Dr Hoadly nodded. With the little Italian’s hand still clutching his arm as though to be sure he would not run away, they entered the cafe, which was next to the jeweller’s establishment.

The cafe was narrow and deep. People were standing with the startled irresoluteness of kangaroos warned of danger by one of their sentinels. Between the groups, like a ship steering between the islands of the Barrier Reef, the cafe proprietor led the doctor, Crome coming up astern.

An elderly man lay upon the wreckage of a table. The face was stained faintly blue. The dilated eyes tended to turn inward, and the bared teeth were irregular and tobacco-stained. Crome knew him-a retired miner living with his niece and her husband in South Broken Hill.

The customers were leaving the cafe, the sensation over and the prospect of being tabbed as witnesses enlarging. Crome was not particularly interested in them. Heat apoplexy. Many of these old chaps could not stand what in their youth they ignored. Old Alf Parsons was for it. Good way to go out-like a light.

The doctor made a superficial examination, and then crouched low and sniffed at the dead man’s mouth. On rising to his feet, he dusted his trousers and wiped his hands with a handkerchief. He told the distracted Italian he would send for the ambulance, and Crome he drew aside and whispered:

“I’m not stating he died of cyanide, Bill, but I’m thinking he did.”

Crome grabbed Favalora, the cafe proprietor.

“Where was he sitting?” he snarled.

There was cyanide in the dead man’s tea cup, which Crome presented to the analyst.

Crome kept on his feet for sixty hours. Asking questions, questions, questions. Statements, reports, theories, argument. Crome was semi-conscious when Inspector Stillman arrived from CIB, Sydney. Soft-spoken, sarcastic, bitingly insulting, Stillman caused Favalora to scream with rage, Mary Isaacs to weep, Mrs Robinov to order him from the shop. Stillman caused Bill Crome to come within an ace of smashing a fist into his sadistic mouth, and Abbot actually formed his lips to give forth the raspberry.