When Philip came home he found her with just that touch of gaiety lighting her up. There was still some time before supper, and he sat down and talked. When she went to prepare the meal he followed her into the kitchen, propped his long figure against the dresser, and went on talking. Without quite noticing how, she found that they were talking about France, and that he was asking her questions, not in any suspicious way but as if the subject interested him, as if it were a meeting-ground. While she flaked fish for a pie and prepared a cheese sauce she realized that for the first time they were conversing, and that Philip, interested and laying himself out to please, could be very attractive indeed.

Over the meal he began to talk about his work. What was said was nothing, but the fact that he could talk about it at all lifted her up. She was very careful, showing only a friendly interest, asking no questions, except that when he mentioned that he would have to finish some writing after supper she said,

“Will it take you long?”

“Not very. I ought to have waited to finish it in office-I don’t really like bringing the code-book away. However- No, I shan’t be long.”

As the meal went on, her confidence grew. She was on the crest of her wave. When she went to fetch the coffee she put two of the tablets which Felix had given her into Philip’s cup. The tray stood on the dresser. Lifting her head, she saw her own reflection in a small cheap mirror propped on the dresser shelf. For a moment it startled her. Natural colour glowed in her cheeks, her eyes shone, her lips had a new curve. She thought, “I look as if I was in love with him.” And then, “Well, why not? I could be if he wanted me to. Why not?”

She picked up the tray and went through with it to the living-room. Philip had got out of his chair. He was standing by the hearth looking down into the fire. As she set down the tray, he said,

“I’ll take my coffee through and finish what I brought home. It won’t take long. If I sit down now I shan’t want to get up again. I’ll come back for a bit when I’ve finished, and then go early to bed. I could sleep the clock round.”

She had the feeling that everything was playing into her hands. In any other mood she might have wondered why. Tonight it never crossed her mind that things might be going too easily.

An hour later, when he came back, she was sitting under the lamp sewing delicately at a piece of fine underwear. The light fell softly on peach-coloured satin and écru lace, on the bright steel needle, along a skein of embroidery silk laid out on the arm of the chair. She looked up as he came in, and saw him put up a hand to hide a yawn. From his other hand there swung a length of chain with a key-ring at the end of it. She lifted her eyebrows and said, “Tired, Philip?” and he gathered up the chain into his palm and said, “Dead. It’s no good trying to sit up any longer. I’ll go off.” As he turned he looked back to say good-night. Then he went out and shut the door behind him.

Anne went back to whipping the lace on to her peach satin petticoat. There was a little clock on the mantelpiece, a bright modern trifle all chromium and crystal. It struck ten with a tinkling chime. It struck eleven. Anne went on sewing for another half hour. Then she got up, folding her work, and went to put it away in her bedroom, not hurrying herself. To anyone watching her she would have been any pretty woman going about the business of tidying up before she went to bed.

When she had put her sewing away she came back to the sitting-room to straighten the chairs and plump up the cushions, going to and fro without haste and without noise. Then she went back to her room and took off her shoes. In her stocking feet she went along to Philip’s door and tried the handle. It turned easily, as she had known that it would. She stood there with the door a hands-breadth open, listening to Philip’s breathing and thinking that she hadn’t left anything to chance. She had tested the door very carefully and could be sure that it wouldn’t give her away. Not that the creak of a hinge or the click of a lock would wake him now. She thought he would have been safe enough even without the tablets, and with them it would take an air raid to shift him. Yet as she stood there, a very faint compunction stirred at the edge of her mood. It had no strength either to change or to deflect it. It was just there, a quite vague feeling about the defencelessness of sleep. In a moment it was gone, caught up with that sense of everything going right for her. Tonight, if ever in her life, she had power in her hand. Other people were there to be used-Philip, Felix, Lyndall, Miss Silver-

She pushed the door wide open and went in. At the dressing-table she switched on a pocket-torch, screening it from the bed. The key-ring lay flung down on the right with a note-case, a handful of coins, a folded handkerchief. It was all quite easy. She picked it up without making a sound and went out of the room, drawing the door to behind her.

In the study she put on the overhead light and sat down to the table. The locked despatch-case was on her left. She pulled it down across the blotting-pad, fitted the smallest of the keys, and threw back the lid. Right on the top was her piece of unbelievable luck-the code-book. She took a long breath, savouring her triumph, full of that sense of power.

Philip Jocelyn did not go directly to his own room at the War Office next morning. With the case he had taken home the night before, he made his way along a number of corridors. In the room he entered, Garth Albany sat writing. He looked up, and received a slight shock. Philip never had much colour, but this morning he looked ghastly-skin bloodless, face drawn, every line deepened and emphasised.

He said, “Well?” and was rather horrified when Philip laughed.

“Is it? Perhaps it is. We’ll see-unless she’s been too clever for us. I was doped last night.”

“What!”

Philip gave a casual nod.

“Undoubtedly. Slept like the dead. I’m not really out of it yet, in spite of cold water and the very excellent breakfast coffee which was provided. It’s a pity Miss Annie Joyce is an enemy agent, because she’s a very good cook. Anyhow she drugged me last night, and what she did after that I am not in a position to say. You’d better get your fingerprint people on to the contents of my case and my keys. I’ve taken care not to touch them, or anything inside or outside the case except the handle. Of course she may have worn gloves, in which case she’s done us down, but I hardly think she’d do that-not in the domestic circle.” He set the case down and dropped a knotted handkerchief on Garth’s blotting-pad. The shape of the keys showed through the linen, the key-chain clinked. With a brief “See you later,” he turned and went out of the room.

Garth Albany felt relief. A beastly business, and Philip was taking it hard.

At a little after one o’clock Lyndall Armitage was in the. drawing-room of Lilla Jocelyn’s flat. It was a charming room, L-shaped, with windows looking east and west so that it caught both the morning and the evening sun. The two west windows faced you as you came in at the door, but the one east window was out of sight round the corner of the L. Lilla’s piano stood there, and at the moment in which the bell rang Pelham Trent had just lifted his hands from the keyboard and swung round upon the piano stool.

Lilla said, “That was lovely.”

If Lyndall had been going to speak, the sound of footsteps in the hall put it out of her head. Her heart beat a little faster, and without meaning to do so she found herself on her feet, moving towards the part of the room which faced the door. Because it was Philip’s step in the hall. She knew it too well not to recognize it now. Not even to herself would she admit how everything in her quickened at the sound. She ought to have stayed with the others-she oughtn’t to have come to meet him-there wasn’t any reason why she shouldn’t come to meet him. These thoughts were all in her mind at the same time, not very clearly defined, and not taking up any time at all. She was shaking a little, she didn’t quite know why, and her thoughts were shaken too. She passed out of sight of the two by the piano, and then the door was opening and Philip was coming into the room. Something came in with him- she didn’t know what it was. It was like cold air coming into a heated room. But the cold was not physical; she felt it in her mind, and she saw it in Philip’s face.