He was partly nerved, but by no means reconciled to his adventure, when he crept carefully down the stairs and peered about the thicket for any signs of his diplomatic friend. He could find neither sight nor sound to guide him, except a sort of distant singing, which greatly increased in volume of sound as he pursued it. The first words he heard seemed to run something like–

Leveson did not know the huge and horrible voice in which these words were shouted, but he had a most strange and even sickening suspicion that he did know the voice, however altered, the quavering and rather refined voice that joined in the chorus and sang,

Terror lit up his wits, and he made a wild guess at what had happened. With a gasp of relief he realised that he had now good excuse for returning to the house with the warning. He ran there like a hare, still hearing the great voice from the woods like the roaring of a lion in his ear.

He found Lord Ivywood in consultation with Dr. Gluck, and also with Mr. Bullrose the Agent, whose froglike eyes hardly seemed to have recovered yet from the fairy-tale of the flying sign-board in the English lane; but who, to do him justice, was more plucky and practical than most of Lord Ivywood’s present advisers.

“I’m afraid Mr. Hibbs has inadvertently,” stammered Leveson. “I’m afraid he has–I’m afraid the man is making his escape, my lord. You had better send for the police.”

Ivywood turned to the agent. “You go and see what’s happening,” he said simply. “I will come myself when I’ve rung them up. And get some of the servants up with sticks and things. Fortunately the ladies have gone to bed. Hullo! Is that the Police Station?”

Bullrose went down into the shrubbery and had, for many reasons, less difficulty in crossing it than the hilarious Hibbs. The moon had increased to an almost unnatural brilliancy, so that the whole scene was like a rather silver daylight; and in this clear medium he beheld a very tall man with erect, red hair and a colossal cylinder of cheese carried under one arm, while he employed the other to wag a big forefinger at a dog with whom he was conversing.

It was the Agent’s duty and desire to hold the man, whom he recognised from the sign-board mystery, in play and conversation, and prevent his final escape. But there are some people who really cannot be courteous, even when they want to be, and Mr. Bullrose was one of them.

“Lord Ivywood,” he said abruptly, “wants to know what you want.”

“Do not, however, fall into the common error, Quoodle,” Dalroy was saying to the dog, whose unfathomable eyes were fixed on his face, “of supposing that the phrase ‘good dog’ is used in its absolute sense. A dog is good or bad negatively to a limited scheme of duties created by human civilization–”

“What are you doing here?” asked Mr. Bullrose.

“A dog, my dear Quoodle,” continued the Captain, “cannot be either so good or bad as a man. Nay, I should go farther. I would almost say a dog cannot be so stupid as a man. He cannot be utterly wanting as a dog–as some men are as men.”

“Answer me, you there!” roared the Agent.

“It is all the more pathetic,” continued the Captain, to whose monologue Quoodle seemed to listen with magnetized attention. “It is all the more pathetic because this mental insufficiency is sometimes found in the good; though there are, I should imagine, at least an equal number of opposite examples. The person standing a few feet off us, for example, is both stupid and wicked. But be very careful, Quoodle, to remember that any disadvantage under which we place him should be based on the moral and not his mental defects. Should I say to you at any time, ‘Go for him, Quoodle,’ or ‘Hold him, Quoodle,’ be certain in your own mind, please, that it is solely because he is wicked and not because he is stupid, that I am entitled to do so. The fact that he is stupid would not justify me in saying ‘hold him, Quoodle,’ with the realistic intonation I now employ–”

“Curse you, call him off!” cried Mr. Bullrose, retreating, for Quoodle was coming toward him with the bulldog part of his pedigree very prominently displayed, like a pennon. “Should Mr. Bullrose find it expedient to climb a tree, or even a sign-post,” proceeded Dalroy, for indeed the Agent had already clasped the pole of “The Old Ship,” which was stouter than the slender trees standing just around it, “you will keep an eye on him, Quoodle, and, I doubt not, constantly remind him that it is his wickedness, and not, as he might hastily be inclined to suppose, stupidity that has placed him on so conspicuous an elevation–”

“Some of you’ll wish yourself dead for this,” said the Agent; who was by this time clinging to the wooden sign like a monkey on a stick, while Quoodle watched him from below with an unsated interest. “Some of you’ll see something. Here comes his lordship and the police, I reckon.”

“Good morning, my lord,” said Dalroy, as Ivywood, paler than ever in the strong moonshine, came through the thicket toward them. It seemed to be his fate that his faultless and hueless face should always be contrasted with richer colours; and even now it was thrown up by the gorgeous diplomatic uniform of Dr. Gluck, who walked just behind him.

“I am glad to see you, my lord,” said Dalroy, in a stately manner, “it is always so awkward doing business with an Agent. Especially for the Agent.”

“Captain Dalroy,” said Lord Ivywood, with a more serious dignity, “I am sorry we meet again like this, and such things are not of my seeking. It is only right to tell you that the police will be here in a moment.”

“Quite time, too!” said Dalroy, shaking his head. “I never saw anything so disgraceful in my life. Of course, I am sorry it’s a friend of yours; and I hope the police will keep Ivywood House out of the papers. But I won’t be a party to one law for the rich and another for the poor, and it would be a great shame if a man in that state got off altogether merely because he had got the stuff at your house.”

“I do not understand you,” said Ivywood. “What are you talking of?”

“Why of him,” replied the Captain, with a genial gesture toward a fallen tree trunk that lay a yard or two from the tunnel wall, “the poor chap the police are coming for.”

Lord Ivywood looked at the forest log by the tunnel which he had not glanced at before, and in his pale eyes, perhaps for the first time, stood a simple astonishment.

Above the log appeared two duplicate objects, which, after a prolonged stare, he identified as the soles of a pair of patent leather shoes, offered to his gaze, as if demanding his opinion in the matter of resoling. They were all that was visible of Mr. Hibbs who had fallen backward off his woodland seat and seemed contented with his new situation.

His lordship put up the pince-nez that made him look ten years older, and said with a sharp, steely accent, “What is all this?”

The only effect of his voice upon the faithful Hibbs was to cause him to feebly wave his legs in the air in recognition of a feudal superior. He clearly considered it hopeless to attempt to get up, so Dalroy, striding across to him, lugged him up by his shirt collar and exhibited him, limp and wild-eyed to the company.

“You won’t want many policemen to take him to the station,” said the Captain. “I’m sorry, Lord Ivywood, I’m afraid it’s no use your asking me to overlook it again. We can’t afford it,” and he shook his head implacably. “We’ve always kept a respectable house, Mr. Pump and I. ‘The Old Ship’ has a reputation all over the country–in quite a lot of different parts, in fact. People in the oddest places have found it a quiet, family house. Nothing gadabout in ‘The Old Ship.’ And if you think you can send all your staggering revellers–”