were asking me to find out who murdered Sir Albert?"
"No, I wasn't," Lady Lunt flashed at him. "I was asking you to save this poor boy Cranford."
"Ah well, let's hope it's the same thing." Reggie stood up. "I can play about in the park, I suppose? Many thanks."
And he did play about in the park till dusk, and when he went back to London, Sam, the factotum, was not with him.
In the evening Donald Gordon rang him up. Donald Gordon thought Cranford was a bit of a tough, but was going to act for him. It would be a fruity case. He had arranged a consultation with Cranford at the prison to-morrow, and hoped Reggie would be there. What did Reggie think of the case? "Rotten," said Reggie, and rang off.
The fact is that from first to last the Lunt case annoyed him. He never saw his way through it, and has always called it one of his failures. The one thing which he did, he will tell you, was to grasp that the police were mucking it—to divine that whoever killed Sir Albert and however he—or she—did it, it was not a simple, common bit of pistolling. He was right about nothing else. His apology is that he has no imagination.
At this stage he was prepared to believe anything. When he went gloomily to bed it was with the con-
