“For the Georgia weekend,” he said, “to shore up the old morale. Did you get the guest list?”

She dropped a paper on his desk, which was a thick slab of walnut with the knotholes left in, and came around beside him so they could read it together. Begley had various pressing things on his mind, but his hand automatically slid up her leg beneath the pink skirt.

“From my good friend Walter Langhorne,” Candida said. “There may be some last-minute additions, but as of last night, this is it. I’m meeting him for lunch. He’ll pass on any developments.”

“Candida baby, how would we ever get anything done around here without you?”

His hand stopped as it reached the coarse weave of her stocking top. His eye had skipped down the list to pick up the final name. For an instant he felt trapped, as though his tall leather chair had snapped shut on him.

“Michael Shayne? They didn’t tell me Shayne was going to be there.”

Candida bent down, took his face between her competent hands and kissed him. After a moment he felt himself beginning to relax. His hand slid on up to the cool flesh of her thigh. Completing the kiss, she looked at his face critically and wiped lipstick from his mouth.

“This explains a few things. A quiet duck-shooting weekend away from the telephone, to talk to a group of Despard executives about their high-level personnel problems? I never believed it for a minute, Hal, and neither did you. They want to talk to you quietly, all right-about how the T-239 report got out of the E. J. Despard safe into the hands of United States Chemical. And we don’t know a thing about that, do we, darling?”

“You’re talking a foreign language,” Begley said, with the beginnings of a grin. “I’m a poor misunderstood head-hunter, and I wouldn’t know an industrial secret if it came up and bit me on the ankle. Scout’s honor. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it even if they put lighted matches under my fingernails. If it was just a bunch of third-class vice-presidents, I wouldn’t worry. The only thing is, Mike Shayne.”