He turned slowly, a slight frown on his face. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“What is there to know? You told me yourself you were a sailor.”

“From necessity,” he said. “Not choice.”

"You couldn’t handle Foxhunter, you mean?”

“Is that her name? Oh, yes, I’ve handled boats like that before. I’ve even done a little skin-diving.”

“Eighty pounds a month and all found,” she said. “Does that tempt you?”

He grinned reluctantly. “It does indeed, Mrs. Grant.”

She held out her hand in a strangely boyish gesture. “I’m glad.”

He held it for a moment, looking into her eyes gravely. Her smile faded, and, again she was conscious of that vague irrational fear. Something must have shown on her face. Mallory’s hand tightened on hers and he smiled gently. In that single moment her fear disappeared and an inexplicable tenderness flooded through her. A horn sounded outside in the street and he helped her to her feet.

“Time to go. Where are you staying?”

“An hotel in the town centre.”

“You should cause quite a sensation going through the foyer,” he told her as he took her arm and helped her across to the door.

The fog was clearing a little as he handed her into the taxi. She wound down the window and leaned out to him. “I’ve several things to attend to tomorrow, so I can’t get down to Lulworth again until the evening. I’ll see you down there.”

He nodded. "You could do with a morning in bed.”

She smiled wanly in the pale light, but before she could reply the taxi moved away. Mallory stood looking into the fog, listening to the sound of the engine die into the distance, then turned and went up the steps.

When he entered the bar the barman was still reading his newspaper. “Where are they?” Mallory asked.

The man lifted the flap and jerked his thumb at the rear door. “In there.”

When Mallory opened the door he found the Irishman sitting at a wooden table beside a coal fire, a basin of hot water in front of him. His clothes were plastered with mud and he was wiping blood from a gash that ran from his ear to the point of his chin. The man with the black beard lay on an old horse-hair sofa, clutching his right arm and moaning softly.