At the same time that Elliott Freemantle was enjoying his success, a former builder called D. O. Guerrero was tasting the bitterness of failure.

He was about 15 miles from the airport, in a locked room in a poor, dirty apartment on the south side of the city. The apartment was above an evil-smelling eating house.

D. O. Guerrero was a thin, sickly sort of man, with an unhealthy, yellowish face, deep hollows around his eyes and pale, thin lips. He was losing his hair. He had nervous hands, and could not keep his fingers still. He smoked continuously, lighting a fresh cigarette from the end of each old one. He needed a wash and a clean shirt. He was fifty, but he looked several years older.

He was married, and had been for 18 years. In some ways it had been a good marriage. He and Inez accepted one another, and their married life had been calm and uneventful. D. O. had always been too busy to be interested in other women. But in the last year he and Inez had grown apart. He could no longer share his thoughts with her. This was one of the results of a number of business failures which had made the Guerrero family poor. They had been forced to leave their comfortable home and to move to cheaper and cheaper apartments, and in the end to this dark and dirty hole.

Inez did not enjoy living like this, but she would have been able to bear it if her husband had not become so strange and bad- tempered recently. At times it was impossible to talk to him. A few weeks ago he had hit her across the face, hurting her badly. He refused to show any sorrow or even talk about it later. After that, Inez had sent their two children - a boy and a girl - to stay with her married sister, and had taken a job in a coffee shop. She had to work hard, and did not earn much, but they needed the money for food. D. O. hardly seemed to notice that the children had gone.

Inez was at work now. D. O. was alone in the apartment. Like a number of other people, he was about to leave for the airport. In his coat pocket he had a ticket for Trans America Flight Two to Rome. Inez did not know anything about the ticket or why her husband had bought one.

The ticket cost four hundred and seventy-four dollars. D. O. had paid forty-seven dollars and had promised to pay the rest over the next two years. It was highly unlikely that the money would ever be paid. He had got the forty-seven dollars by selling his wife's last possession, her mother's ring.