“Good Lord!” said Watchman cheerfully.

“We’ll get your things out for you, sir,” said old Pomeroy. “Will!”

A tall, fox-coloured man came through the doorway. He screwed up his eyes, peered at Watchman, and acknowledged his greeting without much show of enthusiasm.

“Well, Will.”

“ ’Evening, Mr. Watchman.”

“Bear a hand, my sonny,” said old Pomeroy.

His son opened the luggage carrier and began to haul out Watchman’s suit-cases.

“How’s the Movement, Will?” asked Watchman. “Still well on the Left?”

“Yes,” said Will shortly. “It’s going ahead. Will these be all?”

“Yes, thanks. I’ll take the car around, Seb, and join you in the bar. Is there a sandwich or so anywhere about, Abel?”

“We can do a bit better than that, sir. There’s a fine lobster Mrs. Ives has put aside, special.”

“By George, you’re a host in a million. God bless Mrs. Ives.”

Watchman drove round to the garage. It was a converted stable, a dark building that housed the memory of sweating horses rubbed down by stable lads with wisps of straw. When he stopped his engine Watchman heard a rat plop across the rafters. In addition to his own, the garage held four cars. There was Norman Cubitt’s Austin, a smaller Austin, a Morris, and there, demure in the corner, a battered two-seater.

“You again!” said Watchman, staring at it. “Well, I’ll be damned!”

He returned to the pub, delighted to hear the familiar ring of his own steps, to smell the tang of the sea and of burning driftwood. As he ran upstairs he heard voices and the unmistakable tuck of a dart in a cork board.

“Double-twenty,” said Will Pomeroy, and above the general outcry came a woman’s voice.

“Splendid, my dear. We win!”

“So, she is here,” thought Watchman as he washed his hands. “And why ‘my dear’? And who wins?”