she looked across to a small book table where there was propped up the cheap unframed photograph of a dark and not unhappily serious young man.
'Poor old Johnny!' she said softly. 'It was a lousy trick they played on you, my dear . . .'
Mr Algernon Sidney Fairweather jiggled the receiver hook. He took a coin out of his pocket and poised it over the slot; and then he hesitated, and finally put it back in his pocket. He left the booth and made his way to the bar, where he downed a double brandy with very little dilution of soda. His plump cheeks seemed to have gone flabby and his hands twitched as they put down the glass.
Twenty minutes later he was waddling jerkily up and down the carpet of a luxurious room overlooking Grosvenor Square, blurting out his story under a coldly observant scrutiny that made him feel somehow like a beetle under a searchlight.
'Do you believe Her when she says that she's lost this cloakroom ticket?' Luker asked.
He was as calm as Fairweather was agitated. He sat imperturbably behind the huge carved oak desk where he had been writing when Fairweather blundered in and toyed with his fountain pen. The expression in his eyes was faintly contemptuous.
'I don't know what to believe,' said Fairweather distractedly. 'I—well, thinking it over, I doubt it. I've had enough dealings with her to know what her methods are, and personally I think she's fishing to see how much we're prepared to pay.'
'Or how much Templar is prepared to pay,' said Luker phlegmatically. 'Did you know that she had dinner with him tonight at the Berkeley?'
Fairweather blinked as if he had been smacked on the nose.
'What?' he yelped. His voice had gone back on him again. 'But I particularly told her to have nothing more to do with him!'
'That's probably why she did it,' Luker replied unsympathetically. 'I had an idea that something like this might happen—that's why I've been having them watched. For all you know, he may have put her up to this.'
Fairweather swallowed.
'How much do you think she'll want?'
'I don't know. I don't think I care very much. It doesn't seem to be very important. Money is a very temporary solution—you never know how soon you may have to repeat the dose. This cloakroom story may be a myth from beginning to end. She might easily have these papers in her dressing-table drawer. She might easily have no papers at all. Her attitude is the thing that matters; and with this man Templar in the background it would be unwise to take chances.' Luker shrugged. 'No, my dear Algy, I'm afraid we shall have to take more permanent steps to deal with both of them.'
'W-what sort of steps?' stammered Fairweather feebly. 'H-how can we deal with them?'
That seemed to amuse Luker. The ghost of a smile dragged at the corners of his mouth.
'Do you really want to know?' he asked interestedly.
'You mean . . .' Fairweather didn't seem to know how to go on. His collar appeared to be choking him. He tugged at it in spasmodic efforts to loosen it. 'I—I don't think so,' he said. 'I . . .'
Luker laughed outright.
'There's a sort of suburban piousness about you and Sangore that verges on the indecent,' he remarked. 'You're just like a couple of squeamish old maids who hold shares in a brothel. You want your money, but you're determined not to know how it's obtained. If anything unpleasant or drastic has to be done, that's all right with you so long as you
