"Yes."
"Jer see anybody?"
"A keeper, who seemed rather annoyed about the shooting. Some one had fired a rifle."
"It sounded like that to me, sir, and it's an unusual thing at this time of the year."
"A heavy-caliber rifle must sound unusual at any time of the year in an enclosed estate near London," commented Trenholme.
"My idee exactly," said the policeman. "I think I'll go that way. I may meet Bates."
"If Bates is a bandy-legged person with suspicious eyes, a red tie, many pockets, brown leggings, and a yellow dog, you'll find him searching the wood beyond the lake, which is the direction the shot came from."
The policeman laughed.
"That's Bates, to a tick," he said. "If he was 'wanted,' your description would do for the Police Gazette."
They parted. Since Trenholme's subsequent history is bound up more closely with the policeman's movements during the next hour than with his own unhindered return to the White Horse Inn, it is well to trace the exact course of events as they presented themselves to the ken of a music-loving member of the Hertfordshire constabulary.