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matter,” mumbled Mr Todhunter in confusion.
    3
    Mr Todhunter bought a revolver, with surprisingly little difficulty, at a gunsmith’s in the Strand. It was an old army revolver, a heavy weapon firing a .45 bullet, and the salesman assured him it was no more than shop soiled; it had never been used in action. He promised to give it a good cleanup during the next day or two, for Mr Todhunter could not take the weapon away with him. There were forms to be filled out, for registration in the usual way; and Mr Todhunter could not obtain possession until a firearms certificate had been issued.
    It is doubtful whether the authorities, in devising this means of delaying a bargain of this kind, were actually influenced by the consideration that it is better not to allow an angry man to walk into a shop and walk straight out again with a lethal weapon; but whether they did or not, the effect upon Mr Todhunter was salutary. For by the time the revolver was actually delivered, which was nearly a week later, Mr Todhunter had had time to think things over. And by the very process his indignation had lessened. Similarly the notion that he, Lawrence Butterfield Todhunter, had actually planned to murder in cold blood a complete stranger, out of really nothing more than sheer officiousness, had grown correspondingly more fantastic.
    To put it shortly, Mr Todhunter had determined, days before the revolver was even delivered, that he would be shut of the whole affair; and, looking at the unpleasant weapon when it arrived, he considered himself lucky to have come to his senses.
    That was on the Friday morning.
    Precisely at fifteen minutes past six the next evening Edith brought into the library the usual copy of the Evening Mercury, neatly folded on a salver. The headline on the front page caught Mr Todhunter’s eye even before he had taken the paper into his hands. The result, for the next half an hour, was something like chaos.
    â€œHeaven bless us,” panted Mrs Greenhill to Edie when they had cleared away at last the hot water, the cold compresses, the ice, the sal volatile, the brandy, the drops, the basins, the towels, the eau de cologne, the hot-water bottles, the blankets, the burnt feathers and everything else, useful or useless, that two distracted women could frenziedly collect for an employer with a face like chalk and blue lips. “Heaven save us all, that was a near thing, I’m thinking.”
    â€œI was sure he was a goner,” squeaked Edie, much impressed. “Coo, didn’t he look awful? Proper gashly, and no mistake.”
    â€œEdie,” said Mrs Greenhill, dropping her bulk into an inadequate kitchen chair, “go and get me a teaspoonful of that brandy out of the dining-room cupboard. I need it.”
    â€œWon’t he notice?” asked Edie doubtfully.
    â€œHe won’t grudge it me,” said Mrs Greenhill.
    Edie turned back at the door. “And fancy him not letting us call the doctor when he come round. You’d have thought he’d have been hollering for him down the phone the minute he could stand, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œThere’s bin something different about him lately,” nodded Mrs Greenhill, fanning herself with a tea cosy. “I’ve noticed it meself.”
    â€œYes, ever since that day tea was late and he never said a word. Don’t you remember me passing a remark about it at the time? And he don’t seem to read so much as he used to. Seems to sit for hours scraping his finger tips together. Thinking, I suppose. Coo, fair gives me the creeps, it does, to go in there and see him at it. And the way he looks at me sometimes. Upon my word, I sometimes think—”
    â€œThat’ll do, Edie. You run along and get me that brandy. Mr Todhunter ain’t the only one in this house to feel queer at this blessed moment.”
    Mr Todhunter, however, was no longer feeling queer. Having expected to die at once and now, to his