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tax for another hour or so and then set off down Priory Road to the tobacconist and newsagent’s kept by the Bhavnanis. He felt rather excited. He tried to put himself in Mrs. Bhavnani’s shoes, imagining how she was going to feel in five minutes’ time when she understood that someone cared, that someone was going to give her son life and health and a future. Possibly she would cry. Martin indulged in a fullblown fantasy of what would happen when he made his offer, only breaking off when he remembered that one should do good by stealth so that the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doeth.
    It was an old-fashioned little shop. When he opened the door a bell rang and from the back regions appeared Mrs. Bhavnani in a green sari with a bright blue knitted cardigan over it. Her face looked dark and wizened and full of shadows in contrast to these gay colours, and when Martin said he wanted to speak to her privately it grew grim. She turned the sign on the shop door to Closed. Martin stammered a little when he explained to her why he had come. She listened in silence.
    “You are a doctor to operate on Suma?” she said.
    “No, no, certainly not. It’s just that—well, my mother told me about him, and what I’m saying is that if it’s a fact you can get this operation on his heart done in Sydney—well, I could help pay for things.”
    “It will cost a lot.”
    “Yes, I know that. I mean,
I
could pay. I
will
pay. I’d, like you to let me pay for you and him to fly to Sydney and for your accommodation there and for the operation, that’s what I mean.”
    She looked at him, then lowered her eyes and stood passivelybefore him. He knew she didn’t understand. Was her husband in? No, not at present. Martin asked the name of their doctor.
    “Dr. Ghopal,” she said, “at Crouch End.” The dark mournful eyes were lifted once more and Mrs. Bhavnani said, as if he were some importunate intruder, if that munificence had never been offered, “You must go now, the shop is closed. I am sorry.”
    Martin couldn’t help laughing to himself, and at himself, once he was out in the street. So much for the philanthropist’s reward. Of course it would have been far more sensible and business-like to have got Dr. Ghopal’s name in the first place and to have written to him rather than make that romantic direct approach. He would write to him tonight. He would also, he thought as he began the drive home, make the preliminary manoeuvres in his project for using half the money. Suma Bhavnani was merely a sideline. The really serious business was his scheme for giving away fifty thousand pounds.
    He could concentrate on that now that Tim Sage was off his conscience.

IV
    Dear Miss Watson
,
I don’t know if you will remember me. We met last Christmas at the house of my aunt, Mrs. Bennett. I have since then been told that you have a housing problem and that when your employer goes to live abroad next year you expect to be without a home. The purpose of this letter is to ask if I can help you. I would be prepared to advance you any reasonable sum for the purchase of a small house or flat preferably not in London or the Home Counties. You could, if you would rather, regard this sum as a long-term loan, the property eventually to revert to me by will. I should then be able to look on this money in the light of an investment. However, please believe that my interest is solely in helping you solve this problem, and I hope that you will allow me to be of assistance.
    Yours sincerely,
Martin W. Urban.
    Dear Mr. Deepdene
,
You will not have heard of me, but I am a friend of the Tremletts who, I believe, are friends of yours. Norman Tremlett has explained to me that the local authority which is your landlord intends to pull down the block of flats in which you are at present living and to rehouse you in a flat which will be of inadequate size to accommodate your furniture, books, etc. The purpose of this letter is to ask if I can be of any