“Well, as soon as you rang off, I called at Miss O’Callaghan’s house to inspect the hot-water cistern and I had a cup of tea with the cook and the housemaid. They were both rather talkative ladies and full of l’affaire O’Callaghan,” said Fox with one of his excursions into French. “They like Miss O’Callaghan all right, but they think she’s a bit eccentric. It seems she was very much attached to her brother and it seems she’s very thick with this chemist affair—Mr. Harold Sage. It seems he visits her a great deal. The housemaid gave it as her opinion that they were courting. Miss O’Callaghan takes a lot of his medicines.”

“Say it with soda-mints? Anything more?”

“One useful bit of information, sir. Mr. Sage is a Communist.”

“The devil he is! Bless me, Fox, that’s a plum. Sure?”

“Oh, yes—quite certain, I should say. He’s always leaving his literature about. Cook showed me a pamphlet. One of the Marcus Barker lot, it was.”

Alleyn glanced through the study door at Nigel and Angela sitting very close together, their heads bent over the vermilion leaflet.

“Did you gather if Miss O’Callaghan sympathised with these views?” he asked.

At the other end of the telephone Fox blew his nose thoughtfully.

“Well, no; it seems not. Nina, that’s the housemaid, said she thought the lady was trying to influence him the other way. She gave it as her opinion that Sir Derek would have had a fit if he’d known what was going on.”

“Highly probable. You’ve done a good bit of work there, Fox. What a success you are with the ladies!”

“I’m more at home below-stairs,” said Fox simply, “and the cook was a very nice sort of woman. Is that all, sir?”

“Unless you’ve any more gossip. See you later.”

“That’s right, sir. Aw revoir.”

“Bung-oh, you old devil.”

Alleyn returned to the study and repeated the gist of Fox’s information. “See if you can hear anything of this Sage who is Miss O’Callaghan’s soul-mate,” he said. “He may be there to-night. Bathgate, I’m just going to change. Won’t be five minutes. Ask Vassily to call a taxi and give yourself a drink.”

He vanished into his tiny dressing-room, where they heard him whistling very sweetly in a high key.

“Darling,” said Nigel, “this is like old times. You and I on the warpath.”

“I won’t have you getting into trouble,” said Angela. “You did last time, you know.”

“That was because I was so much in love I couldn’t think.”

“Indeed? And I suppose that no longer applies?”

“Do you? Do you?”

“Nigel—darling, this is no moment for dalliance.”

“Yes, it is.”