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a detective story, becoming so engrossed that it was not until nearly closing-time that a sudden outbreak of abnormal excitement in the bar restored him to consciousness of his surroundings. Reluctantly abandoning the heroine to the suspicious circumstances in which she had foolishly contrived to entangle herself, he went to see what was happening.
    The commotion, he found, was centred in a pitiful-looking middle-aged man in gamekeeper’s clothes, who had the air of one who had been suddenly and horribly sobered up in the middle of a gay carouse.
    â€˜â€™Ow was I to know it was ’im?’ he kept saying. ‘’Ow was I to know?’
    â€˜Poor old Frank,’ said Myra. ‘He’s afraid they’re going to have him up for murder.’
    Fen asked to be told the cause of Frank’s distress, and Myra embarked willingly on a narrative of characteristic raciness and gusto.
    It appeared that the lunatic, still at large, had manifested himself again. Mother-naked as before, he had jumped out at a very ancient spinster called Miss Gibbons as she was walking home from an evening spent with a great-nephew and his wife at the other end of the village. In this emergency Miss Gibbons, however, had despite age and infirmity displayed a markedly aggressive spirit; of sterner stuff than Mrs Hennessy, she had seized the lunatic by the hair and shaken him ferociously to and fro until, recovering from his surprise, he had torn himself away and fled.
    Thereupon Miss Gibbons had let out an eldritch shriek which brought half the village, including Constable Sly, to her assistance.
    Constable Sly had at once taken charge. He had enlisted the help of Frank the gamekeeper, as being the possessor of firearms, and the two of them had set off in pursuit, Frank carrying a loaded revolver. They had traced the lunatic up on to the dingy nine-hole golf-course which serves the neighbourhood, and had thought they saw him disappear into one of those huts which are erected on golf-courses to shelter golfers from sudden showers; and Sly had instructed Frank to remain on guard outside while he, Sly, went in to make the capture.
    As it had happened, they had been mistaken, and the lunatic was not there; after a short search, therefore, Sly had emerged from the hut empty-handed. Unluckily, however, Frank the gamekeeper had spent the earlier part of the evening celebrating some undefined stroke of good fortune; and sighting Sly’s unidentifiable form on its way out from the hut he had erroneously assumed that this was the lunatic, had levelled his revolver in an excess of alcoholic enthusiasm; and had shot Sly in the leg. Sly had been removed, in an unforgiving state of mind, to the hospital in Sanford Morvel, and Frank had proceeded to ‘The Fish Inn’, where he was now engaged in monotonous self-justification.
    â€˜Â . . . might ’a’ knocked Will out,’ he was saying, ‘and ’a’ bin escapin’. What I says is, Will oughter ’ave given me a sign, like. Whistled, or that. ’Ow was I to know it was ’im?’
    However, there is always something pleasing to us – as La Rochefoucauld has remarked – in the misfortunes of others. The inn’s customers were rather ribald than sympathetic, and the luckless Frank had to endure a good deal of facetiousness, for which he compensated by drinking deeply at other people’s expense. Presently Myra, tiring of his reiterated complaint, called time. By slow degrees the company dispersed. And Fen, who was by no means immune from the application of La Rochefoucauld’s pejorative law, departed contentedly to bed, where he dreamed the whole night through about a naked lunatic pursuing Mr Judd in and out among the Doric columns of a Greek temple. Psycho-analytically (he decided later) it was an improvement on the afternoon’s effort.

CHAPTER 8
    As on the previous morning, he was awakened promptly at seven by the