At three o'clock on the following afternoon, Chief Inspector Humphrey Masters unlatched the gate of Major Adams's house in Fitzherbert Avenue.
It was a blistering day, Thursday the twenty-fourth of August. Yet Masters, though he always feels the heat, was buttoned up in blue serge and wore his usual bowler hat. Just inside the gate he stopped short.
For an idyllic scene was in progress on the front lawn.
Sir Henry Merrivale, in a white short-sleeved shirt and white flannels, was engaged in playing clock-golf. Near him in a wicker chair sat a solid-looking young man of thirty-odd, smoking a pipe and making shorthand notes. Another chair was occupied by a fair-haired girl in a print frock, who had both hands pressed to her face as though to keep from exploding.
Thus far, pastoral ease merged into drowsiness. The lawn was of that smooth, shimmering green which seems to have lighter stripes in it. Against it shone the white clock-numerals and the little red metal flag which marked the cup. A low, gabled house, elm-shaded, rose against the green-blue haze of the Cotswolds beyond.
H.M.'s style with the putter was correct. Even his shirt and flannels were reasonably correct. But on his head he wore an encumbrance which made even Masters recoils. It was a broad-brimmed, high-crowned conical hat of loose-woven straw, of the sort that darkies in the Southern states of America are accustomed to put on their horses.
Then, too, there was the voice.
"I will now deal," said this voice, "with my first term away at school, and the many happy memories it brings back to me. I will tell how Digby Dukes and I changed round the organ-pipes in the chapel at St. Just's one Saturday night in the autumn of '81.
'This rearrangement was done with skill and care. No pipe was placed very far away from its original position, so that the rearrangement could not be detected by a casual glance. But the general effect, when the organist crashed into the opening bars of the first hymn on Sunday morning, had to be heard to be believed.
"Even then all might have been well if the organist, old Pop Grossbauer, had not lost his head and attempted to play the hymn through. The resultin' sounds, until the headmaster went up and dragged Pop gibberin' away from the organ, will be remembered at St. Just's as long as iron is strong or stone abides. I can liken it only to an interview between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini when each is under the impression that the other has stolen his watch."