He was aware, therefore, that his errand was very exceptional; so far as Linster knew, this was the first time that an Englishman, in England, had hired another man to commit murder for him since the case of Ley and Smith. That occasion had ended badly; but for a fee of two or three hundred pounds, what could you expect? Linster’s own fee was going to be twenty times larger—and he had every reason to believe that Smith’s fate, the being hanged by the neck until he was dead, would never, never be his. The house bulked large in front of him as he slipped in through the side gate. In the distance a church clock struck ten—and fleetingly, Linster frowned. He had twenty minutes to work in, or at the very utmost half an hour; for at midnight a certain private plane would be taking off for the Continent from a lonely field in Norfolk, and whatever else happened, Linster, who had cogent motives for not using any of the more conventional modes of transport, was going to be on that plane; he had no intention of relying on a second chance which might never come.
