“Sorry,” Ricky said. “I can’t hear you.”

He slouched across the table and the voice came through, still faintly antipodean and uneasy in its choice of outdated slang.

“Care to come up to my pad?” it invited.

There was nothing, at the moment, that Ricky fancied less.

“That’s very kind of you,” he said. “One of these days I’d like to see some of your work, if I may.”

The voice said, with what seemed to be an imitation of Ricky’s accent, “Not ‘one of these days.’ Now.”

“Oh,” Ricky said, temporizing, “now? Well—”

“You won’t catch anything,” Mr. Jones sneered loudly. “If that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Oh God!” Ricky thought. “Now he’s insulted. What a bloody bore.”

He said: “My dear man, I don’t for a moment suppose anything of the sort.”

Jones emptied his pint-pot and got to his feet.

“Fair enough,” he said. “We’ll push off, then.”

And without another glance at Ricky he walked out of the bar.

It was dark outside and chilly with a sea nip in the air and misty halos round the few street lamps along the front. The high tide slapped against the seawall.

They walked in silence as far as the place where Ricky had seen Mr. Jones painting in the afternoon. Here they turned left into deep shadow and began to climb what seemed to be an interminable flight of wet, broken-down steps, between cottages that grew farther apart and finally petered out altogether.

Ricky’s right foot slid under him; he lurched forward and snatched at wet grass on a muddy bank.

“Too rough for you?” sneered — or seemed to sneer — Mr. Jones.

“Not a bit of it,” Ricky jauntily replied.

“Watch it. I’ll go first.”

They were on some kind of very wet and very rough path. Ricky could only just see his host, outlined against the dim glow of what seemed to be dirty windows.