We know about this deliberate policy admittedly as effective as it is suicidal—of endless provocation, waiting for something, for somebody to break. … - Alistair MacLean's Death Train

Unspecified exhortation, when translated into practice, is always liable to a certain amount of executive misdirection.

Kind of a treble agent, see? Schaffer said in a patient explaining tone. That's one better than double.

Schaffer caught her by the shoulders, kissed her briefly and smiled at her. She looked at him in surprise. "Well, aren't you glad to see me?" Schaffer demanded. "I've had a terrible time up there. Good God, girl, I might have been killed." "Not as handsome as you were two hours ago." She smiled, gently touched his face where Carraciola's handiwork with the Schmeisser had left its bloody mark, and added over her shoulder as she climbed into the bus: "And that's as long as you've known me." "Two hours! I've aged twenty years tonight. And that, lady, is one helluva long courtship."