Welkin Castle,
Oct. 6th, 19—.
“My Lord,—As you seem to have decided to continue your sweeping scheme of confiscation, as in the case of Warbridge Castle, without the slightest reference to the historic and even heroic claims and traditions of Welkin Castle, I can only inform you that I shall defend the fortress of my fathers to the death. Moreover, I have decided to make a protest of a more public kind; and when you next hear from me it will be in the form of a general appeal to the justice of the English people.—Yours truly,
“Welkyn of Welkin.�
The historic and even heroic traditions of Welkin Castle kept a dozen of the Prime Minister’s private secretaries busy for a week, looking up encyclopædias and chronicles and books of history. But the Prime Minister himself was more worried about another problem. How did these mysterious letters get into the house, or rather into the garden? None of them came by post and none of the servants knew anything whatever about them. Moreover, the Prime Minister, in an unobtrusive way, was very carefully guarded. Prime Ministers always are, but he had been especially protected ever since the Vegetarians a few years before had gone about killing everybody who believed in killing animals. There were always plain-clothes policemen at every entrance of his house and garden. And from their testimony it would appear certain that the letter could not have got into the garden; but for the trifling fact that it was lying there on the garden-table. Lord Eden cogitated in a grim fashion for some time; then he said as he rose from his chair:
“I think I will have a talk to our American friend Mr. Oates.�
Whether from a sense of humour or a sense of justice, Lord Eden summoned Enoch Oates before the same special jury of three; or summoned them before him, as the case may be. For it was even more difficult than before to read the exact secret of Eden’s sympathies or intentions; he talked about a variety of indifferent subjects leading up to that of the letters, which he treated very lightly. Then he said quite suddenly:
“Do you know anything about those letters, by the way?�
The American presented his poker face to the company for some time without reply. Then he said:
“And what makes you think I know anything about them?�
“Because,� said Horace Hunter, breaking in with uncontrollable warmth, “we know you’re hand and glove with all those lunatics in the League of the Long Bow who are kicking up all this shindy.�