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“The Harmony Consultant,” here something a bit overemotional about Famine Relief, which Carlisle, an expert in her way, skimmed through with disapproval. Next an article, “Radiant Living,” which she passed by with a shudder. Then a two-page article headed “Crime Pays,” which proved to be a highly flavoured but extremely outspoken and well-informed article on the drug racket. Two Latin-American business firms with extensive connections in Great Britain were boldly named. An editorial note truculently courted information backed by full protection. It also invited a libel action and promised a further article. Next came a serial by a Big Name and then, on the centre double-page with a banner headline:
     
    THE HELPING HAND
    Ask G.P.F. About It
    (Guide, Philosopher, Friend)
     
    Carlisle glanced through it. Here were letters from young women asking for advice on the conduct of their engagements and from young men seeking guidance in their choice of wives and jobs. Here was a married woman prepared, it seemed, to follow the instructions of an unknown pundit in matters of the strictest personal concern, and here a widower who requested an expert report on remarriage with someone twenty years his junior. Carlisle was about to turn the page when a sentence caught her eye:
     
    I am eighteen and unofficially engaged to be married. My fiancé is madly jealous and behaves…
     
    She read it through to the end. The style was vividly familiar. The magazine had the look of having been frequently opened here. There was cigarette ash in the groove between the pages. Was it possible that Félicité —? But the signature. “Toots”! Could Félicité adopt a nom de plume like Toots? Could her unknown correspondent—? Carlisle lost herself in a maze of speculation from which she was aroused by some faint noise — a metallic click. She looked up. Nobody had entered the room. The sound was repeated and she realized it had come from her uncle’s study, a small room that opened off the far end of the drawing-room. She saw that the door was ajar and that the lights were on in the study. She remembered that it was Lord Pastern’s unalterable habit to sit in this room for half an hour before dinner, meditating upon whatever obsession at the moment enthralled him, and that he had always liked her to join him there.
    She walked down the long deep carpet to the door and looked in.
    Lord Pastern sat before the fire. He had a revolver in his hands and appeared to be loading it.
    For a few moments Carlisle hesitated. Then, in a voice that struck her as being pitched too high, she said: “What
are
you up to, Uncle George?”
    He started and the revolver slipped in his hands and almost fell.
    “Hullo,” he said. “Thought you’d forgotten me.”
    She crossed the room and sat opposite him. “Are you preparing for burglars?” she said.
    “No.” He gave her what Edward had once called one of his leery looks and added: “Although you might put it that way. I’m gettin’ ready for my big moment.” He jerked his hand towards a small table that stood at his elbow. Carlisle saw that a number of cartridges lay there. “Just goin’ to draw the bullets,” said Lord Pastern, “to make them into blanks, you know. I like to attend to things myself.”
    “But what is your big moment?”
    “You’ll see, to-night. You and Fée are to come. It ought to be a party. Who’s your best young man?”
    “I haven’t got one.”
    “Why not?”
    “Arst yourself.”
    “You’re too damn’ stand-offish, me gel. Wouldn’t be surprised if you had one of those things — Oedipus and all that. I looked into psychology when I was interested in companionate marriage.”
    Lord Pastern inserted his eyeglass, went to his desk and rummaged in one of the drawers.
    “What’s happening to-night?”
    “Special extension night at the Metronome. I’m playin’. Floor show at eleven o’clock. My first appearance in public. Breezy engaged me. Nice of him,