"The lock's broken,' I said.

'You ought to get it fixed,' he said, as we left the compartment. 'St Moritz is full of Italians.' His interest could mean something. Or nothing. The two of them might be the best actors in the world.

They had eight bags between them, all brand new, none of them the twin of mine. That again could mean nothing. We had to hire an extra taxi for the baggage, and it followed us up the hill through the busy, snowy streets of the town to the hotel.

The hotel had a tantalizing, faint, indefinable aroma. Its source was money. Quiet money. The lobby was like an extension of the bank vault in New York. The guests were treated by the help in a kind of reverential hush, as though they were ikons of great age and value, frail and worthy of worship. I had the feeling that even the small, exquisitely dressed children with their English nannies, who walked decorously along the deep carpets, knew I didn't belong there.

Everybody at the reception desk and at the concierge's desk shook Mr. Sloane's hand and bowed to Mrs. Sloane. The tips had obviously been princely in the preceding years. Would a man like that, who could afford a wife like Flora and a hotel like the Palace, walk off with somebody else's seventy-thousand dollars? And wear his shoes in the bargain? The answer, I decided, was probably yes. After all, Sloane had confessed he was a self-made man.

When I told the clerk at the reception desk that I had no reservation, his face took on that distant no-room-at-the-inn look of hoteliers in a good season. He had pierced my disguise instantly. 'I'm afraid, sir,' he began, 'that...'

'He's a friend of mine,' Mr. Sloane said, coming up behind me. 'Fit him in, please.'

The clerk made an important small business of checking the room chart and said, 'Well, there's a double room. I might...'

'That's fine,' I said.

'How long will you be staying, Mr. Grimes?' the clerk asked.

I hesitated. Who knew how long five thousand dollars would last in a place like that? 'A week,' I said. I would skip orange juice in the mornings.

We all went up in the elevator together. The clerk had put me in the room next to the Sloanes. It would have been convenient if the walls had been thinner or I had been trained in electronic bugging equipment.

My room was a large one, with a great double bed with a pink satin spread and a magnificent view of the lake and the mountains beyond, pure and clear in the late afternoon sunlight. Under other conditions it would have been exhilarating. Now it merely seemed as if nature was being callous and expensive. I closed the blinds and in the gloom lay down fully dressed on the soft bed, the satin rustling voluptuously under my weight. I still seemed to smell Flora Sloane's perfume. I tried to think of some way in which I could find out quickly and surely if Sloane was my man. My mind was flat and tired. The two days in Zurich had exhausted me. I felt a cold coming on. I could think of nothing except to hang on and watch. But then if I did find out that it was my tie he was wearing, my shoes he was walking around in, what would I do? My head began to ache. I got up off the bed and dug in the leather shaving kit for the tin of aspirin and swallowed two.

I dozed fitfully after that, dreaming disconnectedly. There was a man who appeared and disappeared at the edge of my dreams who might have been Sloane or Drusack, jangling keys.

I was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. It was Flora Sloane, inviting me to dinner. I made myself sound enthusiastic as I accepted. I didn't have to dress for dinner, she said; we were dining in town. Somehow, Bill had forgotten to pack his tuxedo, and it was being flown from America but hadn't arrived yet. I said I preferred not dressing myself and went in and took a cold shower.

We met for drinks at the bar of the hotel. Sloane was wearing a dark gray suit. It was not mine. He had changed his shoes. There was another couple at the table who had been on our plane coming over and who were also from Greenwich. They had been out skiing that day and the wife was already limping. 'Isn't it marvelous?' she said. 'I can just go up to the Corveglia Club every day for the next two weeks and just lie in the sun.'

'Before we were married,' her husband said, 'she used to tell me how much she loved to ski.'

'That was before we were married, dear,' the woman said complacently.

Sloane ordered a bottle of champagne. It was finished quickly and the other man ordered a second one. I would have to get out of St Moritz before it was my turn to reciprocate. It was easy to love the poor in that atmosphere.

We went to dinner in a restaurant in a rustic chalet nearby and drank a great deal more champagne. The prices on the menu were not rustic. During the course of the meal I learned more than I ever wanted to know about Greenwich -who was nearly thrown out of the golf club, what lady was doing it with what gynaecologist, how much the new addition to the Powell's house cost, who was leading the brave fight to keep black children from being bussed into the town schools. Even if I had been guaranteed that I would get my seventy thousand dollars back before the end of the week, I wondered if I could endure the necessary dinners.

It was worse after dinner. When we got back to the hotel, the two men went to play bridge and Flora asked me to take her dancing in the Kings Club downstairs. The lady with the limp came along with us to watch. When we were seated at a table. Flora asked for champagne, and this time it was fairly and truly on my bill.

I never liked to dance, and Flora was one of those women who clutch their partners as if to cut off any possible movement to escape. It was hot in the room and infernally noisy and my flannel blazer was heavy and too tight under the arms and I was swamped in Flora's perfume. She also hummed amorously into my ear as we danced.

'Oh, I'm so glad we found you,' she whispered. 'You can't drag Bill onto a dance floor. And I'll bet you're a great skier, too. You move like one.' Sex and all other human activities were clearly inextricably entwined in Mrs Sloane's mind. 'Will you ski with me tomorrow?'

'I'd love to,' I said. If I could have chosen a list of people whom I could suspect of having stolen my suitcase, the Sloanes would have been far down at the bottom.

It was after midnight, with two bottles of champagne gone, when I finally managed to call a halt. I signed the check and escorted the two ladies upstairs to where their husbands were playing bridge. Sloane was losing. I didn't know whether I was glad or sorry. If it was my money, I would have wept. If it was his, I'd have cheered. Aside from his friend from Greenwich, there was a handsome, graying man of about fifty at the table, and an old lady encrusted with jewelry, with a harsh Spanish accent, like the cawing of a crow. The Beautiful People of the International Set.

While I was watching, the handsome, gray-haired man made a small slam. 'Fabian,' Sloane said, 'every year I find myself writing out a check to you.'

The man Sloane had called Fabian smiled gently. He had a charming smile, almost womanish in sweetness, with laugh wrinkles permanently around his liquid dark eyes. 'I must admit,' he said, 'I'm having a modest little run of luck.' He had a soft, husky voice and an accent that was a little strange. I couldn't tell from the way he spoke where he came from.

‘Modest! ' Sloane said. He wasn't a pleasant loser.

'I'm going to bed,' Flora said. 'I'm skiing in the morning.'

'I'll be right up,' Sloane said. He was shuffling the cards as though he was preparing to use them as weapons.... I escorted Flora to her door. 'Isn't it comfy,' she said, 'We're just side-by-side?' She kissed my cheek good night, giggled, and said, 'Night-night,' and went in.