‘That’s really disgusting,’ I agreed fervently.

She told me how Vanner had tried to make her be ‘nice’ to his guests, and she’d jumped overboard to escape him.

She was small and defenceless, with not a single possession-not on her, anyway. But she was defying the world and I’d never seen anything like her.

Maybe the idea came to me then. Or maybe it had been nudging the edges of my thoughts for a few minutes past. But it was forming rapidly, and I had the outline pretty much shaped when I heard, ‘That’s her!’

And there was a man who could only have been Vanner, rushing at us with two gendarmes, shrieking that the silver girl had stolen from him.

I pointed out that the money lying all around us was mine, which stymied him, although he still frothed at the mouth until, to shut him up, I had to give him my name.

‘You’re Jack Bullen?’ he said in a choked voice.

After that he couldn’t get rid of the gendarmes fast enough. He wanted to get me alone to do some business schmoozing.

‘When you’ve returned this lady’s property,’ I told him. ‘Deliver everything to The Hawk.’

Fending off his attempts to join us, I took her arm and made for the road where there would be a taxi.

‘You were going to take me to the Vice-Consul,’ she said.

‘I’ve changed my mind. We’re going to The Hawk.’

She was still arguing as we got into the taxi. I laid out her options.

‘You can go with Vanner, with the gendarmes or with me.’

‘That’s blackmail.’

‘It’s what I’m good at. Now, shut up or I’ll toss you back into the water.’

I don’t normally talk to women like that, but something had happened to me that night. I was like a drowning man who sees his last hope and knows he has to grasp it. So my finesse went out of the window.