Peregrine Cunobel’s tactful command was perfect. I could see how he had become an admiral. When the conversation had drifted away from 1912 he soon had it firmly anchored to country life and the church.

“If the parsons can’t get a living wage,” he said, “they have to do what they can — grow flowers for the market or turn the vicarage into a guest house. Mine thinks he can breed horses.”

And then he gave us an enchanting picture of the young stallion, Nur Jehan, which aroused Georgina’s curiosity and challenged it. She had gentled horses which had been stupidly or cruelly broken, but had never attempted to discipline a horse which had been brought up as a pet.

When I added that I myself had long been wanting to study a whole colony of squirrels of which I had heard, she agreed that the house would be lonely. And that was that. She accepted Cunobel’s invitation to Chipping Marton.

It was from the vicarage that she was telephoning. She hoped I would come over for the week end and stay on indefinitely if I wasn’t bored. Dear Peregrine had already written to me. I gathered from the adjective that she was enjoying herself.

Her pungent chronicle of the doings of the vicar and Nur Jehan made good listening, but I found it difficult to remain patient while keeping an eye on the two windows which commanded the telephone. She did not return to the question of why I had not given her my address — which was typical —and repeatedly wanted to know if I was all right and comfortable, which was not typical at all. I managed to avoid a definite reply to the invitation. I hoped that by the week end I should be a free man, and should have given the police the name and description of the postman’s murderer.

I felt quite certain that he would not lose all the advantages he had gained by speed. He had only failed to get me owing to the unforeseeable accident of the dog, and he could not be aware that he had aroused any suspicion whatever.

What had started as Ian’s crude goat and tiger was now beginning to have more resemblance to the German Intelligence chess, in which a player never sees his opponent’s men at all. He is told by a referee when a move is impossible and when he has taken or lost a piece. From that he must construct his own picture of the squares which are occupied and the pattern occupying them.

What was the enemy’s picture? That the police might have advised me to go into hiding, but that they were giving me as yet little or no protection on the ground. In that case the more he delayed, the more risk he was running. Today, Thursday, by nightfall he ought to be miles away from Hernsholt, unsuspected and satisfied that I was dead.

What was my picture? That he was so close on top of me that I must play for getting a look at his face without provoking an attack or alarming him. The latter was most important. I did not want him to break contact and wait weeks or months for an easier chance.

If he were on the Long Down watching the front of the house, it should be possible to see him from the upstairs windows. Presumably he was well aware of that and did not dare to scratch himself or blow a fly off his nose unless he knew where I was.

So I let him know. I took out a deck chair through the front door, went back again for a book, a table and a pile of manuscript, and settled down under cover of the shrubbery — apparently to work. I then returned to the house on my stomach by way of the ditch and the back door.

Hidden behind the bedroom curtains I searched the Long Down with my glasses. There wasn’t a sign of him. I gave him up. Perhaps I had exaggerated his energy; perhaps he had decided to be as slow and careful as in London. I took to watching a hare which was hopping along the skyline two hundred yards away.

Now, a hare only sees at the last moment what is in front of him; he can see with very little effort what is behind. So when he jinked and galloped off at an angle to his feeding course I knew the exact spot where something had frightened him. Through the glasses I picked up a shadowy black thread behind the waving grass. It was the top of the entrance to an old air-raid shelter.

I had missed it in my own explorations of the Long Down because I was mainly interested in routes. There was no urgent need to map out the points from which an attack might be made. In any case the shelter was not at all obvious. It had been sunk deep into the clay, and the curve of the roof did not show above ground. Possibly it was meant for the special security of V.I.P.s arriving at the airfield.

Whether my own particular V.I.P. was in it at the moment I could not be sure. Standing on the steps of the shelter with his eyes at ground level he could look out with little chance of being spotted by me or anyone else. It was fortunate that he did not want to be seen carrying a rifle about. Or perhaps he felt that a shot at two hundred yards was too much of a gamble.

After a while I detected movement which suggested the top of a head. I could have stalked him from behind, but I had not a scrap of evidence against him. The person in the shelter might have been a retired bishop writing a monograph on the reproduction cycle of the hare. So I wondered if he would take an opportunity to show his intentions. I worked my way back to the shrubbery and returned openly to the house with my deck chair and papers.

Fussing with notebooks and binoculars and making a show of an innocent naturalist off for a walk, I set out by the front gate, rounded the garden and skirted the edge of the Long Down close to his shelter. I was aiming for a lane running straight to the west for quarter of a mile which would allow me to see if I were followed. By the time I was approaching the end of the straight, there were two men behind me and a woman on a bicycle. One of the men was a biggish fellow and coming along at a good pace. I hoped he was the right one.

The lane brought me on to the main Aylesbury road, along which I walked for half a mile. He was still behind me, but that proved nothing. I took a turning to the right leading gently uphill to the village of Stoke. If he, too, came to Stoke it would be a strong indication that he was following me, for the route was roundabout. Whoever he was, he had come from the Long Down and the shortest way from there to Stoke was through Hernsholt.

A quick glance through the leaves of the hedgerow showed him two curves behind and coming up fast. So, on reaching Stoke, I hesitated outside the church to admire one of those squat, square towers which make the English landscape but have no other aesthetic value, and then went inside. I hoped that he would also pretend an interest in ecclesiastical architecture and that I should have a chance for a good look at him. But he was content to wait.

On my way out I stopped to chat with the first person I saw, so that I could walk through the churchyard keeping my eyes open but apparently deep in conversation. He turned out to be the gravedigger and by no means a merry one. He informed me that in the midst of life we are in death and that they ought to ‘ave cremation wherever the blue clay wasn’t no more than four feet down. Press a button, like. By the time I had recovered from the superstitions of an Austrian nursery the feet which had padded after me were strolling away from the church.

I had not thought out what was going to happen now or where I should go. Obviously he could not trail me indefinitely through a network of lanes. If he came close enough to see what turnings I took he would arouse suspicion. If I let him follow me without noticing him, so should I.

The best game for the moment seemed to be to lose him. What would he do then? Return to the Long Down presumably, or perhaps visit the cottage in my absence and attend again to the larder. In either case he would take the shortest way and, if I could get ahead of him, I should at last be able to see his face.