‘And the girls?’ I asked.

’Oh, I left that to Jules.  I’m a monogomite by nature.  So we embarked strictly ong garcong.  But I should tell you, in case he didn’t, that your Mr. Leggatt’s care for your interests ’ad extended to sheathing the car in matting and gunny-bags to preserve her paint-work.  She was all swathed up like an I-talian baby.’

‘He is careful about his paint-work,’ I said.

’For a man with no Service experience I should say he was fair homicidal on the subject.  If we’d been Marines he couldn’t have been more pointed in his allusions to our hob-nailed socks.  However, we reduced him to a malleable condition, and embarked for Portsmouth.  I’d seldom rejoined my vaisseau ong automobile, avec a fur coat and goggles.  Nor ‘ad Jules.’

‘Did Jules say much?’ I asked, helplessly turning the handle of the coffee-roaster.

’That’s where I pitied the pore beggar.  He ’adn’t the language, so to speak.  He was confined to heavings and shruggin’s and copious Mong Jews!  The French are very badly fitted with relief-valves.  And then our Mr. Leggatt drove.  He drove.’

‘Was he in a very malleable condition?’

’Not him!  We recognised the value of his cargo from the outset.  He hadn’t a chance to get more than moist at the edges.  After which we went to sleep; and now we’ll go to breakfast.’

We entered the back room where everything was in order, and a screeching canary made us welcome.  The uncle had added sausages and piles of buttered toast to the kippers.  The coffee, cleared with a piece of fish-skin, was a revelation.

Leggatt, who seemed to know the premises, had run the car into the tiny backyard where her mirror-like back almost blocked up the windows.  He minded shop while we ate.  Pyecroft passed him his rations through a flap in the door.  The uncle ordered him in, after breakfast, to wash up, and he jumped in his gaiters at the old man’s commands as he has never jumped to mine.

‘To resoom the post-mortem,’ said Pyecroft, lighting his pipe.  ’My slumbers were broken by the propeller ceasing to revolve, and by vile language from your Mr. Leggatt.’

‘I—­I—­’ Leggatt began, a blue-checked duster in one hand and a cup in the other.

‘When you’re wanted aft you’ll be sent for, Mr. Leggatt,’ said Pyecroft amiably.  ’It’s clean mess decks for you now.  Resooming once more, we was on a lonely and desolate ocean near Portsdown, surrounded by gorse bushes, and a Boy Scout was stirring my stomach with his little copper-stick.’

’"You count ten,” he says.