'When we last talked of this you said the Mauriac woman had assured you that Ratnadatta's circle went in only for Yoga. What has happened since to convince you that she was lying?'

'Well, first go off she 'fessed up to Ratnadatta's crowd being a bunch of Satanists and said he had blindfolded her both going to and returning from their hang-out. Then spilling a glass of wine seemed to rattle her, and she abruptly took it all back; swore she had only been pulling my leg. But she had already told me that she was going for the second time to a meeting there with Ratnadatta the following Saturday. Last night I tackled her about it. She tried to sell me the Yoga stuff again, and refused to tell me where the meeting place is. As I had no means of making her, she could have got away with that if she hadn't made a stupid blunder. She said that she couldn't give me the address of the place because it is in a district in which she had never been before, somewhere up in North London.'

'And what do you deduce from that?'

'That she honestly does not know where it is; so she really must have been blindfolded both times when she was taken to it. And Ratnadatta would not have taken the precaution of blindfolding her unless something much more sinister than Yoga goes on there.'

'Come, come! It's too much to expect any woman to know every district well enough to identify a street in which she is set down from a taxi after dark!'

'I agree; but where she bogged it was telling me that the place was in North London.'

'Why shouldn't it be?'

'Because I know that it was not. She was taken to a house off the far end of the King's Road, Chelsea. That S.W.10 district, as you know, is now made up of big blocks of post-war Council flats, mostly built on sites that were left derelict by bombs, and streets of slums that escaped them. This place is down near the river, only a stone's throw from where Cremorne Gardens used to be. At one time I believe they rivalled Vauxhall Gardens as a favourite haunt of eighteenth century boys and girls at which to have their fun.'

'How did you find out that she was taken there?'

'She had told me that she was going to meet Ratnadatta at Sloane Square Tube at nine-thirty. I parked my car nearby, watched them meet and, when they got into a taxi, followed them.'

Verney gave a thin-lipped smile. 'Good work, partner; good work. And what sort of a place was it that he took her to?'