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attitude. He clasped his hands round his knee and tilted his head on one side. ‘You’re so fabulous,’ he said. ‘I can tell you anything. As if you were my generation. Aren’t we wonderful? Both of us?’
    ‘Are we? Kenneth—what’s it like?’
    ‘Pot? Do you really want to know?’
    ‘I’m asking, aren’t I?’
    ‘Dire the first time and quite fun if you persevere. Kid-stuff really. All the fuss is about nothing.’
    ‘It’s done at—at parties, isn’t it?’
    ‘That’s right, lovey. Want to try?’
    ‘It’s not habit-forming. Is it?’
    ‘Of course it’s not. It’s nothing. It’s OK as far as it goes. You don’t get hooked. Not on pot. You’d better meet my little man. Try a littletrip. In point of fact I could arrange a fabulous trip. Madly groovy. You’d adore it. All sorts of gorgeous gents. Super exotic pad. The lot.’
    She looked at him through her impossible lashes: a girl’s look that did a kind of injury to her face.
    ‘I might,’ she said.
    ‘Only thing—it’s top bracket for expense. All-time-high and worth it. One needs lots of lovely lolly and I haven’t—surprise, surprise—got a morsel.’
    ‘Kenneth!’
    ‘In fact if my rich aunt hadn’t invited me I would have been out on my little pink ear. Don’t pitch into me, I don’t think I can take it.’
    They stared at each other. They were very much alike: two versions of the same disastrous image.
    ‘I understand you,’ Kenneth said. ‘You know that, don’t you? I’m a sponge, OK? But I’m not just a sponge. I give back something. Right?’ He waited for a moment and when she didn’t answer, shouted, ‘Don’t I? Don’t I?’
    ‘Be quiet. Yes. Yes, of course you do. Yes.’
    ‘We’re two of a kind, right?’
    ‘Yes. I said so, didn’t I. Never mind, darling. Look in my bag. I don’t know how much I’ve got.’
    ‘God, you’re wonderful! I—I’ll go out straight away. I—I’ll—I’ll get it—‘ his mouth twisted ’—fixed. We’ll have such a—what did that old burnt-out Egyptian bag call it?—or her boyfriend?—gaudy night?—won’t we?’
    Her note-case shook in his hand. ‘There isn’t much here,’ he said.
    ‘Isn’t there?’ she said. ‘They’ll cash a cheque downstairs. I’ll write one. You’d better have something in hand.’
    When he had gone she went into her bedroom, sat in front of her glass and examined the precarious mask she still presented to the world.
    Kenneth, yawning and sweating, went in febrile search of Mr Sebastian Mailer.
IV
    ‘It’s the familiar story,’ the tall man said. He uncrossed his legs, rose in one movement, and stood, relaxed, before his companionwho, taken by surprise, made a laborious business of getting to his feet.
    ‘The big boys,’ said the tall man, ‘keep one jump ahead while their henchmen occasionally trip over our wires. Not often enough, however.’
    ‘Excuse me, my dear colleague. Our wires?’
    ‘Sorry. I meant: we do sometimes catch up with the secondary villains but their principals continue to evade us.’
    ‘Regrettably!’
    ‘In this case the biggest boy of all is undoubtedly Otto Ziegfeldt who, at the moment, has retired to a phoney castle in the Lebanon. We can’t get him. Yet. But this person, here in Rome, is a key man.’
    ‘I am most anxious that his activities be arrested. We all know, my dear colleague, that Palermo has most regrettably been a transit port. And also Corsica. But that he should have extended his activities to Naples and, it seems, to Rome! No, assure yourself you shall have every assistance.’
    ‘I’m most grateful to you, Signor Questore. The Yard was anxious that we should have this talk.’
    ‘Please! Believe me, the greatest pleasure,’ said Il Questore Valdarno. He had a resonant voice and grand-opera appearance. His eyes melted and he gave out an impression of romantic melancholy. Even his jokes wore an air of impending disaster. His position in the Roman police force corresponded,