LITMIR.BIZ

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Stafford? Eric Pugh here. Heard you were back from Malaya—what about dining tonight?’

      ‘Like to very much.’

      ‘Good—Limpits Club—eight-fifteen?’

      Mrs Worrit panted into the room as Sir Stafford replaced the receiver.

      ‘A gentleman downstairs wanting to see you, sir,’ she said. ‘At least I mean, I suppose he’s that. Anyway he said he was sure you wouldn’t mind.’

      ‘What’s his name?’

      ‘Horsham, sir, like the place on the way to Brighton.’

      ‘Horsham.’ Sir Stafford Nye was a little surprised.

      He went out of his bedroom, down a half flight of stairs that led to the big sitting-room on the lower floor. Mrs Worrit had made no mistake. Horsham it was, looking as he had looked half an hour ago, stalwart, trustworthy, cleft chin, rubicund cheeks, bushy grey moustache and a general air of imperturbability.

      ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ he said agreeably, rising to his feet.

      ‘Hope I don’t mind what?’ said Sir Stafford Nye.

      ‘Seeing me again so soon. We met in the passage outside Mr Gordon Chetwynd’s door—if you remember?’

      ‘No objections at all,’ said Sir Stafford Nye.

      He pushed a cigarette-box along the table.

      ‘Sit down. Something forgotten, something left unsaid?’

      ‘Very nice man, Mr Chetwynd,’ said Horsham. ‘We’ve got him quietened down, I think. He and Colonel Munro. They’re a bit upset about it all, you know. About you, I mean.’

      ‘Really?’

      Sir Stafford Nye sat down too. He smiled, he smoked, and he looked thoughtfully at Henry Horsham. ‘And where do we go from here?’ he asked.

      ‘I was just wondering if I might ask, without undue curiosity, where you’re going from here?’

      ‘Delighted to tell you,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘I’m going to stay with an aunt of mine, Lady Matilda Cleckheaton. I’ll give you the address if you like.’

      ‘I know it,’ said Henry Horsham. ‘Well, I expect that’s a very good idea. She’ll be glad to see you’ve come home safely all right. Might have been a near thing, mightn’t it?’

      ‘Is that what Colonel Munro thinks and Mr Chetwynd?’

      ‘Well, you know what it is, sir,’ said Horsham. ‘You know well enough. They’re always in a state, gentlemen in that department. They’re not sure whether they trust you or not.’

      ‘Trust me?’ said Sir Stafford Nye in an offended voice. ‘What do you mean by that, Mr Horsham?’

      Mr Horsham was not taken aback. He merely grinned.

      ‘You see,’ he said, ‘you’ve got a reputation for not taking things seriously.’

      ‘Oh. I thought you meant I was a fellow traveller or a convert to the wrong side. Something of that kind.’

      ‘Oh no, sir, they just don’t think you’re serious. They think you like having a bit of a joke now and again.’

      ‘One cannot go entirely through life taking oneself and other people seriously,’ said Sir Stafford Nye, disapprovingly.

      ‘No. But you took a pretty good risk, as I’ve said before, didn’t you?’

      ‘I wonder if I know in the least what you are talking about.’

      ‘I’ll tell you. Things go wrong, sir, sometimes, and they don’t always go wrong because people have made them go wrong. What you might call the Almighty takes a hand, or the other gentleman—the one with the tail, I mean.’

      Sir Stafford Nye was slightly diverted.

      ‘Are you referring to fog at Geneva?’ he said.

      ‘Exactly, sir. There was fog at Geneva and that upset people’s plans. Somebody was in a nasty hole.’

      ‘Tell me all about it,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘I really would like to know.’

      ‘Well, a passenger was missing when that plane of yours left Frankfurt yesterday. You’d drunk your beer and you were sitting in a corner snoring nicely and comfortably by yourself. One passenger didn’t report and they called her and they called her again. In the end, presumably, the plane left without her.’

      ‘Ah. And what had happened to her?’

      ‘It would be interesting to know. In any case, your passport arrived at Heathrow even if you didn’t.’

      ‘And where is it now? Am I supposed to have got it?’

      ‘No. I don’t think so. That would be rather too quick work. Good reliable stuff, that dope. Just right, if I may say so. It put you out and it didn’t produce any particularly bad effects.’

      ‘It gave me a very nasty hangover,’ said Sir Stafford.

      ‘Ah well, you can’t avoid that. Not in the circumstances.’

      ‘What would have happened,’ Sir Stafford asked, ‘since you seem to know all about everything, if I had refused to accept the proposition that may—I will only say may—have been put up to me?’

      ‘It’s quite possible that it would have been curtains for Mary Ann.’

      ‘Mary Ann? Who’s Mary Ann?’

      ‘Miss Daphne Theodofanous.’

      ‘That’s the name I do seem to have heard—being summoned as a missing traveller?’

      ‘Yes, that’s the name she was travelling under. We call her Mary Ann.’

      ‘Who is she—just as a matter of interest?’

      ‘In her own line she’s more or less the tops.’

      ‘And what is her line? Is she ours or is she theirs, if you know who “theirs” is? I must say I find a little difficulty myself when making my mind up about that.’

      ‘Yes, it’s not so easy, is it? What with the Chinese and the Russkies and the rather queer crowd that’s behind all the student troubles and the New Mafia and the rather odd lot in South America. And the nice little nest of financiers who seem to have got something funny up their sleeves. Yes, it’s not easy to say.’

      ‘Mary Ann,’ said Sir Stafford Nye thoughtfully. ‘It seems a curious name to have for her if her real one is Daphne Theodofanous.’

      ‘Well, her mother’s Greek, her father was an Englishman, and her grandfather was an Austrian subject.’

      ‘What would have happened if I hadn’t made her a—loan of a certain garment?’

      ‘She might have been killed.’

      ‘Come, come. Not really?’

      ‘We’re worried about the airport at Heathrow. Things have happened there lately, things that need a bit of explaining. If the plane had gone via Geneva as planned, it would have been all right. She’d have had full protection all arranged. But this other way—there wouldn’t have been time to arrange anything and you don’t know who’s who always, nowadays. Everyone’s playing a double game or a treble or a quadruple one.’

      ‘You alarm me,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘But she’s all right, is she? Is that what you’re telling me?’

      ‘I hope she’s all right. We haven’t heard anything to the contrary.’

      ‘If it’s any help to you,’ said Sir Stafford Nye, ‘somebody called here this morning while I was out talking to my little pals in Whitehall. He represented that

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