ghost ['gqust], kiosk ['ki:Osk], vanish ['vxnIS], hysteria [hIs'tIqrIq], exact [Ig'zxkt], desolate ['des(q)lqt], allied [q'laId], personnel ["pq:sq'nel], warrant ['wOr(q)nt], superior [sju:'pIqrIq], detain [dI'teIn], suspect /сущ./ ['sAspekt]

DO YOU BELIEVE in ghosts?" Martins said to me.

"Do you?"

"I do now."

"I also believe that drunk men see things—sometimes rats, sometimes worse."

He hadn't come to me at once with his story—only the danger to Anna Schmidt tossed him back into my office, like something the sea washed up, tousled, unshaven, haunted by an experience he couldn't understand. He said, "If it had been just the face, I wouldn't have worried. I'd been thinking about Harry, and I might easily have mistaken a stranger. The light was turned off again at once, you see, I only got one glimpse, and the man made off down the street—if he was a man. There was no turning for a long way, but I was so startled I gave him another thirty yards' start. He came to one of those newspaper kiosks and for a moment moved out of sight. I ran after him. It only took me ten seconds to reach the kiosk, and he must have heard me running, but the strange thing was he never appeared again. I reached the kiosk. There wasn't anybody there. The street was empty. He couldn't have reached a doorway without my meeting him. He'd simply vanished."

"A natural thing for ghosts—or illusions."

"But I can't believe I was as drunk as all that!"

"What did you do then?"

"I had to have another drink. My nerves were all to pieces."

"Didn't that bring him back?"

"No, but it sent me back to Anna's."

I think he would have been ashamed to come to me with his absurd story if it had not been for the attempt on Anna Schmidt. My theory when he did tell me his story was that there had been a watcher—though it was drink and hysteria that had pasted on the man's face the features of Harry Lime. That watcher had noted his visit to Anna and the member of the ring—the penicillin ring—had been warned by telephone. Events that night moved fast. You remember that Kurtz lived in the Russian zone—in the second bezirk to be exact, in a wide empty desolate street that runs down to the Prater Platz. A man like that had probably obtained his influential contacts. The original police agreement in Vienna between the allies confined the military police (who had to deal with crimes involving allied personnel) to their particular zones, unless permission was given to them to enter the zone of another power. I only had to get on the phone to my opposite number in the American or French zones before I sent in my men to make an arrest or pursue an investigation. Perhaps forty-eight hours would pass before I received permission from the Russians, but in practice there are a few occasions when it is necessary to work quicker than that. Even at home it is not always possible to obtain a search warrant or permission from one's superiors to detain a suspect with any greater speed.

This meant that if I wanted to pick up Kurtz (это означало, что если я хотел взять Куртца) it would be as well to catch him in the British zone (его стоило, пожалуй, поймать в британской зоне).

When Rollo Martins went drunkenly back at four o'clock in the morning (когда Ролло Мартинс пошел пьяным назад в четыре часа утра) to tell Anna that he had seen the ghost of Harry (чтобы рассказать Анне, что он видел призрак Гарри; ghost — привидение, призрак; дух), he was told by a frightened porter (ему сказал испуганный портье) who had not yet gone back to sleep (который еще не ушел обратно спать) that she had been taken away by the International Patrol (что она была забрана интернациональным патрулем).