“Oh, Neil dear,” she interrupted; “it’s no good arguing about it.  We mean to help you, and you’ll have to let us.”

“But suppose I refuse?” I said.

“Then as soon as Tommy comes back tomorrow I shall tell him everything that you’ve told me.  I know your address at Pimlico, and I know just about where your hut will be down the Thames.  If you think Tommy will rest for a minute till he’s found you, you must have forgotten a lot about him in the last three years.”

She spoke with a kind of indignant energy, and there was an obstinate look in her blue eyes, which showed me plainly that it would be waste of time trying to reason with her.

I reflected quickly.  Perhaps after all it would be best for me to see Tommy myself.  He at least would appreciate the danger of dragging Joyce into the business, and between us we might be able to persuade her that I was right.

“Well, what are your ideas, Joyce?” I said.  “Except for keeping my eye on George I had no particular plan until I heard from McMurtrie.”

Joyce laid her hand on my sleeve.  “Tomorrow,” she said, “you must go and see Tommy.  He is coming back by the midday train, and he will get to the flat about two o’clock.  Tell him everything that you have told me.  I shan’t be able to get away from here till the evening, but I shall be free then, and we three will talk the whole thing over.  I shan’t make any more appointments here after tomorrow.”

“Very well,” I said reluctantly.  “I will go and look up Tommy, but I can’t see that it will do any good.  I am only making you and him liable to eighteen months’ hard labour.”  She was going to speak, but I went on.  “Don’t you see, Joyce dear, there are only two possible courses open to me?  I can either wait and carry out my agreement with McMurtrie, or I can go down to Chelsea and force the truth about Marks’s death out of George—­if he really knows it.  Dragging you two into my wretched affairs won’t alter them at all.”

“Yes, it will,” she said obstinately.  “There are lots of ways in which we can help you.  Suppose these people turn out wrong, for instance; they might even mean to give you up to the police as soon as they’ve got your secret.  And then there’s George.  If he does know anything about the murder I’m the only person who is the least likely to find it out.  Why—­”

A discreet knock at the outer door interrupted her, and she got up from the sofa.

“That’s Jack with the lunch,” she said.  “Come along, Neil dear.  We won’t argue about it any more now.  Let’s forget everything for an hour,—­just be happy together as if we were back in Chelsea.”

She held out her hands to me, her lips smiling, her blue eyes just on the verge of tears.  I drew her towards me and gently stroked her hair, as I used to do in the old days in Chelsea when she had come to me with some of her childish troubles.  I felt an utter brute to think that I could ever have doubted her loyalty, even for an instant.