“We can hear that for ourselves,” said Wade unsympathetically. “You looked a big simp, Cass. Get your helmet. Gather up that stuff and bring it along to the station. I’ll shut up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Finished your plan, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Yes, thank you,” answered Alleyn.

He came out of the office and walked past the bicycle shed to the stage-door. Here he found Sergeant Packer.

“Hullo, Packer, are you here for the rest of the night?”

Packer came smartly to attention.

“Yessir. At least, I’ll be relieved in half an hour, sir.”

“None too soon, I should imagine. It’s cold.”

“It is too, sir,” agreed Packer. “There’s snow on the back-country.”

“Snow in the back-country!” exclaimed Alleyn, and suddenly he was aware of a new world. The experiences of the night slipped away and became insignificant. He was awake in a sleeping town and not far away there were mountains with snow on them and long tracts of hills with strange soft names.

“Are you a country-bred man?” he asked Packer.

“Yessir. I come from Omarama in the Mackenzie Country. That’s in the South Island, sir. Very high sheep country, beyond Lake Pulcald.”

“I’ve heard of it. You go through a mountain pass, don’t you?”

“That’s right, sir. Burke’s Pass in the north and the Lindis in the south. Still very cold at nights, this time of year, in the Mackenzie, but you get the sun all day.”

“I shall go there,” said Alleyn. Suddenly he felt a great distaste for the position in which he found himself. He had not crossed half a world of ocean to mess about over a squalid and tedious crime. He felt that he had been a fool. He was on a holiday in a new country and he knew that at the back of all his thoughts there lay a kind of delicious excitement which he would not savour until long after he had gone away again.

The office door banged and Wade and Cass stamped out into the yard, beyond the bicycle shed.

“Are you there, Chief Inspector?” called Cass.

“Here! Good night, Packer, or rather good morning, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, it’ll be getting light soon. Good morning, sir.”

Alleyn joined the other two, and together they left the theatre and turned into the main thoroughfare.

Their footsteps rang coldly on the asphalt pavement. Somewhere, a long way off, a dog barked. Then, still farther away, a cock crew and was echoed away into nothingness by other cocks. The moon had set but the darkness was thinning and the street lamps already looked wan.

At the second corner Wade and Cass stopped.

“We turn off here,” said Wade. “It’ll be light in half an hour. If I may, sir, I’ll call in at the hotel sometime tomorrow.”

“Do,” said Alleyn cordially.

“It’s been a great pleasure, sir, having you with us.”