‘Yes, indeed,’ said Harriet. ‘Do join us. Bunter will break his heart if the bird gets dried up in the oven.’

Mr MacBride hesitated. ‘It’s very good of you,’ began Mr Solomons, wistfully. ‘If your ladyship-’

‘No, no, Solly,’ said Mr MacBride, ‘it ain’t fair.’

‘My dear,’ said Peter, with a polite inclination, ‘you know very well that it is a husband’s incurable habit to invite his business friends to dine under any circumstances and on the shortest possible notice. Without that habit, home life would not be what it is. Therefore I make no apology.’

‘Of course not,’ said Harriet. ‘Bunter, these gentlemen will dine with us.’

‘Very good, my lady.’ He laid dexterous hands on Mr Solomons and relieved him of his overcoat. ‘Allow me.’

Mr MacBride, without further argument, valeted himself and then helped Peter to bring two more chairs to the table, observing as he did so: ‘I don’t know what you advanced on these, Solly, but they weren’t worth it.’

‘So far as we are concerned,’ said Peter, ‘you may have the whole lot tomorrow and welcome. Now-are we all quite comfortable? Mr Solomons on the right, Mr MacBride on the left. Bunter-the claret!’

Mr Solomons and Mr MacBride, mellow with Leoville and cigars, departed fraternally at a quarter to ten, having previously made a brief tour of the house, so as to check their inventories together. Peter, who had accompanied them in order to establish his right to his own belongings, returned, bearing in his hand one of the little straw wig-warns in which wine-bottles are housed while travelling.

‘What’s that for, Peter?’

‘Me,’ said his lordship. He detached the straws methodically, one by one, and began to thread them through his hair. He had succeeded in making a very passable bird’s-nest of himself when Superintendent Kirk was announced.

‘Good evening, Mr Kirk,’ said Harriet, with as much warmth of welcome as she could put into the words.

‘Good evening,’ said the Superintendent. ‘I’m afraid I’m intruding.’ He looked at Peter, who made a horrible face at him. ‘It’s a bit late for a call.’

‘This,’ said Peter, wildly, ‘is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at Curfew and walks till the first cock. Have a straw. Superintendent. You’ll need one before you’ve finished.’

‘Have nothing of the sort.’ said Harriet. ‘You look tired. Have a glass of beer or some whisky or something and don’t mind my husband. He sometimes gets taken that way.’

The Superintendent thanked her absent-mindedly; he seemed to be in travail with an idea. He slowly opened his mouth, and looked at Peter again.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ said the latter, hospitably. I’ll talk a word with this same learned Theban.’

‘Got it!’ cried Mr Kirk. ‘King Lear!

Though their injunction be to bar my doors

And let this tyrannous night take hold upon you.

Yet have I ventur’d to come seek you out.’

‘You’re very nearly right about that,’ said Harriet. ‘We really thought we were going to be turned out into the tyrannous night. Hence the distraction and the straws.’

Mr Kirk inquired how this might be.

‘Well,’ said Harriet, installing him on one of the settles, ‘there’s a Mr Solomons, of Moss & Isaacs, who holds a bill, of sale on the furniture, and your old friend Mr MacBride, who wants to distrain on the furniture for his writ, and they both came in together to take the furniture away. But we gave them dinner and they went peaceably.’

‘You may ask,’ added Peter, ‘why they rather choose to have a weight of carrion flesh than to receive three thousand ducats. I cannot tell you, but so it was.’

Mr Kirk paused so long this time that both Peter and Harriet thought he must have become stricken with aphasia; but at last, and with a wide smile of triumph, he gave tongue: ‘He is well paid that is well satisfied! Merchant of Venice!’

‘A Daniel come to Judgement! Harriet, the Superintendent has caught the hang of our half-witted manner of conversation. He is a man, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again. Give him his drink-he has deserved it. Say when. Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please, Resolve me of all ambiguities?’

‘Thank you,’ said the Superintendent, ‘not too stiff, my lord, if you don’t mind. We’ll have it gentle and the elements so mixed-’

‘That a spoon might stand up in it,’ suggested Peter.

‘No,’ said Mr Kirk. “That bit doesn’t seem to finish up quite right. But thanks all the same. Here’s health.’

‘And what have you been doing all afternoon?’ inquired Peter, bringing a stool to the fire and seating himself on it between his wife and Kirk.

‘Well, my lord,’ said Kirk, ‘I’ve been up to London.’

To London?’ said Harriet. ‘That’s right, Peter. Come a little further this way and let me take the straws out.’

‘Il m’aime-un peu-beaucoup.’

‘But not to see the Queen,’ pursued the Superintendent. I went to see Frank Crutchley’s young woman. In Clerkenwell.’

‘Has he got one there?’

‘Passionement a la folie-’

‘He had,’ said Kirk.

‘Pas du tout. Il m’aime-’

‘I got the address from that chap Williams over at Hancock’s. Seems she’s a good-looking young woman.’

‘Un peu-beaucoup-’

‘With a bit of money-’

‘Passionement-’

‘Lived with ’er dad and seemed dead struck on Frank Crutchley. But there-’

‘A la folie-’

‘You know what girls are. Some other fellow turned up-’

Harriet paused, with the twelfth straw in her fingers.

‘And the long and short of it is, she married the other bloke three months back.’

‘Pas du tout!’ said Harriet; and flung the straws into the fire.

‘The devil she did” said Peter. He caught Harriet’s eye.

‘But what got me all worked up,’ said Kirk, ‘was finding out what ’er father was.’

‘It was a robber’s daughter, and her name was Alice Brown. Her father was the terror of a small Italian town.’

‘Not a bit of it. He’s a-There!’ said Mr Kirk, arresting his glass half way to his mouth, ‘of all the trades and professions open to a man, what should you say he was?’

‘From your air,’ replied Peter, ‘of having, so to speak, found the key that cuts the Gordian knot-’

‘I can’t imagine,’ said Harriet, hastily. ‘We give it up.’

‘Well,’ announced Kirk, eyeing Peter a little dubiously, ‘if you give it up, then I’ll tell you. ’Er father is an ironmonger and locksmith as cuts keys when wanted.’

‘Good God, you don’t say so!’

Kirk, putting down a mouthful, nodded emphatically. ‘And what’s more,’ he went on. setting the glass down on the table with a smack, ‘what’s more, none so long ago-six months more or less-young Crutchley comes along, bright as you please, and asks him to cut a key for him.’

‘Six months ago! Well, well!’

‘Six months. But,’ resumed the Superintendent, ‘now this. I’m going to tell you will surprise you. I don’t mind saying it surprised me… Thank you, I don’t mind if I do… Well-the old boy didn’t make no secret of the key. Seems there’d a-been a bit of a tin between the young people before they parted brass-rags. Anyhow, he didn’t seem to feel no special call to speak up for Frank Crutchley. So when I asked the question, he answered straight off, and, what’s more, he took me round to his workshop. He’s a methodical old bird, and when he makes a new key, he keeps a cast of it. Says people often lose their keys, and it come in ’andy to have a record. I dunno. Shouldn’t wonder if he’d had official inquiries round there before. But that’s neether here nor there. He took me round and he showed me the cast what he’d made of the key. And what do you think that key was like?’

Peter, having been once rebuked, did not this time venture on so much as a veiled guess. But Harriet felt that some sort of reply was called for. Mustering up all the astonishment the human voice is capable of expressing, she said: