“What sort of enquiries do the police make in a case like this? How should I know? They’re just—well, enquiring.”

“Over the telephone? Making all sorts of horrible accusations——”

“Not accusations.”

“Well, insinuations against a poor lamb of a dog they’ve never even seen?”

“I wish you wouldn’t run away with ideas like that,” said General Jenkinson plaintively. “They do want to see the dog—that’s just the point. A sergeant or somebody is on his way now to—well, to make enquiries, as I said.”

“And what are you going to tell him when he comes?” asked Susan.

“I’m not going to see him at all,” answered the general hastily. “I’m going out to the stables. He’s your dog, and you had much better deal with the matter yourself. I take no responsibility—no responsibility at all.”

Covering his retreat with his favourite catch-phrase when faced with a difficulty, the general cleared his throat in his most military manner, strode from the room and—since he was a man of his word—did in fact go to the stables, where he devoted a peaceful hour to the contemplation of animals which, whatever their faults, had never numbered sheep-killing among them.

Left to herself, Susan sat in silence for a while. Then she pulled Gandhi’s ears lovingly.

“It’s all a mistake, isn’t it, old boy?” she murmured.

Then she went upstairs to powder her nose. “If it’s that nice Sergeant Littleboy who came up when we had the burglary, I know it will be all right,” she murmured to herself. “But it’s best to take no chances.”

It was not the nice Sergeant Littleboy whom, some twenty minutes later, a nervous parlourmaid ushered into the morning-room. Instead, Susan found herself confronting a face which, though she could have sworn it was wholly unknown to her, nevertheless seemed to strike some vague association in her memory. She frowned involuntarily in the effort to identify it, and then, hastily remembering her good manners, assumed her most beguiling smile, and asked the sergeant to sit down.

The new-comer took a chair and as he did so Susan noticed with amusement that his uniform seemed a good deal too tight for him. His chest strained at the buttons of his tunic, and his breath came somewhat short, as though it were impeded by the neck-band. She longed to tell him to undo it, but feared to ruffle his dignity. “I expect he got a bit warm bicycling up from Lewes,” she thought, for her windows overlooked the drive and she had seen his arrival.