“No, sir.  He’s happy with—­with what you call his playthings.”

“What are they but playthings?” asked Beaumaroy, tilting his glass to his lips with a smile perhaps a little wry.

“Only I wish as you wouldn’t talk about judges and juries,” the Sergeant complained.

“I really don’t know whether it’s a civil or a criminal matter, or both, or neither,” Beaumaroy admitted candidly.  “But what we do know, Sergeant, is that it provides us with excellent billets and rations.  Moreover, a thing that you certainly will not appreciate, it gratifies my taste for the mysterious.”

“I hope there’s a bit more coming from it than that,” said the Sergeant.  “That is, if we stick together faithful, sir.”

“Oh, we shall!  One thing puzzles me about you, Sergeant.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before.  Sometimes you speak almost like an educated man; at others your speech is, well, illiterate.”

“Well, sir, it’s a sort of mixture of my mother; she was class, the blighter who come after my father, and the Board School—­”

“Of course!  What they call the educational ladder!  That explains it.  By the way, I’m thinking of changing our doctor.”

“Good job, too.  I ’ate that Irechester.  Stares at you, that chap does.”

“Does he stare at your eyes?’” asked Beaumaroy thoughtfully.

“I don’t know that he does at my eyes particularly.  Nothing wrong with ’em, is there?” The Sergeant sounded rather truculent.

“Never mind that; but I fancied he stared at Mr. Saffron’s.  And I’ve read somewhere, in some book or other, that doctors can tell, or guess, by the eyes.  Well, that’s only an idea.  How does a lady doctor appeal to you, Sergeant?”

“I should be shy,” said the Sergeant, grinning.

“Vulgar! vulgar!” Beaumaroy murmured.

“That Dr. Mary Arkroyd?”

“I had thought of her.”

“She ought to be fair easy to kid.  You ’ave notions sometimes, sir.”

Beaumaroy stretched out his legs, debonnair, well-rounded legs, to the seducing blaze of oak logs.

“I haven’t really a care in the world,” he said.

The Sergeant’s reply, or comment, had a disconcerting ring.  “And you’re sure of ’Eaven?  That’s what the bloke always says to the ’angman.”

“I’ve no intention of being a murderer, Sergeant.”  Beaumaroy’s eyebrows were raised in gentle protest.

“Once you’re in with a job, you never know,” his retainer observed darkly.

Beaumaroy laughed.  “Oh, go to the devil! and mix me another whisky.”  Yet a vague uneasiness showed itself on his face; he looked across the room at the evil-shaped man handling the bottles in the cupboard.  He made one queer, restless movement of his arms, as though to free himself.  Then, in a moment, he sprang from his chair, a glad kindly smile illuminating his face; he bowed in a very courtly fashion, exclaiming, “Ah! here you are, sir?  And all well, I hope?”