‘Fine,’ said Goldwasser.

‘Hope you don’t mind being all alone with the local scarlet woman?’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Me, old son.’

‘You?’

‘Can’t conceal it any more after that party.’

‘Oh. No. I mean, well . . .’

‘Don’t mince your words, buddy boy. I’m practically the local Messalina.’

‘Oh. I see.’

Goldwasser tried to lean back in his chair as if casually. Every time Riddle coughed, the ash from her cigarette fell intimately into his lap.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘we ought to stick together.’

‘Who?’

‘You and me.’

‘Oh. Well, yes.’

‘Birds of a feather.’

‘What?’

‘Tarred with the same brush, old lad.’

‘Ah.’

Goldwasser was not entirely with her. Everyone in the Institute knew that Goldwasser had assaulted Mrs. Plushkov except Goldwasser. Out of a tactful regard for his feelings, nobody had told him.

‘It’s a funny thing really, old son,’ said Riddle, resting her foot on the arm of Goldwasser’s chair, so that her knee came level with his face, ‘that we’ve never really joined forces.’

‘H’m.’

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit bloody peculiar?’

‘Well . . . yes . . . I mean . . .’

Goldwasser was finding it increasingly difficult not to see that Riddle’s stocking had two ladders in it above the knee, and that her underwear was tangerine-coloured. He didn’t want to think unjustly of anyone, but he couldn’t help remembering Riddle’s assault on Chiddingfold. He struggled with an unworthy feeling of panic.

‘I mean,’ said Riddle, ‘I hope you don’t mind my talking like this?’

‘No.’

‘You know me. I always call a spade a bleeding spade.’

‘Yes.’

‘And after all, we do have something in common.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, don’t we?’

‘Do we?’

Goldwasser was hypnotised by the tiny white discs of Riddle’s knee that kept appearing, as flakes of hot ash from her cigarette melted her nylon stocking just in front of his nose. He felt like a mesmerised rabbit. He had a sudden presentiment that in the next few seconds she would leap on him, as she had on Chiddingfold, singing a ribald song, and drag him to the floor. Tearing his eyes away from the scene on the knee, he jumped urgently to his feet and stared about him for some excuse to escape.

God Almighty! thought Riddle with a mainly awful shock of terror, this great volcanic monosyllabic brute is going to attack me exactly here and now!

She was instantly overcome by a prolonged spasm of coughing. Psychosomatic, she thought to herself, as the fag end shot out of her mouth and fell in the wastepaper basket. She and Goldwasser were still spreading the contents out over the floor searching for it when Nobbs came in, holding a file.

‘If I’m not interfering in your private life, mate,’ he said to Goldwasser, ‘perhaps you’d tell me when, if ever, you propose to make a decision on “Paralysed Girl Determined to Dance Again.” ’

‘Now!’ cried Goldwasser. ‘Don’t go, Nobbs. Draw up a chair, Nobbs.’

Later Goldwasser felt that he had been stupidly wrong about the whole incident, and became convinced that Riddle had intended nothing but a friendly conversation. He went round to her laboratory to set things on a better footing, but found her out. Looking round the seedy confusion in the room to make sure that Riddle was not somewhere amongst it, his eye was caught by a birthday card, covered with cherubs and golden bells and glitter dust, which was standing on the console of the department’s Ajax IV computer. Inside it was written: