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She wondered if Jake had remembered to set the spark guard in front of the fire, and decided she would see to it on the way back.
    She closed the library door behind her noiselessly, and switched on the light, blinking for a few seconds at the sudden glare. Murray's big desk was set in the window recess, and the telephone was perched on one corner of it, trim scarlet lines looking strangely out of place among the antiques and rubbed leather which surrounded it.
    After some initial difficulty in dialling, she managed to get through to the villa. The phone rang for a long time, and she was just about to give it up as a bad job, when the receiver was lifted and a woman's voice said, 'Yes?' 
    Lisle spoke politely, 'Good evening, Mrs Foxton. I wonder if I could speak to Gerard Bannerman.'
    Silence crackled at her. Then, 'Who
is
this?'
    'I'm his sister, Lisle. We met once, actually, at the Hargreaves' dinner party.'
    'Oh, yes.' Carla Foxton's voice conveyed complete indifference. 'Well, what makes you think Gerard's here, Miss Bannerman?'
    Lisle prayed for patience. 'As a matter of fact, I'm not sure where he is, Mrs Foxton. I hoped you might be able to help me. You see, there's rather a crisis here. My grandfather has had a severe heart attack, and I feel Gerard should come back immediately, for a number of reasons.' She paused, but there was no response from the other woman. 'So, if you do happen to know where he is, perhaps you could pass on a message for me.'
    Another lengthy pause, then Carla Foxton said curtly, 'I'll see what I can do.' And rang off.
    Lisle sighed as she replaced her, own receiver more slowly. It occurred to her that really she liked very few of Gerard's women, and Carla Foxton probably least of all. She was petite, black-haired and beautiful in a voluptuous way which spoke of the Latin-American blood in her recent ancestry, and Gerard had been frankly besotted with her for several months. Carla was some fifteen years younger than her wealthy indulgent husband, and although Gerard was undoubtedly more to her taste as a lover, their affair had been carried on fairly discreetly. Carla much preferred to have the best of both worlds, and was shrewd enough to ensure that she did so. Lisle could understand her caution on the phone, but not the lack of humanity she had displayed.
    Dispiritedly, she walked to the door, and stepped out into the hall, pausing as her hand readied for the switch to plunge the library back into its former peaceful darkness.
    'Walking in your sleep?' Jake asked.
    She nearly screamed, her hand flying to her mouth just in time to stifle the sound, so that it emerged instead as a kind of strangled squeak.
    He was lounging in the doorway to the drawing room, his hand clasped round a tumbler of whisky. His head was thrown back slightly, and the grey eyes were narrowed as he looked at her.
    Lisle said faintly, 'You—you startled me.'
    'You startled me,' he returned pleasantly. 'When I saw you go past the door, I thought for a moment you were the resident ghost.' A faint appreciative smile twisted the corners of his mouth. 'But if you were, of course, I'd be able to see right through you, instead of merely through that pretty nonsense you're wearing.'
    Lisle realised with embarrassed dismay that, standing in the strong light streaming from the room behind her, she was providing him with a frank revelation, of the outline of her body through the thin nightdress and robe. Hastily her hand moved to the switch again, snapping it to the 'off' position.
    'What are you doing down here?' she asked. Apart from a couple of extra buttons unfastened on his shirt, he was, dressed exactly as when she had left him. It didn't seem as if he'd been to bed at all.
    'Thinking,' he said. 'And drinking.' He held up the tumbler of whisky in a kind of mocking salute.
    'You find alcohol aids your thought processes?'
    'I find that sometimes it blocks them out altogether, which can be equally useful. May I ask, in return,