Chapter Commentary of The Third Man - Study Guide by Graham Greene

find the body of Joseph Harbin, medical orderly, Harry's supplier and Calloway's double-agent. It is Harbin who has been murdered, presumably because Lime and his colleagues discovered that he had been informing the police.

The international police arrest Anna on account of her false identity papers. Calloway interviews her when she arrives at the police headquarters, hoping that she might be able to help him catch Lime. Initially, she is happy to hear that he is alive but Calloway's warning, 'A rat would have more chance in a closed room without a hole and a pack of terriers loose' prompts a sharp change in her emotion:

'Poor Harry. I wish he was dead. He'd be safe from all of you then.' [106]

She refuses to help Calloway and so he refuses to help her and hands her over to the Russians.

Meanwhile, Harry goes to the Russian quarter to find Kurtz. He tells him that he knows that Harry is alive and tells him to send Harry a message that he will meet him by the big wheel. Their meeting is overcast by a strange tension. They have not seen each other for some time of course, but it is no longer as simple a situation as the meeting of two old friends. Martins is meeting not just Harry - his old friend from school, but also Lime, the penicillin racketeer. He is nevertheless, as Anna said, still Harry and so Martins emotions cannot be polarised either way - they are amalgamated into an unhappy union.

The stage directions are very explicit at this point:

'Life to MARTINS has always quickened when HARRY came, as he comes now, as though nothing much has really happened: with an amused geniality, a recognition that his happiness will make the world's day. Only sometimes the cheerfulness will be suddenly clouded; a melancholy beats through his guard; a memory that this life does not go on. Now he does not make the mistake of offering a hand that might be rejected, but instead just pats MARTINS on his bandaged hand.'[111]

Harry, with characteristic ease, manages to secure an empty car of the big wheel in which he and Martins can talk: 'We couldn't be more alone. Lovers used to do this in the old days, but they haven't money to spare, poor devils, now' [112]. They can hardly be described as lovers in the conventional sense. Martins' tone is cold compared to Harry's breeziness. Nevertheless, Martins is not unfriendly. In the image of Lime, the racketeer, that stands before him, he also sees Harry, the school friend.

Martins tells Harry about Anna. He can hardly be described as concerned. It transpires that it was Harry that informed the Russians that Anna's papers were false in return for his safety in the Russian quarter.

As they reach the top of the big wheel, Martins asks Harry whether he has ever seen any of his victims. Harry's reply is effectively his Apology in the theological sense of the word, his moral creed:

'Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. [He points through the window at the people moving like black flies at the base of the wheel.]Would you ever really feel any pity if one of those black dots stopped moving for ever? If I said that you can have twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stops, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money - or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax.'

Martins seriously considers shoving Harry through the window at this point. But he doesn't. Neither does Harry, as Kurtz suggested to him, take this opportunity to dispose of his dangerous friend.

'HARRY: What fools we are, Holly, talking like this, as if I'd do that to you - or you to me.... In these days, nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, so why should we? They talk of the people and the proletariat, and I talk of mugs. It's the same thing. They have their five year plans and so have I.

MARTINS: You used to believe in a God.
[That shade of melancholy crosses HARRY'S face.]