Richard Blade was bored. This condition very seldom killed anybody. It did not very often make people want to die. But it could and did take away much of a man's zest for living. At the moment, it was doing that to Richard Blade.

He turned on the heel of one custom-made shoe and stared out the floor-to-ceiling window of the deluxe flat. The peach-colored velvet draperies were drawn back, and through the heavy glass he could see London spread out below. The flat was forty stories up in one of the newest of London's luxury buildings, so Blade could see a long way. The twinkling lights and spots of color that were neon signs seemed to march endlessly away into the darkness. It was an unusually clear night, but the spectacle did nothing to diminish Blade's boredom.

From behind him came the noises of a cocktail party. Ice cubes clinked in glasses, corks popped, soda-water siphons hissed like snakes. The noises simply made Blade feel more bored. They were so expected, so conventional.

Blade was at the party more out of a sense of duty than anything else. He was there as the guest of a certain young lady who wanted to show him off to her «set.» She had been quite frank about that. She hadn't been quite as frank about why she was showing him off. But Blade had an almost instinctive ability to read another person's intentions toward him. He wouldn't have been alive without it. And what he read in Clarissa was the desire to snare him for a husband.

He was certainly eligible enough. The Richard Blade who moved elegantly through the London social whirl was one of the most eligible bachelors around. Wit, charm, intelligence, and an ample if vague income, he had them all. Though he had left forty behind, his face and body showed no signs that he was much more than thirty. Not a confirmed bachelor, in other words-still young enough for a determined woman to mold into whatever kind of husband might strike her fancy.