2: It Comes Off Sometimes!
IT WAS one o'clock.
Callaghan sat back in his office chair, his feet on the desk, the inevitable cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. In the ash-tray on the desk were fifteen cigarette stubs.
Only the desk light was turned on. The tilt of the shade threw a beam of light across the desk diagonally, leaving him in the dark, throwing grotesque shadows of the things on the desk on the opposite wall.
Callaghan was thinking about Effie Perkins. He was also thinking about himself, the five hundred pounds— and Cynthis Meraulton.
He wondered about Effie. He wondered if she would be sufficiently nasty to throw a spanner into the machinery. She could— quite easily. Callaghan thought that Effie was probably like that. Somewhere or other he had read somethin
