“Oh, I don’t know,” and then, “It was about Margaret I wanted to speak to you.”

Freddy brightened into curiosity.

“About Margaret-what? You don’t mean to say-no, no, of course not-much better let bygones be bygones. I remember Tommy Hadow now-he got engaged to the second Jenkins girl-I can’t for the life of me remember her name-something short. Dot? No. May? No, it wasn’t May.”

“It’s nothing of that sort,” said Charles firmly.

“Well, well, I’m sorry-in a way, I’m sorry. But all the same I don’t know that it does to bring these things on again. It didn’t answer in Tommy’s case. Separated in a year-and that’s worse than a broken engagement. Gwendoline! That was the girl’s name-Gwendoline Jenkins! And her sister married Sam Fortescue.”

“No, it’s nothing of that sort,” said Charles. He thought Freddy vaguer than ever, and did not feel the slightest interest in the Jenkins family. “Look here, Freddy, I really do want to talk to you. Naturally you’ve got Margaret’s interests very much at heart, and I thought perhaps if we put our heads together, we could do something to help her out of her present false position.”

It was incredibly difficult. The words he was using seemed to him of a stilted ineptitude, a sort of cross between the Meanderings of Monty and the platitudes of the Reverend Mr. Barlow.

Freddy looked across the table at him with a curious fluttered expression.

“Charles-you distress me. I don’t think I understand. What’s all this about a false position?” He did not say, “And what has this got to do with you?” but there was just a hint of it in his manner.

Charles plunged on:

“Margaret is certainly in a false position. And look here, Freddy, you’re going abroad-your plans are apparently very uncertain-you may be away for years-anything may happen. I think you’ll agree that Margaret ought not to be left-” He hesitated for a word, and finally produced “involved.”

Freddy rumpled his mouse-coloured hair.

“My dear boy, you distress me very much. Has Margaret been getting into debt? I’ve offered her an allowance, and she won’t take it. I really don’t know why.”

“I wasn’t talking about debts.”

“But you said ‘involved.’ ”

“I didn’t mean debt. I think you must know what I mean”-he looked away for a minute-“in fact you do know. I want you to understand that I know too.” He paused, and added, “Margaret has told me why she broke off her engagement.”

He looked back at Freddy and saw a blank, white face, small eyes peering, hands shaking. “Good Lord, what a blue funk he’s in!” Rather horrible to see poor little Freddy like that-horrible to see anyone in such a ghastly funk. Why, the forehead under the mouse-coloured hair was streaming wet.

Freddy put up one of those shaking hands and pushed the damp hair back.

“What did she tell you?”

Charles repeated what Margaret had told him.

“She said you’d slipped into it when you were a boy. She said the affair was political-but of course you won’t expect me to believe that. I don’t say you didn’t believe it when you were seventeen. I don’t know anything about that, and it doesn’t matter. But you know as well as I do now that this Grey Mask business is just a big criminal organization run for gain.”

Freddy put his head in his hands. The white wet face was hidden, but Charles felt that the terrified eyes still peered at him through the shaking fingers. A little contempt flavoured his pity. No wonder Margaret had had to bear the brunt if this was a sample of how Freddy went to bits in an emergency.

“Look here, Freddy,” he said. Then, with sudden impatience, “For heaven’s sake, man, pull yourself together! Don’t slump like that.”

An inarticulate sound, half sob, half protest, came from behind Freddy’s hands.

Charles walked up and down.

“I don’t want to reproach you-I’m not going to reproach you; but you must see that it’s up to you to try to get Margaret out of the mess you got her into. You can’t just go off abroad and leave her to it.”

Another sound. Charles made nothing of it.

“Of course she was an absolute fool to sign anything. She told me she put her name to two statements, both highly damaging. Those statements must be got back. That’s really what I’ve come to talk to you about. When people are on the wrong side of the law like this Grey Mask crowd, there must be ways of doing a deal with them. That’s where you come in. You know them-you’re in touch with them- you’re in a position to-”

Freddy dropped his hands.

“You don’t understand. I can’t do anything.”

“Something’s got to be done.”

Freddy leaned back, his hands on his knees, his whole figure limp.

“You don’t know them. You must forgive me-Charles, it was such a shock-to find that you had any knowledge of-” He spoke in a series of jerks, and at the end of each short sentence his voice was almost gone.

“I suppose it was. I want you to understand my position. I’m concerned for two people. Margaret’s one of them, and Greta Wilson is the other. I’m very deeply concerned for Greta, because I believe she is in a very dangerous position; and I’m so placed that I can’t do what I ought to do to protect Greta without running the risk of finding that Margaret is involved.”

“What do you mean?” said Freddy Pelham.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Unless we can get back those two statements which you got Margaret to sign, I can’t put Greta under police protection. You heard her story about being followed by a strange car. I believe she was within an ace of being carried off then, just as I believe she was within an ace of slipping to her death under the bus last night. You know she was pushed. Do you know who pushed her?”

Freddy stiffened; everything about him seemed to go rigid. The effect was one of extreme terror, of a creature in a trap with every muscle tense-waiting.

Charles looked at him with something like horror.

“Freddy! For heaven’s sake, don’t say you knew!”

Freddy shook his head. The tension relaxed. He said faintly,

“It was a shock”; and then, “She slipped.”

“She slipped because she was pushed. I mean to know who pushed her. I mean to bring the whole damned crowd to justice. And I want you to help me. For Margaret’s sake-for your own sake-I want you to help me. I don’t ask you to appear in the matter at all. You can go off abroad tomorrow and be out of it all. If you’re wise, you’ll keep out of it. I want to know who’s got those statements of Margaret’s.”

“Grey Mask,” said Freddy with a shudder.

“Who is Grey Mask?”

Freddy shuddered again.

“No-one-knows.”

“Don’t you know?”

Again that curious rigidity, that fixed stare of fear.

“Freddy, pull yourself together! I’m not asking for anything that will compromise you-I only want your help for Margaret. I can’t work in the dark. Give me a hint of whom to approach.”

“I can’t tell you anything.”

“Look here, Freddy, you’re forcing my hand. If you don’t help-if you won’t help me, I shall have to take my own way. I shall have to take it more or less in the dark. Margaret may suffer-you yourself may suffer. Don’t you see that the minute I move I may pull the whole thing down? If you’ll help me, I believe we can get Margaret out, and I swear I’ll do my best for you. But if I have to go on without knowing where I am, it may very easily mean the worst kind of smash.”

Freddy sat silent.

“You see you force my hand. I can’t delay any longer. I can go to the police and tell them what I know, or”-he spoke very slowly and deliberately-“I can go to Pullen and try to do a deal with him.”

Freddy Pelham started forward. His left hand gripped the table leg; his right fell fumbling on the handle of a drawer.

“Who’s-Pullen?”

Charles laughed angrily.

“Don’t you know? I think you do. Well? Are you going to help me? Or am I to try Pullen or-Lenny Morrison?”