“’Tis the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place,” said Wimsey, “calcine its clods and set its prisoners free. There are times, Charles, when even the unimaginative decency of my brother and the malignant virtue of his wife appear to me admirable. I could hardly say more.”

“You have a certain decency of your own, Peter,” replied Parker, “which I like better, because it is not negative.” Having given voice to this atrocious outburst of sentiment, he became extremely red in the face, and hastened to cover up his lapse from good taste. “But at the present moment I must say you are not being very helpful. You have been investigating a crime-if it is a crime-for some weeks now, and the only tangible result is a broken collar-bone for me. If you could confine yourself to breaking your own collar-bone-”

“It has been broken before now,” said Wimsey, “and in no less good a cause. You shouldn’t shove your beastly collarbone into my affairs.”

At this moment, the telephone-bell rang. It was half-past eight in the morning, and Wimsey had been consuming an early breakfast with his brother-in-law, prior to their departure each to his own place of business. Lady Mary, who had been supplying their bodily necessities and leaving them to their argument, took up the receiver.

“It’s from the Yard, darling. Something about that man Puncheon.”

Parker took the instrument and plunged into an animated discussion, which ended with his saying:

“Send Lumley and Eagles along at once, and tell Puncheon to keep in touch with you. I’m coming.”

“What’s up?” inquired Wimsey.

“Our little friend Puncheon has seen his bloke in dress clothes again,” said Parker, cursing as he tried to get his coat over his damaged shoulder. “Saw him hanging about the Morning Star offices this morning, buying an early paper or something. Been chasing him ever since, apparently. Landed out at Finchley, of all places. Says he couldn’t get on to the ’phone before. I must push off. See you later. Cheerio, Mary dear. Bung-ho, Peter.”

He bounced out in a hurry.

“Well, well,” said Wimsey. He pushed back his chair and sat staring vacantly at the wall opposite, on which hung a calendar. Then, emptying the sugar-bowl on the table-cloth with a jerk, he began, frowning hideously, to built a lofty tower with its contents. Mary recognized the signs of inspiration and stole quietly away to her household duties.

Forty-five minutes afterwards she returned. Her brother had gone, and the banging of the flat-door after him had flung his column of sugar-lumps in disorder across the table, but she could see that it had been a tall one. Mary sighed.

“Being Peter’s sister is rather like being related to the public hangman,” she thought, echoing the words of a lady with whom she had otherwise little in common. “And being married to a policeman is almost worse. I suppose the hangman’s relatives are delighted when business is looking up. Still,” she thought, being not without humour, “one might be connected with an undertaker, and rejoice over the deaths of the righteous, which would be infinitely worse.”

Sergeant Lumley and P.C. Eagles found no Hector Puncheon at the small eating-house in Finchley from which he had telephoned. They did, however, find a message.

“He has had breakfast and is off again,” said the note, written hurriedly on a page torn from the reporter’s notebook. “I will telephone to you here as soon as I can. I’m afraid he knows I am following him.”

“There,” said Sergeant Lumley, gloomily. “That’s an amachoor all over. ’Course ’e lets the bloke know ’e’s bein’ followed. If one of these newspaper fellows was a bluebottle and ’ad to follow an elephant, ’e’d get buzzin’ in the elephant’s ear, same as ’e’d know what ’e was up to.”

P.C. Eagles was struck with admiration at this flight of fancy, and laughed heartily.

“Ten to one ’e’ll lose ’im for keeps, now,” pursued Sergeant Lumley. “Gettin’ us pushed off ’ere without our breakfusses.”

“There ain’t no reason why we shouldn’t have our break-fusses, seein’ as we are here,” said his subordinate, who was of that happy disposition that makes the best of things. “’Ow about a nice pair o’ kippers?”

“I don’t mind if I do,” said the sergeant, “if only we’re allowed to eat ’em in peace. But you mark my words, ’e’ll start ringin’ up again afore we ’as time to swallow a bite. Which reminds me. I better ring up the Yard and stop me lord Parker from traipsin’ up ’ere. ’E mustn’t be put about. Oh, no!”

P.C. Eagles ordered the kippers and a pot of tea. He used his jaws more readily for eating than for talking. The sergeant got his call, and returned, just as the eatables were placed on the table.

“Says, if ’e rings up from anywhere else, we better take a taxi,” he announced. “Save time, ’e says. ’Ow’s ’e think we’re goin’ to pick up a taxi ’ere. Nothing but blinkin’ trams.”

“Order the taxi now,” suggested Mr. Eagles, with his mouth full, “so’s to be in readiness, like.”

“And ’ave it tickin’ up the thruppences for nothing? Think they’ll call that legitimate expenses? Not ’arf. ‘You pay that out of your own pocket, my man,’ that’s what they’ll say, the lousy skin-flints.”

“Well, ’ave yer grub,” suggested Mr. Eagles, pacifically.

Sergeant Lumley inspected his kipper narrowly.

“’Ope it’s a good one, that’s all,” he muttered. “Looks oily, it do. ’Ope it’s cooked. Eat a kipper what ain’t properly cooked through and you gets kipper on your breath for the rest of the day.” He forked a large portion into his mouth without pausing to remove the bones, and was obliged to expend a painful minute rescuing them with his fingers. “Tcha! it beats me why Godamighty wanted to put such a lot of bones into them things.”

PC. Eagles was shocked.

“You didn’t oughter question the ways of Godamighty,” he said, reprovingly.

“You keep a civil tongue in your ’ed, my lad,” retorted Sergeant Lumley, unfairly intruding his official superiority into this theological discussion, “and don’t go forgettin’ what’s due to my position.”

“There ain’t no position in the eyes of Godamighty,” said PC. Eagles, stoutly. His father and his sister happened to be noted lights in the Salvation Army, and he felt himself to be on his own ground here. “If it pleases ’Im to make you a sergeant, that’s one thing, but it won’t do you no good when you comes before ’Im to answer to the charge of questionin’ ’Is ways with kippers. Come to think of it, in ’Is sight you an’ me is just the same as worms, with no bones at all.”

“Not so much about worms,” said Sergeant Lumley. “You oughter know better than to talk about worms when a man’s eating his breakfuss. It’s enough to take any one’s appetite away. And let me tell you, Eagles, worm or no worm, if I have any more lip from you-Drat that telephone! What did I tell you?”

He pounded heavily across to the insanitary little cupboard that held the instrument, and emerged in a minute or two, dismally triumphant.

“That’s ’im. Kensington, this time. You ’op out an’ get that taxi, while I settle up ’ere.”

“Wouldn’t the Underground be quicker?”

“They said taxi, so you damn well make it taxi,” said Sergeant Lumley. While Eagles fetched the taxi, the sergeant took the opportunity to finish his kipper, thus avenging his defeat in religious controversy. This cheered him so much that he consented to take the Underground at the nearest suitable point, and they journeyed in comparative amity as far as South Kensington Station, and thence to the point indicated by Hector Puncheon, which was, in fact, the entrance to the Natural History Museum.

There was nobody in the entrance-hall who resembled Hector Puncheon in the least.

“Suppose ’e’s gone on already?” suggested P.C. Eagles.