"I'll ring for you if I need a ride out of here," said the Sneaky Spy, and he watched Brin drive out into Burns Road. He had called the orphanage, and they were to expect him at nine o'clock that evening. He was soon engaged in a private conversation with Ingrid, which was not even to be offered to the ears of Kyair.

"I have left the boy out of these revelations for his own benefit," said the Sneaky Spy, "The reason being is that I visited the house of the Exceptionally Naughty One today. As a matter of fact I even got right underneath it."

"And what did you learn?"

"Apart from the fact that he'll never play the Sydney Opera House, I gleaned the knowledge that he has reached a desperate conclusion. He didn't mention it in his private musical confessions, but killing me will be crucial to his plans. Well that's no problem. It's been tried before, and now I'm telling you about it."

"What are his plans?"

"They stem from the fact that he's formed an opinion about our relationship. It's unbreakable. Three cheers to Geoffries for getting that one right. It's the only correct thought that he's finally had in his head in the last two days."

"So he hopes to kill you in order to get at me," said Ingrid.

"I only wish that he did," said the Sneaky Spy, "It would be a lot easier to do something about that. What we really have to accept is that it's finally dawned on him that he can't get at you. So he's planning to make sure that you'll never spend your life making any man happy."

She understood at once what the Sneaky Spy was driving at, and bravely offered a suggestion:

"We could go to the police."

"Well I'm not afraid to confess the illegal way in which I discovered his insanely proclaimed confession, if it would help to save your life, but do you think they could act on such flimsy evidence?"

"No...they couldn't."

"And without wishing to blow too many of my own trumpets, I would have to put my chances of protecting you far above those of the police. Higgins didn't catch one visitor today, and he's not likely to buy any more of this. I'd like to commit a theft and pin it on Colin with a framing worthy of a thousand Sneaky Spies. I'd be saving him from having to live the rest of his life with a murder on his conscience. If he plans to get away with murder - and the sentence for theft is generally lighter than the one for murder - then he would only be getting a lesser portion of what he deserves. I think it's justice," said the Sneaky Spy with a casual but nonetheless committed look.

"No, don't chance it Percy. If anything goes wrong, and the frame up doesn't come off the way you're planning it, then I would hate the thought of you being in prison on my account, darling."

"Ingrid, I have enough conclusive evidence that he plans to murder you - not enough for the law, but enough for any freelance adventurer with the ability to think - and I don't see that society, or even Geoffries himself would benefit from his enjoying freedom from incarceration over the next fifteen years or so. He might even get a good psychiatrist in jail. Then he could be helped and paroled early."

"Percy, you might end up in jail yourself. If it were one of your own Sneaky Spy enemies, I'd hate the chances, but I would accept your right to take them. I won't have your risking a prison sentence on my account, Percy. The mad fool's in love with me. I'm the reason for our problems, not you. So don't make this possible sacrifice, please! I'm not worth that!"

"Ingrid, you are the loveliest ongoing event of my entire life, and I have never entertained any desire to be curt with you; but how can you even suggest that you are not worth it? Let the truth be shared by all of us two in this room. There might indeed have been other Donna Scarlots, but there is only one Ingrid Castlecove. We've been talking about risks. Well you make me happy in an imitable way. I am just not going to risk spending the rest of my life reminding myself that the rejections I would receive from other girls could never measure against my convictions that you far surpassed the lot of those future possible girls I might meet ... before you were taken from me by a homicidal maniac."

"You're really seriously going to do this, aren't you?" she asked.

The only thing he couldn’t tell her was that part of his love for her was because of the way she had eaten him when he was a tiny teenager. It would put an end to all their new giantess vore games.

"Yes I am," said the Sneaky Spy, as he caught the teardrop with the tip of his finger, "and you've heard my reasons for choosing to take what you think is a risk. However such assertions constitute something of an oxymoron, because I could have spent the last five years pulling off robberies the likes of which no policeman would ever have been able to prevent. I have not done that, because I don't think it's right. What's the harm in borrowing somebody's property, and then letting it be found again, as a means of convicting some Exceptionally Naughty One who would otherwise be free to perform a murder which would really upset the law... when it was too late to prevent it? Anybody is risking his personal freedom if he plays these sorts of games with me personally. However the principle here comes from a simple rule of Sneaky thumb, which reads as such: Nobody remains calm, safe, and loaded with liberty after endangering the irreplaceable life of the next time period's Mrs Sneaky Spy. My Christianity forbids me to take the life of our enemy, but - to be sure of preserving the life of his intended victim - he'll just have to be shopped with an awful bit of Trouble from the Sneaky Spy. As to how it shall be done, I'm going to take even you for a deceptive ride, along with the Exceptionally Naughty One and all his Geofflings. This is only so that you won't have to carry the beans around living in fear of a spillage. Even when it's all over, you shall be spared the details of the accomplishment. If you still don't approve, and wish to look for someone else, then - "

"Percy, please stop there!"

The command was so unlike anything he had ever heard from Ingrid in all his years of knowing her, even when she was talking to his shrunken self.

"Thank you," he said mildly.

*          *          *          *

When Brin Decembar had smuggled the Sneaky Spy out of Larmont Orphanage, Ingrid resigned herself to the fact that she would have to wait with patience before she saw him again.

"You darling fool," she thought, "Did I really touch your heart so much that you'd risk my losing you to a prison cell? No, not risk. Yes, I do mean that much to you, but you promised me that you weren't risking anything. I've seen you in action before, and it would make me unworthy of what you're doing, if I began to doubt your chances of success now. Would you go to these lengths if you knew how many tiny folk I’d eaten, or the fact that I even wondered…?”

She was unaware that the irony of his devotion to her was not at all lost on him.

*          *          *          *

"Ingrid," thought the Sneaky Spy, as he pulled the sheets over his body, "I know that you will be safe at Larmont, but this cannot go on. I've always wanted the thrill of borrowing something in a good cause. Now I finally have that cause, and I will do it carefully, Ingrid. For you I will do it very carefully. No matter how enjoyable this becomes, when I do it, I'm not going to turn it into a profitable business. It's merely the means to a safe and satisfactory end ... an end that won't be the end of Ingrid Castlecove. To blazes with police protection and waiting for the Exceptionally Naughty One to hang himself on some other conviction. I had to put a stop to the organised murder of police officials by a rotten apple member of Higgins' own staff! He owes me for that. It's the only reason he saw fit to justify staking my house out for me on the flimsiest of evidence."

The Sneaky Spy's mind was alive with mental hyperactivity. He was keen to conceive the crime and commence its execution. What would he steal? It would have to be small. He wanted to hide it easily. Then he thought about the nature of its final hiding place, and he knew that it would have to be extremely small...

*          *          *          *

"If you have finished your homework, I guess it would be alright for me to keep you company," said Ingrid in response to Kyair's Friday afternoon invitation.

"Then come in, and I can close the door. I would like to know what has been happening with Colin Geoffries."

Kyair soon closed the door.

"We're not going to know. Percy wants it that way. He thinks that it will be safer for us, both legally and physically. I'm rather pleased not to know actually."

"Would you rather talk about something else?"

"Yes please," said Ingrid, "How is Rory getting on?"

Rory was a boy whom Percy had rescued from the violent temper and physical assaults of his widowed father. After some hearings in a children's court, it was decided, with Rory's approval, that he should live at Larmont Orphanage. Percy had introduced the boy to Kyair, and they were friends from then on.

"He's settled in comfortably, and he doesn't miss his father at all. He never even talks about his old life now."

"That's probably a good thing," said Ingrid, "Being bashed about by a member of your own family is well worth forgetting."

*          *          *          *

"All this for a small but valuable ruby which I don't even want myself," thought the Sneaky Spy.