She sealed it up, put it back, and walked across the room.

There, with her hand outstretched, she was disturbed by voices through the window from the terrace below.

One was a voice that she knew to be the occupier of the room in which she was standing. A decided didactic voice, fully assured of itself.

She darted to the window.

Below on the terrace, Joan Sutcliffe, accompanied by her daughter Jennifer, a pale solid child of fifteen, was telling the world and a tall unhappy looking Englishman from the British Consulate just what she thought of the arrangements he had come to make.

‘But it’s absurd! I never heard such nonsense. Everything’s perfectly quiet here and everyone quite pleasant. I think it’s all a lot of panicky fuss.’

‘We hope so, Mrs Sutcliffe, we certainly hope so. But H.E. feels that the responsibility is such—’

Mrs Sutcliffe cut him short. She did not propose to consider the responsibility of ambassadors.

‘We’ve a lot of baggage, you know. We were going home by long sea—next Wednesday. The sea voyage will be good for Jennifer. The doctor said so. I really must absolutely decline to alter all my arrangements and be flown to England in this silly flurry.’

The unhappy looking man said encouragingly that Mrs Sutcliffe and her daughter could be flown, not to England, but to Aden and catch their boat there.

‘With our baggage?’

‘Yes, yes, that can be arranged. I’ve got a car waiting—a station wagon. We can load everything right away.’

‘Oh well.’ Mrs Sutcliffe capitulated. ‘I suppose we’d better pack.’

‘At once, if you don’t mind.’

The woman in the bedroom drew back hurriedly. She took a quick glance at the address on a luggage label on one of the suitcases. Then she slipped quickly out of the room and back into her own just as Mrs Sutcliffe turned the corner of the corridor.

The clerk from the office was running after her.

‘Your brother, the Squadron Leader, has been here, Mrs Sutcliffe. He went up to your room. But I think that he has left again. You must just have missed him.’

‘How tiresome,’ said Mrs Sutcliffe. ‘Thank you,’ she said to the clerk and went on to Jennifer, ‘I suppose Bob’s fussing too. I can’t see any sign of disturbance myself in the streets. This door’s unlocked. How careless these people are.’

‘Perhaps it was Uncle Bob,’ said Jennifer.

‘I wish I hadn’t missed him…Oh, there’s a note.’ She tore it open.

‘At any rate Bob isn’t fussing,’ she said triumphantly. ‘He obviously doesn’t know a thing about all this. Diplomatic wind up, that’s all it is. How I hate trying to pack in the heat of the day. This room’s like an oven. Come on, Jennifer, get your things out of the chest of drawers and the wardrobe. We must just shove everything in anyhow. We can repack later.’

‘I’ve never been in a revolution,’ said Jennifer thoughtfully.

‘I don’t expect you’ll be in one this time,’ said her mother sharply. ‘It will be just as I say. Nothing will happen.’