“He was already engrossed in something else, and dismissed me with a wave of his hand. And it was just as I got to the door that he called after me to send Cresswill to him—Cresswill, the star of all the special men. His reception, I reflected a little bitterly as I went in search of him, would be somewhat different from mine. For he had got to the top of the tree, and was on a really big job at the time. He did all the criminal work—murder trials and so forth, and how we youngsters envied him! Perhaps, in time, one might reach those dazzling heights, I reflected, as I sat in my third-class carriage on the way to Ashford. Not for him mammoth tubers and double-yolkers—but the things that really counted. “I got out at Ashford, where I had to change. My destination was Appledore, and the connection on was crowded with people obviously bound, like myself, for the agricultural fête. It was a part of Kent to which I had never been, and when I got out at Appledore station I found I was in the flat Romney Marsh country which stretches inland from Dungeness. Houses are few and far between, except in the actual villages themselves—the whole stretch of land, of course, must once have been below sea-level—and the actual fête was being held in a large field on the outskirts of Appledore. It was about a mile from the station, and I proceeded to walk. “The day was warm, the road was dusty—and I, I am bound to admit, was bored. I felt I was destined for better things than reporting on bucolic flower shows, much though I loved flowers. But I like them in their proper place, growing—not arranged for show in a stuffy tent and surrounded by perspiring humanity. And so when I came to the gates of a biggish house and saw behind them a garden which was a perfect riot of colour, involuntarily I paused and looked over. “The house itself stood back about a hundred yards from the road—a charming old place covered with creepers, and the garden was lovely. A little neglected, perhaps—I could see a respectable number of weeds in a bed of irises close to the drive—but then it was quite a large garden. Probably belonged to some family that could not afford a big staff, I reflected, and that moment I saw a man staring at me from between some shrubs a few yards away. “There was no reason why he shouldn’t stare at me—he was inside the gate and presumably had more right to the garden than I had—but there was something about him that made me return the stare, in silence, for a few moments. Whether it was his silent approach over the grass and unexpected appearance, or whether it was that instinctively he struck me as an incongruous type of individual to find in such a sleepy locality, I can’t say. Or, perhaps, it was a sudden lightning impression of hostile suspicion on his part, as if he resented anyone daring to look over his gate.