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came briskly out of the darkness.
    ‘When we were in the States together, you mean?’
    ‘Yes.’ Campion did not wish to be drawn into any further reminiscences until they had had time to talk, but it was not going to be so difficult after all. They were old friends; that was the main thing.
    His immediate hopes were defeated a minute or two later, however, when they were all three walking back to the Principal’s house together. At the Institute gates Pyne took his leave somewhat abruptly.
    ‘I must get back at once,’ he said. ‘You know what work is, Superintendent, and you know where to find me if you want me, don’t you? I’ll see you in the morning, Campion. This is a bad business, Super. I believed it’s turned me up a bit. I’m a novice, you know. I feel like a kid at the hunt who’s been blooded.’
    He stumbled off down the road, the policeman looked after him and laughed soundlessly.
    ‘I’m afraid we’ve upset that stomach of his,’ he said. ‘Serve him right for nosing in. Look here, Mr Campion, I shan’t come back with you now because I’ve got to wait for the Chief. I don’t know what’s delaying him. He ought to have been here hours ago. I only came along here because I wanted a word with you in private if I could get it. I wasn’t quite accurate up at the house when I said we hadn’t found the parcel. I wanted an excuse for getting hold of you. We had found it, of course, just exactly where you’d put it. I didn’t want to go into it up there because in some ways it’s rather peculiar, and I thought you might be particularly interested. Do you know what it contained?’
    He bent closer and a trick of the light gave his face a menace which it did not normally possess.
    ‘Close on four thousand pounds in cash,’ he said softly. ‘I found it interesting because we had another case earlier today in Coachingford when a lot of money cropped up. It’s been a very funny business altogether over there, with one of our fellows laid out and an unknown in hospital. When I come along I’ll tell you about it.’
    To Campion it seemed that the great starry arc of the sky above him reeled over and back like the lid of a bacon dish, but if the Superintendent knew what he said his game of cat and mouse was inhumanly effective. He gave no sign of meaning more than his actual words, but just before he turned on his heel and left his victim to go up the drive alone he made one further remark which was, if anything, even more annihilating than the first.
    I wonder at that fellow Pyne sticking to us like that,’ he said earnestly. ‘Curiosity seems to drive some people off their onion. He only met you three days ago. He told me that himself last night. And he doesn’t know me at all. You wouldn’t think any man would thrust himself forward like that, would you? I’ll be seeing you later, then.’

VI
    ‘I’M AFRAID HUTCH has let us down. It’s abominably late.’
    Lee Aubrey broke a long silence with the remark, which he delivered with an effort, as if he had been thinking of it for a long time. He, Campion, and Amanda were sitting round the fire in the drawing-room with the candles burning low and the uncomfortable silence of the night bearing down upon them. They had been there for perhaps an hour. Campion had returned from Anscombe’s house just as the dinner guests were leaving and had found himself let in for a more or less formal
tête-à-tête
, his host the one person in the way.
    He was more than anxious to talk to Amanda alone. Every time he set eyes on her she became clearer and dearer to him. Whatever other values were upset, whatever other mistakes he made in this new nightmare world of his, she was real and solid, a living part of that self which he was rediscovering so painfully.
    She was sitting curled up in her chair between the two of them, very much alive but gloriously composed. She looked very young and very intelligent, but not, he thought with sudden satisfaction,