‘There’s some bloke out here from Scotland Yard. A big pot. There was something about him in the papers a week or two back. They reckoned he’d come here to investigate fifth columnists, and Uncle James said they ought to be put in jail for giving away official secrets. By cripey, he’s the joker we ought to get hold of. Go to the top if you want to get things done.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘That’s the catch,’ said Simon. ‘I’ve forgotten.’

III

Barbara and Gaunt did not go up the hill after all. They watched Simon and Dikon clinging to the fence and slipping on the short grass and friable soil.

‘I have decided that my leg jibs at the prospect,’ said Gaunt. ‘Don’t you think it would be much pleasanter to go a little way towards the sea and smoke a cigarette? This morbid desire to look at sinking ships! Isn’t it kinder to let her go down alone? I feel that it would be rather like watching the public execution of a good friend. And we know the crew is safe. Don’t you agree?’

Barbara agreed, thinking that he was talking to her as if she herself was a good friend. It was the first time they had been alone together.

They found a place near to the sea. Gaunt flung himself down with an air of boyish enthusiasm which would have intensely annoyed his secretary. Barbara knelt, sitting back on her heels, the light wind blowing full in her face.

‘Do you mind if I tell you you should always do your hair like that?’ said Gaunt.

‘Like this?’ She raised her hand to her head. The wind flattened her cotton dress. It might have been drenched in rain, so closely did it cling to her. She turned her head quickly, and Gaunt, as quickly, looked again at her hair. ‘Yes. Straight off your face and brushed fiercely back. No frizz or nonsense. Terribly simple.’

‘Orders?’ said Barbara. It was so miraculously easy to talk to him.

‘Please.’

‘I’m afraid I’ll look very bony.’

‘But that’s how you should look when you have good bones. Do you know that soon after we met I told Dikon I thought you had—but I’m making you self-conscious, and that’s bad manners, isn’t it? I’m afraid,’ said Gaunt with a sort of aftermath of the Rochester manner, ‘that I’m accustomed to say pretty much what I think. Do you mind?’

‘No,’ said Barbara, suddenly at a loss.