’It was your Mr. Leggatt’s paint-protective matting which caught his eye.  She did resemble a sampan, especially about the stern-works.  At these remarks I naturally threw myself on ’is bosom, so far as Service conditions permitted, and revealed him all, mentioning that the car was yours.  You know his way of working his lips like a rabbit?  Yes, he was quite pleased. “His car!” he kept murmuring, working his lips like a rabbit.  “I owe ’im more than a trifle for things he wrote about me.  I’ll keep the car.”

’Your Mr. Leggatt now injected some semi-mutinous remarks to the effect that he was your chauffeur in charge of your car, and, as such, capable of so acting.  Mr. Morshed threw him a glarnce.  It sufficed.  Didn’t it suffice, Mr. Leggatt?’

‘I knew if something didn’t happen, something worse would,’ said Leggatt.  ‘It never fails when you’re aboard.’

‘And Jules?’ I demanded.

’Jules was, so to speak, panicking in a water-tight flat through his unfortunate lack of language.  I had to introduce him as part of the entente cordiale, and he was put under arrest, too.  Then we sat on the grass and smoked, while Eddy and Co. violently annoyed the traffic on the Portsmouth Road, till the umpires, all in short panties, conferred on the valuable lessons of the field-day and added up points, same as at target-practice.  I didn’t hear their conclusions, but our Mr. Morshed delivered a farewell address to Eddy and Co., tellin’ ’em they ought to have deduced from a hundred signs about me, that I was a friendly bringin’ in dispatches from the North.  We left ’em tryin’ to find those signs in the Scout book, and we reached Mr. Morshed’s hotel at Portsmouth at 6.27 P.M. ong automobile.  Here endeth the first chapter.’

‘Begin the second,’ I said.

The uncle and Leggatt had finished washing up and were seated, smoking, while the damp duster dried at the fire.

‘About what time was it,’ said Pyecroft to Leggatt, ’when our Mr. Morshed began to talk about uncles?’

’When he came back to the bar, after he’d changed into those rat-catcher clothes,’ said Leggatt.

’That’s right.  “Pye,” said he, “have you an uncle?” “I have,” I says.  “Here’s santy to him,” and I finished my sherry and bitters to you, uncle.’

‘That’s right,’ said Pyecroft’s uncle sternly.  ’If you hadn’t I’d have belted you worth rememberin’, Emmanuel.  I had the body all night.’

Pyecroft smiled affectionately.  ’So you ‘ad, uncle, an’ beautifully you looked after her.  But as I was saying, “I have an uncle, too,” says Mr. Morshed, dark and lowering.  “Yet somehow I can’t love him.  I want to mortify the beggar.  Volunteers to mortify my uncle, one pace to the front.”

’I took Jules with me the regulation distance.  Jules was getting interested.  Your Mr. Leggatt preserved a strictly nootral attitude.

’"You’re a pressed man,” says our Mr. Morshed.  “I owe your late employer much, so to say.  The car will manoeuvre all night, as requisite.”