The invitation was not immediately accepted, and in the silence that followed they heard Hersey Amblington come downstairs into the hall and call Mrs. Compline —

“Sandra! Where are you? Sandra!” They heard an answering voice and in a moment or two the front doors slammed.

Mandrake limped about the room inwardly cursing Jonathan Royal, Chloris Wynne, and himself. Most of all, himself. Why had he given himself away to this girl who did not even trouble to simulate sympathy, who did not find even so much as a pleasing tang of irony in his absurd story, who felt merely a vague and passing interest, a faint insensitive amusement? He realized abruptly that it was because she made so little of it that he wanted to tell her. An attitude of sympathetic understanding would have aggravated his own morbid speculations. She had made little of his ridiculous obsession, and for the first time in his life, quite suddenly, he saw it as a needless emotional extravaganza.

“You’re perfectly right, of course,” he said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“You needn’t think I’ll shrink from you on account of your name, and I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Not even Nicholas Compline?”

“Certainly not Nicholas Compline. At the moment I never want to see a Compline again. You needn’t think you’re the only one to feel sick at yourself. What about me and the Complines? Getting engaged to William on the rebound from Nicholas.”

“And continuing to fall for Nicholas’ line of stuff?”

“Yes. All right! I’ll admit it. Up to an hour ago I knew Nicholas was faithless, horrid-idle, a philanderer, a he-flirt— all those things, and not many brains into the bargain. But as you say, I fell for his line of stuff. Why? I don’t know. Haven’t you ever fallen for a little bit of stuff? Of course you have. But when we do it, you hold up your hands and marvel.”

Through Mandrake’s mind floated the thought that not so long ago he had considered himself in much the same light in relation to Chloris. He began to feel ashamed of himself.

“What does attract one to somebody like Nicholas?” Chloris continued. “I don’t know. He’s got ‘It,’ as they say. Something in his physical make-up. And yet I’ve often gone all prickly and irritated over his physical tricks. He does silly things with his hands and he’s got a tiresome laugh. His idea of what’s funny is too drearily all on one subject. He’s a bit of a cat, too, and bone from the eyes up if you try to talk about anything that’s not quite in his language. And yet one more or less went through one’s paces for him; played up to his barn-door antics. Why?”

“Until an hour ago, you said.”

“Yes. I met him in the hall when he was going. He was in a blue funk. That tore it. I suppose the barndoor hero loses his grip when he loses his nerve. Anyway, I’m cured of Nicholas.”

“Good.”

“You know, I’m quite certain that Dr. Hart did think you were Nicholas and shoved you in the pond. I think Nicholas was right about that. We ought to be making no end of a hullabaloo, staying in the same house with a would-be murderer, and all we do is let down our back hair and talk about our own complexes. I suppose it’ll be like that in the air raids.”

“Nicholas was making a hullabaloo, anyway.”

“Yes, I’m afraid he’s a complete coward. If he’d brazened it out and stayed I daresay I shouldn’t have been cured, but he scuttled away and that wrecked it. I wonder if the Lisse feels the same.”

“Poor Nicholas,” said Mandrake. “But I’m glad he didn’t stay.”

“WHAT’S THAT?”

Chloris scrambled to her feet. She and Mandrake stood stock-still gaping at each other. The hall was noisy with voices, Mrs. Compline scolding, Jonathan explaining, Hersey Amblington asking questions. It went on for some seconds and then Mandrake limped to the door and threw it open.

Outside in the hall was a group of five: Jonathan, Mrs. Compline, Hersey, William, and, standing apart, bedraggled, patched with snow, white-faced and furtive, Nicholas. Mandrake turned and stared at Chloris.

“So now, what?” he asked.

With the return of Nicholas the house-party entered upon a new phase. From then onwards little attempt was made by anybody to pretend there was nothing wrong with Jonathan Royal’s week-end. Jonathan himself, after a half-hearted effort to treat the episode as a mere inconvenient delay, fluttered his hands, surveyed the apprehensive faces of his guests, and watched them break away into small groups. Nicholas muttered something about a bath and change and followed his mother upstairs. Dr. Hart and Madame Lisse, who had come out of the boudoir on the arrival of the outdoors’ party, returned to it; Mandrake and Chloris returned to the smoking-room. The others trailed upstairs to change.

Darkness came with no abatement of the storm. A belated pilot of the Coastal Command, who had flown off his map, battled over Cloudyfold through a driving misery of snow and, for a fraction of time, passed through the smoke from Jonathan’s chimneys. Peering down, he discerned the vague shapes of roofs and pictured the warmth and joviality of some cheerful week-end party. Just about cocktail-time, he thought — and was gone over the rim of Cloudyfold.

It was cocktail-time down at Highfold. Jonathan ordered the drinks to be served in the drawing-room. Mandrake joined him there. He was filled with a strange lassitude — the carry-over, he supposed, from half-drowning. His thoughts clouded and cleared alternately. He was glad of the cocktail Jonathan brought him,

“After all,” Jonathan said as they waited, “we’ve got to meet at dinner, so we may as well assemble here. What am I to do with them, Aubrey?”

“If you can prevent them from getting at each other’s throats, you will have worked wonders. Jonathan, I insist on your telling me. Who do you suppose tried to drown me, and who do you suppose they thought I was?”

“It’s an interesting point. I must confess, Aubrey, that I am now persuaded that an attack was made.”

“Thank you. If you had felt—”

“I know, I know. I agree that you could not have been mistaken. I also agree that whoever made the attempt believed it to be made upon someone other than yourself. Now, let us, perfectly cold-bloodedly, examine the possibilities. You wore a cloak, and for this reason might have been taken for Nicholas, for Hart, or for myself. If you were mistaken for Nicholas then we must suppose that the assailant was Hart, who resents his attentions to Madame Lisse and who threatened him, or William who resents his attentions to Miss Chloris, or possibly Miss Chloris herself, whose feelings for Nicholas—”

“Don’t be preposterous!”

“Eh? Ah well, I don’t press it. If you were mistaken for Hart, then, as far as motive goes, the assailant might have been Nick himself—”

“Nicholas knew Hart was indoors. He saw him looking out of the bedroom window.”

“He might have supposed Hart had hurried down by the shorter route.”

“But I swear Nicholas recognized me through the pavilion window, and over and above all that, he knew I had the cloak.”

“I agree that Nicholas is unlikely. I am examining motive only. Who else had motive, supposing you were thought to be Hart?”

“Madame Lisse?”

“There, we cannot tell. What are their relations? Could Madame have risen from her bed and picked her way down to the pavilion without being seen by anybody? And why, after all, should she do so? She, at least, could not have known anyone was going down singly or otherwise.”

“She might have seen me from her window.”

“In which case she would have realized that you were yourself, and not Hart. No, I think we may dismiss Madame as a suspect. There remains Sandra Compline.”

“Good God, why Mrs. Compline?”