Pettifer had just time to thrust away the envelope with the cuttings into a drawer before she came into the room with Dick.

She had been forced to leave the three men together, but she had dreaded it.

During that one hour of absence she had lived through a lifetime of terror and anxiety.

What would Thresk tell them?
What was he now telling them?
She was like one waiting downstairs while a surgical operation is being performed in the theatre above.

She had hurried Dick back to Little Deeding, and when she came into the room her eyes roamed round in suspense from Thresk to Hazlewood, from Hazlewood to Pettifer.