Armathwaite was too quick for him. Residence in Mr. Walker's "house 'round the corner" had proved so rife in surprises that the long arm of coincidence might be expected to play its part at any moment. So he countered deftly. "Sorry I can't be more hospitable," he broke in, advancing, and deliberately causing the constable to step back into the porch. "Everything is at sixes and sevens. I only arrived yesterday, and my boxes, as you see, are not yet unpacked." He closed the door, feeling certain that his judgment had not erred. It was soon justified. "Next time you're passing, give me a call," he went on. "I'll be able to offer you a whisky and soda or a bottle of beer. Are you the man who was brought here by a Mr. Benson on a certain occasion?" "I am, sir, and it was a nasty job, too. I'm glad someone has taken the place. It's a nice property, but the garden has gone to wrack and ruin since poor Mr. Garth went. Just look at them dandelions, growin' where there used to be a bed of the finest begonias I've ever seen! 'Begonia Smith' was the gardener's nickname for miles around. And convolvulus instead of sweet peas! It's a sin, that's what it is!" The policeman, clearly an enthusiast, took off his helmet, and wiped his forehead with a purple pocket-handkerchief. "You knew Mr. Garth, I suppose?" said Armathwaite, strolling towards the dandelions, whose vigorous growth was so offensive to the horticultural eye. The other went with him, little thinking he was being headed off a scent which might lead to a greater tragedy than the devastation of a once well-kept garden. "Knew him well, sir. A very pleasant-spoken gentleman he was, an' all. I brought him a party of plow stots one day--men who dance in the villages at Martinmas, sir--and he was as pleased as Punch because they sang some old verses he'd never heard before. The last man in the world I'd ever have thought of to kill himself." "There was no doubt that he committed suicide?" "No, sir, that there wasn't. He'd been dead two days when I cut him down. Well, no need to talk of it now, but even the doctor was rattled, though the weather was very hot that June." Armathwaite felt as if he had been conjured by some spiteful necromancer out of a smiling and sunlit English countryside into a realm of ghouls and poison-growths. A minute ago a charming and sweet-spoken girl had been chatting glibly about her father's wanderings in the by-ways of folk-lore, and now this stolid policeman was hinting at the gruesomeness of his task when called on to release the lifeless body of that same man from its dolorous perch beside the clock. For an instant he lost himself, and fixed such a penetrating glance on the constable that the latter grew uneasy, lest he had said something he ought not to have said. Armathwaite realized the mistake at once, and dropped those searching eyes from the other's anxious face to some scraps of ribbon sewn on the left breast of the dark blue tunic.