The Threat of Love

'I'm the store detective,' the big man said in his grating voice, 'We've been watching you on the monitors for the past twenty minutes loitering about, waiting for your chance to do a snatch. We've got it all on film, so don't bother to lie, and we tagged your accomplice too. He won't have got out of the store, don't hope for that. He'll be on his way to the manager's office by now, and he won't have had a chance of switching the stuff to someone else from your gang because we'll have been watching him on the monitor, wherever he went!'

'You've got the wrong person! You're making a mistake!' Caro protested.

'Just come with me, will you, madam?' the detective

merely said.

She struggled angrily. 'Let go of me, you're hurting!'

'Let go of you so that you can bolt for it? I don't think so!' he said.

A little crowd, meanwhile, had gathered, staring. Caro knew she had turned dark red, and she was very tense. From the expression on the faces around her she realised she must look guilty.

'You don't want a scene in public, do you, madam?' asked the detective and, of course, she didn't. He read the look she gave him and smiled, not very pleasantly. Caro did not like him at all, but she had no choice. She had to let him steer her towards the lift.

Once in the lift the man jabbed the button with one hand while he still held her upper arm with the other. As they shot upwards, she pulled herself free, glaring at him while she massaged her arm.

'Being a store detective doesn't give you the right to push customers around. I shall complain to your boss when I see him.'

'If I hadn't insisted that you come with me, would you have come?' he asked her coolly.

'Certainly,' she said. 'If you had asked me politely!'

He laughed. 'Oh, I bet!'

The lift door opened; he propelled her out and along a wide corridor, through a mahogany door into a spacious, discreetly furnished office. A smartly dressed woman sat behind a desk, a telephone in her hand. She gave Caro a cold stare.

'Go straight in,' she said to the store detective. 'The man's in custody. Harry had no trouble with him. There was nothing on him, though; she must have the necklace. I'm just ringing down for Stella to come and strip-search her. The two of them must have been working alone, there doesn't seem to be anyone else.'

'Then he must have been passing it to her—I saw them pull the old trick of knocking into each other. I thought she'd passed it to him, but it must have been the other way round. Never mind. We've got them both.'

'You've got the wrong person!' Caro said again, and the detective grimaced at the woman behind the desk.

'We've heard that before, haven't we?'

'A hundred times!' the woman agreed, her smile contemptuous as she stared at Caro.

'This way,' the detective said to Caro. 'Sorry, I forgot. Would you kindly step this way, madam?' He gestured across the office, and she walked with him towards a door on the other side of the room. The detective knocked on the door.

A deep dark voice curtly said, 'Come in!'

Caro had just seen the name on the door. Her heart sank. Oh, no, she thought—not him! She backed like a frightened horse facing a leap into the unknown, and the detective grabbed her arm with one hand, opened the door with the other and pushed her into the room.

Caro was, by now, completely off balance. She tripped, and ended up face down on a deep-pile carpet.

'Holt! There's no need for that sort of rough stuff, especially with a woman!' the deep voice snapped.

'She tripped, sir!' the store detective hurriedly said.

Caro lifted her head, hair across her eyes, and peered wildly at a pair of highly polished black shoes, at slim, long legs in smoothly tailored dark trousers, at an immaculately cut jacket, a crisp white shirt, a dark grey silk tie, and then at a hard face. A very hard face. A face she recognised at once. Only that morning she had said she wouldn't want to meet its owner on a dark night. Well, it wasn't dark, but she still didn't want to meet Gilham Martell.

He was staring down at her as fixedly. She was glad she did not know what he was thinking. It wouldn't ever be easy to guess, she thought; he had the eyes of a poker player and the mouth of an assassin. Gilham Martell was a very nasty piece of work, almost as nasty as his store detective.

'Get up!' he ordered.

She stayed on her hands and knees, hating him. 'You're going to be sorry about this!' Her voice was shaking with rage.

He bent abruptly; a long-fingered hand fastened on her arm and yanked her to her feet, like a rag doll.