The Third Man

Martins, still inebriated, finds his way to Anna’s, making vague excuses that he needed to get out after his meeting with Cooler. Anna welcomes him, eventually explaining that she’s depressed, recalling Lime’s former habit of visiting her at this hour. Rollo looks down at Anna while closing a window and later claims that this was the moment he fell in love, telling Calloway, “It wasn’t a beautiful face—that was the trouble. It was a face to live with, day in, day out” (38). He tries, for his own reasons, to suggest to her she can get over Lime and accept his death, but she’s still in mourning and isn’t interested in this possibility.

He tells her about the conflicting accounts of Lime’s death: that Herr Koch says that Lime died instantly, while Lime’s friends report his last words of concern for Martins and Anna. She realizes that if Koch is telling the truth, then Lime’s other friends are deliberately concealing something. They decide to visit Herr Koch together and find a crowd outside. Anna is resistant, but Martins goes to investigate (40). One of the bystanders tells Martins that Herr Koch is dead. The bystander’s young son, Hansel, reports to his father that the police are interested in a foreigner who recently visited. Then the child looks suspiciously at Martins. Frightened for his own safety and fearing that he may be arrested, Martins hurries away with Anna.

Martins tells Anna that he’ll stay out of sight and that his altercations with Calloway—whom he mistakenly calls Callaghan—mean that he can’t seek police protection. Anna sees more danger in the situation than Martins does, declaring, “Be careful. Koch knew so very little and they murdered him. You know as much as Koch” (43).

He returns to his hotel, rushing out again to avoid being seen by Calloway, who is at the bar. However, he’s then ushered into a waiting car and fears that it’s a police escort—or that he too will be killed. Instead, he arrives at the British Cultural Relations Society event for his promised lecture. He’s greeted by Crabbin and surrounded by “a multitude of the old-fashioned, the dingy, the earnest and cheery features of constant readers. Martins looked behind him, but the door had closed” (44).

In one of the book’s only comic interludes, after Crabbin introduces him as Benjamin Dexter, a frightened and boorish Martins announces to the audience that he’s titled his new work “The Third Man” (45). He causes a minor uproar when he names Zane Grey, a writer of classic Westerns, as his literary role model. Crabbin attempts to smooth this over by claiming that Martins meant a poet by the same name, but Martins defends his hero and mounts a spirited defense of the Western as a genre. He’s unable to answer basic questions about giants of the literary canon, even admitting that he hasn’t heard of the novelist James Joyce. When the audience names other writers, like Virginia Woolf, Crabbin tries to feed Martins literary terms so that he can answer their questions, urging him to “be kind to them” (46). As the audience peppers Martins with more questions about his assessment of canonically beloved and well-known writers, Martins is preoccupied with guilt, wondering if he’s responsible for Herr Koch’s death. He signs books as B. Dexter, quickly growing tired.

As the crowd thins, Martins spots a police officer and attempts to avoid him on the stairs. He soon gives up running, as the staircase is dark, and he’s increasingly anxious and disoriented. Calloway’s subordinate, Paine, turns on the light and nabs him, taking him to the police station. 

At the station, Calloway questions Martins, recalling his own efforts to track the investigation and noting that he followed Martins on most of his visits to determine exactly which of Lime’s associates he spoke to. Koch’s death convinced him that it was time for another interview. Martins is at first somewhat triumphant in his confidence that he’s determined Lime was murdered, something the police missed. He first conceals but finally admits that Koch’s testimony is critical to his belief. Martins wants to leave Vienna, but Calloway informs him that the Austrian authorities are investigating him as a suspect in Koch’s death. Although Calloway knows where Martins was, he doesn’t tell him that his police tail is his alibi, reflecting, “I wasn’t sure that he was quite so innocent as he made out. The man who owns the knife is not always the real murderer” (51).

Calloway says that Cooler phoned him personally to tell him of Martins’s theory and indicates that he too dislikes Cooler. Cooler, too, is involved in the illegal economy, in tires. Martins begins to accept that “perhaps Harry did get mixed up in something pretty bad” (51), though he imagines that Lime was killed because he tried to escape a life of crime. Calloway is more cynical, imagining a dispute among the criminals ending in murder.

Because Martins seems more cooperative and receptive, Calloway decides to explain more of the case, warning Martins that the tale will be unpleasant. He says that Lime was illegally selling diluted penicillin that injured and killed children. While the occupation gave rise to many illegal markets, Calloway considers the penicillin trade exceptional in its moral depravity. He reflects that other black-market criminals at least provided services: “The black marketeers in food did at least supply food, and the same applied to all the other racketeers who provided articles in short supply at extravagant prices” (52). Those who illegally sold penicillin, however, were not content with inflated prices, as “they wanted more money and quicker money while the going was good” (53). He explains that they began to dilute the drugs, which created antibiotic resistance in adults. Worst of all, though, were the deaths of some children given diluted meningitis treatments. Many of those who did not die had lasting mental health symptoms.

Calloway eventually shatters Martins’s illusions by presenting incontrovertible evidence. He describes the quest to turn a double agent in the operation and shows Martins proof of Lime’s involvement in the form of letters to Kurtz. Finally, the consequences hit home for Martins, and Calloway describes it as a catastrophe, emphasizing, “If one watched a world come to an end, a plane dive from its course, I don’t suppose one would chatter, and a world for Martins had certainly come to an end” (54). For all his emotional shock, Martins clings to the idea that Lime’s participation was somehow involuntary. Calloway reminds him that while Martins may consider the matter closed, he should stay, as Cooler alerted the Austrian police to his investigations. Calloway suggests that things could change if they find the third man, whom Martins calls a “bloody bastard.” Martins, though he doesn’t know it, is referring to Lime himself—as he will soon realize the man who was buried at the story’s opening was someone else. 

Martins drowns his sorrows in a bar called the Oriental, an establishment so unremarkable that “he might have been in any third rate night haunt in any other shabby capital of a shabby Europe” (55). His thoughts turn to women and, finally, to Anna, as he “set his mind on a new course towards sorrow, eternal love, renunciation” (56). Martins, Calloway reflects, a typical besotted person, convinced that Anna knows his feelings. He believes, somehow, that sharing his new knowledge will settle things between them and result in a new romance.

He goes to see Anna again, seeking shared comfort, but Anna still doesn’t share his sense of devastation or his convictions. She tells him that he’s oversimplifying human nature, that her love for Lime is unaltered, and that people can be complex: We can know them as good, and they can still commit evil acts we never know about. She becomes exasperated by Martins’s despair, declaring, ““For God’s sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn’t just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew’” (57).

Martins confesses his love to Anna, and she’s stunned, reminding him she can’t name basic facts about him or his appearance, even something as basic as his eye color. She laughs at the idea that he could be in love with her, as she scarcely knows him, and dismisses him when he tries to argue with her, telling her “I hate the way you talk” (57). She points out that he’s full of contradictions, coming to declare his love yet angry with her honest opinions.

Martins finally leaves, sensing that someone is following him. At first, he imagines it is a police tail, or an agent of the third man. Finally, a passerby opens a window, disturbed by Martins shouting at the stranger, and in a streetlamp he sees a reflection of the man tailing him—and realizes that it is Harry Lime, alive.