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invitation that you, Madame, and the small one join us for
petit déjeuner
. As you know, your husband is to assist me. There will be a little delay before we are ready and coffee is prepared.”
    He stood over Troy. He was really extremely large: his size and his padded voice and his smell, which was compounded of hair-lotion, scent and something that reminded her of the impure land-breeze from an eastern port, all flowed over her.
    She moved back and said quickly: “It’s very nice of you, but I think Ricky and I must find our hotel.”
    Alleyn said: “Thank you so much, Dr. Baradi. It’s extremely kind of Mr. Oberon and I hope I shall have a chance to thank him for all of us. What with one thing and another, we’ve had an exhausting journey and I think my wife and Ricky are in rather desperate need of a bath and a rest. The man will drive them down to the hotel and come back for me.”
    Dr. Baradi bowed, took off his hat, and would have possibly kissed Troy’s hand again if Alleyn had not somehow been in the way.
    “In that case,” Dr. Baradi said, “we must not insist.”
    He opened the door of the car. “And now, dear lady,” he said to Miss Truebody, “we make a little journey, isn’t it? Don’t move. There is no need.”
    With great dexterity and no apparent expenditure of energy, he lifted her from the car and laid her on the improvised stretcher. The sun beat down on her glistening face. Her eyes were open, her lips drawn back a little from her gums. She said: “But where is—? You’re not taking me away from—? I don’t know her name.”
    Troy went to her. “Here I am, Miss Truebody,” she said. “I’ll come and see you quite soon. I promise.”
    “But I don’t know where I’m going. It’s so unsuitable… Unseemly really… Somehow with another lady… English… I don’t know what they’ll do to me… I’m afraid I’m nervous… I had hoped…”
    Her jaw trembled. She made a thin shrill sound, shocking in its nakedness. “No,” she stammered, “no… no… no.” Her arm shot out and her hand closed on Troy’s skirt. The two bearers staggered a little and looked agitatedly at Dr. Baradi.
    “She should not be upset,” he murmured to Troy. “It is most undesirable. Perhaps, for a little while, you’ll be so kind…”
    “But of course,” Troy said, and in answer to a look from her husband, “of course, Rory, I must.”
    And she bent over Miss Truebody and told her she wouldn’t go away. She felt as though she herself was trapped in the kind of dream that, without being a positive nightmare, threatens to become one. Baradi released Miss Truebody’s hand and as he did so, his own brushed against Troy’s skirt.
    “You’re so kind,” he said. “Perhaps Mr. Allen will bring the little boy. It is not well for such tender ones to sleep over-long in the sun on the Côte d’Azur.”
    Without a word Alleyn lifted Ricky out of the car. Ricky made a small questioning sound, stirred, and slept again.
    The men walked off with the stretcher. Dr. Baradi followed them. Troy, Alleyn and Ricky brought up the rear.
    In this order the odd little procession moved out of the glare into the shadowed passage that was the entrance to the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.
    The driver watched them go, his lips pursed in a soundless whistle and an expression of concern darkening his eyes. Then he drove the car into the shade of the hill and composed himself for a long wait.

Chapter II
Operation Truebody
    i
    At first their eyes were sun-dazzled so that they could scarcely see their way. Dr. Baradi paused to guide them. Alleyn, encumbered with Ricky and groping up a number of wide, shallow and irregular steps, was aware of Baradi’s hand piloting Troy by the elbow. The blotches of non-existent light that danced across their vision faded and they saw that they were in a sort of hewn passage-way between walls that were incorporated in rock, separated by outcrops of stone and pierced by stairways,