The Manual of Detection Read Online Free Page A

Duden himself ever approached the door to the overclerk’s office. The glass window, of the opaque kind, was uncommonly so. Before today Unwin had only glimpsed the door from afar. Now he set his briefcase down and raised his fist to knock.
    Before he could, the door swung inward and Mr. Duden, a round-headed man with colorless hair, said quickly, “Pardon me, sir, there seems to have been a mistake.”
    Unwin had never been “sir.” He had always been “Unwin,” and nothing more.
    “Yes, begging your pardon, Mr. Duden, there has been a mistake. I arrived several minutes late today. I shall spare you the details, since all of them will go into my report, which I would like to begin writing immediately. From this I am prevented, however, by the presence of another person at my desk, using my typewriter. Measures had to be taken, no doubt, because I am so late to work.”
    “No, begging your pardon, sir, you aren’t late at all. You just don’t . . . That is, I was informed that—how to put it?—that you’d been promoted. And while of course we’re pleased that you’d think to come down here to visit your old colleagues, sir, it is against Agency policy for . . . well, for a detective, you know, to communicate directly with a clerk, without the intercession of a messenger.”
    “Agency policy. Of course.” Already this was the longest conversation he had ever had with his supervisor, except for an exchange of memoranda regarding the allotment of shelf space among the occupants of the east row that had transpired some three years earlier, but that was not, strictly speaking, a conversation at all. So it was with great hesitation that Unwin asked, “But you and I may speak freely, may we not?”
    Mr. Duden glanced about the room. No one was typing. Somewhere a phone rang unheeded, then succumbed to the general silence. Mr. Duden said, “Actually, though I am the supervisor of the fourteenth floor, I, too, am—technically speaking, that is—a clerk. So this conversation is, you see, against Agency policy.”
    “Then I suppose,” said Unwin, “that we should terminate the exchange, in keeping with policy?”
    Mr. Duden nodded with relief.
    “And I’m to find my new desk elsewhere in the building?”
    It pained Mr. Duden to say, “On the twenty-ninth floor, perhaps. Room 2919, according to the memo I received.”
    Of course, an interoffice communication! With such a missive as his guide, Unwin could follow the trail back to its source and settle the matter in person. Though to ask for a memo directed to his superior would be rather unorthodox, Mr. Duden believed that Unwin outranked him now, so he could not refuse the request. But then, to take advantage of his superior’s confusion would be to employ the very misunderstanding he wished to dispel. Imagine the report he would have to write to explain his actions: the addenda and codicils, the footnotes, the footnotes to footnotes. The more Unwin fed that report, the greater would grow its demands, until stacks of paper massed into walls, corridors: a devouring labyrinth with Unwin at its center, spools of exhausted typewriter ribbon piled all around.
    Mr. Duden saved him from that fate, however, when he produced the memo for Unwin’s perusal without being asked.
     
The bottom of the memo was adorned by the Agency’s official seal, a single open eye floating above the words “Never Sleeping.”
    To: O. Duden, Overclerk, Floor 14
    From: Lamech, Watcher, Floor 36
     
    An employee under your Supervision, Mister Charles Unwin, is hereby promoted to the rank of Detective, with all the Rights, Privileges, and Responsibilities that position entails. Please forward his Personal Effects to Room 2919, and proceed according to Protocol in all regards.
    Unwin folded the paper in half and slipped it into his coat pocket. He saw that Mr. Duden wanted it back, to keep it for his records, but the overclerk could not bring himself to ask for it. It was better this