I’ll tell you what, Handsome, take Janet out and let Abbott get someone else to chase round after him.” Eddie, who was a shrewd officer and at his particular job — the detection of forgery — head and shoulders above anyone else at the Yard, still looked and talked like a detective-sergeant newly promoted from a beat. “Cold as a fish, that’s what I always think the Apostle is.” Then he frowned at Roger’s expression. “Say, what’s biting you. Handsome? You look as if you’ve eaten something that don’t agree with you.”

“It’s nothing,” said Roger. “He might have given me one day without wanting me on tap.” He locked his desk and took his hat and mackintosh from a hat-stand. “Head him off for me if you can, Eddie.”

“Trust me,” said Eddie. “I won’t let you down. Give my love to Janet!”

His laughter echoed in Roger’s ears as he went out, and walked thoughtfully along the passage.

A soft drizzle of rain, a mist which threatened to become a fog and a sky of a uniform dull grey did not depress him. He slipped into a shop, for Janet, and contemplated an afternoon in front of a log fire after a good lunch at a hotel in Chelsea.

When he reached his small detached house in Bell Street, Chelsea, she was waiting in the lounge in a gaily-coloured mackintosh. She was tucking in a few stray curls of her dark hair beneath a wide-brimmed felt hat.

“Will I do, darling?”

Slowly, Roger West looked her up and down. As slowly, he began to smile. The wicked gleam in his eyes brought a flush to Janet’s cheeks.

“You ass !” she exclaimed.

“Yes, you’ll do,” declared Roger. “Although why we want to go out I don’t know. I’d much rather stay in. Catch!” He tossed the package to her.

She caught the package, moved to him and kissed him. “I thought we said “no presents, only a day out”,” she said. “Roger, you haven’t got to go back ?”

He laughed at her sudden alarm. “Not as far as I know. That’s not a peace-offering !”