'O Lord, thou knowest I was provoked,' he murmured, as he floated on the still surface of the pool, and a sense of peace, sweet forgiving peace, descended on him as he prayed.

Peace had not descended on the rest of Jacaranda House. Ringed by one hundred armed men who crouched in the shadows of the garden fingering the triggers of their Sten guns, by sixty-nine German guard dogs snarling and slobbering for a kill and by five Saracen armoured cars which had been driven heedlessly over flowerbeds and lawns to take up their positions, Jacaranda House stood silent and unanswering.

Kommandant van Heerden decided to have one more go at getting the brute out without trouble. The very last thing he wanted was another gun-battle. He peered out of the turret and raised the loudhailer again.

'Jonathan Hazelstone, I am giving you one last chance,' his voice amplified a hundred times boomed into the night. 'If you come out quietly you will be safe. If not, I am coming in to get you.'

The Bishop of Barotseland, lying on his back meditating quietly and staring up into the night sky where a great bird drifted slowly above him, heard the words more distinctly than before. God manifested Himself in many mysterious ways, he knew, but vultures he had never thought of. Now the Almighty had spoken again and more clearly, much more clearly.

The first part of the message had been quite unequivocal. 'Come out quietly and you will be saved,' but the second part had been much less easy to interpret; 'If not, I am coming in to get you.' Jonathan Hazelstone swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out quietly as instructed. Then pausing to look back at the water to see if the Lord had even begun to get in to fetch him out, he noticed the vulture turn and flap horribly away over the blue gums.

'He chased me down the nights and down the days,' he murmured incorrectly, remembering the Hound of Heaven, and he knew that he had been witness that night not only to the voice of God but to his shape as well. If God could come as Doves and Hounds why not as a Vulture? And murmuring another poem his grandfather had taught him as a child, one which he had never understood until these last few minutes, he began to dry himself.

_'The harbingers are come. See, see their mark;

Black is their colour, and behold my head.

But must they have my brain? Must they dispark

Those sparkling notions, which therein were bred?

Must dulnesse turn me to a clod?

Yet have they left me. Thou art still my God.'_

It was called 'The Forerunners', by George Herbert, and while old Sir Theophilus had revised it by changing white to black in the second line, and had assumed that 'sparkling notions' referred to his murderous haha, the Bishop now saw that it applied perfectly to the vulture and was grateful to note that the harbinger had indeed left him. With a silent prayer to the Lord to assume a less ominous form in future, the Bishop of Barotseland entered the pavilion to fetch his clothes.

Fifty yards away Kommandant van Heerden was making up his mind to give the order to storm the house, when Miss Hazelstone appeared in the main entrance.

'There's no need to shout,' she said demurely. 'There is a bell, you know.'

The Kommandant wasn't in the mood for lessons in etiquette. 'I've come for your brother,' he shouted.

'I'm afraid he's busy just at the moment. You'll have to wait. You can come in if you wipe your boots and promise not to knock anything over.'

The Kommandant could imagine just how busy Jonathan Hazelstone must be and he had every intention of knocking things over if he had to come into the house. He glanced uneasily at the windows on the upper floor.

'What is he so busy about?' as though there was any need to ask.

Miss Hazelstone didn't like the Kommandant's tone of voice. 'He's about his ablutions,' she snapped, and was about to turn away when she remembered the breakage. 'About that Ming…' she began. With a slam of the turret-top Kommandant van Heerden disappeared. From inside the armoured car came the muffled sound of his voice.

'Don't talk to me about the Ming,' he yelled. 'You go in and tell your brother to unblute the fucking thing and come out with his hands up.'

Miss Hazelstone had stood as much as she could take. 'How dare you speak to me like that,' she snarled. 'I'll do no such thing,' and turned to re-enter the house.

'Then I will,' screamed the Kommandant, and ordered his men into the house. 'Get the bastard,' he yelled, and waited for the roar of the deadly Ming. He waited in vain. The men and dogs pouring over Miss Hazelstone's prostrate body encountered no further resistance. The Dobermann, knowing now what lack of foresight it had shown by disputing its patch of lawn with Konstabel Els, lay on the drawing-room floor pretending to be a rug. Around it policemen and dogs charged, searching the house for their quarry. There was no human obstacle to the policemen who dashed upstairs and along corridors into bedrooms in search of the killer. Disconsolate, they reported to the Kommandant who was still cowering in the Saracen.

'He's not there,' they yelled.

'Are you absolutely certain?' he asked before opening the lid. They were, and the Kommandant clambered out. He knew there was only one thing left to do, one slim chance of capturing Jonathan Hazelstone that night.

'The dogs,' he ordered frantically. 'Bring the tracker dogs,' and dashed despairingly into the house and up the stairs followed by the pack of breathless and eager Alsatians. The pink floral bedroom was just as the Kommandant had seen it last-with the notable exception of the naked man. Grabbing the bedspread from the bed he held it out to the dogs to smell. As the dogs sniffed the cloth and passed off down the corridor they read its message loud and clear. The thing reeked of Old Rhino Skin brandy. Ignoring the odour of bath salts on the stairs the dogs bounded down into the hall and out on to the drive. A moment later they had picked up the trail Konstabel Els had left and were off across the Park towards the blockhouse.

Behind them in the privacy of the pavilion the Bishop of Barotseland was having some difficulty in getting dressed. For one thing his clothes seemed to have wrapped themselves round some heavy metallic object and when at last the Bishop had disentangled the thing and had carried it out into the moonlight to see what it was, he was so distressed by its associations with the murder of Fivepence that in his agitation he dropped it and the great gun splashed into the pool and disappeared. Consoling himself with the thought that it could do no more harm down there, he went back into the pavilion to put on the rest of his clothes.

He had some more difficulty with his trousers. There was something large and heavy in his back pocket, and it took him some time to get it out.

'Ah well.' he said to himself as he struggled to pull the revolver loose, 'these things are sent to try us,' and was trying to imagine how on earth the weapon could have found its way into his trouser pocket when he became aware that he was no longer alone.

With the departure of the dogs in pursuit of Konstabel Els, Kommandant van Heerden found himself with time on his hands. His mood of melancholy had returned with the disappearance of the murderer and, not wishing to share what promised to be his lonely vigil with an irate and unpredictable Miss Hazelstone, he left his hostess still recovering from the novel experience of being used as a doormat by two hundred hobnailed boots and two hundred and seventy-six paws and wandered miserably out into the garden. As the Kommandant sauntered about the lawn viciously kicking the pieces of Sir Theophilus' shattered bust, he came near to cursing the great hero of his yesteryears for having spawned the line of progeny that had brought his career crashing to the ground as effectively as they had the bust of Sir Theophilus himself.