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happy. Elizabeth described no one to Basil. Petula and Nicholas discussed their respective tennis parties, and Petula talked so much that Nicholas did not seem to get a chance to mention Barbara Newton — not a reasonable chance, anyway. But the champagne had long been drunk, some of the trinkets, with which Basil and Nicholas loved to adorn their wives after a successful adventure, had already found their way back to the places from which they came or very similar places, and the £10,000, which seemed so large when it arrived from Mr Buckram, had shrunk to an almost unbelievable extent. The danger — which so far they had usually managed to avoid — the danger of having to earn an honest living by hard work started to appear horribly close. The almost empty half bottle of gin was a very real warning.
    To do Basil and Nicholas justice, it would not have been particularly easy for them to find an ordinary job. Admittedly, they did not like work, but, apart from purely manual labour, of which they had no experience, there was little employment for which they were suited. They could each have advertised at the end of the 1939—45 War that they were ex-majors with administrative ability and that they sought interesting and remunerative posts. They did not, however, waste their money. They were not prepared to hawk round vacuum-cleaners. During the war Basil had somehow or other collected a D.S.O. and Nicholas an M.C., and this, added to their public school education and the other attributes already mentioned, made them virtually unemployable. Brains they had, as their first exploit since the war showed, but that was very nearly all they had — besides, of course, their wives.
    ‘Well, there’s no doubt about our object,’ said Basil. ‘We can skip that. Considerations. Well, between us, I should say we have about £500 all told —’
    ‘And some pawn-tickets,’ put in Nicholas.
    ‘Don’t remind me,’ said Petula. She had enjoyed her fur coat while it lasted.
    ‘Our rent is paid for the next quarter. We have nothing more to sell. Now, courses open. We can try to get a job.’
    ‘Hopeless.’
    ‘Right. That’s out. We can steal.’
    ‘Too difficult and too dangerous. Too much risk for too little.’
    ‘That’s out.’
    ‘We can borrow.’
    ‘Only from each other. So that’s out.’
    ‘We can send our wives to work.’
    ‘Really!’ said Petula.
    What, me? looked Elizabeth.
    ‘What can they do?’
    ‘We ought to be able to make use of them. Elizabeth is beautiful, Petula is pretty, both have legs which in some professions would be worth quite a lot of money.’
    ‘That’s coarse,’ said Petula. ‘Don’t.’
    Mine are rather lovely, looked Elizabeth.
    ‘Humph,’ said Basil, ‘we ought to be able to do something with them. As a matter of fact, I’ve been toying with an idea for the last day or two. It’ll take a bit of time, though. Wait a moment.’
    The others watched him. Even Petula was quiet. She was trying to remember how much it would cost to get back the fur coat.
    ‘The Sunday papers,’ said Basil after a little. ‘Did you see Mrs Blarney’s life story the other day? I bet they paid her a bit for that. And she was ugly as sin.’
    ‘I don’t follow,’ said Nicholas.
    ‘A beautiful woman with a story can sell it.’
    ‘Do you know any stories about me?’ said Elizabeth.
    ‘No — but we can make one.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘That’s the trouble. It’ll take a bit of time.’
    ‘Tell us.’
    ‘Well, you know that divorce cases can’t normally be reported.’
    Oh, not a divorce, please, looked Elizabeth.
    ‘Of course not, silly. Not even a pretence of one. But other people’s domestic affairs still get the best publicity. Look at the space given to a fruity breach of promise action.’
    ‘Well?’
    ‘Well now, although the Press can’t report divorce cases, they can report enticement actions, and if one or other or both of you girls were involved in one, they jolly well