A Hero for Leanda

suggested that the men should help themselves to whisky. At ten, Lord Rankin said it was time he was getting to bed, and the party began to break up. As Conway and Leanda prepared to leave, the police commissioner and his wife closed in on them purposefully.
    Is there any chance you could lunch with us tomorrow, at the club?” Mrs. Baker said. “We’d so much like you to meet some of our friends.”
    Leanda smiled. “It would be very nice,” she said. “Thank you.”
    “Are you living on your boat?”
    “For the moment, yes.”
    “Then I’ll pick you up there at a quarter to twelve. All right?”
    “Lovely,” Leanda said.

    As soon as they were in the governor’s car, with a plate-glass window between themselves and the driver, Conway said, ‘Well, did you learn anything interesting?”
    Leanda shook her head. “Not a thing. They were talking about how expensive servants were, most of the time. What about you?”
    I picked up a thing or two,” Conway said. He recounted in detail the conversation over the port. Leanda listened with horrified fascination.
    God, she said, “how smug and superior they sound!”
    “They were, rather.”
    I honestly don’t think I could have sat through it—I’d have blown up.”
    “Then it’s just as well you retired with the ladies !“
    “What do they expect him to do while he’s here—compose sonnets to them? Of course he gives trouble. Really, they’re insufferable.”
    “This afternoon you thought the governor was charming!”
    “Well, his attitude isn’t.... Folie de grandeur, indeed! Imagine an Englishman saying that of anyone!” She was silent for a moment or two. Then she said, “Mike, we haven’t got very far, have we?”
    “Oh, I don’t know—we’ve made a start. We know Kastella is reasonably free.”
    “We were pretty sure of that before.”
    “Well, we’ve made some useful contacts—and got ourselves another invitation.”
    “Yes, from the commissioner of police! He probably intends to keep an eye on us all the time.”
    “I shouldn’t think so—he hasn’t any reason to be suspicious. You made a hit with him, that’s all. Actually, it may turn out to be rather a good thing—we could hardly start our inquiries under more respectable auspices.”
    “We haven’t even discovered where Kastella is, yet. ‘The other side of the island’ is terribly vague.”
    “It’s a pretty small island. Anyway, we can’t hurry things.”
    “I wish I had your patience,” Leanda said.

    Mrs. Baker turned up at the quay sharp at a quarter to twelve next day. Leanda showed her over Thalia —which she thought most attractive but so tiny—and then they drove to the club, a long low wooden building situated half a mile out of town on a piece of ground carved out of a coconut grove overlooking the sea. Everything about it was as English as loving imitation could make it—the chintz-covered chairs, the racks of magazines, the small library smelling slightly of mildew, the billiard room, the photographs of successful ball-hitting teams on the walls, the sternly worded notices—“It has come to the attention of the committee... !”—and, of course, the bar. There was already a good deal of pre-lunch activity, with a fair cross-section of the island’s wives, husbands and bachelors talking shop and cars, sport and gossip, with a few mild arguments and a great deal of loud laughter. Colonel Baker was waiting to greet his guests, and took them in for drinks. During the next half hour he introduced them to so many new people that even Conway lost track of the faces. Everyone seemed to have heard of their arrival, and everyone seemed delighted to meet them. Conway constantly had his diary out, making a note of invitations for drinks or lunch.
    It looks as though we’ll have to stay longer than a fortnight!” Leanda said, during a brief lull.
    “We shall all take a very poor view if you don’t, Mrs. Cornford,” the colonel told her gallantly. “No one ever comes here for less than two months—and after all, your time’s your own, isn’t it? You must join the club—you’ll meet absolutely everyone here.”
    Leanda said, “Isn’t there any color bar?”
    Baker looked a bit startled. “Well, we don’t actually have any colored chaps in the club, but I wouldn’t call it a color bar—they wouldn’t like it themselves....”
    Conway gave Leanda’s ankle a sharp tap. She said, “No, I suppose not....”
    “Wouldn’t feel