"You're right for the first time tonight. God, how I hate women!"
"Sally, you don't really know how to open safes, do you?" asked Helen, forgetting her troubles in surprise.
"No, not offhand. I should have to look it up. Of course, I know about soup."
"What sort of soup?" inquired Neville. "If we're going to talk gastronomy I can be quite intelligent, though seldom inspired."
"Ass. Not that kind of soup. The stuff you blow open safes with. I forget exactly what it's made of, but it's an explosive of sorts."
"Is it really?" said Neville. "What lovely fun! Won't it go big with the policeman in the hall?"
"I wasn't thinking of using it, even if I knew how to make it, which I don't."
"That must be your weak woman's nature breaking through the crust, darling. Get the better of it, and don't stop at the safe. Blow the whole house up, thus eliminating the policeman."
"Have a good laugh," said Sally. "After all, you aren't in this jam, are you?" She got up, and began to stride about the room. "Well, let's face it! We can't open the safe, and we don't know how to get by the policeman. In fact, we're futile. But if I created this situation in a book I could think of something for the book-me to do. Why the devil can't I think of something now?"
Neville betrayed a faint interest. "If we were in one of your books, we should all of us have much more nerve than we really have, to start with."