"By gad! I can hardly agree with you there. I felt as though I'd come a purler over wire when I saw Baluchi Bob dropping off that bicycle. Great Scott! You on a bike! How have the mighty fallen! But I'll lend you a hack till you collect a few useful screws, unless you're bitten by this new craze for rushing about the country in a gastank. And won't Mollie be glad to see you! It was only the other day she was talkin' about the Pup, and sayin' that if it hadn't been for you----" "Oh, tell Mollie to forget that old tale, or she'll make me nervous!" Each word exchanged between the two was heard distinctly by the others, and, such is the queer way in which the affairs of life sometimes take an unexpected twist, there was a marked and instant change of attitude on the part of three men, at least, who had come to Elmdale that day prepared to treat the Grange's new tenant as a potential criminal. Banks, mouthpiece of the _Nuttonby Gazette_, who had bicycled thither in the hope of securing another batch of readable copy for a special Saturday edition, suddenly found himself reviewing, with a sinking heart, one or two rather ticklish paragraphs in the screed already published anent "The Elmdale mystery." As for the superintendent and inspector of police from Nuttonby, they forthwith recanted certain opinions formed after hearing Banks's story and reading the current issue of his newspaper. For Sir Berkeley Hutton was a county magnate, chairman of the Nuttonby bench, an alderman of the County Council, a Deputy Lieutenant, and goodness knows what else of a power in civic and social circles, and here was he hailing this stranger as an intimate friend, being himself greeted by the nickname earned by a loud and strident utterance which never failed, speaking of Lady Hutton as "Mollie," of his eldest son as "the Pup." County police and country editors must be chary of accepting the evidence of James Walkers and Tom Blands against the guarantee of such a man, or they may get their corns trodden on most painfully! All at once, Sir Berkeley Hutton seemed to recollect the talk which had been going on outside the locked and barred gate, for Begonia Smith and his henchmen had refused to pass anyone but the doctor and nurse, who were with their patient at that moment. "I say, Bob," he went on, in a thunderous whisper quite as audible as his ordinary voice, "I'm devilish glad it's you--I am, 'pon my soul!--because some of these chaps have been spinnin' the queerest sort of yarn, in which a murder, a suicide, a ghost, and a pretty girl are mixed up in fine style. Just tell 'em all to go to blazes, will you?--except Dobb. Dobb's a decent fellow, and he acted for the people who used to live here--Hi! Dobb. This is----" Then it dawned on him that his friend might wish still to preserve his anonymity save in the sacred circle of the elect, so he broke off into "Come along, Dobb! I want you to meet one of the best fellows who ever wore shoe-leather!"