realised, when he had translated the girl's German into the English idiom - all the while fighting down the inclination simply to turn tail and bolt for the comfort of his hotel. But the door to flat three opened even as he loitered uncertainly outside it in the corridor; and von Stalhein was there, meeting Algy's eyes with an expression as close to real surprise as Algy had ever seen on his face.
"Ah - good evening," said Algy, with brittle brightness. "You said I was to look you up if ever I was at a loose end in Berlin."
"And you took me at my word," von Stalhein replied. "An unexpected pleasure."
"You're going out," said Algy, taking in von Stalhein's overcoat, hat and muffler. "I'm sorry - I'll come back at a more convenient time - "
"Nonsense," said von Stalhein, pulling the door closed behind him with a briskly efficient click. "Have you dined? I prefer to eat out when my sister is away for the evening."
"I - haven't," said Algy, cautiously.
"Good, then you will join me."
He was about to argue - more on principle than anything else, for now it had been pointed out to him he realised he was ravenously hungry - when von Stalhein added, "By the way - did you see my sister on her way out?"
Algy frowned. "All in black, with a grey hat? Fair haired?"
Von Stalhein smiled, and Algy understood why that slight twist of the girls's lips had seemed so oddly familiar. "I believe she is to attend a recital at the Akademie."
Algy thought of the silver sandals and the lipstick. "Between you and me, I'm not entirely convinced that's where she was going."
Von Stalhein was two steps ahead of him on the stairs, but he could hear the amusement in his voice, even if he could not see it in his face. "Between you and me, I am not entirely convinced either. A girl is not usually so passionately concerned about a run in her stockings when she is about to meet her music professors and her friends' parents. But she is sensible enough, and her young man will not be so foolish as to keep her out after her time."
He courteously lifted his hat to Frau Hoffnung, whose eyes could just be made out following them from behind her beaded curtains, and just as courteously held the door open for Algy. "Of course, I would rather she had told me where she was going."
"Though I suppose giving her the illusion that she's getting one over you when really she's doing nothing of the kind can be quite useful too," said Algy, politely.
"Oh, quite," said von Stalhein. "But if she had told me I could have made use of the ticket myself. Though if I had, I might have missed the pleasure of your company this evening, which would have been a great pity." He cast a glance at Algy as they passed beneath the first of the brightening electric street lamps. "Or perhaps you too are a devotee of Schubert?"
Which was how, somewhat to Algy's surprise, they came to spend the twenty minutes or so it took to catch the tram into the centre of the city in discussion of classical music. The other man was quite irritatingly knowledgeable, knowledgeable in that way that made Algy argue, nit-pick, contradict. And the time passed so quickly and absorbingly that Von Stalhein had already clipped up the marble steps of the Hotel Adlon almost before Algy realised they had reached their destination; and Algy's flow of words only dried up when he had actually stepped inside, past the frock-coated doormen, into the palace of marble, crystal, blazing electric light.
He cleared his throat. "Bit much for a weekday dinner, isn't it? I haven't got my best bib and tucker stowed in my pocket in case of emergency, you know."
Von Stalhein cast a rather dismissive glance about him. "It is a little ostentatious, perhaps. You need not worry about your dress, however - you are my guest."
"Which is all very well," Algy grumbled, "but considering you're no better togged up than me, what makes you think - "
Which was naturally the moment at which von Stalhein removed his overcoat and his white scarf to reveal faultless evening dress. Algy shut his mouth with a snap.
"All right, on your own head be it," he muttered, as von Stalhein deposited their hats and coats with the cloakroom girl.
"Quite so," said von Stalhein, pleasantly. "Now, if I may perhaps obtain a drink for you...?"
Algy remembered the three large whiskies he'd dumped onto an empty stomach barely an hour before, and grimaced. "No thanks, I'm fine."
Von Stalhein narrowed his eyes, then turned away. "You think I am going to slip something in your gin and tonic, perhaps?" he murmured, as the bartender mixed a variety of ice-clear, ice-cold liquids together and poured them into a martini glass.
Algy smiled, brightly. "My dear chap, why must you put the most suspicious construction on everything I say?"
Von Stalhein did not look especially amused; but then, he never did. He took his drink, and put the rim of the glass to his lips for the slightest, the very slightest of sips. "I am afraid I shall have to meet with a man here shortly, on a brief matter of business. It should not take us long, and then we can dine."
"Are you sure you want me here for that?"
Von Stalhein looked a little surprised. "But whyever not? Your German, after all, is not so good, if I recall correctly, so you will not understand much of what we say. That is, unless you have taken steps to improve it since last year...?”
Algy remembered the half truths he had told von Stalhein at Potsdam, and began to fish in his pockets for cigarettes and matches, avoiding that blandly enquiring gaze. "Not especially," he said, pulling out the pack. "But - what with your business being so confidential, I wouldn't like you to think - especially with us being rather in the same line of work - "
He had just placed the cigarette between his lips, and was about to start fidgeting about after his matches, when he heard a light being struck.
He looked up, and caught von Stalhein's eyes in the flaring and tentative light of the flame: blue-grey, shuttered, infinitely amused.
And he felt a rush of answering amusement. Because he knew, didn't he? Of course he bloody knew. It was Hauptmann Erich von bloody Stalhein, and he always knew.
That was half the fun of the thing.
He leaned forward slightly, letting von Stalhein hold the flame up to the end of his cigarette before drawing in a great, grateful cloud of smoke. "Thanks. No, I can't say I've really been taking significant steps to improve, but I can't guarantee I won't overhear something important. So if you've got anything sensitive to discuss and you'd rather I wasn't here - "
"Herr Fränkel is the least sensitive of men, and also, though he would be the last to realise it, one of the least important," said von Stalhein, taking up his glass again. "I assure you, your presence will be by far the most enjoyable aspect of this meeting."
Algy didn't quite know how to answer that.
Herr Fränkel, it turned out, was a small, slender man, with blond hair so pale that it was difficult to discern the white strands. On being informed that 'Hauptmann Lacey' was a pilot, he had leapt to the conclusion that he was one of von Stalhein's own operatives, and von Stalhein had taken no steps to disabuse him.
Herr Fränkel had been unsurprisingly vague about how he had made his money during the war.
"And you fought in the war?" he asked "You must have been very young."
"Well, I was out of short trousers and shaving at least once a fortnight," said Algy, with great seriousness. "That was old enough for the selection board."
Fränkel was nodding with that overt attention which suggested he wasn't listening much. "And which squadron did you serve with?"
Algy cast a glance towards von Stalhein, though quite what he expected to see he wasn't sure. "I was with 266."
Fränkel frowned. "Two-six-six... Was that not the squadron of the ace with the peculiarly difficult name - Biggleswade, or similar?"
"Bigglesworth," von Stalhein corrected, in his most neutral of voices. "James Bigglesworth."
"Ah, of course that was it!" Fränkel caught something of Algy's look, and smiled again - pleasantly, engagingly. "My nephew was with Jasta 46 when they flew for a while from Lille. I heard in his letters of the great Bigglesworth."
For the sake of harmonious international relations, Algy tamped down the urge to ask just as pleasantly whether Herr Fränkel recalled his nephew shooting down any of the great Bigglesworth's friends when he was stationed near Lille.
At that point von Stalhein refilled Herr Fränkel’s saucer of champagne, and steered the talk around to business matters; and Algy was left to bite his tongue in peace.
The job, as far as he could make out from Fränkel's consciously cloak-and-dagger way of phrasing it, didn't sound too complicated: some shipping manifests and letters of credit that needed to be delivered to Berlin from one of the arse-end-of-nowhere corners of the old German empire, and were apparently time-sensitive to a degree that Algy suspected was more than slightly illegal. Still, it was hardly the responsibility of the courier to probe the legality of the papers he was carrying, providing the papers didn't turn out to be forged banknotes, or illegally exported art treasures, or -
"Will Captain Lacey be flying the mission himself?"
Algy caught the very faint quirk of von Stalhein's lips at the word 'mission', but thankfully Fränkel did not. He opened his mouth to answer, but von Stalhein pre-empted him. "That remains to be seen. Rest assured, however, that your...mission will certainly be handled by someone with as much experience and expertise as he." He smiled, blandly. "Or at least as close an approximation as we can find."
"Still, it's no wonder he has sought employment here in Berlin. I am sure a similar job in London would not pay so well as to allow you to dine in such establishments as this!"
Algy smiled, politely. "Oh, quite. Of course, there aren't many places like this in London any more. But you do get used to the taste of potato gin, providing you don't let it touch your tongue on the way down."
"You must take word of our new Berlin home with you," said Fränkel, jovially. "Try to overcome the national prejudices of your countrymen."
"Five more minutes and I'd have clocked him," Algy murmured, his eyes following the man out the door as he exited the hotel lobby some minutes later.
"That would hardly have been beneficial to my business concerns."
"I'd have gladly reimbursed you. It'd have been worth every Pfennig."
Von Stalhein shook his head, very slightly. "I must confess that there are aspects of our 'new Berlin' which I find it - difficult to appreciate."
"I just can't abide people who - who act like the war didn't matter!" Algy burst out. "'Chin up, lads, let's swap stories about friends we might have killed and trade witty quips about what a wonderful business opportunity the death of a few million young men creates!'"
"You forget - we are not permitted to act as though the war mattered," said von Stalhein. "We are expected to be grateful that we are being allowed to forget all about it."
Algy pushed his hands awkwardly into his pockets. "Look here - earlier - " he burst out, impulsively. "I didn't mean to imply you'd slip me knock-out drops in my drink. No matter what I might - well. It never crossed my mind. I don't think you'd do something so melodramatic."
Von Stalhein looked at him quizzically. "There is no need to apologise. I should not have been so quick to take offence. The fault - and the ill manners - were all mine."
Algy half smiled. "Well. Not all of them."
Von Stalhein's gaze was evaluating, sifting, enquiring. Then he turned away, to set his glass down squarely and centrally on his napkin on the bar. "You are still willing to accompany me to dinner, I hope?"
Algy coughed, and cast a long look around them. "Look, much as I hate to agree with that odious specimen, he was quite right that my London salary won't really stretch to this." He sniffed. "And I bet they serve their caviar far too salty."
"Oh, I did not mean for us to stay here," von Stalhein explained, with scathing emphasis. "There are some men who will only take one seriously if they believe you dine on caviar every night. Thankfully such men are few, even in our 'new Berlin'."
It was odd, Algy reflected, as he followed von Stalhein out of the hotel and onto the wide boulevard of Unter den Linden. Von Stalhein's misapprehension of his motives had actually bothered him. He felt sure that he had said much more insulting things to von Stalhein in the past; but on this particular occasion, he hadn't in fact meant anything of the kind. He had realised - how long ago? - that although he might not be safe with von Stalhein, the danger didn't lie in anything as simple as a drugged drink.
He didn't think of von Stalhein as simple. Or low, or obvious, or petty, or any of those other things that he had apparently implied. That von Stalhein could imagine he did was - curiously unpleasant. It had made Algy feel shabby, oddly ashamed.
They dined in a small restaurant a few streets away, where the proprietor greeted von Stalhein by name and seated them in a private booth. It was quiet, secluded, and had clear lines of sight to both the kitchen door and the street door, which made Algy grin to himself. The menu was limited, cheap, and unashamedly Hungarian, the linens were scrupulously clean and pressed, and there wasn't even a hint of a live jazz orchestra about the place. But there were people at almost every table, almost all men, and waiters with white napkins over their arms and tiny silver trays of tiny white coffee cups.
Von Stalhein flicked his napkin negligently over his lap, waited for Algy to seat himself, and then leaned forward and steepled his hands.
"So we come to my ulterior motive for inviting you with me this evening. What are your suggestions for the successful completion of Herr Fränkel's...'mission'?"
Algy hesitated for a moment -
- and then began to talk.
The cruet got dragged in quite early, to demonstrate a nice point about refuelling stations between the former German East Africa and Cairo. Algy demonstrated the same point again later by tracing the Red Sea coastline in the gravy that was all that was left of his Pörkölt; but von Stalhein's correction about the fuel capacity of the Fokker Trimotor, combined with Algy's insistence that the Ford would be more suited to the job anyway, made the question a contentious one.
Algy asked questions about the pick-up and security and whether Fränkel was likely to be dabbling in the sort of illegality which would necessitate special measures to ensure the cargo's safety; and von Stalhein answered clearly and fully, and outlined his firm's standard procedures for sensitive cargoes, and how they might be applied in this case. Together they picked through the bones of the problem and finished a carafe of very cold, very dry white wine; and by the time the last coffee had been cleared and von Stalhein had sat back in his chair once more, the restaurant had all but emptied.
Von Stalhein removed his monocle, and cleaned it with sharp, fastidious motions on his handkerchief. Somehow the absence of it from his eye made him look curiously lop-sided. There were faint red lines of impression where it normally sat in the tender skin; and the creases at the outer corners of the eyes, relics of squinting into the bronze skies of Palestine, looked more obvious.
Von Stalhein’s eyes were on him. Algy knew he was looking far too intently, but he refused to look away first.
"Tell me, Captain Lacey - why did you come looking for me this evening?"
Algy got out his cigarettes; lit one, thoughtfully, at the candle on the table. "To tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure. I'd had one Scotch too many, for a start. I've got half a suspicion I wanted to hit somebody, and you seemed as good a person as any."
Von Stalhein paused in his polishing. "I see. Would you care to start the evening again, and see if it goes more according to plan this time?"
Algy shook his head, and smiled very slightly. "No, thank you." He hesitated for a moment. "I think - I think I wanted to see if things could be different."
Von Stalhein held his gaze. "And did you?"
Algy considered. "You know, I think perhaps I did."
"And you will take the job."
It was a statement, rather than a question; and even a few hours ago Algy would have taken exception to that.
Instead he grinned. "I think perhaps I will."
* * *
When he got back to the hotel room, late enough that it was definitely early, he found Biggles still up, still awake, still smoking.
"Where on earth have you been?" he asked.
Algy rolled his eyes. "For goodness' sake - this is Berlin, not darkest Borneo! I was hardly likely to have got into much trouble."
"I expect there are just as many poisonous reptiles in Berlin as there are in the jungle."
"I went out, just like I told you I was going to."
"What, by yourself?"
Algy paused, loosening his tie. "No - just with someone I ran into."