A motor-car stood at the door. While they were detaching hats and sticks in the hall, they could hear some one being told that Lady Lunt was not leaving her room. Then, being shown out, came a bulky man muffled in a fur coat with a big Astrakhan collar. He had a large head and a long face of unhealthy complexion. Across the forehead from right eyebrow to hair was a red furrow. He had prominent, pale eyes. “Who is the sportsman with the scratched face?” Reggie said, as the door shut on him. “Oh, that’s Victor Lunt. Been inquiring after Lady Lunt, I suppose.” “Bright and brotherly,” Reggie murmured. There appeared briskly a man of grave and military aspect, who was presented to Reggie as Radnor Hall, Sir Albert Lunt’s secretary. Radnor Hall (in a faintly American accent) was very glad to see Mr. Fortune; hoped for Mr. Fortune’s company to lunch; after which, Lady Lunt was most anxious to see Mr. Fortune. “I want to see the body,” Reggie said gruffly. So to the body he was taken, and saw that Gerald Barnes was right enough: there could be no doubt of the cause of death. A pistol bullet, fired from some little distance, had entered the chest and lodged in the spinal vertebræ. Sir Albert Lunt might not have died on the instant. He could not have lived long. But that mortal wound was tiny. What made the dead man look horrible was the gash in his forehead and the bruise round it. And over that Reggie frowned and pondered. “Showy, isn’t it, very showy?” he complained. Such a hurt a man might get by falling on a stone. But Sir Albert Lunt had fallen on his back on the turf. If some one had hit him with a stone or some such jagged thing--but why should any man take a stone who had a pistol and was not afraid to use it? “If there was any sense in it, I’d say it was a fake,” Reggie grumbled. He gave up the wounds at last and moved round the body. “Oh, you’re looking at the wrong hand,” Barnes said. “Am I though?” “Yes, this is the one where the thumb’s sprained--the right hand.” “Well, you know, he seems to have been busy with his hands. What did you make of this?” Barnes came to look. The fingers of the left hand were bent towards the thumb as if the dead man had been plucking at something. “Not much in that, is there?” “What was he wearing?” “Rough brown overcoat--brown tweeds.” “Oh, ah!” Delicately Reggie extracted from the stiff fingers some little curly, black tufts. “Well, that’s queer,” Barnes said. “Looks like a nigger’s hair.” “You know you’ve got imagination.” Reggie put the stuff very carefully in his pocket-book. “Some oppressed nigger from the compounds at Johannesburg--came all the way to Prior’s Colney for vengeance--threw a stone at him--shot him--and then butted him. Thorough fellow, very thorough.” “What is it, then?” Barnes said sulkily. “Seek not to proticipate. Hallo!” The interruption was the Hon. Stanley Lomas, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, dapper and debonair.