Lois felt an odd sense of relief. He was really looking at her, really listening to her now. She told him more than she had meant to tell-to him or to anyone.

“He said most extraordinary things. He said someone was trying to poison me-he really did.”

“The food here isn’t really as bad as all that.”

“Don’t joke about it. It was horrible. I’m not very easy to frighten-you know that. But he-almost-frightened me.”

“He was out to make your flesh creep, and apparently he succeeded.”

She shook her head.

“Not quite. But it isn’t exactly pleasant to be told that someone-very near-is trying to poison you.”

“He said that?”

“Yes, he did-someone very near me. But he wouldn’t say whether it was a man or a woman. He said he didn’t know. Why, he even said it might be I myself!” Her laugh was not quite steady. “And I told him I was the last person in the world to take poison. I like my life a great deal too much to throw it away.”

“Yes-I think you do.”

She had taken out a cigarette, and leaned towards him now for a light. When the tip was glowing red and a little haze of smoke hung on the air between them, she said in a puzzled voice,

“He said such a very odd thing-he said there was more than one kind of poison.”

“How trite-how true!”

“It didn’t sound trite-not when he said it.”

Antony laughed.

“The man has glamour, or women wouldn’t be paying him tenners to turn it on.”

Those lightly sketched brows of hers drew together in distaste.

“He was quite old-there wasn’t anything like that. Let’s talk about something else.”

CHAPTER 3

Antony came out of the Luxe and got on to a bus. Change of air was indicated. He was going in search of it.

When he got off the bus he made his way to one of those blocks of flats which were being built just before the war to accommodate office workers. This one had ridden out the storm, and with the exception of window glass and paint it was as it had come from the builder’s hands in 1938. There was an automatic lift, and Antony went up in it-right up to the fifth floor, where he pressed an electric buzzer and had the door opened to him by Julia Vane.