“What was the real trouble?” he enquired. “Not our friend Mr. Wheatley?”
Melina nodded, amused by his perception.
“I am afraid so,” she said. “Mrs. Schuster took a liking to him.”
“And he took a liking to you,” the stranger added. “Oh, well, it’s a story that I seem to have heard before somewhere.”
“Everything seems like a Fairy tale at the moment,” Melina said. “Mrs. Schuster, Ambrose Wheatley and you! You are none of you real characters. Either you are all mad and I am sane or I am raving and should be locked up, I really don’t know which!”
“Does it matter?” the man on the bed asked. “You’re in the middle of an adventure, that’s all. Isn’t it rather better than hammering a typewriter in Whitehall or wherever you did it before?”
“Hampstead,” Melina said automatically, then, glancing
