There was a wooden thunk just to my right, and I swivelled around to see that Alice had withdrawn her penknife from her pocket and slammed it blade-first into the rickety table. Her face was paper-white with rage, staring at Dacre with a red-tinged glare. She stood up suddenly, knocking her almost- empty pint glass over, and I grabbed her wrist and yanked her back down.
‘Stop. You can’t kill him until we have the missing pages.’ I swallowed the addition ofor even after that. I had to give her hope of a release for her murderous rage. ‘Let me handle this.’
As I approached the bar, Dacre didn’t even look up – he was too engaged in his conversation with the barmaid. I cleared my throat.
‘Professor Dacre?’
He looked up irritably. ‘Can’t you see I’m talking to –’
His vexation vanished in an instant when he saw what I was brandishing in my hand: the floppy disk labelled SOCIETY.
I smiled sweetly. ‘Perhaps we’d better talk in private.’