Roger stared at him.

“You must feel pretty bad about it,” said Morgan, “and so do I, Handsome. When I heard what was coming to you I came to the conclusion that it was a fix, and I couldn’t let you down. Lucky thing you’ve got some friends at the Yard.”

Roger said slowly : “What do you mean?”

“It was like this,” said Morgan, moving to the table and sitting on the corner. “No names, no pack drill, but I was chatting with one of the women at the Yard and she started to talk about you. Some o’ the ladies get a proper crush on him, Mrs West!” Morgan shot a sly glance at Janet. “She didn’t exactly tell me, but she did say she’d got a nasty job on this afternoon, and she rambled on a bit — talked about having been told there would be some dough in the bedroom of a Yard man some time after lunch and it would be curtains for him if it was found. She didn’t say you were the man concerned, but she’d been talking about you and she gave me a wink — kind of telling me to put two and two together. So I rang up Mr Lessing and came along here and did my stuff.”

After a long pause, Roger said :

“And you found a thousand pounds in notes?”

“Two hundred five-quid notes as sure as my name is Pep Morgan,” declared Morgan. “I don’t mind admitting I was pretty scared; if they’d found that dough on me they might have asked a lot of awkward questions. So I tied it up and registered it to Post Restante, Lower Strand, addressed to a Mr North. I thought that sounded better than “Smith”,” added Morgan, anxiously. “It’s a bit close to West. I hope I didn’t slip up there.”