"I never knew the old Vienna before the war with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm. Constantinople suited me better."

"I really got to know it in the classic period of the black market. We'd run anything if people wanted it enough and had the money to pay. Of course a situation like that does tempt amateurs... but, well, you know, they can't stay the course like a professional."

"Now the city is divided into four zones, you know, each occupied by a power: the American, the British, the Russian and the French. But the center of the city that's international policed by an international patrol. One member of each of the four powers. Wonderful! What a hope they had! All strangers to the place and none of them could speak the same language. Except a sort of smattering of German."

"Good fellows on the whole, did their best you know. Vienna doesn't really look any worse than a lot of other European cities. Bombed about a bit."

"Oh, I was going to tell you, wait, I was going to tell you about Holly Martins, an American. Came all the way here to visit a friend of his. The name was Lime, Harry Lime. Now Martins was broke and Lime had offered him, some sort, I don't know, some sort of job. Anyway, there he was, poor chap. Happy as a lark and without a cent."

"When I saw Rollo Martins first I made this note on him for my security police files: 'In normal circumstances a cheerful fool. Drinks too much and may cause a little trouble. Whenever a woman passes raises his eyes and makes some comment, but I get the impression that really he'd rather not be bothered. Has never really grown up and perhaps that accounts for the way he worshipped Lime.' I wrote there that phrase 'in normal circumstances' because I met him first at Harry Lime's funeral."

"If you are to understand this strange rather sad story you must have an impression at least of the background—the smashed dreary city of Vienna divided up in zones among the four powers; the Russian, the British, the American, the French zones, regions marked only by a notice board, and in the centre of the city, surrounded by the Ring with its heavy public buildings and its prancing statuary, the Inner Stadt under the control of all four powers."

"In this once fashionable Inner Stadt each power in turn, for a month at a time, takes, as we call it, 'the chair,' and becomes responsible for security; at night, if you were fool enough to waste your Austrian schillings on a night club, you would be fairly certain to see the International Patrol at work—four military police, one from each power, communicating with each other if they communicated at all in the common language of their enemy."

"I never knew Vienna between the wars, and I am too young to remember the old Vienna with its Strauss music and its bogus easy charm; to me it is simply a city of undignified ruins which turned that February into great glaciers of snow and ice."

"I was going to stay with him, but he died Thursday."

"Goodness, that's awkward."

"Is that what you say to people after death? 'Goodness, that's awkward?'"

"We do a little show each week. Last week we had 'Hamlet.' The week before we had... something."

"The striptease, sir."

"Yes, the Hindu dancers. Thank you, sergeant."

"Hello, Mr. Martins! I've been trying to reach you at your hotel. I've arranged the lecture for tomorrow."

"Oh? What about?"

"On the modern novel, you remember? What we arranged. I want you to talk about the crisis of faith."

"What's that?"

"Oh, I thought you'd know. You're a writer."

"I suppose it wouldn't interest you to know that Harry Lime was murdered? You're too busy. You haven't even bothered to get the complete evidence... And there was a third man there. I suppose that doesn't sound peculiar to you."

"I'm not interested in whether a racketeer like Lime was killed by his friends or by an accident. The only important thing is that he's dead. Go home Martins, like a sensible chap. You don't know what you're mixing in, get the next plane."

"As soon as I get to the bottom of this, I'll get the next plane."

"Death's at the bottom of everything, Martins. Leave death to the professionals."

"Mind if I use that line in my next Western?"

"I told you to go away, Martins. This isn't Santa Fe. I'm not a sheriff and you aren't a cowboy. You've been blundering around with the worst bunch of racketeers in Vienna, your precious Harry's friends, and now you're wanted for murder."

"Put down drunk and disorderly too."

"I have."

"I guess nobody really knew Harry like he did... like I did."

"How long ago?"

"Back in school. I was never so lonesome in my life until he showed up."

"When did you see him last?"

"September, '39."

"When the business started?"

"Um, hmm."

"See much of him before that?"

"Once in a while. Best friend I ever had."

"That sounds like a cheap novelette."

"Well, I write cheap novelettes."

"Did you ever read a book of mine called, 'The Lone Rider of Santa Fe'?"

"No, not that one, sir."

"It's a story about a man who hunted down a sheriff who was victimizing his best friend."

"Seems exciting."

"It is! I'm gunning just the same way for your Major Callaghan."

"Calloway. I'm English, not Irish."

"Sounds anti-British, sir."

"Did you ever hear of 'The Lone Rider of Santa Fe'?"

"Can't say that I have."

"'Death at Double-X Ranch'? Uh, 'Raunch'."

"Could he have been conscious?...Was he still alive?"

"Alive? He couldn't have been alive. Not with his head in the way it was."

"I was told that he did not die at once."

"He was quite dead."

"But this sounds crazy. If he was killed at once, how could he have talked about me and this lady here after he was dead? Why didn't you say all this at the inquest?"

"It's better not to be mixed up in things like this."

"Things like what?"

"I was not the only one who did not give evidence."

"Who else?"

"Three men helped to carry your friend to the statue."

"Kurtz, the Rumanian, and -"

"There was a third man. He didn't give evidence."

"You don't mean the doctor?"

"No, no, no. He came later, after they carried him to the Josef statue."

"What did this man look like?"

"I didn't see his face. He didn't look up. He was quite ordinary. He might have been just anybody."

"Just anybody."

"It's always bad around this time. He used to look in around six. I've been frightened. I've been alone, without friends and money. But I've never known anything like this. Please talk. Tell me about him."

"He could fix anything."

"What sort of things?"

"Oh, little things, how to put your temperature up before an exam, the best crib, how to avoid this and that."

"He fixed my papers for me. He heard the Russians were repatriating people like me who came from Czechoslovakia. He knew the right person straight away for forging stamps."

"When he was fourteen, he taught me the three card trick. That was growing up fast."

"He never grew up. The world grew up round him, that's all - and buried him."

"Anna, you'll fall in love again."

"Don't you see I don't want to? I don't ever want to."

"I knew him for twenty years, at least I thought I knew him. Suppose he was laughing at fools like us all the time?"

"He liked to laugh."

"Seventy pounds a tube. He wanted me to write for his great medical charity... Perhaps I could have raised the price to eighty pounds for him."

"Oh please, for heaven's sakes, stop making him in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your friend and my lover, he was Harry."

"Well, don't preach wisdom to me. You talk about him as if he had occasional bad manners. Oh, I don't know, I'm just a hack writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls - you."

"Me?"

"Don't be such a fool, of course."

"If you'd rung me up and asked me were you fair or dark or had a moustache, I wouldn't have known."

"I am leaving Vienna. I don't care whether Harry was murdered by Kurtz or Popescu or the third man. Whoever killed him, there was some sort of justice. Maybe I would have killed him myself."

"A person doesn't change because you find out more."

"You were in love with him, weren't you?"

"I don't know. How can you know a thing like that afterwards? I don't know anything more except I want to be dead too."

"I'd make comic faces... and stand on my head and grin at you between my legs... and tell all sorts of jokes. I wouldn't stand a chance, would I?"

"You know, you ought to get yourself a girl."

"Can I ask is Mr. Martins engaged in a new book?"

"Yes, it's called 'The Third Man.'"

"A novel, Mr. Martins?"

"It's a murder story. I've just started it. It's based on fact."

"Are you a slow writer, Mr. Martins?"

"Not when I get interested."

"I'd say you were doing something pretty dangerous this time."

"Yes?"

"Mixing fact and fiction."

"Should I make it all fact?"

"Why no, Mr. Martins. I'd say stick to fiction, straight fiction."

"I'm too far along with the book, Mr. Popescu."

"Haven't you ever scrapped a book, Mr. Martins?"

"Never."

"That's a nice girl, that. But she ought to go careful in Vienna. Everybody ought to go careful in a city like this."

"I helped Harry fix her papers, Mr. Martins. Not a sort of thing I should confess to a stranger, but you have to break the rules sometimes. Humanity - is a duty. Cigarette, Miss Schmidt?"

"I was told that a third man helped you and Kurtz carry the body."

"I don't know how you got that idea. You'll find all about it in the police report. There was just the two of us, me and the Baron. Who could have told you a story like that?"

"Why wasn't he at the police inquiry?"

"He doesn't want to get involved."

"You'll never teach these Austrians to be good citizens. It was his duty to give the evidence."

"What did you want me to do? Be reasonable. You didn't expect me to give myself up... 'It's a far, far better thing that I do.' The old limelight. The fall of the curtain. Oh, Holly, you and I aren't heroes. The world doesn't make any heroes outside of your stories."

"Why not?"

"Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly."

"Holly, I'd like to cut you in, old man. There's nobody left in Vienna I can really trust, and we've always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message - I'll meet you any place, any time, and when we do meet old man, it's you I want to see, not the police. Remember that, won't ya?"

"Have you ever seen any of your victims?"

"You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, 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 - the only way you can save money nowadays."

"Lot of good your money'll do you in jail."

"That jail's in another zone. There's no proof against me... besides you."

"I should be pretty easy to get rid of."

"Pretty easy."

"I wouldn't be too sure."

"I carry a gun. You don't think they'd look for a bullet wound after you hit that ground."

"Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't. Why should we? They talk about the people and the proletariat, I talk about the suckers and the mugs - it's the same thing. They have their five-year plans, so have I."

"You used to believe in God."

"Oh, I still do believe in God, old man. I believe in God and Mercy and all that. But the dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor devils."

"What do you believe in? Oh if you ever get Anna out of this mess, be kind to her. You'll find she's worth it."

"Anna, don't you recognize a good turn when you see one?"

"You have seen Calloway. What are you two doing?"

"Well, they, they asked me to help take him. I'm helping."

"Poor Harry."

"Poor Harry? Poor Harry wouldn't even lift a finger to help you."

"Oh, you've got your precious honesty and don't want anything else."

"You still want him."

"I don't want him anymore. I don't want to see him, hear him. But he's still a part of me, that's a fact. I couldn't do a thing to harm him."

"Oh Anna, why do we always have to quarrel?"

"If you want to sell your services, I'm not willing to be the price. I loved him. You loved him. What good have we done him? Love! Look at yourself. They have a name for faces like that."

"I'm sorry, Miss, it's orders. We can't go against the protocol."

"I don't even know what protocol means."

"Neither do I, Miss."

"Next time we'll have a foolproof coffin."

"Well, what's this? Where are we?"

"It's the main sewer. Runs right into the blue Danube. Smells sweet, doesn't it?"

"Calloway, can't you do something about Anna?"

"I'll do what I can, if she'll let me."

"Wait a minute - let me out."

"Well, there's not much time."

"One can't just leave - please."

"Be sensible, Martins."

"I haven't got a sensible name, Calloway."

"What time is it?"

"Two thirty."

"I'll have to step on it, if you're going to catch that plane."

"HUNTED...By a thousand men! Haunted...By a lovely girl!"

"Hunted by men...Sought by WOMEN!"