“Enjoy yourself,” I said.

The Porsche’s engine gave a complacent well-fed cough; I turned away so that I should not watch – or be seen to watch – him going.

As I walked up the steps into the entrance hall I thought of the Tiffield Products house magazine which I’d received that morn­ing. It was the first communication I’d had from him since I’d written him a week ago. The magazine itself was of no great interest; like all magazines of its kind the picture it painted was a little too rosy. What had interested me more was the page describing future developments. On the compliments slip accom­panying the magazine Tiffield had put the page number followed by three exclamation marks and his signature. Not con­tent with that he’d written at the top and bottom of the section MORE TO COME!!! There was no other message, but he had made the only possible answer to my letter. Tiffield Products was growing, building new factories, rebuilding old ones: A. Z. Brown and Co. was ossifying, and the computer muddle was only one of the things which proved it. For which firm should a bright young man be expending his energies? I toyed briefly with the notion of a new life in a new place, knowing as I did so that it was im­possible. There were too many things holding me to Warley and to A. Z. Brown and Co. Susan would never, I was well aware, leave Warley; consequently Barbara couldn’t. That was that; I didn’t need to enumerate any other reasons for not accepting Tif­field’s offer.

But my office, particularly when compared with the sort of office I could expect at Tiffield Products, was one of the reasons for my not having definitely refused the offer. I looked at it with distaste. I had been palmed off with the most cramped and ill-ventilated room in the whole office block. And the title on the door hadn’t rated a carpet on the floor but worn coconut matting and a scratched oak desk with drawers that always stuck.

I looked at Hilda, my secretary, with rather less distaste. She was a small round girl in her early twenties with a small round face and a great deal of fuzzy ginger hair. She’d never repre­sented any temptation to me but she was unfailingly cheerful, had some notion how to spell and, most important of all, knew all the office scandal.

“Hello there,” I said. “What’s new?”

“Those estimates,” she said.

I took the folder out of the In tray. There was at least four hours’ work there; I put my hand to my head.

“Won’t they wait?”

“Mr. Rabin wants them for three o’clock. And you’ve an ap­pointment with Mr. Smithers at half past three.”

“He’s at Wakefield,” I said. “I’ll never make it.”

“I’ll put it back half an hour,” she said. She rummaged in her handbag and passed me a bottle of aspirin. “I’ll get you some tea.” She lifted the phone.