Run! by Patricia Wentworth

said,
    â€œAll right—I’m here—I was just thinking. You’re sure it’s important?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œVery well—just this once. We oughtn’t to meet, you know. Or you don’t know, but—we oughtn’t to.”
    James took no notice of this.
    â€œWhere shall we meet?” he said.
    â€œI’m supposed to be going to a dance. If I start early and arrive late, no one will be any the wiser—at least I hope not.”
    â€œWell?”
    â€œI’d better come to you. You’re in Gertrude Lushington’s flat, aren’t you? I’ll take a taxi to the corner, and you can meet me there at a quarter to ten.”
    â€œI’ll be there,” said James.

XIII
    Corbyn Mews opens on to Little Corbyn Street, and Little Corbyn Street runs into Hinton Road. The houses in Hinton Road, old-fashioned, inconvenient, and five storeys high, back on to the Mews. They have sunless basements and horrible long back yards, by courtesy gardens, which are the fighting-ground of every cat in the neighbourhood.
    James walked from the corner fifty paces down Hinton Road and back to the corner and fifty paces down Little Corbyn Street. It was a bitter night with a cold wind blowing. Coming or going, the wind appeared to meet him full. The air smelt of frost. It was too early for the full chorus of the cats—too early, and perhaps too cold.
    James hoped that Sally wasn’t going to be late. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch and found that it was just a quarter to ten. Before he had time to pull down his cuff a taxi drew up in front of the corner house. James was a dozen paces away. He stood still where he was in the shadow. He watched Sally get out and pay the driver. He watched the taxi move off and disappear up the road. Then he came up quickly and said,
    â€œI was just wondering if you were going to be late.”
    â€œBrr!” said Sally. “Isn’t it bitter? I was here first, James Elliot.”
    â€œNo—I’ve been here ten minutes. Come along. I thought the taxi man had better not see me—just in case, you know.”
    Sally laughed under her breath.
    â€œHow discreet! Go right up to the top of the class! Where’s this place of Gertrude’s?”
    â€œIn here. It’s only a step.”
    Sally said, “Brr!” again.
    James felt an extraordinary sense of pride as he opened the door and ushered her up a ladder-like stair into his cousin Gertrude’s studio. It was at any rate warm—an anthracite stove saw to that—and altogether it wasn’t too bad if you didn’t look too hard at the pictures. There was a Persian carpet on the floor, and some odd stripy curtains from Georgia, or Caucasia, or some other off-the-map sort of place where Gertrude had just missed coming to a sticky end. The stair came up through a hole in the floor, because the studio had once been a hayloft. James reflected that he and Sally seemed destined to meet in haylofts. He shut down the trap-door to keep out the draught, folded the rug back over it, and offered Sally a shapeless old red leather chair which he knew to be comfortable.
    â€œLovely and warm,” she said. “My goodness—what’s that?”
    James said gloomily, “It’s called Eve.”
    Sally gazed fixedly at the gaunt, grey female with the apple. Then she looked at the lobster in the left-hand corner and said,
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œA lobster.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œAsk Gertrude.”
    â€œDo you think she’s going to eat it? It’s already cooked.”
    â€œIt’s symbolic. The blue tadpole thing in the other corner is symbolic too. Gertrude told me so.”
    â€œI don’t wonder Gertrude can’t stay at home.” She pulled her chair round so that she didn’t have to look at Eve.
    James took the other chair, the one you had to sit in carefully because the off front leg was