“Look at that now, Lindsay-Wolseley. And yet you can bring yourself to sympathize with brutes who deliberately take a mean advantage of my being handicapped by a pompous little ass of a minister like Munro. Anyway, the question of Sunday doesn’t arise yet. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, what? We’ll beat Glenbogle and Glenbristle for hikers to-night. And the sooner we start the better. Look here, Toker, I think we’ll cut out the rest of the dinner. I’m sure everybody’s had enough. You’ve all had enough, haven’t you? We’ll all have to change into proper clothes for the beating of the glens. Hector, you’d better drive Myrtle in that curious contraption of Murdoch’s he calls a car. Where’s Angus? Oh, look here, Angus. I’m sorry to upset the pipers’ evening after the splendid way they upheld the honour of Glenbogle to-day, but I want them to go and play in different parts of the glen and to listen carefully about every five minutes.”

“What would they listen for, Ben Nevis?” his piper asked.

“Why, to hear if they hear anybody shouting for help. Don’t you realize Mr Royde has been carried off by hikers?”

“What would they be doing that for, Ben Nevis?”

“I can’t waste any more valuable time explaining the whys and wherefores of this business.”

“Very good, Ben Nevis,” said his piper, retiring with a puzzled expression on his long lean face.

“Now, look here, Wolseley, I refuse to quarrel with you over this wretched business. Two old friends and all that sort of thing. But I don’t want … what’s the name of that bounder who wrote to me, Hugh? … Buckham? … yes, well, as I was saying, Wolseley, I don’t want to involve you if I catch this fellow Buckham and decide to have him thrown into Loch na Craosnaich. I mean to say if he were drowned or anything, you might have to resign your seat on the County Council. So I think you and Mrs Wolseley ought to go home.”

The rest of the guests who had been invited to the dinner and the dance hastily said they thought they should be going. The prospect of being summoned before the Procurator-Fiscal’s deputy lacked attraction.

“I feel terribly bad about spoiling the lovely time we were having,” Carrie told her host when the last of the guests’ cars had gone sweeping down the drive.

“My dear young lady, what have you done to spoil it?”

“I feel that perhaps if Chester hadn’t taken to wearing the kilt all of a sudden like that this wouldn’t have happened.”