“Good gracious!” said Harriet. “I thought you seemed a little stiff in your manner. Why on earth didn’t you say so before, instead of sitting there like a martyr and inveigling me into misjudging you?”

“I don’t seem able to do anything right,” he said plaintively.

“How did you manage to do it?”

“Fell off a wall in the most inartistic manner. I was in a bit of a hurry; there was a very plain-looking bloke on the other side with a gun. It wasn’t so much the wall, as the wheelbarrow at the bottom. And it isn’t really so much the ribs as the sticking-plaster. It’s strapped as tight as hell and itches infernally.”

“How beastly for you. I’m so sorry. What became of the bloke with the gun?”

“Ah! I’m afraid personal complications won’t trouble him any longer.”

“If the luck had been the other way, I suppose they wouldn’t have troubled you any longer?”

“Probably not. And then I shouldn’t have troubled you any longer. If my mind had been where my heart was, I might have welcomed that settlement. But my mind being momentarily on my job, I ran away with the greatest rapidity, so as to live to finish the case.”

“Well, I’m glad of that, Peter.”

“Are you? That shows how hard it is for even the most powerful brain to be completely heartless. Let me see. It is not my day for asking you to marry me, and a few yards of sticking plaster are hardly enough to make it a special occasion. But we’ll have coffee in the lounge, if you don’t mind, because this chair is getting as hard as the wheelbarrow, and seems to be catching me in several of the same places.”

He got up cautiously. The waiter arrived and restored Harriet’s bag, together with some letters which she had taken from the postman as she left the house and thrust into the outer pocket of the bag without reading. Wimsey steered his guest into the lounge, established her in a chair and lowered himself with a grimace into one corner of a low couch.

“Rather a long way down, isn’t it?”

“It’s all right when you get there. Sorry to be always presenting myself in such a decrepit state. I do it on purpose, of course, to attract attention and awaken sympathy; but I’m afraid the manoeuvre’s getting rather obvious. Would you like a liqueur with the coffee or a brandy? Two old brandies, James.”

“Very good, my lord. This was found under the table in the dining room, madam.”

“More of your scattered belongings?” said Wimsey, as she took the postcard; then, seeing her flush and frown of disgust, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” said Harriet, pushing the ugly scrawl into her bag.

He looked at her.

“Do you often get that kind of thing?”

“What kind of thing?”

“Anonymous dirt.”

“Not very often now. I got one at Oxford. But they used to come by every post. Don’t worry; I’m used to it. I only wish I’d looked at it before I got here. It’s horrible of me to have dropped it about your club for the servants to read.”

“Careless little devil, aren’t you? May I see it?”

“No, Peter; please.”

“Give it to me.”

She handed it to him without looking up. “Ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup. What did you give him to get you off?” it inquired disagreeably.

“God, what muck!” said he, bitterly. “So that’s what I’m letting you in for I might have known it. I could hardly hope that it wasn’t so. But you said nothing, so I allowed myself to be selfish.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just part of the consequences. You can’t do anything about it.”

“I might have the consideration not to expose you to it. Heaven knows you’ve tried hard enough to get rid of me. In fact, I think you’ve used every possible lever to dislodge me, except that one.”

“Well, I knew you would hate it so. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Didn’t want to hurt me?”

She realized that this, to him, must sound completely lunatic.

“I mean that, Peter. I know I’ve said about every damnable thing to you that I could think of. But I have my limits.” A sudden wave of anger surged up in her. “My God, do you really think that of me? Do you suppose there’s no meanness I wouldn’t stoop to?”

“You’d have been perfectly justified in telling me that I was making things more difficult for you by hanging round.”

“Should I? Did you expect me to tell you that you were compromising my reputation, when I had none to compromise? To point out that you’d saved me from the gallows, thank you very much, but left me in the pillory? To say, my name’s mud, but kindly treat it as lilies? I’m not quite such a hypocrite as that.”

“I see. The plain fact is, that I am doing nothing but make life a little bitterer for you. It was generous of you not to say so.”

“Why did you insist on seeing that thing?”

“Because,” he said, striking a match and holding the flame to a corner of the postcard, “while I am quite ready to take flight from plug-uglies with guns, I prefer to look other kinds of trouble in the face.” He dropped the burning paper on to the tray and crushed the ashes together, and she was again reminded of the message she had found in her sleeve. “You have nothing to reproach yourself with-you didn’t tell me this; I found it out for myself. I will admit defeat and say good-bye. Shall I?”

The club waiter set down the brandies. Harriet, with her eyes on her own hands, sat plaiting her fingers together. Peter watched her for some minutes, and then said gently:

“Don’t look so tragic about it. The coffee’s getting cold. After all, you know, I have the consolation that ‘not you but Fate has vanquished me’. I shall emerge with my vanity intact, and that’s something.”

“Peter. I’m afraid I’m not very consistent. I came here tonight with the firm intention of telling you to chuck it. But I’d rather fight my own battles. I-I-” she looked up and went on rather quaveringly-“I’m damned if I’ll have you wiped out by plug-uglies or anonymous letter writers!”

He sat up sharply, so that his exclamation of pleasure turned half-way into an anguished grunt.

“Oh curse this sticking-plaster!… Harriet, you have got guts, haven’t you? Give me your hand, and we’ll fight on until we drop. Here! none of that. You can’t cry in this club. It’s never been done, and if you disgrace me like this, I shall get into a row with the Committee. They’ll probably close the Ladies’ Rooms altogether.”

“I’m sorry, Peter.”

“And don’t put sugar in my coffee.”

Later in the evening, having lent a strong arm to extricate him, swearing loudly, from the difficult depths of the couch, and dispatched him to such rest as he might reasonably look for between the pains of love and sticking-plaster she had leisure to reflect that if fate had vanquished either of them it was not Peter Wimsey. He knew too well the wrestler’s trick of letting the adversary’s own strength defeat itself. Yet she knew with certainty that if, when he had said, “Shall I go?” she had replied with firm kindness, “I’m sorry, but I think it would better,” there would have been the desired end of the matter.

“I wish,” she said to the friend of the European trip, “he would take a firm line of some kind.”

“But he has,” replied the friend, who was a clear-headed person. “He knows what he wants. The trouble is that you don’t. I know it isn’t pleasant putting an end to things, but I don’t see why he should do all your dirty work for you, particularly as he doesn’t want it done. As for anonymous letters, it seems to me quite ridiculous to pay any attention to them.”

It was easy for the friend to say this, having no vulnerable points in her brisk and hard-working life.

“Peter says I ought to get a secretary and have them weeded out.”

“Well,” said the friend, “that’s a practical suggestion, anyway. But I suppose, since it’s his advice, you’ll find some ingenious reason for not taking it.”

“I’m not as bad as that,” said Harriet; and engaged the secretary.