"There was ninety-and-nine, you mean. That lay. No, sir, He ain't found me. I've found IT though." "Well, then, come round to the 'appy 'our on Sunday next and tell us all about it," growled the great man. "There's none so 'umble and lowly but we can learn from them, as I often says." He tramped on his reverberating way.... That night, as Ernie was on lift-duty, the telephone bell rang in the passage. He went. "Who's that?" he asked. "Mr. Caspar from the Garage, Old Town," came the answer. "Could I speak to Captain Royal?" The Captain had given orders that when he was in his room of evenings after dinner, he was not to be disturbed. "He's engaged," answered Ernie. "Could I give him a message?" For a moment there was a pause. Then the voice began again. "Who'm I speaking to?" "One of the porters, sir," Ernie answered. There was no need for him to disguise his voice: for the telephone was out of repair, and speech muffled and uncertain accordingly. "Well, will you take down this message and see it gets to him to-night. _The car will be at the Decoy Park, East Gate, to-morrow afternoon at 2.30._" Ernie wrote the message down, and repeated it. "Very good, sir," he said briskly. "Thank ye," answered Alf, and rang off. Later, when Captain Royal came down to the smoking-room for a last cigarette before bed, Ernie took him the message. The Captain, who had brought the art of insolence to his inferiors to a height that only a certain type of officer, sheltered by Military Law, attains, took the note without a word, glanced at it, and tossed it into the fire. Ernie retired with burning heart. The conjunction of Captain Royal and Alf seemed to him sinister. But he had his armour on now, his lance in rest. His brain was working with a swiftness and precision that astonished him. He was ready for whatever might come.... The old Decoy was a survival of the remote days when Beachbourne was a fishing-village, famous only for the duck-shooting on the Levels hard by. When Ernie was a lad the Decoy Pond, in its rough ambush of trees and thick undergrowth, was still the haunt of duck and snipe, and his favourite hunting-ground in the bird-nesting season. During Ernie's absence in India the Corporation had acquired it, and made of the tangled wilderness, formerly the home of fox and snipe and the shy creatures of the jungle, a fair pleasure-ground for their conquerors. Green lawns now ran down amid forest-trees and clumps of flowering shrubs to a shining ornamental water on which floated stately swans, while moor-hen scudded here and there, and flotillas of foreign ducks paddled about islands gorgeous with crimson willow. A broad road ran from gate to gate; and in the woods of summer evenings young men now chased rarer game than ducks. It was at the Eastern Gate of this resort that Alf was to meet the Captain with a car. Ernie would meet them there too. On that he was determined.