aka Dark Threat

Miss Silver – #10, 1946

Judy Elliot stepped off the moving staircase at Piccadilly Circus, and felt a hand under her elbow. As it was undoubtedly a male hand and she was not prepared to be picked up by something in the lonely-soldier line, she first quickened her pace, and when that didn’t seem to be any good whisked round with a few refrigerated words upon her tongue.

They never got said. The keep-your-distance look melted into one of pleased recognition. She tilted her chin, gazed up at a tall young man in a dark blue suit and a discreetly chosen tie, and exclaimed, “Frank!”

Detective Sergeant Abbott gave a poor imitation of his usual rather cynical smile. He was in fact considerably handicapped by the behaviour of his heart, a perfectly sound organ but responding at the moment to a quite uncalled for access of emotion. When you haven’t seen a girl for a year, when she hasn’t answered your letters, and when you have convinced yourself that any slight interest you may have felt is now a thing of the past, it is extremely discomposing to find yourself behaving like a schoolboy in love. He couldn’t even be sure that he had not changed colour, and, worst symptom of all, he was rapidly beginning to feel that, Judy being here, nothing else mattered.

He continued to smile, and she continued to tilt her chin, this being made necessary by the difference in their heights. The chin was a firm one, the face to which it belonged agreeable rather than pretty, the mouth wide and curving, the eyes indeterminate in colour but very expressive. They began at this moment to express surprise. What on earth Frank Abbott thought he was doing, standing looking at her like that… She pulled him by the arm and said,