One does not remark casually over one’s second cup of tea: “By the way, you people, an idea’s just occurred to me for hoaxing the British Broadcasting Company rather neatly. Anybody care to give me a hand? I shall tell them, you see, that I’ve got a trained rabbit that gives organ recitals, and . . .” Certainly not. But give the average law-respecting Briton (which Guy was not, nor yet Mr. Doyle, but George was) a modicum of sound alcohol to titillate his sense of humour into a slightly perverted form, taunt him through the mouth of one friend with inability to carry the thing through, egg him on through the lips of another to show the stuff he is made of, and smile at him through his wife’s eyes as if to say, “Dear old Guy! Oh yes, my dear, he often _talks_ like this—but bless you, he’d never _do_ anything. Oh, dear no!”—do these things to him, and then be very careful not to answer for the consequences. For consequences will certainly occur. In cold blood George would never have considered that he possessed any corpse-imitating properties at all. At twelve o’clock, then, two people stood in Guy’s drawing-room and dithered; two others watched them happily. The ditherers were the constable, who had been keeping it up for the last hour, and Mr. Foster. These two victims of the modern cinema were being watched by Guy himself, with critical appreciation of their efforts towards his ends, and by Inspector Cottingham, of the Abingchester Police. Inspector Cottingham was a fatherly man, with a large walrus moustache, and he was very, very happy. He had not only smelt blood, he had actually seen it. He had, not to disguise the truth, gloated over it. Blood very seldom comes the way of a country Inspector of Police. Inspector Cottingham however, had been blessed above most country Inspectors, for this was the second time blood had come his way. Many, many years ago, when the Inspector had been a mere Sergeant, a small village outside Abingchester had startled the placid neighbourhood by becoming the scene of a particularly brutal and mysterious murder, and Sergeant Cottingham had taken the matter in hand. To the admiration of the neighbourhood, and the intense surprise of his superior officers, the Sergeant, by a series of brilliant deductions, had followed an obscure trail to the person of the murderer, who, sharing the astonishment of the Sergeant’s superiors, had been so taken aback as to confess at once to the crime.