‘Oh, no,’ Mary said softly. ‘He’s still alive. He may never walk again, but that won’t concern him after they hang him for treason.’ The tip of her little pink tongue showed between her parted lips. She was having such a good time she didn’t even hear the voices outside.

There’s a poem about a highwayman who came riding, riding, up to the old inn door. The soldiers used his sweetheart as a decoy, tying her to a chair with a rifle pointed at her breast. She managed to get one finger around the trigger, and when she heard him coming she pulled – ‘and warned him with her death.’

I always wondered why she didn’t just yell.

Oh, well, maybe he couldn’t have heard her over the pounding of his horse’s hooves. Or maybe it didn’t fit the metre. I didn’t have a rifle at my breast. Anyhow, John knew the soldiers were there.

I threw my head back and opened my mouth and screamed. But the name I called was not that of my lover. ‘Max! Hey, Max!’

John was the first one through the door, but Max was right behind him. It wasn’t until much later that I understood the significance of that sequence.

The Pavlonian conditioning didn’t seem to be as strong as Mary had believed. After a few steps John stopped. He had only glanced at me; his eyes were fixed on Mary.

‘More melodrama,’ Max said in exasperation. ‘How weary I am of this! You were forbidden to come here, Mary. Mr Tregarth is willing to cooperate. You will only irritate him if you persist in this nonsense.’

‘I am already irritated,’ John said. His eyes returned to my face. ‘Are you – ’

‘Fine, just fine,’ I said, stretching my mouth into a smile. My cheek hurt. ‘I do hope you have a couple of aces up your sleeve, because if you haven’t, this was not one of your brighter moves.’

He was still wearing Keith’s suit, but he had washed the cheap dye out of his hair. Avoiding my eyes, he remarked, to the room in general, ‘She tends to babble when she’s nervous. Mary does affect people that way. Get her out of here.’

Blenkiron was the next to arrive. ‘Damn it,’ he exclaimed. ‘Mary, I told you – ’

She laughed contemptuously. ‘What a conveniently bad memory you have, Larry.’

‘Well, I certainly didn’t give you permission to . . .’ He couldn’t even say the ugly words. ‘I’m sorry, Vicky. I told her to stay with you but I never authorized . . .’

‘Swell,’ I said. ‘So how about untying me?’

Nobody reacted to that naive suggestion. Mary backed off a few steps and Max said, with poorly concealed exasperation, ‘Can we now discuss the situation in a reasonable way? You have the pectoral, Mr Tregarth?’

‘You know I haven’t,’ John said. ‘You watched Rudi search me.’

‘Where is it?’