ain’t Nicky! I just seen you come out of Moriarty’s as I was passing.” (She had seen him go in an hour before and had waited a patient hour in the drug store across the street.) “What you doing around loose this hour the day, anyway?”

“I’m off ‘safternoon.”

“Are yuh? So’m I.” Nicky said nothing. Miss Bauers shifted from one plump silken leg to the other. “What you doing?”

“Oh, nothing much.”

“So’m I. Let’s do it together.” Miss Bauers employed the direct method.

“Well,” said Nick, vaguely. He didn’t object particularly. And yet he was conscious of some formless programme forming mistily in his mind —