“Bloke comes along about ‘alf past nine and goes into Fred’s from the back. Changes into boots and breeches and bowler ‘at and then goes off on the ‘orse. Funny time for hackin’, I thinks. And that’s all I knows.”

“When you saw him go into Gorble’s from the back,” I asked, “could he have been coming from the Long Down?”

“Not your end of it, he couldn’t. But the other end he could.”

“How was he dressed before he changed?”

“Couldn’t see in the dusk. But a big bloke, he was, with a cap on his head.”

“Any form of luggage? A knapsack on his back?” I asked, for I couldn’t understand how he had managed to change out of riding kit and into the brown tweed suit at Fred Gorble’s.

“Rolled cape on his saddle when I saw him,” Jim Melton suggested.

That was good enough. All he needed to carry in the roll were shoes, a cap, a pair of trousers to match his jacket, and a collar and tie to take the place of his cravat.

This invaluable agent now insisted on paying for the next round of drinks. Stiff whiskies seemed to have no effect on him whatever. Myself, I was awash with beer; but Ian’s brewery did not seem to be all Ferrin claimed for it. When we had finished, Jim Melton nodded to me, vanished through the kitchen door of the pub, round the back of the yard into the road and along the road to the public bar. It was very evidently his habit to let no one know his business or whereabouts.

As soon as Ian came home I told him the story. He went straight to the telephone to ask whether a rider had passed either of the patrol cars the night before.

“That damned Melton!” he exclaimed while he waited for the reply. “I’ve spent all of a week trying to get hold of him to tell him to keep his eyes open. Bloody little crook! Doesn’t he strike you as the perfect type of double agent?”

He didn’t. Jim had no sense of self-importance. All he wanted from life was to be allowed to scrabble around among the roots of it and avoid notice.

“What did he do in the war?” I asked.

“Caught rats for the Ministry of Agriculture — after fooling the psychiatrists into believing he had fits every time he heard a bang.”

“And the village didn’t give him away?”

“Not they! The joke kept ‘em happy for five years!”

I could see that Jim Melton would be forever beyond Ian’s understanding. He had the quality of an old-fashioned Central European peasant. Any and all rascality was forgivable so long as it made established authority look an ass. The Meltons are the only relic of the feudal system left in England.

The call from the chief constable came through. Yes, one of the patrol cars had passed a well-dressed man on a horse and paid no attention.

“Did they stop?” I asked.

No, they had not stopped — just seen him in the headlights as they cruised by.

The dark gentleman had played his formidable knowledge of customs and country for all it was worth. Hunting with the famous packs of the Whaddon Chase and the Grafton was the winter sport of the district, and horse-breeding a flourishing local industry. Men in cars and on foot might be worth watching, but a well-dressed man on a horse would be assumed to have no interest in vulgar crime. He would not even arouse the curiosity of a town-bred traffic cop, whereas a local farmer would at least wonder where the devil he was hacking to or from at that time of night.

He must have discovered Fred Gorble’s establishment in his first reconnaissance of the district — for it would be an inconceivable coincidence that they already knew each other. Then he coolly rode in, weighed him up, told him a good story and arranged to stable his horse at a price which would keep Gorble’s mouth shut. The choice of a horse for transport between his base and the approaches to the Long Down was a stroke of genius. Should an unfortunate incident at the Warren be discovered before he was clear of the district, he could either canter casually past the police or, at the worst, make a highwayman’s escape across country.

“Well, now straight to the police!” said Ian briskly. “They can get on his tail and establish his identity. Where did he hire his horse? Where was he staying?”

“He hired his horse under a false name,” I answered, perhaps impatiently. “And wherever he was staying, he’s not there now. He may even be having lunch in your club today — without his prominent black eyebrows.”

“All right, Charles, all right! But how did he travel? Taxi drivers, ticket collectors, car registration numbers — that’s all daily bread and butter to the police.”

“Yes. They will trace him up to a point. But they won’t get near his identity.”

“He isn’t a superman!”

I agreed that he was not. He was just trained — and so was I —to recognize, anticipate and avoid police. I never, in old days, took a taxi anywhere near my starting point. I always gave the driver a reasonable mass destination which was close to but not my real one. I never repeated the same route. There would be no trouble in tracing the man to Euston Station, and a complete blank when he left it.

“But you can’t do nothing!” Ian exclaimed — and then, feeling that despairing cries were not strong enough, added, “You must not do nothing!”

I begged him to look at the position from my opponent’s point of view —who could not know that I had discovered the drugged dog nor that I suspected him. So the trap did not quite make sense as a trap.

“Was it one at all?” I went on. “Well, I had a friend with me whom he never saw arrive. And he had some other strongish reason — I don’t know what — to smell a rat. So for his own safety he must assume I expected him. And therefore it is dead certain he has cleared right out of the district for the moment and covered his tracks.

“But there are also some good arguments against its being a trap. The friend was with me because I don’t like being alone. The friend shouted and struggled to get out but said nothing which could definitely prove I was not quietly following my profession and watching badgers. All the time he has been here he has not seen a sign of police, in uniform or out of it. The car which passed him on the road meant no more than any other cruising police car.

“So what is his next move in this game where he cannot see the other board, but the referee has said ‘check’? He must make up his mind by what I do. It is certain that I myself know that a murderous attack was made on me, whatever excuse I may have given to my unknown friend … Consequently I must show nervousness and run. That’s the surest way of getting him to follow.”

Ian would not listen. He became more and more regimental. He insisted on telling the whole story to the police, and that I should stay with him while they made their investigations.

“I’ve been thinking all day what would have happened if I had been forced to put a charge of shot into that fellow last night,” he said. “I know he deserves it. But the police should have known exactly what we were doing.”

“And forbidden it or wrecked it.”

“That’s their funeral.”

“Mine, too, unfortunately.”

“Very well. But it’s against common sense and it’s against my —my —”

I was certain he was going to say “orders.”

” — against my principles. I cannot help you any more, Charles, unless you allow me to keep the police informed.”

I said I had told him a dozen times why I wouldn’t. Because I would not be guarded. Because I did not want him questioned, frightened off and returning months later when I was not expecting him. Because this was a private matter between me and him.

“For which you are quite likely to be publicly sentenced to death.”

That was my own business, I replied. Would he promise to leave the police out of it if I never asked anything more from him?

He agreed to that. He was very unhappy but obstinate. It was all my fault. I should have recognized that he was not the same man as in the war, and that it had become for him, as for the rest of us, a mere episode breaking the continuity of an orderly life. Both of us, as I have indicated, found the special beastliness of that episode still too much in the present. It is hard for a man of scrupulous mercy and humanity to be forced into the morals of a ruthless gangster. But he had the pattern to carry him along — a continuity of landed gentry into army and back to landed gentry. I had no pattern.