Judith was silent. Norton went on:

"Frankly, you know, Judith, you'd be just the same yourself. You wouldn't have the courage when it came to it."

"Don't you think so?"

"I'm sure of it."

"I think you're wrong, Norton," said Boyd Carrington. "I think Judith has any amount of courage. Fortunately the issue doesn't often present itself." The gong sounded from the house.

Judith got up.

She said very distinctly to Norton:

"You're wrong, you know. I've got more - more guts than you think." She went swiftly towards the house. Boyd Carrington followed her, saying:

"Hey, wait for me, Judith."

I followed, feeling for some reason rather dismayed. Norton, who was always quick to sense a mood, endeavoured to console me.

"She doesn't mean it, you know," he said. "It's the sort of half-baked idea one has when one is young - but fortunately one doesn't carry it out. It remains just talk." I think Judith overheard, for she cast a furious glance over her shoulder. Norton dropped his voice.

"Theories needn't worry anybody," he said. "But look here, Hastings - "

"Yes?"

Norton seemed rather embarrassed. He said:

"I don't want to butt in, but what do you know of Allerton?"

"Of Allerton?"

"Yes, sorry if I'm being a Nosy Parker, but frankly - if I were you, I shouldn't let that girl of yours see too much of him. He's - well, his reputation isn't very good."

"I can see for myself the sort of rotter he is," I said bitterly. "But it's not so easy in these days."

"Oh, I know. Girls can look after themselves, as the saying goes. Most of them can, too. But - well - Allerton has rather a special technique in that line." He hesitated, then said:

"Look here, I feel I ought to tell you. Don't let it go further, of course - but I do happen to know something pretty foul about him."

He told it me then and there - and I was able to verify it in every detail later. It was a revolting tale. The story of a girl, sure of herself, modern, independent. Allerton had brought all his "technique" to bear upon her. Later had come the other side of the picture - the story ended with a desperate girl taking her own life with an overdose of Veronal.

And the horrible part was that the girl in question had been of much the same type as Judith - the independent highbrow kind. The kind of girl who when she does lose her heart, loses it with a desperation and an abandonment that the silly little fluffy type can never know.

I went in to lunch with a horrible sense of foreboding.

TWELVE

"Is anything worrying you, mon ami?" asked Poirot that afternoon. I did not answer, merely shook my head. I felt that I had no right to burden Poirot with this, my purely personal problem. It was not as though he could help in any way.