"Looks very peaceful and all that. Rotten luck on him," mumbled Jimmy. Then he said: "I say, Ronny, who arranged all those clocks like that in a row?" "How should I know? One of the servants, I suppose." "The funny thing is," said Jimmy, "that there are seven of them, not eight. One of them's missing. Did you notice that?" Ronny made an inaudible sound. "Seven instead of eight," said Jimmy, frowning. "I wonder why." CHAPTER IV A LETTER "Inconsiderate, that's what I call it," said Lord Caterham. He spoke in a gentle, plaintive voice and seemed pleased with the adjective he had found. "Yes, distinctly inconsiderate. I often find these self-made men _are_ inconsiderate. Very possibly that is why they amass such large fortunes." He looked mournfully out over his ancestral acres, of which he had to-day regained possession. His daughter, Lady Eileen Brent, known to her friends and society in general as "Bundle," laughed. "You'll certainly never amass a large fortune," she observed dryly, "though you didn't do so badly out of old Coote, sticking him for this place. What was he like? Presentable?" "One of those large men," said Lord Caterham, shuddering slightly, "with a red square face and iron-grey hair. Powerful, you know. What they call a forceful personality. The kind of a man you'd get if a steam-roller were turned into a human being." "Rather tiring?" suggested Bundle sympathetically. "Frightfully tiring, full of all the most depressing virtues like sobriety and punctuality. I don't know which are the worst, powerful personalities or earnest politicians. I do so prefer the cheerful inefficient." "A cheerful inefficient wouldn't have been able to pay you the price you asked for this old mausoleum," Bundle reminded him. Lord Caterham winced. "I wish you wouldn't use that word, Bundle. We were just getting away from the subject." "I don't see why you're so frightfully sensitive about it," said Bundle. "After all, people must die somewhere." "They needn't die in my house," said Lord Caterham. "I don't see why not. Lots of people have. Masses of stuffy old great grandfathers and grandmothers." "That's different," said Lord Caterham. "Naturally I expect Brents to die here--they don't count. But I do object to strangers. And I especially object to inquests. The thing will become a habit soon. This is the second. You remember all that fuss we had four years ago? For which, by the way, I hold George Lomax entirely to blame." "And now you're blaming poor old steam-roller Coote. I'm sure he was quite as annoyed about it as anyone." "Very inconsiderate," said Lord Caterham obstinately. "People who are likely to do that sort of thing oughtn't to be asked to stay. And you may say what you like, Bundle, I don't like inquests. I never have and I never shall."