The Human Factor by Graham Greene Read Free Book Online

general.’
    â€˜Yes, perhaps I was.’
    â€˜You haven’t been a long time with us, have you, or you’d know how we all live in boxes – you know – boxes.’
    â€˜I still don’t understand.’
    â€˜Yes, you said that before, didn’t you? Understanding isn’t all that necessary in our business. I see they’ve given you the Ben Nicholson room.’
    â€˜I don’t . . .’
    â€˜I’m in the Miro room. Good lithographs, aren’t they? As a matter of fact it was my idea – these decorations. Lady Hargreaves wanted sporting prints. To go with the pheasants.’
    â€˜I don’t understand modern pictures,’ Daintry said.
    â€˜Take a look at that Nicholson. Such a clever balance. Squares of different colour. And yet living so happily together. No clash. The man has a wonderful eye. Change just one of the colours – even the size of the square, and it would be no good at all.’ Percival pointed at a yellow square. ‘There’s your Section 6. That’s your square from now on. You don’t need to worry about the blue and the red. All you have to do is pinpoint our man and then tell me. You’ve no responsibility for what happens in the blue or red squares. In fact not even in the yellow. You just report. No bad conscience. No guilt.’
    â€˜An action has nothing to do with its consequences. Is that what you’re telling me?’
    â€˜The consequences are decided elsewhere, Daintry. You mustn’t take the conversation tonight too seriously. C likes to toss ideas up into the air and see how they fall. He likes to shock. You know the cannibal story. As far as I know, the criminal – if there is a criminal – will be handed over to the police in quite the conservative way. Nothing to keep you awake. Do just try to understand that picture. Particularly the yellow square. If you could only see it with my eyes, you would sleep well tonight.’

PART TWO

CHAPTER I
    1
    A N old-young man with hair which dangled over his shoulders and the heaven-preoccupied gaze of some eighteenth-century abbé was sweeping out a discotheque at the corner of Little Compton Street as Castle went by.
    Castle had taken an earlier train than usual, and he was not due at the office for another three-quarters of an hour. Soho at this hour had still some of the glamour and innocence he remembered from his youth. It was at this corner he had listened for the first time to a foreign tongue, at the small cheap restaurant next door he had drunk his first glass of wine; crossing Old Compton Street in those days had been the nearest he had ever come to crossing the Channel. At nine in the morning the strip-tease clubs were all closed and only the delicatessens of his memory were open. The names against the flat-bells – Lulu, Mimi and the like – were all that indicated the afternoon and evening activities of Old Compton Street. The drains ran with fresh water, and the early housewives passed him under the pale hazy sky, carrying bulging sacks of salami and liverwurst with an air of happy triumph. There was not a policeman in sight, though after dark they would be seen walking in pairs. Castle crossed the peaceful street and entered a bookshop he had frequented for several years now.
    It was an unusually respectable bookshop for this area of Soho, quite unlike the bookshop which faced it across the street and bore the simple sign ‘Books’ in scarlet letters. The window below the scarlet sign displayed girlie magazines which nobody was ever seen to buy – they were like a signal in an easy code long broken; they indicated the nature of private wares and interests inside. But the shop of Halliday & Son confronted the scarlet ‘Books’ with a window full of Penguins and Everyman and second-hand copies of World’s Classics. The son was never seen there, only old Mr Halliday himself, bent and white-haired,