“I’m so glad to see you, darling.” Belinda went over to hug me. “I thought we’d never leave that horrible little office in the middle of nowhere. And then when a car was finally procured and the driver said, ‘Where to?’ we realized we had nowhere to go.”

“So we thought we might bunk in with you, if that’s all right,” Algie said. “Until we decide what we’re going to do next. I’m bally well going to tell Golden Pictures that they owe me a job. I don’t care if there is no Mr. Goldman, his studio will go on, won’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I rather feel that he was Golden Pictures. We’ll have to wait and see. Do you really think you’re cut out for the motion picture industry, Algie?”

He looked rather hurt. “Who, me? Jack-of-all-trades, you know. I sort of see myself as the next Douglas Fairbanks, but I’m willing to lend a hand at painting scenery or whatever.”

“And be on set at six in the morning?” I asked.

“If I bally well have to. I wonder who is in charge now? I wonder if we’ll be paid a nice sum to compensate us for what we went through. After all, we were nearly killed, weren’t we?”

“In the meantime you could always do what your father wanted and find your job on the cattle station,” Mummy said coldly. “I still blame you for speaking the words we never speak from the play we never mention—”

“What, Macbeth, you mean?” Algie asked.

There was a horrified intake of breath from my mother. “Someone get that boy out of my sight before I kill him personally.”

“Your friend Tubby Halliday still seems to be hanging around,” I said. “He was among the journalists when we arrived. Why don’t you see if you can bunk in with him? I don’t think you’re too popular around here.”

“Good old Tubby,” Algie said. “Well, that should count as a scoop, shouldn’t it? Claire Daniels rescued from death and all that. I must go and see him. He can interview me and I can give him all the dramatic details: How I survived a fire at a movie mogul’s castle. Yes, that should finally make Tubby’s name as a journalist, and maybe I’ll get a fee for being interviewed.” He paused, and I could see the wheels of his brain turning over. I rather suspected that in his version of the story he might be the hero who saved us all from fiery death.