Dark Duet

THE office was a small, square room on a third floor near Golden Square. It was sombre and unassuming. The furniture was nondescript. A suggestion of efficiency was provided by a steel filing-cabinet.

Outside, between this office and the corridor, was another even smaller room. In it MacMurray, a big, broad-shouldered, truculent-looking man, dozed over an evening paper. He wished Fenton would go home.

MacMurray— who had been "lent" by C.I.D. Central Office, and who spent most of his time wishing he was back there— divided his attention between the Greyhound Racing news and wondering about Fenton. MacMurray was curious about Fenton. Damned curious. He wondered why it should be necessary for him to stay put in the outer office for twenty-four hours at a stretch whilst Fenton sat at the desk in the other room waiting for telephone calls that seldom came, or spent an odd hour going through the filing-cabinet making pencil notes on folders. Folders which MacMurray never saw.