She shook her head.

“No-Isabel’s out-there’d be no one in the flat. I can’t leave Penny. And if you say what you were going to say, I’ll never speak to you again.”

There was a rather sardonic gleam in the light eyes as he said,

“Undoubtedly an angel child. I adore them!”

Judy burst out laughing.

“Don’t they teach you to tell lies better than that at Scotland Yard?”

“They don’t teach us to tell lies at all. We’re all very high-toned. My Chief is an esteemed Chapel member. If your Isabel March is out, what about my dropping in to help look after Penny?”

“She’ll be asleep. I could do an omelette-reconstructed egg of course.”

“What time?”

In spite of himself his voice was eager. Judy wondered why. They had been friendly, but no more. They had dined together, danced together. And then she had had to go back to poor old Aunt Cathy, and he hadn’t written or anything. Only now he said he had… She wondered about that. She wondered if he was one of the out-of-sight out-of-mind kind, because if he was, she wasn’t the right person to try it on with. A year’s silence, and then that eager voice. And it wasn’t like him to be eager. She recalled an elegant young man with a rather blasé manner. He was still elegant-slim and tall, with very fair hair slicked back and mirror-smooth, and light blue eyes which had appeared to contemplate his fellow-beings with supercilious amusement, but which at the moment were fixed upon her in rather a disturbing manner.

She began to regret the omelette. Because what was the good of being disturbed? She wasn’t going to have any time for young men, what with Penny and getting a job as a housemaid. She had a moment of wanting to back out-she had a moment when she would have liked to run away. And then the voice of common sense chipped in with one of its most insidious and fallacious remarks-“After all, it’s only one evening-what does it matter?”