Mrs. Forbes, whose face was paler and eyes seemingly bigger and more luminous than usual, was leaning on Evelyn’s arm.  She was dressed in a blue tulle costume which lent a fragile air to an already slender form, but she smiled so unaffectedly that even the policeman grinned.

“You certainly look ferocious,” said her husband, yielding instantly, as she well knew would happen.

“I believe you are all jealous,” she vowed.  “I am the only one who has really been in the forefront of the battle.  No.  I forgot you, Mr. Theydon.  Didn’t that horrid man knock you down?”

“Yes,” said Theydon, moistening his lips with his tongue.  There was such a peculiar rasp in his voice that it evoked a general laugh.

Obviously the guests meant to avoid serious topics during the meal.  Evelyn Forbes chimed in with a reminiscence of her schooldays in Brussels, and soon the talk was general, ranging from the year’s Academy to the Ladies’ Gold Championship.

Mrs. Paxton, an excellent mimic, was amusing them with imitations of the voice and manner of a certain well-known lady golfer, when she was interrupted by three sharp, irregular cracks which seemed to come from the dining-room windows.  Simultaneously a picture frame on the opposite wall was split and a Worcester vase on a sideboard was smashed to atoms.

Theydon, owing to his position at the table, was the first to notice three small, starred holes in the plate glass of the windows.

“Don’t stand up!” he said, instantly.  “Some one is shooting at the house.  Crouch on the floor, for Heaven’s sake!”

That urgent appeal was emphasized by a fourth bullet, which, taking a lower flight, barely missed Forbes, upset a Venetian glass flower vase on the table, and buried itself in the lower half of the sideboard.

Forbes, heedless of the possible consequences to himself, sprang to his wife’s assistance, and, interposing his body as a shield between her and the windows, led her to an angle of the wall where she would be safe.  The younger women, after a momentary hesitation, dropped to the floor and crawled to the same refuge.  Theydon ran out.  The front door was open.

The police had heard the shooting, the sound of which had been deadened to those in the dining room by the breaking glass and china.  But within a few minutes a useless pursuit was abandoned.  The fusillade had come from a car which halted close to the garden railings on the far side of the square.  Though the trees were nearly in full leaf, and dense shrubberies seemed to shut off every house from any such method of attack, investigation proved that it was possible to estimate accurately the position of the dining-room windows in No. 11.

When Theydon returned he found Forbes and the ladies gathered in the hall.

“Another narrow escape on both sides,” he said coolly.  “Two policemen were just too late to interfere.  Of course, they did not anticipate a move in that quarter.”