He changed abruptly into the Sword motive, which he gave with a violent flourish, and then he left the piano.  ’I do beg you not to wake my children,’ said his wife.

‘Your children must get used to my piano,’ said he.  ’Now, then, what about these two sisters?’

I pulled the Gazette from my pocket and handed it to him.  He read aloud the passage describing the magic night on the lake.

‘I don’t know who they were,’ he said.  ’Probably something tasty from the Hanbridge Empire.’

We both observed a faint, amused smile on the face of Mrs Brindley, the smile of a woman who has suddenly discovered in her brain a piece of knowledge rare and piquant.

‘I can guess who they were,’ she said.  ‘In fact, I’m sure.’

‘Who?’

‘Annie Brett and—­you know who.’

‘What, down at the Tiger?’

‘Certainly.  Hush!’ Mrs Brindley ran to the door and, opening it, listened.  The faint, fretful cry of a child reached us.  ’There!  You’ve done it!  I told you you would!’

She disappeared.  Mr Brindley whistled.

‘And who is Annie Brett?’ I inquired.

‘Look here,’ said he, with a peculiar inflection.  ’Would you like to see her?’

‘I should,’ I said with decision.

’Well, come on, then.  We’ll go down to the Tiger and have a drop of something.’

‘And the other sister?’ I asked.

‘The other sister is Mrs Oliver Colclough,’ he answered.  ’Curious, ain’t it?’

Again there was that swift, scarcely perceptible phenomenon in his eyes.

V

We stood at the corner of the side-street and the main road, and down the main road a vast, white rectangular cube of bright light came plunging—­its head rising and dipping—­at express speed, and with a formidable roar.  Mr Brindley imperiously raised his stick; the extraordinary box of light stopped as if by a miracle, and we jumped into it, having splashed through mud, and it plunged off again—­bump, bump, bump—­into the town of Bursley.  As Mr Brindley passed into the interior of the car, he said laconically to two men who were smoking on the platform—­

‘How do, Jim?  How do, Jo?’

And they responded laconically—­

‘How do, Bob?’

‘How do, Bob?’

We sat down.  Mr Brindley pointed to the condition of the floor.

‘Cheerful, isn’t it?’ he observed to me, shouting above the din of vibrating glass.

Our fellow-passengers were few and unromantic, perhaps halfa-dozen altogether on the long, shiny, yellow seats of the car, each apparently lost in gloomy reverie.

’It’s the advertisements and notices in these cars that are the joy of the super-man like you and me,’ shouted Mr Brindley.  ’Look there, “Passengers are requested not to spit on the floor.”  Simply an encouragement to lie on the seats and spit on the ceiling, isn’t it?  “Wear only Noble’s wonderful boots.”  Suppose we did!  Unless they came well up above the waist we should be prosecuted.  But there’s no sense of humour in this district.’