“However, by this time my venerable guide had exhausted pumpkins, and, muttering strange words, he began to lead me towards another part of the garden. It was sweet-peas this time, and I must say they were really magnificent. In fact, I had forgotten the disappearing gentleman at the window in my genuine admiration of the flowers, when I suddenly saw the old man straighten himself up, take a firm grip of his false teeth with his one hand and touch his cap with the other. He was looking over my shoulder, and I swung round.
“Three men were standing behind me on the path. One was the man I had spoken to that morning; one was the man I had seen at the window; the other was grey-haired, and, I assumed, the owner of the house. It was to him I addressed myself.
“ ‘I must apologise for trespassing,’ I began, ‘but I am reporting the agricultural fête down here, and your gardener asked me in to see your sweet-peas. They are really magnificent specimens.’
“The elderly man stared at me in silence.
“ ‘I don’t quite see what the sweet-peas in my garden have to do with the fête,’ he remarked coldly. ‘And it is not generally customary, when the owner is at home, to wander round his garden at the invitation of his gardener.’
“ ‘Then I can only apologise and withdraw at once,’ I answered stiffly. ‘I trust that I have not irreparably damaged your paths.’
“He frowned angrily and seemed on the point of saying something, when the man I had spoken to at the gate took his arm and whispered something in his ear. I don’t know what it was he said, but it had the effect of restoring the grey-haired man to a better temper at once.
“ ‘I must apologise,’ he said affably, ‘for my brusqueness. I am a recluse, Mr.—ah—Mr.——’
“ ‘Graham is my name,’ I answered, partially mollified.
“He bowed. ‘A recluse, Mr. Graham—and my garden is a hobby of mine. That and my books. I fear I may have seemed a little irritable when I first spoke, but I have a special system of my own for growing sweet-peas, and I guard it jealously. I confess that for a moment I was unjust and suspicious enough to think you might be trying to pump information from my gardener.’