Bimbo now appeared carrying an air-gun. He waved the other men aside and presented his weapon at the central mélée. There was a mild explosion, followed by cries of distress and suddenly the arena had emptied and the night was plangent with the laments of rapidly retreating dogs.

Only one remained. Exhausted, gratified, infamous and complacent, her tongue lolling out of one side of her mouth, and her lead trailing from her collar, sat a boxer bitch: Mr Cartell’s Pixie, the Helen of the engagement. When Bimbo approached her she gathered herself together and bit him.

VI

The next morning Connie Cartell woke slowly from a heavy sleep. She experienced that not unusual sensation during half-consciousness, in which the threat of something unpleasant anticipates the recollection of the thing itself. She lay, blinking and yawning for a second or two. She heard her Austrian maid stump along the passage and knock on a door.

‘Damn!’ Connie thought. ‘I forgot to tell her not to disturb either of them.’

Then the full realization of all the horrors of the preceding evening came upon her.

She was not an imaginative woman, but it hadn’t taken much imagination after her brother’s visit to envisage what would happen to Moppett if Mr Period’s cigarette-case was not discovered. Connie had tried to tackle Moppett and, as usual, had got nowhere at all. Moppett had merely remarked that P.P. and Mr Cartell had dirty minds. When Connie had broached the topic of Leonard Leiss and his reputation, Moppett had reminded her of Leonard’s unhappy background and of how she, Moppett, was pledged to redeem him. She had assured Connie, with tears in her eyes and a great many caresses, that Leonard was indeed on the upward path. If Connie herself had had any experience at all of the Leiss milieu and any real inclination to cope with it, she might possibly have been able to bring a salutary point of view to bear on the situation. She might, it is not too preposterous to suppose, have been able to direct Moppett towards a different pattern of behaviour. But she had no experience and no real inclination. She only doted upon Moppett with the whole force of her unimaginative and uninformed being. She was in a foreign country and like many another woman of her class and kind, behaved stupidly, as a foreigner.

So she bathed and dressed and went down to breakfast in a sort of fog and ate large quantities of eggs, bacon and kidneys indifferently presented by her Austrian maid. She was still at her breakfast when she saw Alfred, in his alpaca jacket and the cloth cap he assumed for such occasions, crossing the green with an envelope in his hand.

In a moment he appeared before her.

‘I beg pardon, miss,’ Alfred said, laying the envelope on the table, ‘for disturbing you, but Mr Period asked me to deliver this. No answer is required, I understand.’ She thanked him and when he had withdrawn, opened the letter.