He went into the bedroom at the rear, poured himself a drink and stood on the verandah looking across the small strip of rough grass that was the garden. A loose board creaked and he turned and saw Suwon, Mr. Li’s secretary, coming up the steps.

She was perhaps twenty and her skin had that creamy look peculiar to Eurasian women, her lips an extra fullness that gave her a faintly sensual air. Her scarlet dress was of heavy red silk, slashed on either side above the knee, and moulded her ripe figure.

He grinned crookedly and raised his glass. “Surprise, surprise. I thought you’d be at the party.”

“I will be later,” she said. “But I wanted to see you.”

“Now that’s most flattering.”

He moved close and she held a hand against his chest. “Please, Jack, this is serious. The wife of Sabal, the ferryman, has just been to see me. She’s scared out of her wits.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“They’ve been hiding a wounded terrorist at their house for three days now, under the usual threats. He was shot in that patrol clash on the other side of the river last week. His friends took him to Sabals house because of its isolation. You know where it is?”

Gregson's stomach was hollow with excitement and when he put down his glass his hand was shaking. “About half a mile upriver. So they’ve decided to hand him over?”

She shrugged. “If the man doesn’t have medical treatment soon he’ll die. Sabal is a Buddhist. He couldn’t let that happen.”

"You’ve told no one else?”

She shook her head. “I’ve no desire to become a target. You know how easily these things leak out. That’s why I came the back way.”

He buckled on his belt and revolver. "No one will know who tipped me off, I promise you that.”

“It’s Sabal and his family I’m really worried about.”

“No need to be. I’ll only take a couple of men with me. Make it look like a routine call.” He kissed her lightly on the mouth. “You’d better get going. They’ll be looking for you at dinner. And not a word about this to anyone. I’d like to surprise the Colonel.”

He went out through the other room and she heard his voice raised as he called to the duty corporal, A few moments later the Land Rover drove away. She stood there, a shadow slanting across her eyes like a mask. It was as if she were waiting for something. Only when the sound of the engine had finally died into the distance did she turn and walk away.

A moth fluttered despairingly beside the oil lamp and shrivelled in the heat. What was left of it fluttered to the table. Mr. Li brushed it away and reached for the decanter. It was obvious that he had European blood in him. His eyes lifted slightly at the corners, but they were shrewd and kindly, the lips beneath the straight nose well formed and full of humour.

“More brandy, Mrs. Hume?”

She was in her early forties, her greying hair cut short in the current fashion, still attractive in her simple print dress, a kashmir shawl around her shoulders against the cool of the evening.

She pushed her glass across and Mr. Li continued, “You have no idea of the pleasure it gives me to entertain a British Member of Parliament in my own home.”

“I’m afraid you’re a little out of date, Mr. Li,” she answered lightly as Suwon came in with the coffee. “I’m no longer interested in politics. Simply a working journalist on an assignment.”

“To discover for yourself the state of things in the border country?” Mr. Li smiled. “How fortunate that Colonel Malory agreed to accept my hospitality during his stay. I am sure there can be no greater authority on the troubled times through which we are passing.”

“I’ve already seen something of Colonel Mallory’s methods,” Mary Hume said coldly, and turned to Mallory. who sat at one end of the long table in a beautifully tailored drill uniform, the medal ribbons and S.A.S. wings above his left pocket a splash of colour in the lamplight. “I drove through a village called Pedak about ten miles south of here on the way in. Every house burned to the ground on your orders. Women and children homeless and the rains due.”

Suwon leaned over Mallory’s shoulder to pour coffee into his cup and he was aware of her fragrance. “One of my patrols was ambushed in Pedak two days ago. Four men killed and two wounded. The villagers could have warned them. They didn’t.”

“Because they were afraid,” she said angrily. “Surely that’s obvious. The Communist guerrillas must have forced them to keep silent with threats.”

“Quite right,” Mallory replied calmly. “That’s why I burned their houses. Next time they’ll think twice.”

“But you’re giving them an impossible choice,” she said. “To betray their own countrymen.”

“Something people like you never seem to get straight. The men who were ambushed and killed, my soldiers, were Malays. The guerrillas who killed them are Chinese.”

“Not all of them.”

“Some are Malayan Chinese, I wouldn’t argue on that point, but the majority are Chinese Communists, trained and armed by the Army of the People’s Republic and infiltrated into Malaya from Thailand.”

“What Colonel Mallory says is quite true, Mrs. Hume,” Mr. Li put in. “These terrorists are bad people. They have made things very difficult for us in this area.”

“For business, you mean,” she said acidly.

“But of course.” Mr. Li was not at all put out. “Many of the great rubber estates have virtually gone out of business and things will soon be as bad in the timber trade. At the mill my workers are already on half-time. These are the people who really suffer, you know. Two weeks ago the Catholic mission at Kota Banu was attacked. The priest-in-charge was away at the time, but two nuns and thirteen young girls were killed.”

“You’re wasting your time, Li,” Mallory said. “That isn’t the sort of story Mrs. Hume wants to hear. That rag of hers usually prints items like that in the bottom left-hand comer of page seven.”

He picked up his brandy and walked out on the open verandah, aware of Li’s voice raised in apology behind him. In the gathering darkness beyond the river the jungle started to come alive, tree-frogs setting the air vibrating, while howler monkeys challenged each other, swinging through the trees, and through it all the steady, pulsating beat of the crickets.

At his shoulder Mary Hume said in a dry, matter-of-fact voice: “They’re saying in Singapore that you executed your prisoners during the Kelantang operation. Is it true?”

“I was hard on the heels of another gang. I needed every man I had.” Mallory shrugged. “Prisoners would have delayed me.”

“And now there’s to be an enquiry. They’ll kick you out, you know.”

He shrugged. “Isn’t that what you want?”

She frowned. “You don’t like me, do you, Colonel Mallory?”

“Not particularly.”

“May I ask why? I’m only doing my job.”

“As I remember, that was the excuse you offered in Korea when you and one or two choice specimens like you accepted an invitation from the Chinese to see what things were really like over on that side.”

“I see now,” she said, and her voice died away in a long sigh.

"You wrote some excellent articles on how good the prison camps were,” Mallory said. “How well we were all treated. I read them after I was released. Of course, they never showed you over my camp, Mrs. Hume, which is hardly surprising. Around about the time you were starting your conducted tour I was doing six months in a rather small bamboo cage. As a matter of fact, about twenty of us were. A salutary experience, particularly as winter was just beginning.”

“I reported the facts as I saw them/ she said calmly.

“People like you always do.” He swallowed about half of his brandy and went on: “One thing really does interest me. Why has it always got to be your own country? Why is it never the other side? I mean, what exactly is eating away at your guts?”