At about the time that George Bevan's train was leaving Waterloo, agrey racing car drew up with a grinding of brakes and a sputter ofgravel in front of the main entrance of Belpher Castle. The slimand elegant young man at the wheel removed his goggles, pulled outa watch, and addressed the stout young man at his side.

　　"Two hours and eighteen minutes from Hyde Park Corner, Boots. Notso dusty, what?"His companion made no reply. He appeared to be plunged in thought.

　　He, too, removed his goggles, revealing a florid and gloomy face,equipped, in addition to the usual features, with a small moustacheand an extra chin. He scowled forbiddingly at the charming scenewhich the goggles had hidden from him.

　　Before him, a symmetrical mass of grey stone and green ivy, BelpherCastle towered against a light blue sky. On either side rollingpark land spread as far as the eye could see, carpeted here andthere with violets, dotted with great oaks and ashes and Spanishchestnuts, orderly, peaceful and English. Nearer, on his left, wererose-gardens, in the centre of which, tilted at a sharp angle,appeared the seat of a pair of corduroy trousers, whose wearerseemed to be engaged in hunting for snails. Thrushes sang in thegreen shrubberies; rooks cawed in the elms. Somewhere in thedistance sounded the tinkle of sheep bells and the lowing of cows.

　　It was, in fact, a scene which, lit by the evening sun of a perfectspring day and fanned by a gentle westerly wind, should havebrought balm and soothing meditations to one who was the soleheir to all this Paradise.

　　But Percy, Lord Belpher, remained uncomforted by the notableco-operation of Man and Nature, and drew no solace from thereflection that all these pleasant things would one day be his own.

　　His mind was occupied at the moment, to the exclusion of all otherthoughts, by the recollection of that painful scene in Bow StreetPolice Court. The magistrate's remarks, which had been tactless andunsympathetic, still echoed in his ears. And that infernal night inVine Street police station . . . The darkness . . . The hard bed. . .

　　The discordant vocalising of the drunk and disorderly in thenext cell. . . . Time might soften these memories, might lessen thesharp agony of them; but nothing could remove them altogether.

　　Percy had been shaken to the core of his being. Physically, he wasstill stiff and sore from the plank bed. Mentally, he was avolcano. He had been marched up the Haymarket in the full sight ofall London by a bounder of a policeman. He had been talked to likean erring child by a magistrate whom nothing could convince that hehad not been under the influence of alcohol at the moment of hisarrest. (The man had said things about his liver, kindlybe-warned-in-time-and-pull-up-before-it-is-too-late things, whichwould have seemed to Percy indecently frank if spoken by hismedical adviser in the privacy of the sick chamber.) It is perhapsnot to be wondered at that Belpher Castle, for all its beauty ofscenery and architecture, should have left Lord Belpher a littlecold. He was seething with a fury which the conversation of ReggieByng had done nothing to allay in the course of the journey fromLondon. Reggie was the last person he would willingly have chosenas a companion in his hour of darkness. Reggie was not soothing. Hewould insist on addressing him by his old Eton nickname of Bootswhich Percy detested. And all the way down he had been breaking outat intervals into ribald comments on the recent unfortunateoccurrence which were very hard to bear.