coons know I don't stand for being kept waiting. The chow'll be here soon as the stove can fry the eggs.'
Eggs he had said and eggs he meant. Eight of them, flanked by a plentiful supply of bacon and sausages, arrived still sizzling on a big hot-dish. Beside it, on the travelling table that had been wheeled in while she was in the bathroom, were a great aluminium drum of steaming coffee, a jug of cream, toast, marmalade, butter and fruit. The sight and smell of them suddenly made her feel ravenously hungry; so she did justice to the ample helpings he gave her while he demolished the greater part of what remained.
She had already noticed that facing the end of the bed there was an outsized television set. When they had finished eating he pushed the wheeled tray out on to the landing and turned on the set. They were just in time for the one o'clock news. Nothing of startling importance had occurred so the alarms and excursions reported were mainly developments of matters that had already occupied headlines. As Mary listened to further particulars of an air-liner disaster that had happened the day before, she could hardly believe that she was not dreaming.
To her, yesterday seemed weeks ago; yet it was barely twenty-four hours since she had received Barney's roses and been so furious with him for letting her down. She wondered what he would say if he could see her now, and felt certain that the sight of her, propped up against the pillows with the arm of her big companion cast casually round her shoulders, would send him into a frenzy of jealous rage. So she wished that he could see her. It would serve 'his lordship' right for having gambled on her liking him enough to accept any excuse he might cook up as cover for his having gone off for the week-end with some other woman - as she was fully convinced he had.
For a few minutes she tried to guess what the other woman was like but, having not a vestige of information to go on, she soon realized the absurdity of attempting to do so. Mentally shrugging it off, she thought with sudden vicious satisfaction, 'Anyway, whatever her colouring and vital statistics, I bet she hasn't as much physical attraction as this super-man who has got hold of me'.
Next moment she was appalled at her own thought. The man beside her was a criminal. As a professed Satanist he must have committed all sorts of abominations and evil deeds. He had even implied, while surveying her and about to rescue her from Ratnadatta, that he was a white-slaver. She was, at the moment, in the position of a white-slave to him. To have mentally admitted that she had allowed herself to be attracted to such a man now seemed a terrible degradation. It was the sort of sin against the higher nature which could be wiped out only by taking the veil. She began to wonder miserably if she would ever again be able to look a decent man in the face.
But the giant on whose shoulder her head was resting was anything but miserable. With the breakfast, on the lower shelf of the wheeled table, the Sunday papers had been brought up. He had switched off the T.V. and was reading them. Now and then he read extracts aloud to her with either humorous or salacious comment. Presently he came to an article on the British Government's attitude towards Communist China and began to sneer at the British as a dirty lot of double-crossers who would have gone down the drain long ago had it not been for the innocent belief of the Americans that there was something like old brandy about them in that, however much they might cost, they paid for keeping.
Mary, being full-blooded Irish, shared the political schizophrenia which is characteristic of a great part of that people. She had been brought up to believe that the British were the root of all evil but that the Empire as a whole, to the building of which the Irish had made such a great contribution, was a thing that, if need be, one should lay down one's life for; and woe betide any foreigner who had the impudence to belittle either its past achievements or present power to find the best answer to difficult situations which were constantly arising all over the world.
She knew little about international politics but enough to tell him that, if Churchill had had his way, and Roosevelt not been a gullible fool, Stalin would never have been allowed to get his claws on Central Europe; so the massacre of the Hungarians and the enslavement of millions of Czechs, Poles and Rumanians lay at America's door. And that if only their sanctimonious moron, Dulles, had not prevented the British from putting in a 'stitch in time' at Suez, hundreds of honest, intelligent Arabs would not since have been murdered and the whole of the Middle East fallen under Soviet influence.
Amazed and intrigued by her vehemence he entered into a man to man argument with her and, although she spoke more from instinct than from knowledge, he found it impossible to reason soundly against her reiterated assertion that the 'proof of the pudding was in the eating' and that he had only to look at the shrinkage of the territories free from Communist domination, since the United States had assumed world leadership, to realize what a mess his countrymen had made of things. On the other hand, she could not honestly deny his charge that, when Britain had had the leadership of affairs between the wars, she had done little better, and that her refusal to back the French, when they wanted forcibly to resist the re-entry of the Germans into the Rhineland, had been the key error from which had sprung Hitler's confidence that he could tear up Treaties with impunity, and so led to the Second World War.
This acrimonious discussion occupied them until three o'clock then, by mutual consent, they broke it off and, turning over, went to sleep again. Soon after five they roused up and went into the bathroom. He had a shower while she had a bath and when she had finished, instead of getting back into bed, she began to put her clothes on. Suddenly realizing what she was doing, he exclaimed: 'Hi, what's the big idea?'
Endeavouring to make her voice sound indifferent, she replied:
'You said last night that today you meant to take me back to the Temple, and there's not much of the day left; so I thought we would be starting soon now.'
Actually the last thing she wanted was ever to enter the Temple again, but knowing that the Sabbats took place only on Saturdays she was hoping to persuade him that there was no point in his delivering her there so, instead, he should drop her at her own flat; or, if that failed, once they were back in London she would find a better chance than she had the night before to get free of him.
'You sound as though you want to go back,' he flung at her with a frown.
'No,' she lied hastily. 'Of course not. But I thought you had made yourself liable to some sort of penalty for having carried me off, and that the longer you kept me the heavier it would be.'
His frown deepened into a scowl. 'Yeah. I'll have to pay a forfeit; but not for having snatched you. The Great Ram is quite a buddy of mine, so I can square that one with him. It's cutting the Walpurgis Eve party that's put me in the red.'
'If you hadn't been so impatient. . .' she began.
'I know. I know. Sure, I could have parked you at your flat and picked you up this morning. But patience isn't in my make-up. If it had been I'd not have got halfway up to where I am now.'
She shrugged. 'Well, you've had what you wanted as far as I'm concerned. I hope it's been worth it.'
'And how!' His scowl gave place to a sudden grin. 'Sure; sure. But mighty few of the best-looking dolls have anything inside their heads. And you've got everything, honey. I'm a man who likes to get fresh angles on things, and if the angles come from someone who's got the right kind of curves as well, what more could a guy want? I
