3
I Become A Body-Snatcher
I STOOD precariously upon a pile of wreckage looking down at the dead body of X.42. I was not yet hardened to the vicissitudes of my profession. A moment ago I had been drinking wine with a fantastic stranger. Next I had escaped death, savage and violent, by the breadth of a hair. I had then come within an ace of fulfilling my mission, only to meet again with death and to realise that the message for which I had been sent was lying in the body at my feet.
Monnier, in his precise and careful way, had obeyed the Service regulations. Messages that could not be memorised must be carried so that they might, if necessary, be concealed or destroyed. One of the commonest devices was to enclose them in a capsule which might be swallowed as you swallow a pill, the capsu
