With the rain falling steadily on our heads, its drops silvering the dark; The exchange of courtesies and then the quick movement and then nothing, finis. Not while there's life, my friend. But Mr Jordan, it is a foregone conclusion. You know that. I shall not fail - indeed I dare not. I am sim- ply attempting to bring this matter to an end in a rational and civilised manner. Do you see his point? A desperate stalking operation through the building here, waking the guests how- ever quietly we moved, however secretly, each seeking the other's death until the end-game and the last hot deed enacted in the close confinement of the flesh or a missed foothold and the hideous drop to the stones below or a lost chance and the wire's bite and the blood spilling and the cry cut off, and then the mess, the messiness of a violent death - or alternatively his offer of due ceremony, out there somewhere in the privacy of the rain and the dark with no one near and no sound but the intoning of my executioner's prayer. If this was in his mind you couldn't say he wasn't civilised. Better, surely, than baring one's neck to a brute. I went down to the bar and picked up the phone.