Coco is well aware that certain types of behaviour in a library are deemed to be obnoxious to other users, and some behaviours may result in future exclusion from these reputable institutions. Whilst making his way to the botanical gardens Coco noticed some of the eccentricities of library behaviours whilst passing by and chancing to peer down into what appeared to be the reading room. It was not the papers strewn across the table of someone who was at least making an effort to do some work, nor the pairs of fingers tapping furiously on keyboards which may be evidence of little more than playing a game, but the head, not in hands moment, but rather resting on the arms of the white-topped reader whose attention span may have been exceeded by perhaps several minutes and who was then enjoying a quite pause, shall we say, in her efforts to provide ingress into her mind of whatever subject she had that afternoon previously been devoted. We may credit her with that as there is some evidence of a book underneath her arms. On the other hand she may just have fallen asleep. Coco hopes that she was a quiet sleeper and did not disturb the other readers.

Not far away however there was a much more sinister apparition. Perhaps it was only that the air conditioning in the reading room was far too severe, but the other readers do not give any indication of that there was a lack of heat in their environment, except perhaps the sleeper, but Coco hopes that she had not succumbed to the extreme cold of the reading room. Why would anyone wear dark glasses, a gaberdine shawl collar coat and something between a pork pie and top hat in a library reading room? Did anyone else in the reading room consider that such vesture may be, shall we suggest, a cause of concern? Who is this person? To what secret, or not so secret, society does he belong? Unlike his neighbour he is looking intently at the screen in front of him. Is he one of Marlon’s putatively Trotskyite acquaintances? Is he using the library as cover for his espionage? Is he conducting a conversation with his co-conspirator who is sitting at the desk in front of him and who is also intently conversing with her screen, whilst apparently being quietly watched by her neighbour? What is going on? Does he know that he is being watched?

Well, Coco did not wait to discover the answers to these questions, and in any event the answers to the questions if they had become public knowledge may have posed serious if not mortal danger. There were more pressing demands than this trivia – a rendezvous in the botanical gardens was calling and one could not let the coffee go cold.