Sir Harold had left everything in apple-pie order and his son anticipated little trouble. As he turned over the pages of his father’s diaries it occurred to him that as a family they richly deserved their too-much-publicized nickname of ‘Lucky Lacklanders.’ How lucky, for instance, that the eighth baronet, an immensely wealthy man, had developed a passion for precious stones and invested in them to such an extent that they constituted a vast realizable fortune in themselves. How lucky that their famous racing stables were so phenomenally successful. How uniquely and fantastically lucky they had been in that no fewer than three times in the past century a Lacklander had won the most famous of all sweepstakes. It was true, of course, that he himself might be said to have had a piece of ill-fortune when his wife had died in giving birth to Mark but as he remembered her, and he had to confess he no longer remembered her at all distinctly, she had been a disappointingly dull woman. Nothing like … But here he checked himself smartly and swept up his moustache with his thumb and forefinger. He was disconcerted when at this precise moment the butler came in to say that Colonel Cartarette had called and would like to see him. In a vague way the visit suggested a judgment. He took up a firm position on the hearthrug.

‘Hallo, Maurice,’ he said when the Colonel came in. ‘Glad to see you.’ He looked self-consciously into the Colonel’s face and with a changed voice said: ‘Anything wrong?’

‘Well, yes,’ the Colonel said. ‘A hell of a lot actually. I’m sorry to bother you, George, so soon after your trouble and all that but the truth is I’m so damned worried that I feel I’ve got to share my responsibility with you.’

‘Me!’ Sir George ejaculated, apparently with relief and a kind of astonishment. The Colonel took two envelopes from his pocket and laid them on the desk. Sir George saw that they were addressed in his father’s writing.

‘Read the letter first,’ the Colonel said, indicating the smaller of the two envelopes. George gave him a wondering look. He screwed in his eyeglass, drew a single sheet of paper from the envelope, and began to read. As he did so, his mouth fell gently open and his expression grew increasingly blank. Once he looked up at the troubled Colonel as if to ask a question but seemed to change his mind and fell again to reading.

At last the paper dropped from his fingers and his monocle from his eye to his waistcoat.

‘I don’t,’ he said, ‘understand a word of it.’

‘You will,’ the Colonel said, ‘when you have looked at this.’ He drew a thin sheaf of manuscript out of the larger envelope and placed it before George Lacklander. ‘It will take you ten minutes to read. If you don’t mind, I’ll wait.’