Alan answered, 'The special inquiry is to be held at four o'clock. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've a lot to do before then.'

Disengaging himself from the group, he moved away with Tom Lewis.

Out of the reporters' hearing Alan asked, 'What was that about Kramer?'

'Nothing really. He was just in a hurry to get to the can. While I was there I hung out beside him and for a minute or two he seemed almost in pain. I figured the poor bastard has some kind of prostate trouble.'

It explained Edgar Kramer's restlessness in court, the obvious distress towards the end. The fact was insignificant; all the same, Alan filed it away mentally.

Walking along, they had come to the wide stone stairway leading to the main floor below.

A soft voice behind them said, 'Mr Maitland, could you answer one more question?'

'I already explained…' Alan turned, then stopped. 'All I wanted to know,' Sharon Deveraux said, her deep eyes innocent, 'was where are you going to lunch?'

Startled and pleased, Alan asked, 'Where did you spring from?'

'Spring is the word,' Tom said. He was looking at Sharon's hat, a wispy affair of velvet and net veiling. 'You remind me of it.'

'I was in court,' Sharon smiled. 'I snuck in at the back. I didn't understand it all, but I thought Alan was wonderful, didn't you?'

'Oh, sure,' Tom Lewis said. 'Of course, he just happened to have the judge in his pocket, but he was wonderful, all right.' 'Aren't lawyers supposed to be responsive?' Sharon said.

'No one's answered my question about lunch.'

'I hadn't planned anything,' Alan said, then brightened. 'Right by our office we could offer you a nice line in pizza pie.'

Together they began walking down the stairs, Sharon between them.

'Or streaming, creamy spaghetti,' Tom urged. 'With oozy hot meat sauce – the kind that trickles out both corners of your mouth and meets in rivulets at the chin.'

Sharon laughed. 'Some day I'd love to. What I really came to say, though, is that Granddaddy wondered if you could join him. He'd very much like to hear from you directly how things are going.'

The prospect of accompanying Sharon anywhere was enticing. All the same, Alan looked doubtfully at his watch.

'It needn't take long,' Sharon assured him. 'Granddaddy has a suite in the Georgia. He keeps it for when he's downtown, and he's there now.'

'You mean,' Tom asked curiously, 'he rents a suite there all the time?'

'I know.' Sharon nodded. 'It's dreadfully extravagant and

I'm always telling him so. Sometimes it goes for weeks without being used.'

'Oh, I wouldn't worry about that,' Tom told her airily. 'I'm just sorry I've never thought of it myself. Only the day before yesterday I was caught in a shower downtown with just a drugstore to go into.'

Sharon laughed again. At the foot of the stairs they halted.

For an instant Tom Lewis switched his glance between the faces of the other two: Sharon, lighthearted, unself-conscious;

Alan, at the moment serious, thoughtful, with a part of his mind still back in the courtroom where this morning's hearing had been held. And yet for all the outward difference, Tom Lewis thought, there was a warm affinity between the two. He suspected they could care about the same things. He wondered if they were aware of it yet.

Remembering his wife at home, pregnant, Tom gave an inward nostalgic sigh for carefree, single days.

'I'd love to come,' Alan said, meaning it. He took Sharon's arm. 'But do you mind if we hurry a bit? I have to be at that inquiry this afternoon.' There was just enough time, he decided – as a matter of courtesy – to fill Senator Deveraux in on the background of events so far.

Sharon asked, 'You'll join us as well, Mr Lewis, won't you?'

Tom shook his head. 'Thanks all the same, but this isn't my show. I'll walk to the hotel with you, though.'

With Alan and Tom on either side of the Senator's granddaughter, they left the echoing lobby of the Supreme Court Building by the Hornby Street side door. The cold of the narrow cavernous street outside was a sharp, biting contrast to the building's warm interior. A bitter blast of wind caught, and for a moment held them, and Sharon pulled her sable-trimmed coat tightly around her. She had a sense of pleasure at Alan's nearness.

'The weather's from the sea,' Tom said. There was a sidewalk excavation ahead and he led the way, jaywalking through traffic, to the northwest side of Hornby, turning towards West Georgia. 'It must be the coldest day of winter.'

With one hand Sharon was holding her impractical hat tightly. She told Alan, 'Every time I think of the sea I think of our stowaway, and what it must be like never going ashore. Is the ship as bad as the newspapers say?' He answered curtly, 'Worse, if anything.' 'Shall you mind very much – I mean really mind – if you don't win?'

With a vehemence that surprised himself Alan answered, 'I shall mind like hell. I shall wonder what kind of rotten, stinking country I belong to which can turn away someone homeless like this: a good man, young, who'd be an asset…'

Tom Lewis asked quietly, 'Are you sure about being an asset?'

'Yes.' Alan sounded surprised. 'Aren't you?'

'No,' Tom said. 'I don't think I am.'

'Why?' It was Sharon's question. They had come to West Georgia Street, waited for the lights, then crossed on green. 'Tell me why,' Sharon insisted. 'I don't know,' Tom said. They re-crossed Hornby, reached the Georgia Hotel and stopped, sheltering a little from the wind by the front entrance door. There was a dampness in the air which spoke of rain to come. 'I don't know,' Tom repeated. 'It isn't something you can put a finger on. A sort of instinct, I guess.'

Alan asked abruptly, 'What makes you feel that way?'

'When I served the captain's order nisi I talked to Duval. I asked you if I could meet him, remember?'

Alan nodded. 'Well, I did, and tried to like him. But I had a feeing there was a flaw somewhere; a weakness. It was almost as if he had a crack down the middle – maybe not his own fault, maybe something his background put there.' 'What kind of a crack?' Alan frowned. 'I told you it wasn't something I could be specific about.

But I had a feeling that if we get him ashore and make him an immigrant, he'll come apart in pieces.'

Sharon said, 'Isn't that all rather vague?' She had a feeling of defensiveness, as if something Alan cared about were being assailed.

'Yes,' Tom answered. 'It's why I haven't mentioned it till now.'

'I don't think you're right,' Alan said shortly. 'But even if you are it doesn't change the legal situation – his rights and all the rest.'

'I know,' Tom Lewis said. 'That's what I keep telling myself.' He pulled his coat collar tighter, preparing to turn away. 'Anyhow, good luck this afternoon!'

The substantial double doors of the twelfth-floor hotel suite were open as Alan and Sharon approached, along a carpeted corridor, from the elevator. All the way up, from the moment they had left Tom Lewis in the street below, he had had an exciting awareness of their closeness to each other. It still persisted as, through the doorway of the suite, Alan could see an elderly uniformed waiter transferring the contents of a room-service trolley – apparently a buffet luncheon – to a white-clothed table in the room's centre.

Senator Deveraux was seated in an upholstered wing chair, his back to the doorway, facing the harbour view which the centre window of the suite's living-room commanded. At the sound of Sharon's and Alan's entry he turned his head without rising.

'Well, Sharon my dear, my compliments to you for successfully ensnaring the hero of the hour.' The Senator offered Alan his hand. 'Allow me to congratulate you, my boy, on a most remarkable success.'