What we saw when we arrived at the great gray building on the Strand were streams of operatives from our fellow agencies arriving in the dusk of early evening. There they all were: the lilac jackets of Grimble, the sky-blue ones of Tamworth, the striped pink blazers of Mellingcamp, and the rest. They congregated by the flower beds, where ranks of lilies had been planted in the shapes of rampant unicorns; they filed slowly through the etched glass doors. Traditionally, herding so many agents together would have been like shoveling a dozen tomcats into a sack and expecting them to cuddle up and
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