Me neither. He had dragged the revolver clumsily out of his jacket pocket, pointed it shakily in my direction, and used both hands to pull the trigger. If I hadn’t seen that it was only Andrews who had come to nibble at the bait I wouldn’t have ambled unwarily out of the darkness of the washroom to tax him with breaking into the Cromwell Road premises of Hunt Radnor Associates at one o’clock in the morning. It simply hadn’t occurred to me that he would attack me in any way.

By the time I realised that he really meant to use the gun and was not waving it about for effect, it was far too late. I had barely begun to turn to flip off the light switch when the bullet hit, in and out diagonally through my body. The force of it spun me on to my knees and then forward on to the floor.

As I went down he ran for the door, stiff-legged, crying out, with circles of white showing wild round his eyes. He was almost as horrified as I was at what he had done.

‘At what time did the shooting take place?’ asked the policeman formally.

After another pause I said, ‘One o’clock, about.’

The doctor drew in a breath. He didn’t need to say it; I knew I was lucky to be alive. In a progressively feeble state I’d lain on the floor through a chilly September night looking disgustedly at a telephone on which I couldn’t summon help. The office telephones all worked through a switchboard. This might have been on the moon as far as I was concerned, instead of along the passage, down the curving stairs and through the door to the reception desk, with the girl who worked the switches fast asleep in bed.

The policeman wrote in his notebook. ‘Now sir, I can get a description of Thomas Andrews from someone else so as not to trouble you too much now, but I’d be glad if you can tell me what he was wearing.’