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premises on the stroke of ten. He did not imagine him to be the sort of man who would take kindly to any usurpation of authority.
    But stay – why make it an official matter at all? Why should not Bobby take two or three days’ holiday and stop with his uncle? A discreet inquiry by a trained man would quickly settle the affair, and if not, at least it would frighten the practical joker, and it could all be extremely unofficial. The Dean reflected that he possessed at least one influential connection at the Home Office. He felt confident that the matter could be arranged.
    Leaving the telephone, therefore, he sat down to compose three letters. Firstly, an official invitation to Bobby to visit Melchester for a few days, which could, if necessary, be shown to inquisitive superiors. Secondly, a less official one, setting out for Bobby’s edification alone, the true facts of the case. Thirdly and lastly, a highly official one to Sir Marmaduke Felling, O.B.E., one of His Majesty’s Undersecretaries of State for Home Affairs.
    â€˜And that,’ said the Dean, ‘shelves the matter for twenty-four hours at least.’
    The thought was premature.
    A letter came for the Dean that night. It was in a plain, un-addressed, rather cheap envelope, and an unknown hand pushed it through his letter-box some time after seven in the evening. It was written in a thin, unformed hand on cheap fined paper, and stated simply:
Mr. Busybody Appledown has lived too long. Someone will get him soon if he doesn’t look out.
    But unlike the other effusions this one was signed with a bold “J.B.”

2
    CLEARING THE GROUND
The evidence of vice and virtue are not confined to famous accomplishments: Often some trivial event, a word, a joke, will serve better than great campaigns as a revelation of character.
P LUTARCH .
    â€˜Even a straw,’ concluded the Dean, ‘will show you which way the wind is blowing. And as there’s never smoke without fire—’
    â€˜Nor bricks without straw,’ agreed Sergeant Pollock of the Criminal Investigation Department pleasantly. ‘Let’s have all the facts.’
    Uncle and nephew faced each other across the table in the Dean’s library-cum-study. It was a pleasant room – tolerant, not over-academic. Marcus Aurelius and Jeremy Bentham looked down from adjacent shelves. Benjamin Disraeli, the Dean’s large black cat, reclined across the round patch of sunlight which fell on the carpet and watched the two men with a deceptive leer.
    He was a knowing animal, incredibly wise in the ways of mankind, and he realised that these two beings – apparently addressing themselves briskly to the work in hand – were really engaged in the age-old pursuit of summing each other up, as he himself had summed up many a possible ally or potential rival in his moonlight rhodomontades and dark witches’ sabbaths.
    How the lad had grown, thought the Dean. The power of the young to grow was a constant source of surprise to him. It seemed a very short time ago that he had been visiting him at school with a half-sovereign. A few years in London had not only added inches to his stature – they had hardened him and refined him into something which looked to the Dean uncommonly like a man. He seemed competent. Not officious, exactly, yet very efficient. For a moment the Dean experienced the touch of disquiet. Here was no kindly nephew who would ask a few questions for his uncle and then retire discreetly, but a modern police officer. The sort of man who probably delighted in leaving no stone unturned. And underneath stones – large flat stones – even the stones of Melchester, there lived all manner of slimy things. Would it not perhaps be better to send him back – now, immediately? Laugh the matter off. A foolish old uncle, making mountains out of molehills. It could be done. It would be so easy to say that the culprit had confessed, that the Chapter