“One, and he’s not in the grounds but outside on the road. I pull him in at night, or rather in the evening, to patrol the grounds, and he is armed.” He said this with a certain importance. An armed English policeman is a tremendous phenomenon, that few have seen. “Which means that he has a revolver that he hasn’t fired except at target practice,” said Leon. “Excuse me—I thought I heard a car.” He got up noiselessly from the table, went round the back of Mr. Lee, and, darting to the window, looked out. A flower-bed ran close to the wall, and beyond that was a broad gravel drive. Between gravel and flowers was a wide strip of turf. The drive continued some fifty feet to the right before it turned under an arch of rambler roses. To the left it extended for less than a dozen feet, and from this point a path parallel to the side of the house ran into the drive. “Do you hear it?” asked Lee. “No, sir, I was mistaken.” Leon dipped his hand into his side pocket, took out a handful of something that looked like tiny candies wrapped in coloured paper. Only Meadows saw him scatter them left and right, and he was too discreet to ask why. Leon saw the inquiring lift of his eyebrows as he came back to his seat, but was wilfully dense. Thereafter, he ate his dinner with only an occasional glance towards the window. “I’m not relying entirely upon my own lawyer’s advice,” said Mr. Lee. “I have telegraphed to Lisbon to ask Dr. Pinto Caillao to come to England, and he may be of greater service even than Poole, though where——” The butler came in at this moment. “Mrs. Poole has just telephoned, sir. Her husband has had a bad accident: his car ran into a tree trunk which was lying across the road near Lawley. It was on the other side of the bend, and he did not see it until too late.” “Is he very badly hurt?” “No, sir, but he is in the Cottage Hospital. Mrs. Poole says he is fit to travel home.” The blind man sat open-mouthed. “What a terrible thing to have happened!” he began. “A very lucky thing for Mr. Poole,” said Leon cheerfully. “I feared worse than that——” From somewhere outside the window came a “snap!”—the sound that a Christmas cracker makes when it is exploded. Leon got up from the table, walked swiftly to the side of the window and jumped out. As he struck the earth, he trod on one of the little bon-bons he had scattered and it cracked viciously under his foot.