‘Oh, yes, he expressed concern and asked if I knew where you were. I was very clever,’ Schmidt said, puffing himself up. ‘I said that you were a grown-up woman and that this was not the first time you had gone off with a handsome young man.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘The important thing was not that he believed it but that he believed I believed it,’ said Schmidt. He added, smirking, ‘This facade of naivety I assume is very useful. No one tried to prevent me from leaving. Ha, but they will be sorry, when they find how they have underestimated – ’

‘Schmidt,’ I said, trying to articulate through clenched teeth, ‘at some future date I will spend an entire day telling you how brilliant you are. Right now I’m in something of a hurry. Stick to the point. How did you happen to turn up today?’

‘In the nick of time,’ Schmidt pointed out. ‘It was not a coincidence that I was there.’

‘I didn’t think it was.’

My teeth weren’t clenched, they were bared. Schmidt said hurriedly, ‘Yes, I will tell you, if you will stop the interruptions. I went, as I had said I would, to the Winter Palace Hotel and checked myself in. I was eating Mittagessen when a waiter summoned me to the telephone. It was Feisal; he was calling me, he said, at the instruction of a mutual friend. You had foolishly run away from him – Feisal, that is – and he – the friend – feared you would return to the house of Larry Blenkiron. He – the friend – strongly advised that I should adopt evasive measures for my own sake and for your sake I should hover outside the gates and try to intercept you.’

I had a sudden, insane mental image of Schmidt hovering over the house like the Goodyear blimp. Or a very well-fed angel. It won’t be Heaven to Schmidt unless there is an unending flow of fattening food.

‘You were too quick for me,’ Schmidt went on, frowning. ‘I was still hoping to see you come when I heard the guns shooting and knew they must be shooting at you or at Sss . . . at John. So I leaped from the taxi, telling the driver to be ready for instant departure, and was about to break down the gate when you emerged.’

‘Break down the gate,’ I repeated. ‘How did . . . Never mind. You’re a hero, Schmidt. If you hadn’t been there I’d never have made it.’

‘If it had not been for the foresight and noble sacrifice of John you would not have made it,’ Schmidt corrected. ‘So now we must rescue him, eh? Do you know where they have taken him?’