Back Room Girl: By the author of Paul Temple. Francis Durbridge

if by some miracle you did find your way to the exit, the guards wouldn’t let you out without a pass signed by the Chief. We all have to have them. Now, would a cup of tea and a bun preserve us from more of your questions?’

      ‘It’s an idea,’ agreed Roy thankfully. ‘Now you’re being human. I was wondering what I had to do to be offered some real hospitality.’

      Miss Silvers ignored this and pressed a button on the table. In a moment or two a white-jacketed steward entered the cavern through the curtained door.

      ‘You rang, Miss Silvers?’ he said quietly.

      ‘Yes, Tom. Tea for two, please, and make it fairly strong. Our guest here is feeling a trifle faint.’

      Tom glanced at Roy and a shadow of a smile passed over his weather-beaten features. ‘Very good, miss,’ he said, and went out as quietly as he had come in.

      ‘That’s what I call service,’ commented Roy. ‘Where did you get him? The Savoy?’

      ‘Not exactly. Tom was a steward in the Queen Mary before the war. Then he joined up. His first ship was the Rawalpindi. He was torpedoed three times after that, I think. The last time he suffered so much from exposure that he was invalided out. Now he’s here. All the servants and guards here are ex-Servicemen. And very reliable,’ she added significantly.

      Tom entered silently once more and placed a tea-tray on the table. ‘I’ve brought some hot water,’ he said. ‘Do you think you’ll want anything more, Miss Silvers?’

      ‘Thank you, no. I’ll ring if we do. Oh, you might let me know as soon as the Chief gets back, will you?’

      ‘Certainly, miss,’ said Tom, and vanished.

      ‘Nice man, Tom,’ said Miss Silvers, as she poured out tea and passed a cup to Roy; ‘I don’t know what we’d do without him, expecially since Pat disappeared.’

      ‘Pat? Disappeared?’

      ‘Another steward. Went about a week ago without saying anything to anyone. We’re rather worried about him. That’s why the Chief’s been away today. We haven’t replaced him yet. It’s not easy to get people for a job like this. The conditions are so abnormal and they have to be very carefully vetted.’

      ‘Like me, I suppose,’ said Roy with a rueful grin. ‘But do you mean the other steward left without any explanation?’

      ‘Yes, one or two rather odd things have happened round here lately. That’s why we arrange special receptions for curious strangers.’ There was a smile about Miss Silvers’ lips as she said this.

      ‘So I’ve noticed.’ Roy sipped his tea thoughtfully. ‘This is an odd business altogether,’ he said reflectively. ‘A little while ago I was living what I fondly imagined was an idyllic life in a little cove far from the madding crowd. You ought to come and see my chalet, by the way, it knocks spots off this place. I set out for a perfectly innocent walk, get knocked out and dragged into a disused tin mine – at least I thought it was disused – and wake up to find myself being entertained to tea by a very charming hostess in the most unconventional setting you could imagine. You must agree it’s all very unusual. What puzzles me is where I go from here.’

      ‘That’s for the Chief to say, and here he is now.’

       CHAPTER V

       Chief Inspector Leyland Explains

      Miss Silvers rose as a short, rather shabbily dressed, sandy-haired man came into the cavern. Roy uttered a startled exclamation as the man’s face came into the range of the electric light and he saw him clearly. He tried to get up from the bed, but lost his balance and sank back. ‘Well, I’m damned,’ he said. ‘If it isn’t old Wilfred!’

      ‘I gather there isn’t any need to introduce you,’ remarked Miss Silvers to the grinning little man.

      ‘There is not,’ said Roy as ‘old Wilfred’ came over to him and they shook hands.

      ‘And if it isn’t our Roy, in trouble as usual,’ said the newcomer in an unmistakable Yorkshire accent. ‘And how the heck did you find your way in here?’

      ‘I didn’t,’ retorted Roy indignantly. ‘I was knocked out and dragged in. Ask Miss Silvers. She knows all about it.’

      Miss Silvers recapitulated briefly what had happened. ‘Joe hit him a little too hard,’ she concluded, ‘and it was quite a time before he came round.’

      ‘I should have thought you Special Air Service lads were tougher than that,’ said the little man. ‘Nosey-parkering as usual, were you? I thought you’d retired from newspaper work to become a famous author.’

      ‘I had, damn it! I suppose Bill Darkis told you. But can I help it if I go for a stroll and am set on by thugs and vagabonds and heaven knows who? You’re a fine one to talk, anyway, if it comes to that. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in London tracking down criminals.’

      ‘Wilfred’ – Chief Inspector Leyland, to give him his full name, – smiled. ‘I was, I was,’ he said, ‘but the Government found me another little job, and Scotland Yard’s having to carry on without my invaluable services for the time being.’

      Though he was joking when he said ‘invaluable services’, Chief Inspector Leyland was right, as Roy was well aware. They had met on a score of cases which he had been covering for the Tribune and Roy knew him as one of the most astute officers at Scotland Yard. Few equalled, and none surpassed, his knowledge of London’s underworld. His shabby, shambling appearance belied him, for beneath that sandy head was a first-class brain, which Roy also knew had been employed during the war on the side of the counter-espionage branch of the Secret Service. What Roy did not know was how many spies had faced the firing-squad as a result of the little man’s efforts. Was he still doing that kind of work? he wondered. Would that account for this strange reunion?

      ‘Well, come on,’ he said impatiently, ‘how much longer do I have to wait for an explanation? What’s it all about?’

      Leyland looked at Miss Silvers. ‘How much have you told him?’ he asked.

      ‘Not as little as I intended,’ she replied, a trifle sheepishly, ‘but you know what newspapermen are.’

      Leyland smiled. ‘I do, I do,’ he said. He had a habit, which some people found irritating, of repeating the first phrase of a sentence. ‘Especially this one,’ he added.

      ‘Yes, but I never broke a confidence,’ Roy reminded him, ‘so you might as well come clean. You know that if you don’t tell me, I’ll never rest until I find out what it’s all about.’

      ‘I know, I know,’ snapped the Chief Inspector. ‘That’s what’s worrying me, and if it were any routine job you might be able to help us. But this is rather different. It isn’t a matter of cat burglars, safe-cracking, or even murder – yet. It’s something far more important. I’d be for the high jump good and proper if they thought I’d whispered a word of this to anyone, however well I knew him, or however trustworthy and reliable he might be. But I don’t quite see how we can keep you here indefinitely. He hesitated a moment, then added, ‘There’s just a remote chance that you might – I say might – be able to help us.’

      ‘I should damned well think you can’t keep me here indefinitely,’ retorted Roy indignantly. ‘Of all the nerve!’

      ‘All right, all right,’ said the Chief Inspector soothingly, ‘there’s no need to get excited. Well, here goes, though if you so much as breath a word that I’ve told you anything I’ll have your hide. This tin mine has been converted into a secret Government laboratory – at least we thought it was secret – with Miss Silvers in charge of