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naked in a corridor. The best that he could manage was a hog-like grunt, accompanied by a watery academic smile and a puckering of the eyes, designed to indicate to those familiar with his signals that he was a short-sighted person of minimal libido in the presence of someone who had hitherto escaped his notice. Helen on the other hand, with looks and breeding on her side and time to think in the dressing room, displayed a stately composure. She was even more beautiful dressed than not. She wore a housecoat of devotional simplicity. A high collar enfolded her noble neck, lace cuffs her slender wrists. Her auburn hair was combed long like Juliet’s and her feet were still bare. Her breasts, which despite his simulated myopia he could not help remarking, were unsupported, and trembled delicately as she moved. Her hips were similarly unbound, and with each balanced stride a white knee, smooth as marble, peeped demurely through the division of her robe. English to the core, thought Cassidy to his relief, what an entry; what a dash she’d cut in trade. Switching off the wireless with a simple movement of her index finger and thumb, she placed it on the sofa table, smoothed the dust cover as if it were the finest linen, then gravely shook his hand and invited him to sit down. She accepted a drink and apologised for the mess in a low, almost a humble tone. Cassidy said he quite understood, he knew what it was to move, he had been through it several times in the last few years. Somehow, without trying, he managed to suggest that each move had been for the better.
    â€œMy God, even moving the office, when one has secretaries and assistants, even one’s own workmen, it takes months. Literally months. So what it’s like here . . .”
    â€œWhere is your office?” Helen asked politely.
    Cassidy’s opinion of her rose still higher.
    â€œSouth Audley Street,” he said promptly. “West One. Just off Park Lane, actually. We went in there last spring.” He wanted to add that she might have read about it in the Times Business News but modestly he forebore.
    â€œOh how very nice.” Chastely rearranging her skirts to cover her peerless thighs, she sat down on the sofa.
    Towards her husband she showed a greater reserve. Her eyes seldom left his face and Cassidy did not fail to notice their darting expression of concern. How well, as always, did he understand a pretty woman’s feelings! A drunken husband was liability enough. But who could tell what other blows her pride had suffered in the last months, the fights with lawyers, the towering death duties, the painful partings from family retainers, the tattered keepsakes in the silent desk? And how many potential purchasers in that time had swept brutally through the treasured chambers of her youth, mouthed their gross objections, and left without a word of hope?
    I will ease her burden, he decided; I will take over the conversation.
    Having concisely rehearsed the reasons for his unheralded arrival, he laid the blame squarely at the door of Grimble and Outhwaite:
    â€œI’ve nothing against them, they’re very good people in their way. I’ve dealt with them for a number of years and I shall go on dealing with them no doubt, but like all these old firms they get complacent. Slack.” Under the velvet, the steel showed. “I mean to take this up with them in quite a big way as a matter of fact.”
    Shamus, who had crossed his legs under the curtain and was leaning back in an attitude of critical reflection, merely nodded with energetic approval and said, “Attaboy Cassidy,” but Helen assured him that his visit was perfectly convenient, he was very welcome at any time and it made no difference really:
    â€œ Does it Shamus?”
    â€œNone at all, lover,” said Shamus heartily. “We’re having a ball.”
    And resumed, with a complacency amounting almost to pride of ownership, his study of his