He had deliberately refrained in order to pique her, and now he laughed. 'I guessed you were bursting to tell me; so I've been holding out on you. But to tell the truth I'm itching to hear, and near as damn it gave you best only a moment ago. How's the form for your becoming a pretty white nannygoat and me a big black toad?'

'In your case, pretty good,' she replied lightly, 'though you needn't flatter yourself I'd have you as my familiar. Last night Mr. Ratnadatta took me to a place in Chelsea and gave me dinner upstairs in a private room!'

'What!' he exclaimed. 'Of all the nerve! And you let him?'

'Why not? He is a nice little man, and extremely learned.'

'Nice little man, my foot!' Barney stuck his chin out aggressively. 'He's a smarmy no-good Babu. It was damned impertinent of him to take you to a place like that, and I'd like to kick his learned bottom.'

'Really Barney!' It was the first time she had used his Christian name, although he had asked her to when she had dined with him the previous Thursday. 'You sound as though you had only just climbed out of the bog. It's silly to take such a primitive view of it. He wanted to tell me about the secret doctrine and he couldn't do that in a restaurant with other people nearby who might overhear him.'

'Oh, all right then. What had he to say about it?'

For the best part of half-an-hour, between mouthfuls of food and wine, she gave him the highlights of Ratnadatta's discourse, and as they discussed them Barney had to agree that much of it made sense. Just after the main course they had chosen - a Hungarian goulash - had been served, he enquired: 'And when you had finished dinner, what happened then?'

She gave her sweetest smile. 'He took me to a Satanic temple.'

'The little swine! That's just what I feared he might do. Still, it seems you came to no harm, otherwise you wouldn't be looking so cheerful.'

'No; I enjoyed it. I found it absolutely fascinating.'

Barney was on the point of giving way to an outburst but, his duty coming uppermost in his mind, he checked it and asked, 'Whereabouts was this place?'

'I've no idea,' she replied lightly. 'He took me to and from it in a taxi, and both ways he insisted on putting a bandage over my eyes. Going there took a long time and for no very good reason I got the impression that it was somewhere in north-east London. But I'm sure the distance we covered coming back was much shorter, and when he dropped me at Hyde Park Corner the taxi had just come up the slope from Knightsbridge; so it may be anywhere.'

'You must have seen something of it when you got out of the taxi. What was it like outside?'