‘I wouldn’t have said a thing about the kid if I didn’t know you’d find out. Anyway, that’s the sort of thing that might happen to any girl. But I’m not going to do the dirty and have them calling her criminal names, and it’s no good asking me to. Are you going, dear? Well, so long. See you some more.’

‘Suppose I sent a man along from one of the evening papers, would you care to give him an interview?’

‘Who, me? Well, I don’t pretend a bit of publicity doesn’t help you in the business,’ said Miss O’Dawne honestly. ‘D’you mean the “Sonia Gluck as I knew her” gag?’

‘Something like that.’

‘With perhaps my picture along of hers? I’ve got a nice picture of Sonia. You know—wound up in georgette with the light behind her. Very nice. Well, as long as they don’t want the dirt about her, I wouldn’t mind the ad, dear. You know. It sounds hard, but it’s a hard old world.’

‘I’ll come again, if I may.’

‘Welcome, I’m sure. Be good.’

Alleyn went thoughtfully to Scotland Yard. He saw his Assistant Commissioner and went over the case with him. Then he went to his office. He had been for a year in the south of the world and the room looked at once strange and familiar. The respectably worn leather chairs, his desk, the untidy groove where he had once let a cigarette burn itself out, the little dark print of a medieval town above the mantelpiece—there they all were, as it seemed, waiting for him after a period of suspension. He sat at his desk and began to work on the report of this case. Presently Fox came in. Alleyn reaiized that he had clicked right back into his socket in the vast piece of machinery that was Scotland Yard. New Zealand, the wharf at Suva, the night tide of the St Lawrence—all had receded into the past. He was back on his job.

He related to Fox the gist of his interview with Miss O’Dawne.

‘What about yourself?’ he asked when he had finished. ‘Any news, Brer Fox?’

‘The city’s been set going on the warehouse business. It’s a bit of a job and no mistake. According to Miss Troy’s reckoning, we’ve got sixty miles to account for. That correct, sir?’

‘Yes.’