He placed a half-bottle of brandy and two glasses on top of the bedside locker and dropped to one knee beside her. “Any damage?”

She shook her head. “A nasty graze, that’s all.”

He pulled a battered fibre suitcase from under the bed and took out a heavy fisherman’s sweater which he dropped into her lap. “You’d better put that on. You’re wet through.”

When she had pulled it over her head and rolled up the long sleeves, he rested her right foot on his knee and bandaged the damaged ankle expertly with a folded handkerchief. She watched quietly.

He was of medium height, with broad shoulders, and wore the sort of clothes common to sailors. A cheap blue-flannel shirt and heavy working trousers in some dark material, held up by a broad leather belt with a brass buckle. But this was no ordinary man. He had a strange, hard enigmatic face, the face of a man few would care to trifle with. The skin was clear and bloodless; black, crisp hair in a point to the forehead. The eyes were the strangest feature, so dark that all light died in them.

On the wharf he had been terrible in his anger, competent and deadly, and when he looked up suddenly his dark eyes stared through her like glass. For the first time that night genuine fear moved inside her and then his whole face creased into a smile of quite devastating charm, so great, that he seemed to undergo a complete personality change.,

“You look about ten years old in that sweater.”

She smiled warmly and held out her hand. “My name is Anne Grant and I’m very grateful to you.”

“Mallory,” he said. “Neil Mallory.”

He touched her hand briefly, opened the brandy, poured a generous measure into one of the glasses and passed it to her. “I got the barman to phone for a taxi. It might be some time before it gets here.

“I’d like to know why the driver who brought me didn’t wait,” she said. “I asked him to.”