‘Time – that’s what we want – time. If we can satisfy Holden and get time to pay the money back we’ll be all right. Can’t you think of something we can do?’

She said, ‘I could.’

‘Mavis!’

‘What do I get out of it?’

The words came across the table like a pistol-shot. He said her name again in a shocked tone, and she smiled.

‘Look here, Cyril, if I do this I’m risking a lot. It’s got to be worth my while. I’ll be risking a lot, and you know it. Well, I’m not doing it for nothing, and that’s flat.’ The hazel eyes had the hard, dominant look which had impressed William Smith.

Cyril Eversley said, ‘What do you want?’ But he knew before she spoke.

Her smile widened.

‘You’ve been a widower for five years-Sylvia is married. Everybody expects you to marry again.’

He said, ‘It would make too much talk.’

‘My dear Cyril, men marry their secretaries every day. Who cares about talk?’

He looked down at his own long, nervous fingers. At some moment, he didn’t know when, they had picked up a short length of red pencil. He saw them twitch on it, rolling it to and fro.

‘I should be lost without you here.’

‘You needn’t let that stand in your way. I like to have a finger in the pie. I would stay on at any rate until we’d got everything straight.’

There was more to put straight than he knew about – more than she ever intended him to know. It could be done if she brought this off. The Admiral was a godsend. She pressed her advantage.

‘Look here, Cyril, it’s a pretty good bargain for you – honestly. Don’t you ever get tired of your own company down at Evendon? I should have thought you’d be bored stiff now that you haven’t got Sylvia dashing in and out with her crowd.’

He looked up with a faint gleam of humour.

‘There used to be rather too much dashing in and out, you know.’

‘I daresay, but there’s no sense in going to the opposite extreme. And you want someone to run the house. I don’t mind betting you’re being robbed right and left.’

Inwardly he shrank. Mavis had a coarse streak in her. She attracted him, as vital, domineering women do attract his type of man. Sometimes the attraction was strong enough, to blind him to everything else. When it wasn’t she could jar him badly. No man likes to be urged to marry, but he had to reckon with long habit and the pressure of her will on his.

She said with half a laugh, ‘You really want a wife a great deal more than I want a husband. I think I’m a bit of a fool to take it on. I shouldn’t if I wasn’t fond of you, but there it is.’

He said, ‘I know.’ And then, ‘Why can’t we just go on as we are? As you say, I haven’t got so much to offer you now.’

She laughed outright.

‘Perhaps not, but I happen to want it. I said it was a bargain, and I said you’d be getting the best of it, and so you will. But I shouldn’t be going into it if I wasn’t getting something too. You’ll get a good-looking, presentable wife and an efficient mistress for your house, and I’ll keep on at the office until we’ve straightened everything out and I’ve trained somebody else. Comfort, efficiency, and security – that’s your share of the bargain. I give up my independence, and I get a double job, a lot of hard work, and – security. If that satisfies me, it’s just your luck. I’m putting all my cards on the table.’

She had a moment’s thought of how surprised he would be if she really did so – surprised, and shocked. That was one of the amusing things about Cyril – the moment you got down to facts they shocked him.

He was staring at his hand again, and at the red pencil. His fingers had tightened on it. He did not speak. She could feel him resisting – not actively, but in a withdrawn kind of way, as if he had gone into another room and locked the door. If they had been anywhere else, she would have let her temper go. Nothing ever enraged her so much, and he knew it. But he knew that she couldn’t make a scene in the office. He was afraid of her scenes, but she couldn’t make one here. Perhaps one of the things which nerved him to resist her was the knowledge that once they were married she would be perfectly free to make him a scene whenever she chose.

Mavis Jones put out an ugly manicured hand and picked up Admiral Holden’s letter. She might have been picking up a weapon. She picked it up, glanced at it, and put it down again.

‘Wednesday or Thursday next week,’ she said crisply. ‘It doesn’t give us too much time.’

The thrust went keenly home. He started, dropped the pencil, and said with panic in his voice,

‘What can you do?’

It was surrender, and they both knew it. The colour was warm in her face as she leaned across the table and laid her hand on his.

‘Don’t worry – I’ll pull it off. The less you know, the better. I’ll go through all the papers and cook something up. ’ She laughed good-humouredly. ‘There’s almost nothing you can’t do with figures – especially when you’re good at them and the other person isn’t.’

She had better not have said that – he wasn’t any too good at them himself – he might start thinking.

She got up and came round the table and put an arm about his neck.

‘Aren’t you going to kiss me?’

He turned a harried face.

‘Mavis!’

‘My poor old man! You needn’t worry like that – it’ll be all right on the night.’

‘Are you sure?’

He had been leaning back against her. He turned now as if for shelter and pressed his face into her neck. She held him like that and said,

‘Quite sure.’ And then, ‘We’d better give notice at the register office today. There has to be a clear day’s notice. We can get married on Saturday and go away for the weekend. No need to give it out – better let all this other business fade a bit first. So you don’t have to feel you’re being rushed.’

‘Need we – ’

She bent and kissed him.

‘Darling, I simply can’t do it unless I’m your wife. And he’s coming next week – that’s where the hurry comes in. It’s a big thing, and I’ll do it for my husband, but – oh, Cyril, you must see that I couldn’t do it for anyone else.’

Cyril Eversley saw.

Chapter Six

On that Thursday morning, the undercoating having dried on the Dumble Ducks, they were being decked out in green and bronze metallic paint, with exciting touches of red and blue, and yellow bills. At the far end of the conservatory old Mr. Bindle was telling the boy Robert all the things that boys had never been allowed to do when he was young. From long habit Robert, whom everyone but Mr. Bindle called Bob, was able to say ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ at the right places and go solidly on thinking about the model aeroplane he was making at home in his spare time. He was a long, rangy boy with a freckled face and competent hands, and, waking or sleeping, he very seldom thought about anything but aeroplanes. Neither he nor Mr. Bindle took any interest in Mr. Smith and Miss Eversley who were painting ducks at the parlour end of the workshop.

William was pleased with his duck. It had a cream breast, brown and green plumage, enormous yellow feet, and a rolling eye. It waddled, and its beak gaped. He was pleased with it, but a good deal of his mind was taken up with something else. Thursday is early-closing day in the outlying parts of London. He wanted to know what Katharine was going to do when she put on her hat and left the shop at one o’clock. Suppose she went to bed at about eleven, that left approximately ten hours in which things could be done. He wondered what sort of things she was going to do.

This happened every Thursday morning. It also happened on Saturday evening when the long, deserted hours of Sunday began to loom up. Saturday was worse than Thursday, because at the very lowest reckoning there were about fourteen hours of Sunday during which Katharine would not only not be with him, but would be walking, talking, and doing things with other people. Every time a Thursday or a Saturday came round his feelings on the subject became more acute. Today they were rapidly approaching the point where he would no longer be able to keep them to himself. He may never have heard of the poet who declared that he either fears his fate too much or his deserts are small who dare not put it to the touch to gain or lose it all, but he certainly would have agreed with him. The trouble was that he did fear his fate and was most wholeheartedly convinced of the smallness of his deserts. Yet what he had not so far dared put to the touch was no matter of headlong wooing, but the mere ‘Madam, will you walk, madam will you talk?’ on a Thursday or a Sunday afternoon.