It opened with a scene between the Beaver (Surbonadier), his cast-off mistress (Janet Emerald), and her mother (Susan Max). They were all involved in the opium trade. One of their number had been murdered. They had suspected him of being a stool-pigeon in the employ of Carruthers, alias the Rat (Felix Gardener). Miss Emerald threatened, Miss Max snivelled, Surbonadier snarled. He took a revolver from his pocket and loaded it while they watched him significantly.

"What are you going to do?" whispered Janet Emerald.

"Pay a little visit to Mister Carruthers."

The stage was blacked out for a quick change.

Carruthers (Felix Gardener) was discovered in his library among the leather chairs that Nigel and Alleyn had seen from the wings. It was still uncertain, to all but the wariest playgoer, whether he was the infamous Rat, organiser of illicit drug traffic, agent of the Nazis, enemy of the people, or the heroic servant of the British Secret Service. He sat at his desk and rapped out a letter on the typewriter, the keyboard of which was not visible.

"He pounds away at the letter Q," whispered Nigel, full of inside knowledge.

To Gardener came Jennifer (Stephanie Vaughan), passionately in love with him, believing him false, fascinated in spite of her nobler self, by the famous Felix charm. Miss Vaughan did this sort of thing remarkably well, the audience was enchanted, especially as at any moment the bookcase might slide back revealing the Butler (J. Barclay Crammer), whom they knew to be a gun-man of gun-men. It was, as Nigel had remarked in reviewing the play, a generous helping out of the old stock-pot, but Felix Gardener and Stephanie Vaughan played it with subtlety and restraint. The lines were sophisticated if the matter was melodramatic, and "it went." Even when the sliding bookcase slid and the gun-man did seize Miss Vaughan by her lovely elbows and pinion her, he did it, as it were, on the turn of an epigram, since as well as being a butler and a gun-man he was also an Etonian.

Miss Vaughan was borne off registering a multitude of conflicting emotions and Felix Gardener remained wrapped in the closest inscrutability. He took out his pipe, filled and lit it, gave a little audible sigh and sank into one of the leather chairs. "Isn't he marvellous!" breathed a woman's voice from behind Nigel. Nigel smiled a superior but tolerant smile and glanced at Alleyn. The inspector's dark eyes were fixed on the stage.

"Positively," thought Nigel, more tolerant than ever, "positively old Alleyn's all het up." Then he saw Alleyn's eyebrow jerk up and his lips tighten and he himself turned to the stage and experienced an emotional shock.