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cats and dogs, it is,” added Mrs. Dobson, “and he’s ever so wet. Sopping wet.”
    Another mysterious American visitor? “Didn’t he give his name?” Daisy demanded.
    “No, madam. I ast him, and he looked behind him, sort of shifty like, and said he better not tell. So I shut the door on him.”
    “Very wise,” said Tommy.
    “Shall I tell him to go away, madam?”
    “Heavens no!” Daisy started to get up. “I’ll go and see who it is.”
    Alec put out his hand to stop her. “Stay here. I’ll go. You made friends with some pretty strange people over there.”
    “So did you,” she retorted as he went out, followed by Tommy.
    Alec had told her some rather odd stories about the director of the new Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, with whom he’d briefly worked. Judging by the peculiar behaviour of the man on the doorstep, he could well be one of Hoover’s agents. He had claimed to know both of them, though, and events had prevented her joining Alec in Washington, D.C.
    So much had happened in her life since the American trip that it seemed like aeons ago. But come to think of it, she had met one FBI man, and he, of all people, might conceivably turn up on their doorstep without notice, sopping wet, and refuse to give his name.
    “Wait, Alec! I shan’t be a minute,” she excused herself to Madge.
    “I’m coming, too. You don’t think I’d miss the excitement, do you?”
    They went after the men.
    Alec had his hand on the chain, about to unhook it and open the door, when he hesitated.
    “What is it?” Pearson asked.
    “Probably nothing. You may have read reports from America about the rise of large criminal gangs, fuelled by the vast sums to be made by evading Prohibition. It’s been in the
Times
, I think.”
    “Small-time hoodlums—mostly Italian, Irish, and Jewish, aren’t they?—joining together into well-organised groups, leading to a rising level of violence. There were some pretty virulent letters about the idiocy of the Volstead Act. It’s unenforceable over here, though, nothing to do with Scotland Yard.”
    “Bootlegging, no, but the violent crimes are extraditable offences. Not long ago, the FBI asked us to collar an Irish fugitive, an American with family in Dublin, and I got landed with the job.”
    “Because of your American expertise? So you think someone’s out for blood because you arrested—”
    “Actually, we didn’t arrest him. He got away to the Irish Free State. But—”
    “Oh come on, darling,” said Daisy, reaching past him to open the door. “I bet I know who it is.” She peered through the three-inch gap allowed by the chain. The electric light was on in the porch. She saw a huddled, dripping figure of misery, who raised his head hopefully, revealing spattered horn-rimmed glasses, and lifted his trilby. “I knew it, it’s Mr. Lambert. Just a minute, Mr. Lambert!” She closed the door and unfastened the chain.
    “Lambert? Who …? Oh, your watch-sheep.” Alec had not held a high opinion of Lambert even before the youthful agent had abandoned them somewhere in the middle of the United States. “I suppose we’d better take him in.” Sighing, he opened the door.
    “Darling,” Madge said to Daisy, “I’m simply dying to hear all about it!”
    Half an hour later, Lambert was ensconced in a chair by the fire, the damp change of clothes from his bag steaming gently, as was the glass of whisky toddy in his hand. Judging by the rate at which the latter was disappearing, he was no great devotee of Prohibition.
    Daisy decided to offer coffee rather than a refill.
    While the American was changing, she had told Madge a bit about their mutual adventures in the States. Subsequently, Tommy had tried, without success, to persuade his wife it was time they went home. She gazed in fascination at the American.
    Alec stood leaning against the mantelpiece, tamping tobacco in his pipe, frowning down at Lambert. “All right,” he said, “now let’s